Human Nature and Socialism

http://www.worldsocialism.org/articles/is_socialism_against_human.php

Okay, this article asks if Socialism is against human nature, and in contrast to what a left leaning person would expect, I say no.  Rather, I believe that its fatal flaw lies in human nature and its naive denial of its existence.  This means that it isn't so much contradictory to it as much as it buries its head in the sand upon its mention.  It's the lax nature of having a social safety net that makes Socialism an uncompetitive economic structure in a naturally competitive world.  None of this is rocket science.  In fact, it should be considered self evident, but leftists often feel the need to outthink the room; too much thinking and not enough knowing, I suspect. 

How often do we hear it said "It's only human nature?" And mostly about an anti-social piece of behaviour, as if it couldn't be avoided? Curiously, it is not often said about the best things that people can do. On hearing that someone has risked their life to save another, for some reason we are not inclined to say "Yes, it's human nature."

This is completely untrue.  Empathy and even the urge to risk your own safety for the sake of a loved one is very much in line with human nature.  They are mistaking forced charity in the name of the common good for a heroic act such as taking a bullet for your child.  They are also discounting the often powerful urge to help others voluntarily.  It is very important not to mistake a dire life or death instant with the life situation of a reasonably capable human being who should be expected to be able to take care of his or herself.  The latter has nothing to do with risking your life for saving another and they are attempting to make a very flimsy connection between the two.

Mostly, the idea of "human nature " is a reflection of a divisive society that is incapable of creating a decent life for all its members. This failure is then rationalised as a pessimistic view that all people (mainly other people) are inherently selfish, greedy, and lazy. This view has been used as an objection to socialism, in which all the bad examples of human behaviour under capitalism are called upon to say that a society based on equality and voluntary co-operation is impossible.

The sad truth is that there is a percentage of society that is selfish, greedy and most importantly in this case, lazy.  The left must ignore this fact in order for their beliefs to hold even a drop of water.  Who in their right mind is naive enough to believe that there is not a sizable percentage of the population that is either lazy or at least willing to "just get by"?  In an increasingly entitled society, I am willing to wager this is a majority even.  Capitalism uses human nature's penchant for greed to drive it; you can think of pure Capitalism as using human nature as the proverbial carrot that draws the cart.  If that doesn't work, you can at least bank on a person's fear of failure to ensure that they are pulling their fair share.  Socialism, however, is a system that look quite good on paper, but to their cart, human nature serves as a brutal stretch of potholes. 
Many like to point to the Scandinavian countries of Denmark and Sweden and such with exhorbitant tax rates as Socialist quasi-utopias.  That's all well and good and another dirty secret of human nature is that it has a very keen sense of things that are different.  I suspect that as soon as you add a significant population of Greeks, Jews, Somalis, Asians or Latinos that this delicate utopia would easily crumble.  Why?  Because it is much easier in these very ethnically homogenized societies to feel that everyone is working for the same team.  But differences, even though we don't like to admit it, breed suspicion.  Nobody who is being honest with themself will deny this fact.  This is not to say that our many differences don't enrich our society to the nth degree which they do; it means that under the circumstance of inevitable inequality of wealth distribution, these differences can breed contempt.  Even in the case of perfectly equal distribution, suspicion can still arise simply from warped perceptions.  This is why Socialism will never work in America.  Our differences are our strength under Capitalism.  They will be our undoing under Socialism. 
(I discovered this article a few days after posting this piece and it confirms what I say in this paragraph even beyond what I would have expected http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/938)

This prejudice is also reinforced by arguments which assert that our behaviour and our relationships result from the way we are biologically or genetically programmed. These focus on competition, leadership, possessiveness, aggression, social and sexual inequality and an alleged drive to be territorial but, again, all these are behaviour patterns that reflect capitalism.

C'mon now lefty, we are again being disastrously naive in thinking that there isn't still a little wild animal in our species.  This assertion is that Capitalism puts the human animal on a level with snakes, spiders and sharks when in fact we are, like elephants, dolphins and our fellow primates, also biologically programmed to be sharing, sympathetic, deferential and welcoming.  I think that Capitalism tries to give the human animal a little more credit than the left while also embracing the idea that there is a little human animal in us.
I still hate seeing competition used in such a negative context.  Competition combined with our unique evolutionary advantages has driven humanity to its lofty status in the world.  Furthermore, it is quite hypocritical of the left to cleverly sport Darwin fish with legs on their cars while uttering the word competition with the same expression as if they were smelling sour milk. 

The arrival of capitalism is a relatively recent phenomenon within human history, ninety per cent of which has been spent living as hunter gatherers, in small tribes moving from place to place. This ended with the rise of settled agriculture about ten thousand years ago and a variety of different forms of social organisation have followed across different parts of the world. If our social arrangements were determined by our biology then this diversity of human behaviour, relationships and culture would never have arisen.

Really?  So the left claims that there was never any competition for game, nuts and berries?  Do you think that in the days of hunters and gatherers that the slow, dimwitted or lazy were alotted a certain percentage of the bounty of the smart, fast and motivated?  I really don't think so.  These poor saps died and never bred.  Ugly?  Why does it have to be ugle when we always tout the beauty of mother nature and her balance?  It's simple Darwinism, remember?  Socialism is anti-Darwinism.  Then in the case of agriculture, I suspect that circumstances were very similar except that good farmers thrived and reproduced and the bad ones died.  Or maybe, much to the dismay of Socialist theory, their neighbors may have voluntarily helped them motivated only by human kindness out of their own free will instead of being compelled to do so by a governing body.

The real scientific evidence shows humans are able to adapt to cope with the challenges presented by the natural and social environments within which they have had to live. Evidence from the now completed human genome project supports the view of the adaptability of human beings. Dr Craig Venter, President and chief scientific officer of Celera Geonomics (the private firm that wants to patent genes for profit and thus not someone to be suspected of anti-capitalist or pro-socialist leanings) declared in the official press release issued by the journal Science which published his firms results in its 16 February issue:
"There are many surprises from this first look at our genetic code that have important implications for humanity. Since the June 26, 2000 announcement our understanding of the human genome has changed in the most fundamental ways. The small number of genes—30,000 instead of 140,000—supported the notion that we are not hard-wired . We now know that the notion that one gene leads to one protein and perhaps one disease is false. One gene leads to many different products and those products-proteins- can change dramatically after they are produced. We know that regions of the genome that are not genes may be the key to the complexity we see in humans. We now know the environment acting on these biological steps may be key in makin us what we are. Likewise the remarkably small number of genetic variations that occur in genes again suggest a significant role for environmental influences in developing each of our uniqueness."

So we have been remarkably capable of adapting and coping with challenges presented by natural and social environments for as long as we have been human, yet the basic belief of Socialism lacks the confidence in the individual to do so.  The article wants to argue that we are survivors, yet their economic belief banks on the idea that many of us are quite helpless. 
It looks like the scientific study this article quotes is simply stating that there are a small number of genes that account for the unusually diverse phenotypes within the human race.  So what?  Am I missing a point?  Again they are using a Darwinian concept of variation and adaptability to argue for a system that disallows those very Darwinistic concepts.

While human beings' genetic nature leaves much scope for variation in behaviour, there are certain features that we all share and distinguish us from other species. These include the ability to walk upright, binocular colour vision, hands with opposable thumbs, organs capable of speech, and the ability to think conceptually. These physical features have led to the versatility of the human species as embodied in their labour as well as social behaviour such as the accumulation of shared experience that can be passed down through the generations. The development of tools, from the flint-working technique during the paleolithic period to the computers and space vehicles of today is central to understanding human history.

Absolutely; and if that first humanoid that picked up a rock to open a nut or club a squirrel had instead been too busy helping some other deadbeat monkey wipe his ass, I wouldn't be on this computer writing this rebuttal right now. 

It may have been that this toolmaking tradition played a key part in the development of human consciousness. The tools made by early human kind objectified the existence of the tool makers and in contemplating this they become conscious of their own existence. This reflection of their own lives in their own creations may have led to a heightened self awareness and an ability to think in an expanded timeframe of past, present and future. Language could then develop from basic references to material objects to higher levels of abstract thought which expressed a developing, more complex vision of their world. It was possibly then that humanity created ideas and culture, becoming less instinctive and more decision-making. Through this dynamic interaction between human characteristics and the environment which was essentially the labour process, humankind not only altered their conditions of life, they changed themselves. What this required was not an invariable set of behaviour patterns programmed by genetic coding but adaptability.

This is very true, but not totally true.  Yes, we evolved into self-aware, conscientious beings.  The problem is that we are, once you take the clothes off, aniimals that lust for sex, eat like pigs, and often get angry, argue and fight.  Again, we are not on a par with the snakes and sharks, but we still have more animal in us than we are humble enough to admit.  Again, the article continues to speak of Darwinism to support their decidedly non-Darwinistic beliefs. 

But none of this would have been possible without co-operation. Whilst we may not say that co-operation is programmed through our genes, it is certainly predisposed by our physical make-up. The view that co-operation was essential to the survival and development of human society has recently been supported by the work of the anthropologist Andrew Whiten. He argues that egalitarianism, sharing and lack of domination were the most prominent features in hunter-gatherer societies.

For tens of thousands of years, man has co-operated to a certain extent and done so without any form of mandate to it.  It happened because when left to his own conscience, man is often quite charitable.  When he stops feeling that way is when charitability is forced upon him.  I am quite suspicious that there was not a measure of competition in these early societies.  This paints of picture of rosy, hand-holding communes when in fact I assure you that these early humans were far less sympathetic than famous capitalists such as Andrew Carnegie or Donald Trump when it came to those who could not carry their weight.

By co-operating with others through a division of labour we greatly increase what can be produced for our mutual benefit. Besides these material benefits, co-operation enables us to develop as individuals. Our individuality grows and finds its expression in relation to others and this would be impossible in social isolation. In this process of individual growth we draw not only on personal relationships, we draw on society in general and even on the lives of those who lived in the past.

Of course voluntary co-operation is a very essential part of human advancement.  Only a fool would argue against that.  The problem is that Socialism does not foster co-operation as much as it fosters as extreme a degree of Robin Hoodian theft as possible.  Socialism's brand of co-operation eats itself alive.  It crushes individuality and please remember what I said about individuality in a previous blog.  Socialism crushes it.  Never let a leftist preach individuality.  Never let him or her argue that their system fosters relationships.  It does quite the opposite.  It erodes the family because in their system, a person can lean on the state greatly reducing the necessity of a strong family unit where generations could be counted upon to meet the needs of their more vulnerable members.  This should cross-reference nicely with my blog entry concerning liberal racism since it is a well-established fact that the African-American family is, on a whole, more dysfunctional than other races, particularly white America.  The liberal agenda exploits this as this has become a very reliable voting block for them.. I assure you that if these reliable votes could cast off the yolk of leftist slavery disguised as welfare, they would be as conservative as the lily-whitest of us middle class Caucasians.

Co-operation is sometimes said to be impossible because there is an inherent conflict between self-interest and the interests of others. In fact, the reverse is true. The interests of the individual are best realised when people are working together.

This is so, so true except that the inherent conflict arises when co-operation is forced.  The second charity becomes an obligation, it is no longer co-operation and more importantly, it is no longer noble. 
So in closing, I encourage the left leaning of you to embrace your inner human animal a little and  furthermore, to give it a little more credit.  Enjoy the fierce competition that the world offers, be glad that we aren't in a third world country or some homogenized nanny state in Denmark sucking our thumbs.

Anthem, the good part. Shall we argue now?

I would now like to pull what I felt was the important part of Anthem and open this up for some political and philosophical discussion.  I think the smart thing for me to do is to simply transcribe it to the blog so everyone is on the same page.  Frankly, this is the only really important part of the book in my opinion which you probably already know if you read my critique in my previous entry.  Here goes:
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Whatever road I take, the guiding star is within me; the guiding star and the loadstone which point the way.  They point in but one direction.  They point to me.

I know not if this earth on which I stand is the core of the universe or if it is but a speck of dust lost in eternity.  I know not and I care not.  For I know what happiness is possible to me on earth.  And my happiness needs no higher aim to vindicate it.  My happiness is not the means to any end.  It is the end.  It is its own goal.  It is its own purpose.

Neither am I the means to any end others may wish to accomplish.  I am not a tool for their use.  I am not a servant of their needs.  I am not a bandage for their wounds.  I am not a sacrifice on their altars.

I am a man.  This miracle of me is mine to own and keep, and mine to guard, and mine to use, and mine to kneel before!

I do not surrender my treasures, nor do I share them.  The fortune of my spirit is not to be blown into coins of brass and flung to the winds as alms for the poor of spirit.  I guard my treasures:  my thought, my will, my freedom.  And the greatest of these is freedom.

I owe nothing to my brothers, nor do I gather debts from them.  I ask none to live for me, nor do I live for any others.  I covet no man's soul, nor is my soul theirs to covet.

I am neither foe nor friend to my brothers, but such as each of them shall deserve of me.  And to earn my love, my brothers must do more than to have been born.  I do not grant my love without reason, nor to any chance passer-by who may wish to claim it.  I honor men with my love.  But honor is a thing to be earned.

I shall choose my friends among men, but neither slaves nor masters.  And I shall choose only such as please me, and them I shall love and respect, but neither command nor obey.  And we shall join our hands when we wish, or walk alone when we so desire.  For in the temple of his spirit, each man is alone.  Let each man keep his temple untouched and undefiled.  Then let him join hands with others if he wishes, but only beyond his holy threshold.

For the word "We" must never be spoken, save by one's choice and as a second thought.  This work must never be placed first within man's soul, else it becomes a monster, the root of all the evils on earth, the root of man's torture by men, and of an unspeakable lie. 

The word "We" is as lime poured over men, which sets and hardens to stone, and crushes all beneath it, and that which is white and that which is black are lost equally in the grey of it.  It is the word by which the depraved steal the virtue of the good, by which the weak steal the might of the strong, by which the fools steal the wisdom of the sages.

What is my joy if all hands, even the unclean, can reach into it?  What is my wisdom, if even the fools can dictate to me?  What is my freedom, if all creatures, even the botched and the impotent, are my master?  What is my life, if I am but to bow, to agree and to obey?

But I am done with this creed of corruption.

I am done with the monster of "We," the word of serfdom, of plunder, of misery, falsehood and shame.

And now I see the face of god, and I raise this god over the earth, this god whom men have sought since men came into being, this god who will grant them joy and peace and pride.

This god, this one word:

"I."
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So the natural question that spawns from this is, "How much responsibility do we bear for those less fortunate than ourselves?"  I say that the only civil answer beyond our immediate circle of family and close friends is as little as possible.
I will make an analogy where the human race is a heard of zebras and the challenges of life are a pride of lions.  I challenge you with this question.  Is it not at least equally morally reprehensible for the slow zebra to expect the fast one to delay or halt his escape to come to his aid as it is for the fast zebra to refuse his aid?  Is it not morally corrupt for the slow zebra to refuse to condition himself for the inevitable chase then to have the audacity to request aid in his getaway?  Even a mother zebra will only aid and protect her young so much as they are able to help themselves.  In the zebra world, it is every zebra for himself.  This preserves the species and ensures that the strongest, fastest zebras run in the front of the heard in order to lead the other zebras to safety, food and drink.  It is the responsibility of all zebras to maintain this pace or perish, for if the best zebras are not in the front of the pack, but instead burdened by the slow and lazy, their talents are wasted.  The whole herd is now vulnerable to attack. 
Well, the argument that you will hear is, of course, that humans beings are not animals.  We are above that way of thinking.  We are better than that.  While it is nice to think so, it just isn't true.  That is either the cry of the burdensome or of one whose superior talent, motivation or resources are not being stolen and cast into the abyss of that which is often called social justice or the greater good.  It is incomprehensibly naive to think that the world is not a fiercely competitive place be it nation versus nation, person versus person or any other way you choose to divide the teams.  This greater good is only good for those who are foolish enough to ignore this fundamental fact of life and take the necessary measures for survival in such an environment.  It has become morally acceptable, and in many instances laudable, to steal from one for the benefit of another whose merit I personally call into question.  This theft is known also by the kitschier name of Socialism.
Socialism and all entitlement programs thrive on the jealousy of the common masses.  It instills the belief that everybody deserves to have what the richer of us have.  If you read the comments posted after any given Yahoo! News article that mentions the economy, you will see that they are deluged with comments by those demanding that businesses and the wealthy and the politicians give up their exhorbitant paychecks for the greater good.  Let's be honest about what jealousy really is.  Jealousy or the hatred of others based on what they possess, be it wealth, beauty, intelligence, talent, etc., is nothing more than a hatred of our own inadequacies.  Socialism wants you to feel inadequate.  It wants you to hate the wealth and talents of others.  This is the only way which Socialism will exist. 
So Socialism throws around these romantic ideas of equality.  Everyone has everything that they need provided by resources to which everybody works very hard to contribute, right?  The unaccounted for variable here is human nature.  I have worked for the state for five years and I know that people who are in an environment where their ceiling for achievement is limited, but their base security is guaranteed are not motivated contibutors.  If the end result of a person's efforts is always equality among all, his motivation is no longer to succeed, but rather to do no more than the person next to him.  So I ask of Socialism, how successful will your herd of zebras be with this kind of mentality?
Now back to the Anthem.  The ideology in this book specifically, and of Ayn Rand in general, I find to be very liberating.  I feel it is ultimately hardwired into the human brain to be selfish.  Despite many selfless heroic acts and examples seemingly to the contrary, if we are honest with ourselves, we will admit that the human being is a very selfish beast.  Rand applauds the natural state of this selfishness and goes as far as to assert that it is our duty to be selfish.  Our selfishness, pride and pursuit of our own happiness results in our not being a burden on our fellow man.  It is in fact, very unselfish for us to be more selfish.  A parent who is too preoccupied with meeting the needs of the rest of the family without considering his or her own well being is ultimately bringing a lesser piece to the family puzzle.  A healthier, wealthier, more attractive, happier mother or father/husband or wife will always result in a mother or father/husband or wife that is even more capable of meeting his or her family's needs.
I can only imagine how empowering it would feel to stand on a mountaintop and read aloud the pages that I copied into this blog.  The empowerment of the individual makes one well up with the human spirit.  This is why capitalism is the true economic system of the proud, the rebellious, the spirited and the individualistic.  Capitalism is the system which favors those who defiantly declare, "Yes I can."  You are not being rebellious by declaring yourself a socialist.  You are, in fact, declaring yourself a coward and a conformist.  Pseudo-intellectuals love to wax poetic about the merits and civility of Socialism and in doing so, unwittingly declare themselves and their fellow man to be weak, common, incapable, dumb, average, insignificant, sheepish, etc.  Any man who will look upon you and try to explain why Socialism is a great idea is doing nothing short of insulting your abilities to your face. 

Blogger's final thoughts:
I know as soon as I finished the passage from Anthem, I went into more of a stream of consciousness rant than a discussion of the passage itself, but as I sit here I am satisfied that I have captured the essence of what it said to me which, in its own way is also a commentary on the passage.  Besides, that is why these blogs are open to comments by the reader and in cases like this, I don't even believe it becomes interesting until I start to hear what others have to say.