50 Years Ago: Man: Ape in Wolf’s Clothing? (2019)

The 50 Years Ago column from the September 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

Perhaps the most famous of scientific frauds was the fake Piltdown Skull of 1910, a “missing link” fabricated by a person unknown. That anonymous joker put together an ape’s jaw with a human skull. Desmond Morris has grafted the most ignorant fairy tales about human society onto a body of basically sound ideas about human biological evolution. The Naked Ape is a barefaced hoax.

As a gimmick, Morris pretends to describe the human animal just as it would be pictured by a zoologist if it were a newly-discovered species. “Naked ape” is a clinical term (like “black-footed squirrel”) which is supposed to denote men’s most noticeable characteristics: their lack of fur. But evidently, Morris has become a rich man because to millions of his readers, nudity is a novelty. It should be obvious that the most important thing about human animals is not that they are naked, but that they are clothed. In other words, they produce what they consume; they turn the artificial into the necessary, and (like Morris) sometimes confuse it with the natural.

His book is a hymn of praise to modern capitalism. All the current practices, preoccupations, superstitions, myths and manners are, according to Morris, highly admirable. Furthermore, they are natural because they stem from man’s past as a wolf-like, monogamous, predatory killer.

(Socialist Standard, September 1969)

Freud and Marxism (1) (1989)

From the September 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Fifty years ago this month one of the century's most controversial figures died: Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. He has been celebrated as a genius or condemned as a charlatan, but one thing is certain: he cannot be ignored.

Freud's influence has been overwhelming. His views have informed issues and debates in every field of knowledge dealing with human affairs, and have contributed to forming present-day 'common sense'. His views have influenced many of the institutions that are a part of our social world. Child care clinics and a whole apparatus of systems to intervene in the family have been established in the belief that a healthy child requires certain sorts of experiences. Other institutions that deal with the problems encountered by adults, such as psychiatry, social work and clinical psychology, have been influenced in how they conceive of the problem and its treatment.

It would be false, however, to believe that Freudian views have swept all before them. This is far from the case. Freudian ideas and practices exist within fields in conflict with other viewpoints which claim that psychoanalysis is invalid. This is so within Marxism.

Freud's Life and Ideas

Sigmund Freud was born on 6 May 1856 in Freiberg, Moravia, a small town some 150 miles north-east of Vienna, in present-day Czechoslovakia. Although tine family was Jewish, orthodox practices and beliefs were not emphasised. When his father’s wool business began to fail in 1860 the family moved and settled in Vienna.

Freud remained there, except for brief visits away, until 1938 when the Nazis invaded Austria. It was then that he moved to London, dying there on 23 September 1939, aged 83. Freud showed early academic promise and, as an adolescent his interests were broad and varied. The rampant anti-semitism in Vienna severely restricted the opportunities open to Jews. Freud chose medicine primarily because of the openings it provided to science. In 1873 he entered the University of Vienna and in 1882 entered practice at the Vienna General Hospital.

In 1885 he managed to get a travelling grant which allowed him to go to Paris to study with the famous French psychiatrist, Jean Charcot, at the Saltpetriere. The contact with Charcot marked an important watershed in Freud's intellectual development, as it led to the beginning of his concern with the psychical rather than the physiological basis of neurosis. At the time nervous diseases (neuroses) were treated by physical means such as electrotherapy. However, Charcot had shown that the use of hypnotic suggestion could be effective in recovering the lost function (such as vision or walking) in hysterics. This work was highly controversial and when Freud gave a presentation of it to the Vienna Society of Medicine it was met negatively.

On his return from Paris, Freud married and set up in private practice. He used hypnosis to enable patients to recall forgotten events and for making suggestions to change their behaviour. In doing so, Freud was using a technique developed by Josef Breuer whom Freud had known from his days at the University of Vienna.

An account of the case of one of Breuer's patients. Bertha Pappenham, together with the varying interpretations of Freud and Breuer, was published in Studies in Hysteria in 1895. This can be considered the founding publication of psychoanalysis. Through further experience with his patients and his own lengthy self-analysis beginning in 1897 Freud came to focus attention on childhood experiences and the role of early sexual development in the formation of neurosis. The Interpretation of Dreams was published in 1900. In it Freud presented his theory of the unconscious and of repression. Dreams were seen as the royal road to the unconscious. Freud's views on the development of the sexual instinct from infancy to maturity, and the link between early development and sexual perversion and neurosis in adulthood, were presented in the Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality in 1906. Freud was beginning to gather around him a group of followers: Alfred Adler, Carl Jung, Sandor Ferenczi, Otto Rank, Karl Abraham, Ernest Jones and others. He had also been appointed to a professorship. International recognition was growing and psychoanalysis was establishing a vigorous institutional foundation of congresses and journals. In 1910 the International Psychoanalytical Society was formed. However, with the growth and development there was also conflict and dissent. Adler left in 1911 and Jung in 1914.

Freud continued to refine and develop psychoanalytic theory and extend his analyses. The theory of psychoanalysis had expanded from a therapeutic technique based on clinical observation into a general account of neuroses, and into a theory of psychological processes in general. Finally, it had become a system in which most phenomena in body, mind and society were explained.

Psychoanalysis was always a source of controversy. But 1933 saw a new way to oppose it. When Hitler came to power Freud's writings, along with those of Einstein and H.G. Wells, were heaped on blazing public bonfires. Freud was reported as saying: "What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me, now they are contented with burning my books".

Freud's Geography of the Mind

Freud's views developed and changed over the years. It was in 1923 in The Ego and the Id that he presented his final account of the structure of the mind in terms of the Id, Ego and Superego. These, combined with the concepts of the unconscious, sexual energies and repression, form the basic framework of psychoanalysis.

One of the earliest findings for Freud was that the real motivation for an act may be disguised even to the person who performs it. Unconscious processes are the most important and the least accessible. Since these processes are outside awareness they can only be understood by way of their practical effects (for example, dreams, slips of the tongue). Unconscious processes can not be controlled by consciousness.

Of the three regions of the mind Freud described in 1923, the id was the most fundamental and basic aspect of the personality. It was the source of all the instinctual energy and was rooted in the biological characteristics of the human species. The id was governed by the pleasure principle and the immediate gratification of desire. The infant personality contained no other structure. The id was entirely amoral and incapable of making judgements of right and wrong. It pulsated with greed, envy and desire.

Out of this evolved a portion of the mind devoted to reason, the evaluation of external conditions and self-activity. This was the ego. Eventually, it became the executive of the personality, controlling the demands of the id and the super-ego. Whereas the id was shaped by instinctual forces, the ego was shaped by conscious perceptions and contact with the external world. The ego was governed by the reality principle.

The super-ego developed out of the ego as the child took on the standards of the parents. In the child's early development it had to learn right from wrong. This was done through the rewarding and punishing practices of the parents. As this was incorporated the super-ego was formed, and the child took on these parental functions by itself. The super-ego was just as unbending and unreasonable as the id. It would not tolerate any deviation from its rigid code of morals. If these morals were broken the super-ego produced a feeling of guilt in the ego, and if they were met a feeling of pride. The super-ego was governed by the morality principle.

In Freud's account of the structure of the mind the concept of energy was important, as it was this which he held quite literally fuelled the three systems and allowed for their development. All energy originated in the instincts, in the id. Of especial importance as a source of energy was the libido which consisted of the sex instinct. This differed from other instincts in that it could be diverted from its biological aim (sex) and sublimated or canalized into cultural activities and work.

The concept of the unconscious does not make much sense without the notion of repression, to help explain the relationship between the id and the ego. For Freud, the psyche (mind) was in a continuous state of conflict. In the middle of this conflict was the ego balancing the demands from the id, the super-ego and the external environment. This produced a state of anxiety which the ego attempted to ameliorate. The process whereby it achieved this was defence. The most pervasive and significant of the defence mechanisms of the ego was repression. Impulses from the id which might be disturbing to the ego and super-ego were shut out of consciousness. Repression was not a conscious process. Once repressed the material did not remain static, but attempted to break through to consciousness in a disguised form in fantasy, dreams and behaviour, often related to the original conflict.

In his account of the sexual development of the child, Freud argued that the child passed through oral, anal and phallic stages. In the phallic stage at 4-5 years of age the child turned to the genitals as a source of erotic gratification. It was at this age that male and female sexual differences became significant. Up to this time psychosexual development had been much the same for both sexes. But now the feelings of the boy towards the mother became more erotic. These feelings were complicated by feelings of rivalry with the father and a fear of loss of love and castration. This conflict Freud called the Oedipus complex and he believed it was universal to human development.

Marx or Freud?

The relationship between Freud and Marx's views has been one that has been a topic of controversy for half-a-century—and is likely to continue for some time. Those who favour an integration of Freud and Marx, and those who argue that there is an incompatibility between the two, are equally determined that theirs is the correct viewpoint. There does not seem to be a prospect that one or other will win the day. This tension, however, is not without benefit; it ensures that the issue of the role of the person in socialist theory remains a topic of debate, and not an arena left solely in the hands of the ideologues of capitalism, to be used to argue that socialism suppresses the individual. In fact, it is socialism that will ensure the free development of the individual. But this will not "just happen"; it is something that needs to be consciously produced. And that requires a valid theory of the individual.

Those who favour a Marx-Freud partnership, with Marx providing the social theory and Freud the psychology, are attracted to Freudianism on a number of grounds. First of all, they point to the dialectical quality of Freud's theorisation, with its emphasis on contradictions between the psychic regions, a quality they see as paralleling Marx's social dialectic. But this similarity is surely an inadequate reason to justify integration.

Perhaps the most important reason why Freud is chosen from the vast range of psychological theories is that he seems to offer an explanation as to how capitalist ideology can have such a hold on working class consciousness. For Marx, being determines consciousness, and the early Marxists assumed that as the means of production developed to the point where they came into contradiction with capitalist relations of production, so socialist consciousness too would develop in a relatively automatic way. However, the participation of the working class in the First World War. the rise of fascism and Stalinism, and the apparent decline in the ability of socialist ideas to attract support, cast doubt on this relative optimism; matters were far more complex. Freud's concepts of the unconscious as a realm of irrationality and of repression seemed to offer an explanation of how capitalist ideology buried deep into the personality beyond the control of the "rational conscious. Freud also offered a mechanism of how this occurred—in the early years of family life. It seemed as if the unconscious determines being.

However, Freudian theory has not remained unchallenged. both by academic psychologists and by Marxists. Not only has the tripartite division of the mind into id. ego and superego been seen as an idealist fiction derived from a religious tradition rather than an authentic materialism, but it has also been seen as giving too much emphasis to unconscious processes. Certainly Marx refers to events which people are not conscious of and of the unintended consequences of actions. But to explain these he does not refer to the unconscious wishes of individuals, but to the character of the social structure and of our ignorance of its mode of operation. Moreover, socialism was to come about not through the power of the unconscious, but through the development of consciousness within the working class. Revolutionary social change will be a result of the awareness of the contradictions of capitalism and not because of the libido.

Perhaps the most fundamental criticism of Freud concerns his concept of mind. For him the mind was an entity that could be separated from society. The mind had its own laws independent of society. Certainly Freud recognised that there was an interaction between mind and society but the mind nevertheless remained for him an individual phenomenon. To understand an individual it was not enough to know the history of the observable interactions of that individual's mental apparatus with the world.

In opposition to this dualism, a Marxist view sees mind as a relation and one that is embedded in specific, historically-determined social relations. In one sense, there is no theory of the individual in Marxism; there can be no Marxist psychology. This is because the individual-as-such is only an abstraction. For Marx, the individual is a concrete individual in a society of a certain kind characterised by a certain mode of activity. Thus a Marxist theory of the individual must have a basis in a different conception of psychology than that Freudianism shares with most other theories. This is a psychology that defines the object of study not as the individual, but as the study of the specific interactions of the "individual-m-relationship-with-the-world”.

Ed Blewitt

Part 2 can be read here.

Values (2013)

Book Review from the February 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

Where Do My Values Come From? – And How To Attain Social Sustainability. By Thomas M.V. Hallatt & Dale M.R. Hallatt. Kindle eBook.

Instead of chasing the chimerical ‘values’ that may lurk inside the heads of private individuals, the focus of this book is human behaviour as it is shaped by and shapes the cultural referents that make up a ‘value system’. The authors undertake their investigation using an interdisciplinary approach with case studies to illustrate their argument. The focus is on four fields from the human sciences: genetics, neuroscience, physiology and environmental psychology.

Beginning with an examination of the genetic basis of behaviour, the authors correctly state that there is no evidence that genes can bypass environmental influences and directly cause a particular behaviour. However, as they point out, that is not to claim that we are born as ‘blank states’, as we are born with certain genetic predispositions, but it is the environment that determines how and in what way these will play out.

It is our genetic inheritance that gives us the neuronal equipment that enables us to experience empathy, because of the survival value of becoming a social species. It is also due to our evolved history that we have brains that are highly malleable: changes in the environment determine which propensities are strengthened and which are weakened. With this is mind it makes no sense to speak of a fixed human nature which is outside or above environmental influence. Any long-term observed patterns of human behaviour must also be squared against the fact that the problem of scarcity in the environment has never been resolved and that any changes in the environment in the future will affect behaviour. ‘We make the environment, the environment makes us’.

The concept of ‘operant conditioning’ is central to this book, the basic idea being that behaviours that are ‘reinforced’ are more likely to be repeated. Positive reinforcement takes place when a behaviour is reinforced because of a reward of some kind; negative reinforcement takes place when a behaviour is reinforced by the removal of an adverse stimulus in the environment. The strengthening of neural pathways in the brain is the reinforcing mechanism.

The penultimate chapter is largely taken up with proposals for a reform of education methods inspired by the observations of the preceding chapters. All of these could be incorporated into present system; after all science and technological innovation do require a stream of new critical thinkers. Though, under capitalism the purpose of education is not to raise healthy, free-thinking individuals but only to provide sellers of labour-power capable of operating the technological means of production. The authors do raise this point in a brief passage, but its full implications are not fully developed.

So here is the fly in the soup, the whole book is based on an analysis of culture but from the standpoint of the individual, the role of structural factors in limiting and steering behaviour is neglected: ‘society is like one big experiment, whereby the dependent variable is the behaviour emitted by a person and the independent variable is the environment that is manipulated and changed in various ways to bring out the behaviours in people’. But the fact that the control of the productive factors that shape the economic and socio-political environment is outside the reach of the majority and that the owning minority are compelled to comply to the blind logic of capital accumulation is somewhat missing from the analysis. The interdisciplinary approach that is adopted fails, as it fails to include the study of the laws of historical and economic change.

This book can be thought of as an updated version of B.F. Skinner’s Freedom and Dignity, incorporating the latest developments in the sciences. If Marx can be said to be history’s number one victim of glib criticism and misrepresentation, then perhaps Skinner is a close contender for the number two spot. Both Marx and Skinner developed coherently materialist theories of change, Marx in the area of social change with what has become known as historical materialism, and Skinner in the field of individual behavioural change with what he called behaviorology or radical behaviourism. These two concepts could be seen as complementing each other to make a coherent whole, with Marx providing analysis at the macro level and Skinner at the micro; though Skinner himself never advanced such a view (more often than not he got Marx wrong) and this claim is sure to bring resistance from Marxists. However, with that thought in mind I shall recall the words of Engels writing in the Anti-Dühring: ‘Freedom does not consist in any dreamt-of independence from natural laws, but in the knowledge of these laws, and in the possibility this gives of systematically making them work towards definite ends’; there is no reason to exclude the laws of behaviour from our enquiry.

Darren Poynton

The Myth of Man as a Killer (1969)

From the June 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Of all the vulgar modes of escaping from the consideration of the effect of social and moral influence on the human mind, the most vulgar is that of attributing the diversities of conduct and character to inherent natural differences.

John Stuart Mill

Mankind today has greater wealth and knowledge than at any other time in history. Yet today mankind seems more cruel, more aimless, more insane than ever before. It appears to many observed that man has the chance of an earthly paradise, but has chosen an earthly hell. If an individual must be mad to commit suicide, then perhaps the human species as a whole must be mad, for it is quite possible that humanity will exterminate itself.

How baffling this situation appears to so many well-meaning people! They look around and scratch their puzzled heads—if only they could discover the cause of all this lunacy! One of these sincere and disturbed individuals is Konrad Lorenz. However, he actually has managed to find the cause, or so he supposes.

Gazing at all the wars and other atrocities in human society, it occurred to Mr Lorenz that "we are all so accustomed to these phenomena that most of us fail to realise how abjectly stupid and undesirable the historical mass behaviour of humanity actually is.” He began to ponder why "reasonable beings behave so unreasonably.” Lorenz happens to be one of the leading experts on the behaviour of animals. It didn't take him long to decide that the reasons some animals fight each other were basically the same as the reasons some human animals fight each other. Of course he realised that a simple theory like that wouldn't do at all, because non-human animals never display anything on the scale of wars and massacres. So an ingenious twist was added.

With most varieties of birds and animals, fights sometimes occur between members of the same species. But if these fights became too vicious or too frequent, they would be very bad for the species as a whole, which would soon become extinct. So as these animals have evolved, natural selection has bred into them inhibitions. For instance, if two alsatians are fighting, one of them has only to stand in a certain submissive posture, and the other dog will automatically stop attacking. These inhibitions are adapted to the killing ability of the species. An animal which can very easily kill with one bite or blow will usually have strong inhibitions against doing so. If an animal can’t kill quickly, or if his intended victim can get away easily, there will be no need for inhibitions. But if the living conditions of these species are altered, so that they can easily kill their fellows, they will do so without hesitation or remorse. And Lorenz emotionally describes how a dove (the symbol of peace!) will slowly and cruelly torture another dove to death, when they are in captivity.

Applying this to man, Lorenz says that men find it comparatively difficult to kill each other with their bare hands, but as soon as they invent weapons—clubs, spears, atom bombs—their killing ability is vastly increased. Their innate inhibitions against killing, however, remain slight. So they are liable to go around slaughtering each other in a big way.

Having thought up this modem Just-so story, Lorenz leapt into print with his book On Aggression, which has had a huge sale in the German and English-speaking worlds. In this volume he gleefully expands his theory to explain nearly everything about human society, taking in his stride juvenile delinquency, space flight, Kantian moral philosophy, sport, the generation gap, and so forth. Some of it is not exactly new ("The romantic veneration of national values . . . can do nothing but damage.” “We should love all our human brothers indiscriminately.”) But underneath it all is Lorenz’s space-age version of original sin.

Meanwhile someone else was having the same worries. This was Mr Robert Ardrey, who in the 30s was involved with writing plays about social problems. In those days he attributed suffering and poverty to economic and social causes. But how innocent that was! Since then we have had the ‘affluent society’ which has given everyone marvellous economic and social environments, yet the same old problems remain. Perhaps Ardrey's affluence has increased a bit more than most people’s. After all, there is a tendency for those who have moved up in the world to imagine that the world has moved with them, And Ardrey did get the backing of a wealthy capitalist foundation to write his book The Territorial Imperative. This is how he sees the problem:

  How could we know that in the end there would come a changed environment and a prosperity such as no man had ever seen? And that such an age of affluence and material security would witness a level and degree of juvenile delinquency that did not exist in the depression years; racial conflict and bitterness that we had never known; and a crime rate beyond our most monstrous imaginings . . . A changed environment demonstrated that our environmentalist conclusions were inadequate.

. . .  Or perhaps, that a television set and a car aren’t the only requisites of a healthy environment. But to continue with Ardrey’s life story: when he heard of the bombing of Pearl Harbour:

  I ached with my love for my country, I ached with horror at the Japanese deception, I ached with sickness for the American loss I had encountered, slam-bang, for the first time in my experience, the territorial release.

So Ardrey concluded that not only his own reaction, but the actual entry of America into the war, were caused by instincts. He pooh-poohs the suggestion that he had been indoctrinated with patriotic values by pointing out that there were a lot of cynics, sceptics and leftists about in America during his childhood, and he doesn’t remember taking patriotism very seriously.

Although Ardrey is not a scientist, he, like Lorenz, is constantly at pains to state that his opinions are in keeping with the latest scientific findings. His two books, African Genesis and Territorial Imperative, are best-sellers, and together with Lorenz’s propaganda, other popular works like The Naked Ape, and most of all the novel Lord of the Flies, give many folk the impression that the view of man as inherently aggressive and possessive is well substantiated, whereas in fact it is the wildest fantasy, a superstition totally lacking in evidence and utterly rejected by all scientists specialising in this field.

Ashley Montagu has put together an anthology of articles, Man And Aggression (Oxford University Press) mostly written by leading scientists who have been appalled at the epidemic of falsehoods spread by Lorenz and Ardrey. This volume shows, not only how the reasoning of these two writers is mistaken, but also how, time after time, they have simply got their facts wrong. We can recommend any worker bothered by the fairy tales of Human Nature, Killer Instincts, or Territorial Drives, to read Montague’s book. As Montagu makes clear, man has no instincts. Man’s behaviour is learned behaviour, and varies immensely with different upbringing and living conditions.

Most of the Lorenz/Ardrey arguments are developed by assuming that what is true for some animals and birds is true for man. But arguments drawn from birds are strictly for the birds. Furthermore, man’s closest relatives, the primate apes, are especially unaggressive:

  Primates are not usually belligerent unless provoked, and the more carefully they are observed the more remarkably revealing do their unquarrelsomeness and co-operativeness become' . . . if, as is evident, man’s nearer collateral relatives are wanting in anything resembling an inborn territorial drive, it is highly improbable that any form of man was ever characterised by such a drive.

And J. H. Crook adds:

  Perhaps the most striking feature of those nonhuman primates the behaviour of which is most relevant to man is precisely their lack of easily defined territorial behaviour.

In view of the indisputable fact that man’s closest living relatives are notable for their lack of aggression and territory, it would seem that all the arguments in the world about coral fish and greylag goslings must fail to prove that man is naturally a killer or a nationalist.

One of the strange things about Ardrey and Lorenz is that, with their theories of innate depravity, they try to present themselves as courageous seekers after truth, ready to spurn comfortable illusions and face the harsh reality that men are naturally nasty! But the reverse is the case.

The great majority of people today believe in a greedy, lazy and warlike 'human nature'. This is a popular myth which discourages investigation of the real, social causes of man’s inhumanity to man. That man cannot help himself, that he is born cruel and selfish, is just what most people want to be told. This myth enables them to accept without question their most cherished institutions of property and patriotism as 'natural'.

Born and brought up in a specific society, we learn the values of that society just as we learn the laws of nature, and we confuse the two, supposing that private ownership, or governments, or romantic love, are eternal and instinctive, when they are really artificial and indoctrinated. Yet while Ardrey and Lorenz tell the world what the world dearly wants to hear, they pose as bold overthrowers of customary ideas. And the dust jacket of Ardrey’s second book proclaims that he, "threatens even more forcefully some of our most precious assumptions. Mr. Ardrey’s conclusions ... will undoubtedly raise an even greater storm.” Reading that, you will hardly guess that most of his reader- ship are having their most precious assumptions confirmed, and that most of the 'storm' raised by Ardrey’s books has come from scientists who know something about the subjects he dabbles in.

The importance of all this to socialists is clear. We want to remove capitalism—the cause of wars, poverty, nationalism, and exploitation, and of the frustrations which provoke much aggressive behaviour. The lie of innate depravity is a weapon in the hands of the capitalist class: it prevents criticism of capitalism, since there is supposed to be no possible alternative. Ardrey’s theories are the direct offspring of the Christian bogey of original sin. He betrays this quite clearly when he assumes that those who disagree with him think that man is innately ‘good’. Of course, innate goodness is just as much a myth as innate wickedness. Ardrey has consciously set out to rehabilitate the discredited concept of original sin, just as Golding did when he produced Lord of the Flies.

Even the contributors to Montagu’s book, who are no Socialists, have tumbled to the political implications of the Ardrey/Lorenz thesis. K. E. Boulding comments:

 A line of argument like that of Ardrey’s, therefore, seems to legitimate our present morality, in regarding the threat system as dominant at all costs, by reference to our biological ancestors. If the names of both antiquity and of science can be drawn upon to legitimate our behaviour, the moral uneasiness about napalm and the massacre of the innocent in Vietnam may be assuaged.

And Ralph Holloway says of Ardrey’s work:

  In short, this book is an apology and rationalisation for Imperialism, Pax Americana, Laissez-Faire, Social Darwinism, and that greatest of all evolutionary developments, Capitalism.

While Montague concludes:

  What, in fact, such writers do, in addition to perpetrating their wholly erroneous interpretation of human nature, is to divert attention from the real sources of man’s aggression and destructiveness, namely; the many false and contradictory values by which, in an overcrowded, highly competitive world, he so disoperatively attempts to live. It is not man’s nature, but his nurture, in such a world, that requires our attention.

Socialists can only regret that Montagu’s book (at 42s) is unlikely to reach the same massive working-class market open to the capitalist apologetics of Ardrey, Lorenz, Desmond Morris, and William Golding. It is a drop in the ocean compared with the intense brainwashing with ideas of innate depravity which workers receive an the time.

Steele.

Are We Utopian? Reply To A Correspondent (1950)

Letters to the Editors from the May 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Editorial Committee.

Socialist Standard.                                                                                                    

Silsoe, Beds.

Dear Friends,

I have been a regular reader of the Socialist Standard for 10 years, and often subscribe to your funds.

Since you welcome correspondence I write to criticise Gilmac’s article “What Socialism Is” in the March S.S.

He says that under Socialism no one will want those things which can only be produced at the cost of injury to the producer. Few care about the producer, or such things could not be sold, and without a market they would not—even to-day—be made. Assuming that under Socialism industry still depends chiefly on coal for power, will most people be willing to dispense with coal because of the frequent danger and discomfort to the miner? I doubt it.

Without State power, and without armed forces there could not be war; but certainly discord. In the past so-called religious wars men fought for their beliefs, whatever the economic motives of the governments commanding them; and I understand that even to-day the religious difference between Northern Ireland and Eire is strong enough to survive the political frontier between them.

Gilmac continues, “there will be no prisons, police, warders, etc.” Not all offences against the present law are offences against private property. For instance, murder has often been done entirely to make way for a second marriage. Will Socialism relieve us of unsocial behaviour by individuals here and there so serious that the community must impose violent restraint?

I infer that the man will always consider society before himself. If so he will have advanced in social consciousness as well as in the knowledge and intelligence which make him a Socialist. If this is inevitable I should like to be convinced of it. One reason why I desire Socialism is because it would be a better life for me. and it is not moral superiority which makes me a sympathiser with the S.P.G.B.

Gilmac pictures the Socialist world as very Utopian, and it seems a pity to sound so unrealistic. Nor is this necessary, for whatever evils may survive under Socialism will be the merest fraction of those it will remove.

I shall be grateful for your reply, and I think it will answer the unexpressed thoughts of other readers of the Socialist Standard.

Yours truly,

G. K. Strachan.

Reply:

Under Capitalism the aim is to make a profit out of what is produced and to reduce costs accordingly. Under Socialism no effort would be spared that would make work as comfortable and as enjoyable as possible. Taking our correspondent’s assumption that industry would still depend chiefly upon coal for power (an assumption with which we do not agree, as power can be got from many other sources) coal would be mined where it was easiest, with tools that deprived it of labouriousness and danger and with spells and rotation of work that deprived it of its harmfulness. Neither speed of production nor location would concern society in the way it does to-day.

All wars have sprung from economic motives. Speaking accurately there have been no religious wars; they have only been, as our correspondent rightly puts it. “so-called religious wars.” The economic motives have been cloaked by religion just as the last war was cloaked by such things as a fight for democracy. The motives are there even though the participants may not be conscious of them. If our correspondent knew a little more of the history of Ireland he would realise the part economic motives had played. What, on the surface, appears to him to be a conflict between Protestants and Catholics commenced as land grabbing by groups from outside.

Our correspondent sees the effects but not the cause. All offences against the present law, as well as the present marriage system, spring from private-property society. Conditions in a free society, where everyone has social security, will eliminate unsocial behaviour that might have serious consequences. What our correspondent possibly has in mind is people who may suffer mental injury or mental disease which would lead them to commit violent actions. Assuming that such things occurred they would affect such a trifling number of people that society could deal with them without the need for prisons, police, warders, etc.

In thinking about what Socialism will be like our correspondent should realise what will be the outlook of those who establish Socialism and what Socialism itself will involve. Conditions determine the behaviour of people. When the mass of people have decided to abolish the conditions that cramp their minds and bodies they will already have recognised the evil of unsocial behaviour and the value to themselves of social behaviour. When the new society has got upon its feet the conditions that breed unsocial behaviour will have disappeared. Some inkling of this can be gained by the behaviour of people in tribal societies although tribal society is far short of the conditions that will obtain under Socialism.

What the present writer was doing in the article criticised was simply painting a realistic picture of the future based upon an understanding of the present and what was emerging from the present, in spite of “whatever evils may survive under Socialism will be the merest fraction of those it will remove.”

If our correspondent will examine the article again, in the light of what has been set down here, he will see that it simply points to the evils that will be removed, why they will be removed—because they only arise out of private-property society—and what will be left after their removal. He has mistaken a statement of facts and logical inferences for a beautiful dream!

Gilmac.

Hidden Cameraderie (2013)

The Proper Gander column from the August 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

Traditionally, if you were the victim of a hidden camera show, then you’d find out when you heard ‘smile, you’re on Candid Camera’ or realised the officious bearded idiot who’s just crushed your car is Jeremy Beadle. But if you’re caught by Channel 4’s Eye Spy, you’ll be confronted by a film crew scrutinising the ethics of your behaviour. The programme tries to distance itself from the schadenfreude of Candid Camera and Beadle’s About by using the hidden camera format to attempt to gauge the nation’s moral fibre. Eye Spy uses set-up situations to test how the people stumbling into them will react.

Presenter Stephen Fry asks what you would do if you found money lying around, whether it’s stacked up in bundles in a holdall, or a tenner in a dropped wallet with a return address inside. Would you help a lad using a wheelchair get up a long flight of steps, or an elderly shopper in a supermarket, even if they became a bit too demanding? The answer seems to be that we’ll usually go out of our way for someone else, but we’re less likely to if we can’t relate to the person behind the need. Only the discarded wallets which contained a photo were returned, for example.

Another set-up involves a restaurant being hired by the programme, and an actor playing an obnoxiously bigoted waiter. A volunteer couple, either gay or of different ethnicities, then sit through the waiter revealing his prejudices within earshot of the other diners. Will anyone else rally round to challenge the waiter? Many of us would, although apparently we’re less quick to do so outside London.

The show generally doesn’t try to be scientific by running the tests on a large scale. This is a pity, as some of the scenarios could give us interesting conclusions about social norms and peer pressure, if we excuse the duplicity involved. Society wouldn’t function if people weren’t basically co-operative and helpful, and how this is expressed depends on society’s principles. But instead of this kind of analysis, we just get Stephen Fry making the occasional patronising remark from the back of a taxi, presumably on his way to film QI.

Mike Foster

A Modern Denial of Pinker (2013)

From the November 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

In 1999 Steven Pinker threw down the gauntlet with his book The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature in which he argued that selfish and aggressive human behaviour was hard-wired by the genetically-determined structure of the human brain. Writing as an ideologue and outside his specialist field of how the brain interprets sensations from the eyes, he proclaimed:

‘Those who believe that communism or socialism is the most rational form of social organisation are aghast at the suggestion that they run against our selfish natures.’

Although not written as such, The Marvelous Learning Animal: What Makes Human Nature Unique by Arthur Staats, a retired behavioural psychologist who specialised in child development, published last year by Prometheus Books, is in effect a rebuttal of what Staats calls the ‘Great Scientific Error’ and which Pinker exemplifies.

Staats traces this error back to a speculation by Darwin that human behaviours might also have been inherited by the same process of biological natural selection as the physical features of the human body. Staats argues that there is no validated evidence for this and that, on the contrary, ‘you are what you learn’; at birth the mind of the human child is, yes, a blank slate and its future personality and repertoire of behaviours depends on the way it will be brought up, on what and how it learns. He backs this up with the results of his own and others’ research in the field of child development.

Brain scans

Biological determinists like Pinker rely on findings revealed by brain scans which show that there are some differences in the brain features of, for instance, men and women, heterosexuals and homosexuals, people with personality disorders and people without, and children with autism and other children. The conclusion they draw is that it is these differences in the brain that determine the differences in behaviour.

But hold on, says Staats, this doesn’t necessarily follow; we know that learning must change the brain, so that the brain differences could equally reflect different learning experiences. This, he suggests, is more likely, especially as those who argue that the brain differences are inherited via genes have been unable to identify any gene governing behaviour (the only genes identified have been are ones governing bodily features and defects) or even to explain, if such genes existed, how they would or could influence behaviour. ‘Brain changing does not produce learning; learning produces brain changes.’ Staats accepts that it has not yet been worked out how exactly learning changes the brain and calls for more research into learning.

Learning animal

Part 2 on ‘The Human Animal’ explains how the human body (upright stance, binocular three-dimensional colour vision, vocal system capable of emitting a wide range of sounds, free hands with opposable thumbs, a big brain with a million million neurons), together with a prolonged period of growing up, makes humans a ‘learning animal’:

‘… we have been shaped by evolution to learn extensively. Humans encounter the richest of all learning environments. Systematic consideration indicates that our huge brains have been developed to learn the very complex behaviours needed to adjust to that complex environment. Evolution constructed us to do that according to learning principles. Huge learning ability constitutes an essential, fundamental, deep, extensive, and valuable part of human nature. The human is a learning animal, better than any other, by a huge difference.’

Cumulative learning

The distinguishing feature of human learning, he points out, is that it is ‘cumulative’ with what one generation of humans has learned being passed on to the next generation and extended. Most animals do learn some of their behaviour (more than is often assumed) but it is the same behaviour that is learned unchanged from generation to generation. Hence Staats’ conclusion that:

‘Generally it should not be assumed that the behaviour of any other animal can be studied as a means of knowledge of human behaviour. Humans are different than all other animals in learning.’

So much, then, for Konrad Lorenz, Richard Dawkins and their geese.

With humans, what has been learned can be passed on, by the non-biological means of culture, and has been:

‘There is no evidence of a genetically produced change in the human brain for a hundred or so thousands of years, during which time there have been fantastic advances in culture. This holds that the cultural advances in technology, entertainment, politics, language, economics, education, inventions, and other social features are due to learning. There is no cultural evolution.’

To say that there is ‘no cultural evolution’ may seem odd as there is a sense in which there could be said to have been, but he means that the growth of culture does not take place in the same way as the evolution of the human body did.

Human self-creation

Staats speculates that, in the later stages of the biological evolution towards homo sapiens, learned behaviour must also have played a part and he coins the term ‘the human creation theory’ of origin of humans. Some anthropologists have already come to a similar conclusion and talk of biological-cultural ‘co-evolution’, or that, in the title of one of Gordon Childe’s books, Man Makes Himself.

Staats calls for a paradigm shift away from genetic explanations of human behaviour to learning ones. Actually, until the 1970s, that humans were a ‘culture-bearing animal’ whose behaviour was learned was accepted by most cultural anthropologists. For instance, in his introduction to Man and Aggression (1968) Ashley Montagu wrote:

‘The notable thing about human behaviour is that it is learned. Everything a human being does as such he has had to learn from other human beings. From any dominance of biologically or inherited predetermined reactions that may prevail in the behaviour of other animals, man has moved into a zone of adaptation in which his behaviour is dominated by learned responses. It is within the dimension of culture, the learned, the man-made part of the environment that man grows, develops, and has his being as a behaving organism.’

So what Staats is calling for is not so much a new paradigm as a return to the situation that existed before the biological determinist counter-revolution.

While Pinker reflects the current popular prejudice that human nature is a barrier to socialism, Staats looks forward to a time (which he considers inevitable in the long run, even if gradually)

‘… when there is no race or other prejudice or mistreatment, no war, no exploitation of people by other people, no brutality, equitable abundance for all, and general kindness and compassion.’

Adam Buick 

The human nature argument (1993)

Book Review from the May 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the most frequent arguments used against the possibility and viability of socialism is that the ideas and behaviour it requires are against “human nature”. So any book that makes a detailed, well-researched and thoughtful analysis of the whole subject is likely to be useful to socialists. Such a book is Alfie Kohn’s The Brighter Side of Human Nature published in America in 1990. His references to capitalism and socialism are few but he is no apologist for the status quo. He is aware that most of what has been written on human nature has focused on its darker side. So his aim is to present examples of and discuss “altruism and empathy in everyday life” (the book’s subtitle).

Cynical consensus
Described as “an independent scholar, lecturer and journalist”, Kohn previously wrote No Contest: The Case Against Competition (1986). He starts by asking us to consider a curious set of facts about our culture:

  Someone who thinks well of himself is said to have a healthy self-concept and is envied. Someone who thinks well of his country is called a patriot and is applauded. But someone who thinks well of his species is regarded as hopelessly naive and is dismissed.

When you think about it, this set of facts isn't so much curious as characteristic of capitalism. Individual-ism is lauded as superior to social-ism, so that when some individuals cream off the profits while others go short of what they need this is regarded as “natural". Patriotism is the individual expression of nationalism, and the capitalist world is divided into nation-states because it suits leaders to divide and rule. Thinking well of one’s species is what people do when they overcome individualism and nationalism—when, as socialists, they identify with humanity as a whole.

In the following passage it is necessary to read "we" as referring to the current majority viewpoint, not that of the author and not, of course, that of socialists:

  The phrase “human nature” . . . is reserved, as if by some linguistic convention, for what is nasty and negative in our repertoire. We invoke it to explain selfishness rather than service, competition rather than cooperation, egocentricity rather than empathy. On any given day we may witness innumerable gestures of caring, ranging from small acts of kindness to enormous sacrifices, but never do we shrug and say. "Well, what did you expect? Its just human nature to be generous".

Illustration by George Meddemmen

After giving some examples of the ways in which characteristics such as aggression and competition, selfishness and egocentricity are persistently overstated, and their opposites understated, Kohn goes on to present what he describes as a more balanced perspective, "an affirmation of what there is to appreciate about humankind without ignoring the reality that people sometimes act rotten”:

  In response to a stubborn refusal to recognize what is heartening about humans, I am chiefly interested in showing that there is more to us than the negative qualities we have come to identify with human nature. Most of us have heard only half the story. Human beings are selfish and self-centered, looking for any opportunity to take advantage. But human beings are also decent, able to feel others' pain and prepared to try to relieve it. There is good evidence to support the proposition that it is as “natural” to help as it is to hurt, that concern for the well-being of others often cannot be reduced to self-interest, that social structures predicated on human selfishness have no claim to inevitability—or even prudence. In short, the cynical consensus about our species is out of step with the hard data.

The evidence that Kohn presents later in the book is all the more remarkable because it is evidence of how people behave in capitalism, a society that encourages and, indeed, depends for its very existence and continuation upon, a set of beliefs that emphasizes competition, being tough, accepting market forces, looking after yourself, and so on. In other words, people today are shown to behave much more pro-socially than the system urges them to. How much more pro-socially would be likely to behave in a system that emphasized the brighter, rather than the darker, side of human nature.

Pro-social behaviour
In his chapter on pro-social practices, Kohn gives us a number of examples from the literature on the subject. Some of them are findings from artificially contrived "research" situations of which experimental psychologists are unfortunately so fond. But other examples are from the author’s own experience or from studies of everyday life and are thus more credible:

  In my experience, cars do not spin their wheels on the ice for very long before someone stops to offer a push. We disrupt our schedules to visit sick friends, stop to give directions to lost travelers, ask crying people if there is anything we can do to help. According to polls, nearly 90 percent of Americans give money to charitable causes and nearly half take the time to do some sort of volunteer work. In one study, 83 percent of blood donors indicated a willingness to undergo anasthesia and stay overnight in a hospital in order to donate bone marrow to a complete stranger. And if we, like some researchers, choose to expand the idea of pro-social behaviour to include cooperative activities—working with others for mutual benefit, such as in structured collaboration at work—we would find even more evidence of prosocial inclinations. All of this, it should be stressed, is particularly remarkable in the light of the fact that we are socialized in an ethic of competitive individualism.

Kohn spends 15 pages tackling the question of whether aggressive behaviour is part of human nature. He concludes that it isn't. Here are some extracts:

  The frequency with which nations draft their citizens into combat (and invoke stiff penalties for those who resist it) qualifies as powerful evidence against the idea that wars reflect natural human aggressiveness. 

  There is absolutely no evidence from animal behavior or human psychology to suggest that individuals of any species fight because of spontaneous internal stimulation. 

  Like other beliefs about the intrinsic unsavoriness of our species . . . an assumption about aggression can also be explained . . .  in terms of images presented to us by the mass media, and in terms of the powerful interests who are benefited by just such an assumption. 

  The simple assumption that we cannot help being aggressive helps us to continue being aggressive. No circle is more vicious than the one set up by the fallacious assumption that we are unable to control an essentially violent nature.

A lengthy account is given of what a military historian of World War II discovered about the unwillingness of American soldiers to kill enemy troops. After interviews with hundreds of military companies in the central Pacific area and Europe, he found that on average not more than 15 percent of the men had actually fired at the enemy positions or personnel. This reluctance to kill was true not only of novices but also of those who had been through several battles. The historian concluded that the average and normally healthy individual has such resistance towards killing a fellow human that they will not take life if it is possible to turn away from that responsibility.

Illustration by Peter Rigg.

One-sided individualism
Kohn devotes three chapters to altruism, after having introduced the subject earlier in the book. The famous study by Titmuss of blood donors gives perhaps the best example of altruism. When asked why they gave blood, most donors spoke about having either a duty or a desire to help others, or talked about wanting to express gratitude for being in good health or for having received someone else’s blood in the past. Less than two percent said they were hoping to receive some benefit from donating. A further example is given of altruistic behaviour among French civilians in World War II. Residents of a village agreed to hide Jews despite the enormous risks this involved. The helpers did not see themselves as heroic: they typically said that they simply did what had to be done, they answered a call, they made the obvious choice.

Kohn is highly critical of the doctrine of individualism, as expressed from Hobbes to Freud and from Ortega y Gasset (“human life as radical reality is only the life of each person”) to Margaret Thatcher (“there is no such thing as society"). Of psychology he writes “almost every branch, school, speciality, and theory within it is based on individualism”. The separate self as the fundamental level of analysis is one way of making sense of the world. But something is missing from the picture—and that is human relationship.

The belief that concern for self is more real than concern for others results from a very partial view of human behaviour. In the last century Toqueville remarked of the United States "the individual is free . . .  to expand as a standardized individual". Kohn updates this judgment: “Our miserable individuality is screwed to the back of our cars in the form of personalized license plates”.

Part of the “human nature” argument for preserving the status quo is that the worlds work will only get done if people are paid to do it. Of course, the system does get people to work, up to a point. But, as Kohn observes, “People do their best work when they find it fun. not when they are in it for the money”. Rewards actually erode intrinsic interest. Encouraging pro-social behaviour by the use of incentives or other appeals to self-interest doesn’t work very well or works only in the short run:

  When we are rewarded for pro-social behavior, we tend to assume the reward, and not altruism, accounts for our having acted as we did . . . encouragement to think of oneself as a generous person—an appeal not to self-interest but to genuine altruism—seems to be the most reliable way to promote helping and caring over the long haul and in different situations.

Economists and other egoists have long claimed that we make all our decisions on the basis of trying to maximize our individual gains. But people (in the US) regularly do things like contribute to public television and radio stations even though self-interest theory predicts everyone should wait for others to contribute and then watch or listen for free. Actually it is not too difficult to promote behaviour that is in everyone's best interests:

  People will usually cooperate with others in a group so long as they are given an opportunity to feel a sense of belongingness to that group. Allow someone to meet and talk with the others and he or she will subsequently tend to make decisions in the group’s interest rather than trying to take advantage of the others.

Kohn makes the important point that our thinking about what is natural is affected by our economic system (he actually says “may be affected" but that seems too weak). Also there is the power of the self-fulfilling prophecy:

  If we have been socialized to expect a tat for every tit, to keep score silently in relationships so that things are nearly symmetrical (and to feel uncomfortable when they are not), to construe the act of helping as doing a favor that ought to be repaid, then these expectations can create a reality as real as any determined by natural egoism.

However, social anthropologists tell us that in some cultures the emphasis is on gifts rather than exchanged commodities, gifts made with no assurance of anything in return. That is no doubt how it will be in socialist society. After all, even in today's mercenary society we sometimes give help to strangers just because they need helping, not because we expect to get something out of it.

Humanity
In his last chapter “Beyond Altruism" the author has a tantalizing section Where Humanity Begins. He suggests that we need a morality of thought and of feeling, of principle and of care. Throughout the book he emphasizes questions of morality and philosophy, although he is obviously aware of the economic—and to a lesser extent the political—implications of what he writes. Earlier he refers to the need to detoxify "the poisonous We/They structure of nationalism”. But his main message is summed up in one sentence: “Altruism—one self helping another without consideration of personal gain—is both realistic and commendable”.

The last paragraph of a book is often important because it contains the thoughts the author wants to leave us with:

  No imported solution will dissolve our problems of dehumanization and egocentricity, coldness and cruelty. No magical redemption from outside outside of human life will let us break through. The work that has to be done is our work, but we are better equipped for it than we have been led to believe. To move ourselves beyond selfishness, we already have what is required. We already are what is required. We are human and we have each other.

Biology and Behaviour (1993)

From the May 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is clear that the biological characteristics of human beings have a great effect on the things we can and cannot do. For instance, the fact that we walk upright, can focus on the same object with both eyes, and have an opposable thumb determines various aspects of the way we interact with the world. If we had wings to fly or could breathe in water or survive by eating sand, we would behave and live very differently from the way we actually do. But how much of human behaviour is determined by our biological make-up? Are we the prisoners of our genes and of our animal forebears, or can we learn from experience, adapt to our surroundings and act in a manner that is not purely ordained by our biological inheritance?

Different
A few moments’ reflection probably suggests that human beings are very different from other animals, that we can learn and invent and discover and develop in ways that no non-human can. Language gives the ability to pass on knowledge to the next generation, so that they can build on the expertise of those who have gone before, and do not need to start all over again at solving the problems they encounter. Some other animals have rudimentary languages, or make some elementary use of tools in obtaining food, but none of these is any way as sophisticated as humanity. While human beings are related to other members of the animal kingdom via the workings of evolution, we seem on the face of it to be animals with so many extra powers and abilities that we are quite unlike even our nearest non-human relatives.

Nevertheless, in spite of what common sense appears to tell us, it has often been argued that many aspects of human social behaviour are directly due to our animal inheritance. This implies that such behaviour is innate and unchangeable, and is as much part of being a human as upright gait and binocular vision. If it is claimed that aggression and genocide are an unalterable part of human nature, a challenge is thrown out to the socialist view that a society of harmony and co-operation is not just possible but is the sole answer to working-class problems.

For instance, back in the 1960s, writers such as Robert Ardrey and Konrad Lorenz wrote best-selling books in which they argued that our instincts made us violent, just as the instincts of many animals make them. Human beings have access to far more powerful weapons, thus rendering our ingrained capacity to violence all the more lethal. Ardrey even argued that it was hunting which made proper humans out of our closest ape ancestors; hunting and killing, then, is not just part of being human, it is what made us human in the first place. Socialists pointed out that these accounts were sheer fantasy, not supported by any evidence and totally ignored the fact that so much human behaviour is learned behaviour. Moreover, these views have a clear political role:

  The lie of innate depravity is a weapon in the hands of the capitalist class: it prevents criticism of capitalism, since there is supposed to be no possible alternative. (Socialist Standard, June 1969).

The Ardrey-Lorenz view tends not to be heard in quite such a blatant form today.

However, comparable ideas can be encountered in a more sophisticated form, even among those who take pains to criticize Ardrey’s distortions. A recent example of this is the book The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond (Vintage £6.99). The author presents a synthesis of a great deal of research in anthropology, biology and archaeology, aiming to show how human beings changed from being just another large mammal into a species that has an unprecedented geographical spread and impact on the world, and yet by its pollution and violence may well be responsible for its own destruction. The title refers to the fact that the closest relative to humanity is the chimpanzee, and that we share over 98 percent of our genes with chimps. We are thus the third chimpanzee species (alongside the common chimp and pygmy chimp).

Are We Chimps?
Diamond’s essential technique in explaining human development is a materialist one, in that he argues the need to survive and reproduce drives our various responses to our surroundings. Unfortunately, he has not managed to rid himself of all the influence of biological determinism. While he acknowledges that our uniqueness as a species lies in the cultural traits (language, technology, etc) that rest on our genetic foundations he can still appeal to our genetic inheritance to explain certain aspects of human behaviour. Specifically, he provides an appalling catalogue of historical instances of genocide, and concludes:

  of all our human hallmarks . . . the one that has been derived most straightforwardly from animal precursors is genocide. . . . Chimpanzee behaviour suggests that a major reason for our human hallmark of group living was defence against other human groups, especially once we acquired weapons and a large enough brain to plan ambushes. If this reasoning is correct, then anthropologists’ traditional emphasis’ on “man the hunter” as a driving force of human evolution might be valid after all – with the difference that we ourselves, not mammoths, were our own prey and the predator that forced us into group living.

Let us look at the evidence behind this. It used to be argued that our nearest animal relations were essentially peaceful, and that there was therefore no reason in terms of evolution to consider humanity as innately aggressive. This exact argument can no longer be maintained, though: evidence cited by Diamond, and mentioned by a correspondent in the January Socialist Standard, shows that chimpanzees certainly can act aggressively, and ambush and kill each other. But what follows from this? Very little, since there is no evidence that chimp aggression is built-in to them. Furthermore, it is simply not possible to draw conclusions about human behaviour or human nature from observations about non-humans. One could pick and choose almost any aspect of animal behaviour, and point to it as a precursor of some similar human trait, but clearly this would prove nothing.

Peter Rigg cartoon from the May 1993 Standard.

Adaptable
In any event, the case for innateness of genocidal instincts is non-existent. Only a tiny percentage of human beings have committed acts of genocide, and, as Diamond shows, they need to convince themselves that their victims are “sub-human”, or at least different from themselves, before they can bring themselves to undertake these acts. Moreover, they do so in certain specific conditions, usually when they are under the orders of rulers or leaders who think they see some political or economic gain. If genocide was a part of being human, it would surely be far more prevalent and far easier to people to commit. The whole point, which the biological determinists ignore, is the fact that humans can learn and change our behaviour drastically. Diamond himself points out that New Guineans whose parents lived virtually in the Stone Age now drive cars and fly planes; plainly they have learned to do this, not undergone some sudden genetic modification. No matter how genetically close we are to chimps, our unique ability to modify our behaviour makes all the difference in the world.

In conclusion, it can be said that the combination of our genetic and cultural characteristics makes humanity a superbly adaptable being, well-equipped to deal with the problems that the natural and social worlds throw at us. Not even human ingenuity, however, can make capitalism an acceptable social system. In a socialist society, all our abilities will be exploited (in the good sense) to the full, and claims that humans are born to fight rather than co-operate will be seen as truly laughable.

Paul Bennett

A highly adaptable animal (1986)

From the March 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Compared with a lion, a gorilla, or even a horse, the human animal is weak, slow and defenceless. And yet homo sapiens has become the dominant species of the planet. Our species developed none of the specialised attributes that have fitted other creatures so perfectly for their environments. Physiologically, we have hardly evolved at all since we became a distinct species. Whereas other species have evolved to fit their environments and the available food supplies, human beings have remained unspecialised, but very adaptable. Instead of their bodies altering to suit their environments they have altered their environments to suit themselves.

Human beings spread across the surface of the planet, occupying tropical rain forests, deserts, temperate regions and even Arctic ice. They lived upon virtually every type of food possible, from seal fat to tropical fruits and desert insects. And from this variety of life-patterns arose wide differences in knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, feelings and behaviour. Almost every conceivable kind of belief and behaviour has been adopted by some human beings at some time somewhere. Although we are one species, from the jungle of New Guinea to the streets of New York, the inhabitants of different places may think and act in quite dissimilar ways.

And yet a baby, carried across the world from New Guinea to New York and brought up there, could become a complete New Yorker, with the accent, the food preferences, the personal habits, the love of baseball and the Stars and Stripes, and the average tendency towards obesity, heart disease, divorce and crime. The basic animal is the same, but all behaviour patterns are shaped by the society in which the child is brought up.

Making a living
But if societies mould individuals, different types of society are themselves shaped by a number of external factors, as well as by the activities of individuals and classes within them. The basic needs of the human animal are, like those of any other mammal, food, drink, warmth and sex; but these needs have not been easily met. For most of human existence the lives of the great majority have been dominated by scarcity. The methods of making a living from the land and sea have therefore been the major influences upon the sorts of lives people have led, the types of society that have been formed, and the attitudes and behaviour of the members of those societies.

The development of gathering roots and fruit, organised hunting and fishing, the growth of herding with its nomadic pattern of life, the emergence of agriculture, encouraging settlements, and the growth of towns and cities — all this has repeatedly modified relationships within societies. It has modified the material conditions of life and led to the accumulation of riches for some and poverty for others.

The discovery and utilisation of metals, and the development of more and more complex tools and machines have often gone hand in hand with progress in methods of making a living, increasing the amount of wealth produced per head of the population many times over; but the benefits of these improvements have not been shared by all members of society. After the rise of settled townships on an agricultural base in Mesopotamia, trade between localities developed; for the first time the product of hands and brains took on an alien life as commodities to be bartered, and then bought with that abstract commodity — money. Property, realised at the boundaries between tribes, began to impinge within. Laws of inheritance were formulated and the first property society developed when people came to be bought and sold as slaves.

Chattel slavery gave way to feudalism, and feudalism to capitalism; and still all the land and factories and mines and transport are owned by a small minority of the population, who make the laws to protect their wealth, and employ the majority to work for them.

Employers and employees
The fundamental division between workers and employers in the structure of modem society affects all the relationships within it. It affects feelings, attitudes, beliefs, and has a fundamental effect upon the personality of every individual. The child brought up in a family owning a few million shares, a few thousand acres, and four or five houses to live in has a completely different outlook on life from that of the child brought up in the average factory or office worker's semi-detached house on a housing estate. The children born into a family with adequate capital realise as they grow up that they are part of an élite with the freedom to chose how they occupy their lives. They may also realise that, although they will not necessarily do the hiring and firing themselves when they grow up. and may never even see the mines, factories and offices where their wealth is made, their inheritance of capital will make them employers of other human beings. The vast majority of children, on the other hand, become aware that their future depends upon being able to find someone to employ them. If they want to succeed in this, not only their education but their dress, their manners, their attitude to authority, even their political opinion must conform to the standards laid down by employers.

The employment they must seek is a fundamental part of a society in which the market, the price mechanism, the profit motive have come to dominate almost every aspect of life. There is a tendency for all relationships to be reduced to that of buyer and seller. And the interests of buyer and seller are opposed to one another. Good business consists of getting the better of someone. Competition means winning by fair means if possible, by foul means if necessary. The fictional heroes are gangsters, ruthless tycoons, spies "licensed to kill”, or policemen using the same kind of unconventional methods.

Contradictory values
This, therefore, is the atmosphere in which most children grow up. We are born essentially the same living beings as our ancestors of thousands of years ago; but we learn to think and feel and act from what goes on around us. From school, the newspapers and television, we take in the knowledge of the world's hunger and disease. At other times we learn that “butter mountains" are being piled up. milk poured down quarries, wheat burned, or crops ploughed back into the ground. We may not bring these facts together in our mind to raise questions about the system by which society is run indeed we are actually discouraged by the schools and the media from doing so. Instead we are persuaded to believe that the present organisation of society is eternal — even divinely ordained — and that it is ordinary people like ourselves with our selfishness. laziness and greed, who are to blame. And so. unresolved, these contradictions remain at the back of our mind, causing confusion, frustration, and a vague sense of guilty helplessness.

At school and at home we are repeatedly told that kindliness, cooperation and constructiveness are the guidelines of good social behaviour, but the films about war. robbery and violent crime that form one of television's staple diets teach very different lessons: there are always "baddies" against whom violence is not only justified but necessary and even enjoyable — Nazis, terrorists. Apaches, criminals, mad scientists. Martians, agitators. Russian spies, and so on.

We are taught that hard work and thrift are the recipe for success in our future "career"; and then occasionally we see members of the ruling class in the news, who never do a day's work in their lives and spend money like water, playing at fox-hunting on their ten thousand acre estates, or racing ocean-going yachts, or shooting grouse on their Scottish moors, while our hard-working, thrifty parents get worn out before our eyes with years of work and worry. Our potential for behaving with affection, generosity, trust and creativity is made to seem naive and ridiculous up against the power of wealth in a society of ruthless competition.

There are many different reactions to the disillusionment (sometimes called 'maturity") that this causes, and none of them is good for the individual. The commonest, because it avoids conflict with authority and the forces of law and order, is an almost complete refusal to be concerned with the problems of society. Workers who take this line silently or openly admit that they cannot make sense of what goes on; and they absorb themselves energetically in their darts team or football supporters' club, hobby or garden, trying to remain unaffected by the drudgery of their daily job. or the threats of unemployment or nuclear war.

The original ad from the March 1986 issue.

Others look for scapegoats to blame: black people (if they are white), white people (if they are black), men (if they are women). Jews, foreigners, atheists, trade unionists, and so on. The fashions change from time to time.

Still others become completely cynical turning to crime or something close to it. in an attempt to beat the system and to get hold of the only thing which seems to have any value money. The use of tranquillisers is widespread and the number of people who receive psychiatric treatment at some time in their lives has risen rapidly. We behave like this because we are forced to live under conflicting pressures which, as individuals, we do not have the power to resolve.

All of us. whether we remain relatively sane or not. are inevitably contaminated by the social values that provide the real motive power of capitalist society. The behaviour of capital in its urgent, relentless drive to make profit, which can be reinvested as capital to make yet more profit, regardless of human need or suffering, is the essence of avarice or greed. The very structure of modern society, in which the minority own and control all the means of producing and distributing wealth — and employ all the powers of the state to preserve their monopoly this class-divided structure has insecurity and self-interest at the foundations of society. None of us can fail to be affected by it.

Yet, adaptable as we are, we cannot completely fit the pattern that modem capitalism demands, because it is inconsistent and, at times, directly contradictory. Articles and advertisements regularly appear in magazines and newspapers explaining how we can become rich by setting up in business and applying "hard-headed" (ruthless) business principles. But when workers, especially those organised in trade unions, apply such principles in wage negotiations there is a chorus of condemnation from the press. We hear, only too often, that "there is no sentiment in business"; but as workers we are exhorted equally often to be "loyal" to the company we work for. Modern wars are fought over power and wealth — as becomes only too clear when the truth comes out afterwards — but they are always presented to the working class as fights for freedom of one sort or another, in order to persuade us to risk our lives in killing workers from other countries.

This inconsistency is inevitable. Capitalist society is not a collection of individuals with common interests and a common set of guiding principles, it is a society deeply divided, at odds with itself. Class conflict was built into the foundations and shows up every day in its workings. To criticise workers as being selfish, greedy, unco-operative, deceitful, violent, when these are the main characteristics of the nations and the businesses with which we are compelled to be involved all our lives is to add insult to two hundred years of injury. Certainly these are anti-social forms of behaviour; but then this is an inhuman social system. As long as we, its working-class majority, allow it to continue, we can expect nothing better.

(An extract from our most recent pamphlet From Capitalism to Socialism: How We Live And How We Could Live.)