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Wednesday January 28, 2009 20:37 by Kevin Doyle - Workers Solidarity 107
Anarchists want to change the world. Instead of the present order – capitalism – with its focus on inequality and profits for a few, we want to build a new society based around the principles of participatory democracy, freedom and production for need not profit. For anarchists the type of society we want to build is best summed up by the slogan: ‘To each according to their needs, from each according to their ability’. Is an anarchist society possible? Although many people agree that it sounds like a good project, there are also plenty who argue that an anarchist society simply wouldn’t work. ‘Come off of it,’ the objectors say. ‘People are selfish and only interested in looking out for themselves. After all it’s human nature – most people, given a choice, would put themselves before the rest of society. How could an anarchist society function if this is true?’ |
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Jump To Comment: 1As I've noted before, I think this article makes two serious mistakes.
First, it confuses selfish genes with selfish individuals. That is NOT the case. If there are genes for altruism and selfishness, they would be both "selfish" genes -- a selfish gene for altruism, a selfish gene for selfishness -- and both would try and make copies of themselves.
How an individual animal would act, therefore, cannot be predicted. In some cases, they would be co-operatives and in others not so.
Second, it implies that solidarity and co-operation are not in our self-interest. This is strange, particularly as the whole argument for (say) unions is that if we stick together than we can do better than if we compete against each other!
As Kropotkin's Mutual Aid documents in great detail, co-operation has an evolutionary benefit. Those who practice it do better than those who do not. Hell, we would not be here as a species without mutual aid! This analysis has become a mainstay of evolutionary theory, under the name "reciprocal altruism".
Anyway, I explore this in more detail in my article on Kropotkin:
Mutual Aid: An introduction and evaluation
http://anarchism.pageabode.com/anarcho/mutual-aid-an-in...ation
In summary, we have evolved to co-operate and do best (both as individuals and as a species) when we do so. This does not mean that we cannot be selfish (we obviously can) but that there is nothing in "human nature" to suggest that capitalism is "natural" or that socialism is "unnatural" -- quite the reverse, I would suggest.