Continued from the previous issue.
5—We Learn from Social Scientists
People who criticise or object to Socialism because they think that human nature makes it impossible, assume that the characteristics they ascribe to human nature are fixed and unalterable. However, the science of anthropology (the study of human beings as creatures of society) shows that most of the characteristics are cultural acquisitions and have not been present in all societies. The importance of this to the case for Socialism lies in the fact that what is acquired culturally must change as the culture changes, and that the behaviour we are accustomed to think of as “natural” under Capitalism can and will be something entirely different under Socialism.
It is a commonplace that man is a social animal, i.e., that it is in human nature to be social. But it is not true in the sense in which it is commonly understood, namely, that our social nature is due to a social “instinct.” We were not born with our social nature; we acquired it. Likewise, we were not born with a certain sort of social nature, but developed it because of the sort of social environment into which we were born.
Each step man makes in his history alters his environment, each alteration in his environment changes that in which his fellow men and the oncoming generation live. The background of the child differs from that of the parent; in a changed social atmosphere men themselves react differently: they acquire new knowledge, new experience, new understanding. They value things anew. Human nature is itself transformed.
Nor should the inter-relationship of man and society be overlooked. Apart from his group, a man is a mere potentiality. He is developed in a milieu that fosters, modifies, or destroys his capacities. To explain the individual and discuss his psychology as something distinct from the society is a false dissection, by which structures are isolated from one another artificially and their organic connection destroyed. Society in its full sense is never an entity separable from the individuals who compose it. No individual can arrive even at the threshold of his potentialities without a culture in which he participates. Conversely, no civilisation has in it any element which in the last analysis is not the contribution of individuals.
Socialised habits
The life-history of the individual is first and foremost an accommodation to the patterns and standards traditionally handed down in his community. From the moment of his birth the customs into which he is born shape his experience and behaviour. By the time he can talk he is the little creature of his culture, and by the time he is grown and able to take part in its activities, its habits tend to be his habits, its beliefs his beliefs, its impossibilities his impossibilities.
People interpret the inevitability, under Capitalism, of economic competition as proof that this is the prime motivation that human nature can rely upon. The behaviour of small children, as it is moulded in our civilisation and recorded as child psychology, is the way in which the young human animal is “bound to behave.” It is the same with ethics or family organisation. It is the inevitability of each familiar motivation that is defended, with the attempt always to identify particular local ways of behaving with Behaviour, or certain socialised habits with Human Nature.
Let us take as an example the case of warfare. War is a phenomenon that may or may not be a feature of a certain culture. There are regions where organised resort to mutual slaughter never occurs between social groups. It may be impossible for a people to conceive of the possibility of a state of war. Rasmussen tells of the blankness with which the Eskimo met his exposition of the custom. Ruth Benedict tried to talk of dignity, uprightness, strength of character and courage warfare to the Mission Indians of California, but it was of these “barbarians" impossible. Their misunderstanding of warfare was abysmal. They did not have the basis in their own culture upon which the idea could exist, and their attempts to reason it out reduced World Wars to the level of alley brawls. We may conclude that if war is justified it is because people always try to justify their behaviour, and not because war will bear an objective examination of its merits.
Property
When we turn to the question of private property we can learn much from the reports of field workers who have lived in societies where communistic sentiments prevailed. When on the Banks Islands, W. H. R. Rivers worked out the history of a plot of land which was cleared about four generations ago. The greater part of the plot had been divided up between the children of the clearer, and had since been regarded as the individual property of their descendants, but part had been left for the common use of all the descendants of the original clearers. Rivers was told that disputes were frequent concerning the portions of the land which were owned individually, while there were never any quarrels concerning the part which had been left for the common use of all. Let this be a lesson to those who think that there will always be disputes over land and other wealth, and that if it were all commonly owned we should all grab as much as we could!
A comparison between the Melanesian and people in our own civilisation is enlightening. The Melanesian knows that were he to wander into the next tribe he must look out for himself. The next tribe are strangers and enemies. But he does not live among strangers as we do. He lives among friends. They have never sought to rob him, or cheat him, or slander him. If he is down, if he has bad luck, if he has nothing to eat, they will vie with one another in supplying him with food. They will make a point of going hungry themselves rather than he should. And they will not even make a virtue of it, and think how very noble they are and how grateful he should be.
There is little ground for the conflict of individual interests where there is little private property. Where all interests are in common, mutual assistance and goodwill are spontaneous sentiments. To assist others, to share with them and to protect them is as natural in “uncultured” societies as it is natural in individualistic communities to rob, to cheat, outwit and defraud.
Even today there are some remote parts of the world that illustrate in embryonic form the basic social relationships of Socialism. Hunza, a country of 26,000 people high up in the Himalayas, has no money, no police, no jails, no courts and no army. Without money there is no crime. It is not, let us hasten to add, an example of Socialism—there is a king, and it is a pre-property rather than a post-property society. But at least it shows that people can live without money and private ownership, and live quite happily and fully too. “ We are fond of sport, life and laughter. We work hard —then when the harvest is in, it is there for everyone,” Daily Graphic, 31/12/52. Engels’ description of the Iroquois is in the same vein, and he writes of the admiration inspired in all white people who have come into contact with unspoiled Indians, by the personal dignity, uprightness, strength of character and courage of these "barbarians."
Morality
If we study the history of human sexual relations we find that these have varied considerably with different types of culture. Sexual jealousy, a high esteem for chastity, sexual modesty, and the tendency to fall passionately in love with a single object (so-called “romantic love”) are such common and distinctive characteristics of civilised man, that not only laymen but frequently psychologists and naturalists take them to be inherent in man and inseparably united to his character. Nevertheless, these emotions are foreign to many primitive peoples. They have arisen in the course of the evolution of civilisation, and have been built up slowly and gradually as secondary characteristics under the influence of definite social conditions.
The technical use of morality—as a thing pertaining to the sex relation only or especially—is the application of our standards of sex behaviour, and our form of the sex taboo, to judge the folkways of all people. But all that can properly be said is that a great range and variety of usages, ideas, standards, and ideals can be found which differ greatly from ours. “Immoral” never means anything but contrary to the customs of the time, and place. There is no permanent or universal standard by which right and truth in regard to these matters can be established and different folkways compared and criticised.
It is now a moral principle that it is wrong to commit murder. But in early Judea to sacrifice the first born was not murder; in the 17th century “not to suffer a witch to live” was not murder; in the 20th century war is not murder. Abstract precepts are of very little significance in the ethical history of mankind; it is their concrete interpretation which has varied.
The ethical problem of selfishness v. social-mindedness (one that is so often brought into discussions about Socialism) is not in fact theoretical but practical. Its solution lies not in the construction of new ethical philosophies but in the creation of a new society. Every act which leads towards that new society is a contribution to solving the problem. When mankind has attained a state in which goods and services abound and exploitation has ceased, selfishness, having no longer anything important to do, will wither away.
Stan Parker
Some useful books to read:—
“Human Nature in the Making,” M. Schoen.
“Patterns of Culture,” R. Benedict.
“The Making of Man,” ed. V. F. Calverton.
“ Sin and Sex,” R. Briffault.
“ Folkways ” W. G. Sumner.
“ The Making of Humanity,” R. Briffault.
“ Man against Myth,” Barrows Dunham.
(Concluding Article: “The Socialist Future.”)
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