Humans were constrained by their material conditions. Now that those material conditions have changed, their behaviors have changed to match. This is not a fixed state of affairs. Humans continue to transition between stages just like every other living being.
Greed is as much a part of modern human nature as fear and love. And it is the product of a social condition that rewards growth, punishes disobedience, and requires a larger community to reproduce itself. It is a consequence of social conditioning executed iteratively from parent to child. And a consequence of statistical survival and prosperity played out over populations.
What defines human action is not the basic libidinal impulse, but the interplay between people and their environments over lifetimes and generations. That’s not socialism or capitalism at its root. Socialism and capitalism are simply fruits grown from the post-industrial branches of the tree of human history.
Greed isn’t inescapably “human nature”, but results from it under some basic conditions. The nature of enjoyment and suffering means the pursuit of enjoyment and avoidance of suffering as a biological imperative. Desperation, lack of cultural/learned empathy, cultural normalization of disparity, etc., can quickly allow unchecked greed. The same thing, with different conditions, can be said for… not sure there’s a single word for it, but behavior motivated by empathy promoting equality and sharing and so on. The conditions actually kind of close to being the inverse of those for greed - some combination of not having desperation, having cultural/learned empathy, cultural normalization of economic equality, etc. Both types of thinking are just basically pro-social or anti-social thought with regard to material/economic gain, depending on what influences individual thinking.
And slavery isn’t capitalism? Or is that cooperative because the slaveholder says “I have a knife and will kill you” and the slave says “I don’t want to die” so it’s mutual collaboration where the slave doesn’t die but also is a slave?
Debt and slavery are not the same thing. Debt can be used to functionally enslave as capitalism does enslaving us to our wages so we can afford to exist, but again that is a feature of the coercive nature of capitalism and debt is just the enforcement mechanism in this instance. Debt and capitalism are two independent things that intersect in interesting ways.
Apologies I responded to the wrong convo thinking it was the response to another comment. I think you are trying to make the point that modern day civilization is slavery due to the exploitation of capitalism but I’m not really sure of the point you are trying to make beyond that. Slavery is bad. Capitalism is slavery. Capitalism is bad.
I think we are agreeing unless you think I’m taking the position that slavery is good. Or are you trying to make the point that I am wrong because human beings have employed slavery in the past (and still do today)?
My point was simply that humans have been doing slavery for…pretty much as long as we have records. And that is in conflict with your view.
You said:
You know that humans lived in communal societies for a long fuckin time before all the bullshit we know today, right?
So what I’m saying is that for pretty much all of recorded human history we have documented proof that humans enslaved each other. Ie not communal. Slaveholding.
You then implied the ills of today’s society are tied to capitalism, an invention which came several tens of thousands of years after we invented slavery. Ie humans were shit to each other and abused each other in horrible ways long in advance of capitalism coming onto the scene.
There may not be capitalism in human nature, but enslaving people we view ourselves as being inferior to us is pretty much as human as apple pie.
You can have slavery under global capitalism (we do) and our last few thousands of years have been very bad for a lot of humans, but it seems like we weren’t always oppressing each other and on the contrary we have been egalitarian most of the time anatomical humans existed, hence why the human nature argument doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.
When was this? How good are the records from this time? Seems like for at least the last 12000 years (biblical era) we were for the most part miserable, diseased, and exploitative
But it’s still our best guess at something we think we can prove.
I can vaguely recall several stories of fossilized remains which indicate all sorts of horrible things being performed on humans or related by tool users, which seems to imply in pre-history humans were still shit to each other.
Yeah, there are. While human groups sometimes fought each other due to competition for scarce resources, within groups we seem to have been very communitarian, taking care of our wounded and elderly even when conditions were harsh.
Per David Graeber in “Debt: The First 5000 Years”, people used to record debt with “Tally Sticks”. You’d notch the debt you owed at the end of a branch. Then you’d bend it in half. Creditor would get one end. Debtor the other. When you wanted to call in your debt, you’d hold the sticks up together to confirm they matched and that’s what was owed. This practice goes back to the Paleolithic Era.
Incidentally, the Tally Stick would often be longer on the creditor’s end. This was the stock of the stick and thus designated its recipient the “stock holder”.
But assignment and collection of debts isn’t the same thing as assignment and collection of rents and interest, which is at the center of the capitalist economic system.
Debt and capitalism are not the same thing if that’s what you’re insinuating. Markets are not a feature of capitalism either, they are simply tools for economic control.
What do you mean not allowed? Just go do it. Defense is by it’s very nature much much harder than offense. You could probably kill a few CEOs with $1000 and some travel expenses. Just go do it if you think it’s so important to bash heads in.
Came here to say this, the problem is the system of government because everyone can be bought. We need direct democracy where there are no representatives that can be bought
Sure, the base will shape the superstructure. Any levers that can be pulled within capitalism will either be destroyed or nerfed if proven too effective at gaining what workers want.
The government is tied to the mode of production, it isn’t above it. When capital owners hold sway over how society functions, it isn’t through bribes alone that this happens. Control of media, control of the state, administration, cultural hegemony, etc all influence it. As such, no direct democracy could really exist in capitalism.
Even an honest and well meaning politician will be blocked at every step. Like corporations and big businesses sabotaging key supply chains, media engaging in character assassination, and if all that fails then either a military coup or a literal assassination (like they did to Salvador Allende in Chile). Unless the politicians try to gain concessions from the ruling class in exchange for complacency, which means we still have our status quo.
That still doesn’t guarantee the military won’t take over, reactionary sentiments spread through propaganda, etc. Without a revolution there will never be true democracy.
A lot harder to buy off the general population than it is to buy single representatives, everyone would have to know about the corruption and anti corruption watchdogs would have plenty of evidence
No, it’s not hard, it happened many times in Greek cities. Polish noble democracy in Commonwealth also became corrupted in exactly this way. You can see it even nowadays in the part of bourgeois democracies that are direct, for example European presidental elections, “vote x no matter what” blocks are found and it result in electing such people like Nawrocki in Poland. I mention him because he’s incredible example, barely anyone ever heard of that guy before elections (except prosecutioner) but the magical hand of PiS chairman marked him as the desired candidate and suddenly he actually won against very well known liberal politician Trzaskowski (and Trzaskowski was least horrible lib in Poland).
They don’t, there is an empty void in them, typically from an insecurity in child hood. For example I know a very successful guy whos goals are amassing wealth because he said as a kid they were poor and it made him feel insecure and unsafe. So now his happiness is earning more and more. Billionaires have this trait. Whether that be financial, or I have to be better than the next guy to feel like I’m not a failure.
If life is happiness and living and not economic success, you’d see that billionaire trait die out, its a selfish trait that serves no need in a community
Yeah of course, this meme is meant to be making fun of the idea that “human nature” (whatever that may be lol) in any way disproves communist or anticapitalist theory
You’re right that the best arguments against Marxism are the falsity and over-simplification of economic determinism, and the falsity and over-simplification of the labour theory of value.
This is kind of the elephant in the room that every large scale political/economic model like to ignore.
While I don’t agree with a lot of what he writes about, Murray Bookchin makes some pretty persuasive arguments about how hierarchical structures themselves are an issue no matter what system theyre found.
No matter how many wish communism to work and devote themselves to it, it will fail. They can hold back agorism indefinitely by great effort, but when they let go, the ‘flow’ or ‘Invisible Hand’ or ‘tides of history’ or ‘profit incentive’ or ‘doing what comes naturally’ or ‘spontaneity’ will carry society inexorably closer to the pure agora.
This is a deeply idealist view of production. There is no “invisible hand,” no universal Spirit of Hegel. Trade and industrialized production gives way to centralization and the death of competition, and it makes more and more sense economically to plan production and collectivize it as this competition dies out of itself. Communists aren’t “holding back” trade, trade naturally gives way to the very structures that compel communism and kill off trade.
You know that humans lived in communal societies for a long fuckin time before all the bullshit we know today, right?
Human nature is not greed. That’s capitalism.
Humans were constrained by their material conditions. Now that those material conditions have changed, their behaviors have changed to match. This is not a fixed state of affairs. Humans continue to transition between stages just like every other living being.
Greed is as much a part of modern human nature as fear and love. And it is the product of a social condition that rewards growth, punishes disobedience, and requires a larger community to reproduce itself. It is a consequence of social conditioning executed iteratively from parent to child. And a consequence of statistical survival and prosperity played out over populations.
What defines human action is not the basic libidinal impulse, but the interplay between people and their environments over lifetimes and generations. That’s not socialism or capitalism at its root. Socialism and capitalism are simply fruits grown from the post-industrial branches of the tree of human history.
Greed isn’t inescapably “human nature”, but results from it under some basic conditions. The nature of enjoyment and suffering means the pursuit of enjoyment and avoidance of suffering as a biological imperative. Desperation, lack of cultural/learned empathy, cultural normalization of disparity, etc., can quickly allow unchecked greed. The same thing, with different conditions, can be said for… not sure there’s a single word for it, but behavior motivated by empathy promoting equality and sharing and so on. The conditions actually kind of close to being the inverse of those for greed - some combination of not having desperation, having cultural/learned empathy, cultural normalization of economic equality, etc. Both types of thinking are just basically pro-social or anti-social thought with regard to material/economic gain, depending on what influences individual thinking.
And slavery isn’t capitalism? Or is that cooperative because the slaveholder says “I have a knife and will kill you” and the slave says “I don’t want to die” so it’s mutual collaboration where the slave doesn’t die but also is a slave?
Debt and slavery are not the same thing. Debt can be used to functionally enslave as capitalism does enslaving us to our wages so we can afford to exist, but again that is a feature of the coercive nature of capitalism and debt is just the enforcement mechanism in this instance. Debt and capitalism are two independent things that intersect in interesting ways.
Where did I say debt and slavery are the same thing?
I saw a half dozen messages in this thread about how humans used to be good or some bullshit, with no backing. I’m responding to that.
Prove your point with historical data or don’t, but don’t argue about some unrelated topic.
Apologies I responded to the wrong convo thinking it was the response to another comment. I think you are trying to make the point that modern day civilization is slavery due to the exploitation of capitalism but I’m not really sure of the point you are trying to make beyond that. Slavery is bad. Capitalism is slavery. Capitalism is bad.
I think we are agreeing unless you think I’m taking the position that slavery is good. Or are you trying to make the point that I am wrong because human beings have employed slavery in the past (and still do today)?
My point was simply that humans have been doing slavery for…pretty much as long as we have records. And that is in conflict with your view.
You said:
So what I’m saying is that for pretty much all of recorded human history we have documented proof that humans enslaved each other. Ie not communal. Slaveholding.
You then implied the ills of today’s society are tied to capitalism, an invention which came several tens of thousands of years after we invented slavery. Ie humans were shit to each other and abused each other in horrible ways long in advance of capitalism coming onto the scene.
There may not be capitalism in human nature, but enslaving people we view ourselves as being inferior to us is pretty much as human as apple pie.
Hopefully this makes more sense.
You can have slavery under global capitalism (we do) and our last few thousands of years have been very bad for a lot of humans, but it seems like we weren’t always oppressing each other and on the contrary we have been egalitarian most of the time anatomical humans existed, hence why the human nature argument doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.
When was this? How good are the records from this time? Seems like for at least the last 12000 years (biblical era) we were for the most part miserable, diseased, and exploitative
Look into anthropology and such, obviously that falls squarely before history and written records.
But it’s still our best guess at something we think we can prove.
I can vaguely recall several stories of fossilized remains which indicate all sorts of horrible things being performed on humans or related by tool users, which seems to imply in pre-history humans were still shit to each other.
So are there counter-examples?
Yeah, there are. While human groups sometimes fought each other due to competition for scarce resources, within groups we seem to have been very communitarian, taking care of our wounded and elderly even when conditions were harsh.
Look at this example.
We’re social animals, we would have never survived extinction if it weren’t for traits like empathy and cooperation.
Mesopotamians tracked agricultural debt on clay tablets in 3000 BC
Per David Graeber in “Debt: The First 5000 Years”, people used to record debt with “Tally Sticks”. You’d notch the debt you owed at the end of a branch. Then you’d bend it in half. Creditor would get one end. Debtor the other. When you wanted to call in your debt, you’d hold the sticks up together to confirm they matched and that’s what was owed. This practice goes back to the Paleolithic Era.
Incidentally, the Tally Stick would often be longer on the creditor’s end. This was the stock of the stick and thus designated its recipient the “stock holder”.
But assignment and collection of debts isn’t the same thing as assignment and collection of rents and interest, which is at the center of the capitalist economic system.
Debt and capitalism are not the same thing if that’s what you’re insinuating. Markets are not a feature of capitalism either, they are simply tools for economic control.
Pretty sure humans have been bashing in each others heads over resources since the dawn of humanity.
Capitalism made it worse and more efficient tho.
Half the problem with capitalism is that we aren’t allowed to bash in the heads of the people who took all the resources.
What do you mean not allowed? Just go do it. Defense is by it’s very nature much much harder than offense. You could probably kill a few CEOs with $1000 and some travel expenses. Just go do it if you think it’s so important to bash heads in.
I mean that you get arrested and go to jail.
I mean it’s possible. I think Luigi either wanted to get caught or the planted evidence story is true.
Came here to say this, the problem is the system of government because everyone can be bought. We need direct democracy where there are no representatives that can be bought
The mode of production takes priority, capitalism with direct democracy would still fall to the same problems intrinsic to capitalism.
That’s basically true, but I think capitalism would overthrow direct democracy.
People would vote for higher wages and then there’d be a coup.
Sure, the base will shape the superstructure. Any levers that can be pulled within capitalism will either be destroyed or nerfed if proven too effective at gaining what workers want.
How could corruption run rife when there are no bribable politicians?
The government is tied to the mode of production, it isn’t above it. When capital owners hold sway over how society functions, it isn’t through bribes alone that this happens. Control of media, control of the state, administration, cultural hegemony, etc all influence it. As such, no direct democracy could really exist in capitalism.
Even an honest and well meaning politician will be blocked at every step. Like corporations and big businesses sabotaging key supply chains, media engaging in character assassination, and if all that fails then either a military coup or a literal assassination (like they did to Salvador Allende in Chile). Unless the politicians try to gain concessions from the ruling class in exchange for complacency, which means we still have our status quo.
Direct democracy gets rid of politicians and the general population vote on each bill/law change
That still doesn’t guarantee the military won’t take over, reactionary sentiments spread through propaganda, etc. Without a revolution there will never be true democracy.
Then the direct votes will be bought…
A lot harder to buy off the general population than it is to buy single representatives, everyone would have to know about the corruption and anti corruption watchdogs would have plenty of evidence
No, it’s not hard, it happened many times in Greek cities. Polish noble democracy in Commonwealth also became corrupted in exactly this way. You can see it even nowadays in the part of bourgeois democracies that are direct, for example European presidental elections, “vote x no matter what” blocks are found and it result in electing such people like Nawrocki in Poland. I mention him because he’s incredible example, barely anyone ever heard of that guy before elections (except prosecutioner) but the magical hand of PiS chairman marked him as the desired candidate and suddenly he actually won against very well known liberal politician Trzaskowski (and Trzaskowski was least horrible lib in Poland).
If large numbers of the general population sampled at random is corrupt, you’re utterly fucked
And compulsory voting?
So everyone who doesn’t care to do their own due diligence can vote how the media they consume pushes them to?
Yup. Works well for Australia.
All the best countries have it…
Thats the thing, if we build a system where all needs were met, it would seem that greed and bashing heads becomes unneccesary
He wealthiest already have all their needs met. Still greedy.
They don’t, there is an empty void in them, typically from an insecurity in child hood. For example I know a very successful guy whos goals are amassing wealth because he said as a kid they were poor and it made him feel insecure and unsafe. So now his happiness is earning more and more. Billionaires have this trait. Whether that be financial, or I have to be better than the next guy to feel like I’m not a failure.
If life is happiness and living and not economic success, you’d see that billionaire trait die out, its a selfish trait that serves no need in a community
They do have all their needs met, according to Marxism
I mean currently, not after growing up in a Marxist society that has healed generations of familial issues
Yeah of course, this meme is meant to be making fun of the idea that “human nature” (whatever that may be lol) in any way disproves communist or anticapitalist theory
You’re right that the best arguments against Marxism are the falsity and over-simplification of economic determinism, and the falsity and over-simplification of the labour theory of value.
But have humans have never had a non-hierarchical large scaled society?
This is kind of the elephant in the room that every large scale political/economic model like to ignore.
While I don’t agree with a lot of what he writes about, Murray Bookchin makes some pretty persuasive arguments about how hierarchical structures themselves are an issue no matter what system theyre found.
Sure, but we freely traded with each other.
This is a deeply idealist view of production. There is no “invisible hand,” no universal Spirit of Hegel. Trade and industrialized production gives way to centralization and the death of competition, and it makes more and more sense economically to plan production and collectivize it as this competition dies out of itself. Communists aren’t “holding back” trade, trade naturally gives way to the very structures that compel communism and kill off trade.