Human Nature and Socialism: 5—We Learn from Social Scientists (1953)

From the September 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

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.”)

"Science, natural and social" (1950)

From the August 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

“. . . Today it seems that we are again in the process of launching a new phase of science—one in which social as well as natural phenomena are to be made amenable to scientific understanding and rational control.

“As with natural science, social science too has had its earlier stages. It too passed through the stage of trial and error, in which social organisation shaped itself under the influence of unconscious adjustment together with non-rational rules of conduct and non-scientific interpretations of human destiny. It also had its traditional phases, often tightly bound up with philosophical and theological interpretative principles, as, for example the climax of the Middle Ages. And it has had its birth of free speculative inquiry, parallel to the Greek phase of natural science—but two thousand years later, in the philosophers of the seventeenth and especially the eighteenth century.

“Finally, its modern stage now dawning has had. like the modern stage of natural science, its scattered precursors, its Roger Bacons and Leonardos—and it has had its precursor in the restricted sense, its equivalent of Francis Bacon in the Renaissance. Many, I am sure, would put Herbert Spencer in this position; but I believe that the true John the Baptist of social science is Karl Marx. Herbert Spencer, for all his academic knowledge, or perhaps because of it, was more in the position of an Old Testament prophet. His work was essentially analogical. He demonstrated that social science was an inevitable development; but his notions of what form it would actually take and what methods it should employ were vague and essentially erroneous.

“Marx, on the other hand, developed a system directly based on social facts and directly applicable to them. He did not just prophesy. A Messiah; he indicated THE Messiah. As natural scientists tend to undervalue Bacon because he himself did not make discoveries or work out experimental techniques, so social scientists tend to under-rate Marx because his system is a dialectical one, ready-made and complete with an answer to any problem, not sufficiently empirical and inductive for their scientific taste. But at least Marx, like Bacon, gave expression to a new outlook and a new method of attack, and helped materially to alter the intellectual climate so as to make it propitious for scientific work in his field . . . ”

(“The Uniqueness of Man”, by Julian Huxley. Pages 224—225).

Can Science Benefit Mankind? (1975)

From the October 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

When the modern capitalist class began its struggle against feudal rule, it was compelled to enlist the aid of empirical science and materialist philosophy. As feudal rule and the mediaeval church were historically connected, any struggle had to begin with the discrediting of existing religious ideas or religious practices.

The Reformation, sparked off by Luther in Germany in 1520, was the first major revolt against the Roman Catholic Church, then the centre of feudalism. The second was the advent of Calvinism in Holland and England (Cromwell). The French Revolution of 1789, and the German revolution of 1848, finally established the supremacy of the capitalist class over the political power and property of the church. From then on, religious institutions had to conform to the laws that were devised mainly for the commercial and industrial advancement of developing capitalism.

The church had previously “saved men’s souls” by suppressing their intellectual development, and any philosophy or science was only allowed strictly on the oppressive terms dictated by the church. For example, no anatomical research of corpses was allowed up to the 15th century; physicians had to take up metaphysics if they wanted to continue research. Astronomy was astrology; chemistry was alchemy; science, such as it was, was in the hands of the priests. The language of science was the dead Latin of the church which had the effect of holding back the publication of new discoveries. The church itself had adopted many of the myths of Greek mythology, and the old Buddhist and Norse legends. They also accepted the Mosaic law that the earth was 5,000 years old and was based on spontaneous universal creation by a God. The church made sure that men would not be in a position to explain their environment, and what they did not understand they would worship with superstition.

The capitalist class needed science more than religion; you cannot base modern wealth production on the myths of the book of Genesis or Buddhist legends. The process of wealth production and distribution needs a full scientific understanding of the working of the laws of nature and the harnessing of those laws to the needs of the capitalist social system. One of the drawbacks of teaching several generations to think scientifically is the impossibility of arbitrarily shutting off the process. Where do you draw the line? How can you restrict thinking and the spread of ideas? The simple answer is that you cannot. The capitalist class, as with the church before it, wants the spread of knowledge to be under the control of the ruling body, but unlike the church which required ignorance, capitalism requires scientific knowledge in order to survive. So they try to square the circle by channelling the enquiring mind along the lines of new myths, or old myths refurbished. One of the ancient myths of capitalist society is that the production of wealth and its distribution is due to the energy and activity of the capitalist class.

It is to the discredit of international scientific bodies that they do little to refute this fantastic claim on the most elementary scientific basis. The reason is not difficult to find — they have become respectable. Their institutions are concerned with perpetuating the commonplaces of accepted practices. The Royal Institution and its international counterparts are castrated organizations, always looking over their shoulders to see if they are in harmony with their masters’ desires. No criticism is made of the disorder and anarchy surrounding the social order. They think that “realism”, as they describe it, should always have priority. This “realism” is nothing other than a servile acquiescence to the social relations of capital, and is a prostitution of the scientific method. It must be apparent to any group of scientists, particularly those engaged in medical science, that facilities for research are limited by the deliberate withholding of grants by governments and others. It must be frustrating to know the solution to a medical problem and be effectively debarred from carrying it out. Yet very few voices are raised in protest. In short, science has become bourgeois and is dependent upon capitalism for its operation and expansion.

In an article entitled “Science and the Quest for Human Purpose” (Times, 21st June 1975) Sir George Porter, Director of the Royal Institution, discusses the future of man in relation to science. He states that most of our worries and anxieties stem from a “lack of purpose which was rare 100 years ago”. He is referring to the large number of scientific discoveries made during the last century when capitalism was progressing and expanding. The purpose of science then, as now, is to serve the financial interests of the ruling class. Sir George also regrets the absence of a new philosophy and purpose. We wonder where Sir George has been these last hundred years.

There is a new philosophy and purpose — it is called Scientific Socialism. Its scientific basis was laid by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels over 100 years ago. Broadly speaking its purpose, to quote a phrase of Sir George, is to provide the greatest happiness for the greatest number. This cannot be done by bourgeois science, but only by the application of a progressive proletarian science. We can well understand Sir George’s rather uncertain thoughts on the future of man. Capitalism is certainly in need of some kind of “spiritual revival” in the sense that they long for the good old days. What with no comfort from the theologians, and an uncertain economic future, it will have to find some mystic source of support.

Sir George ventured the opinion that the future of man rests with science, and thinks that the proper study of man may be through physics, chemistry and biology. We do not agree. The study of man must be concerned with his social being, his social relations and social organization, and the development of his productive forces. Physics, chemistry and biology are ancillary to man’s social organization, as are all branches of learning. What men need is the science of society — an investigation into the phenomenon of wealth production and distribution, the arrangement of social classes and the reason why social changes occur. In other words, what man needs is information about society, and bourgeois science will not provide that kind of information. We know about physics, chemistry and biology, etc.; what is now required is a form of social organization, Socialism, where we can benefit from existing knowledge. The benefits of science today accrue to the ruling class not to society generally — that is why it has become respectable. Far from serving mankind, it serves one kind of man — the capitalist.

Most scientists, like other workers, are socially and politically ignorant about the state of society. Some are religious, spiritualists, reformers, etc., but they are trained thinkers and should recognize the existence of social science which is fundamental to a true understanding of the scientific method. Darwin was able to solve the problem of how there originated vegetable and animal species in the struggle for existence. Marx succeeded in solving the problem of how there arise different types of social organization in the struggle of men for their existence. The spirit of research was the same in both thinkers despite the different fields. The capitalist has enjoyed the fruits of Darwinism; let us move quickly to the application of the science of Marx. The introduction of scientific Socialism will mean the freedom of all science to develop and fulfill its true social function — as a practical tool for society’s benefit.

Jim D'Arcy

Broadcatching the Working Class. (1923)

From the May 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard

There are thousands of people who to-day have adopted the habit of what has become generally known as “Listening-In.” Everybody seems to have a desire to study this particular science, and we would be the last to suggest that scientific knowledge' should not be acquired, especially amongst members of the working class. "Wireless Telegraphy,” no doubt, is a very interesting subject, in view of its rapid development in recent years.

The conquest of the ethereal waves, possibly provide a very important landmark of progress in scientific research; but if we go a little further into the question, we shall find that whilst there are some sciences which are encouraged, there are others which are fettered and not allowed that freedom to develop which one might expect.

In these days, living as we do under Capitalism, there is one thing necessary before any progress can be made in scientific research—it must have the capitalist “Hall Mark” of profits, after which it may emerge forth into the daylight. That in itself, explains the present “ Wireless ” boom which is producing a rich harvest for the groups of capitalists like Godfrey Isaacs and others of the “Macaroni” type, derived, of course, from the sale of the instruments, accessories, etc.

Suppose for a moment we divert our attention to another phase of science— Social Science—that which deals with the various problems, faced of day by day by the working class. We shall find that no such inducement is being given to the working class to investigate problems of this character in a scientific manner. Why? Because once the working class become afflicted with the desire to understand the cause of their poverty, even in numbers half as great as those studying “Wireless” at the present time, the position of the capitalist class would not be quite secure, hence we find them directing the minds of the working class into other channels.

This state of affairs provides the necessity for an organisation like the Socialist Party of Great Britain to come to the rescue, and thus provide the working class with the necessary scientific education, in the shape of Economics, History, Politics and Sociology, etc.

By the correct understanding of these subjects they will equip themselves with necessary knowledge for accomplishing the social revolution, by wresting from the capitalist class that power which they the workers have hitherto presented to their masters, i.e., Political Power.

Therefore, we say to the working class, study the Social Sciences first, and thereby qualify to take your stand for the emancipation of your class. By doing so you will not only benefit yourself, but the community as a whole. For the first time in the history of the world, mankind will be able to enjoy the best that nature, aided by science, can provide

A. S. C.

Economic illusionists (1999)

Book Review from January 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Economics and Reality by Tony Lawson, Routledge 1997

The "Social Sciences" are in a mess and a few workers within the various subjects know it. The public in general has lost interest, and those engaged in the Natural Sciences are either incredulous or contemptuous—John Gribbin, a physicist, says the expression "social sciences" is an oxymoron, a self-contradiction.

Few people in Europe take psychology seriously any more. Bernard Crick says books on political science are unpublishable; nobody knows what sociology, a bastard half Latin half Greek word, means, and Paul Ormerod wrote in The Death of Economics that his life's work has turned out to be worthless.

Meanwhile a whale named Karl Marx has surfaced in the most unlikely pages of the New Yorker, the Financial Times and the Observer amid claims that he is the only one who has ever made sense of the whole mess.

Tony Lawson, a Cambridge mathematician turned economist analyses in this book why the "mainstream experts" have failed to provide an explanation of what is wrong with the world and, as a consequence, what to do about it. He begins with methodology.

Their procedure, he says, is simply "deductive". Reasoning from premisses which are either not disclosed, or when they are, simply do not fit any world that we recognise—they assume a world full of greedy, aggressive loners, squabbling over "scarce means", they end up with a rag-bag of isolated scenarios and anecdotes. Their world is one of atomic events, of isolated phenomena, unrelated to each other. Then, because this does not supply an explanation, many of them move into "econometrics" i.e. algebraic mumbo-jumbo, or computer modelling, GIGO—Garbage In Garbage Out. You can't get out of a machine what you did not put in.

All of the procedures (algorithms) of mathematics and logic are tautologies, or equations, and you can't have unequal equations. They can't tell us anything about the world but they can help to straighten out our thinking.

Tony Lawson's analysis of economists' failure to explain events is that they do not look below the surface for patterns, structures, processes, which are as real and verifiable through their effects as physical things are. Isolated events, individuals, things, have no explanatory power. He points out further that their attempts to use the criteria of physics and chemistry, of the "if x then y" variety, simply collapses human behaviour into that of the non-living world: "Given the open nature of human action—the fact that each person could have acted otherwise—the social structure can only ever be present in an open system"

As a consequence, economic "laws" cannot explain human behaviour mechanically. All living things share some degree of autonomy. And it is in their failure to recognise this that their problems lie, rather than in the conclusions that they draw from them.

The behaviour of humans in society is not unpredictable, but it has to be done appropriately. "If x then y", a simple causal connection, cannot give us the results that we need.

This book is for students of economics who despair of making sense of the subject. The style is heavily academic, much of it arising from the need to deal with the willful obscurantism or the hopeless muddle of the advocates of the system. For example, there is some discussion of ontology or being (what the world is really about) and epistemology or knowing (how and what we know about the world), which is not quite the same thing. The problem for us is that the World or the Universe is infinite, and we are very finite. Add to that our inability to investigate more than one thing at a time. Yet reasoning from one thing to many can give false conclusions because we are moving through different levels of abstraction. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

A better title for this book might have been Political Economy and Reality which is how Marx characterised the study of capitalism, as opposed to other socio-economic arrangements in history. The capitalist system has occupied less than one percent of human existence and it is only by comparing it with other systems—hunter-gatherer, herder, homesteader, etc and possible future societies—that it can be satisfactorily analysed. Bourgeois apologetics usually fight shy of history, of an economic past, since that might imply a (possibly different) future.

Comparing our unfree society with autonomous past or future arrangements can permit a better understanding of our present predicament. Science supplies only relative or partial truths. "Whole truths", as A. N. Whitehead pointed out, "are the very devil", and he could have added: from fundamentalist religion to molecular biology ("genes explain everything") or any other single cause explanation.

There is an alternative to capitalism but no research funds are being awarded for investigating it. Meanwhile millions of words are being ground out by economists in press, radio, television and books, which leave neither them nor us any the wiser.

Ken Smith