Does Capitalism Equal Human Nature?

Fraudulent ideologies 101 -- First in a series: Does capitalism equal human nature?
By Patrice Greanville
Online Journal Guest Writer


Mar 7, 2007, 01:30


Does capitalism equal human nature? This is an old conservative propaganda chestnut that deserves to be exposed for the defamatory fraud that it is, but most reasonable people would be forgiven for thinking that indeed it does, that what goes coyly by the reassuring moniker of “free enterprise” is in fact the economic equivalent of human nature, the only system of social organization aligning itself effortlessly with the temperamental inclinations of most people.

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Fact is, far from being true, this is simply a clever propaganda equation, a ruse, and one of the oldest and most effective ideological weapons routinely rolled out to defend capitalism in the so-called Free World. And while it may not have been invented in the U.S., it’s here where it has received its warmest embrace. In other nations, the reviews and the embrace by the populace are nowhere as friendly. Dom Helder Camara, the late archbishop of Brazil, a noted fighter for the poor, the “marginados” of that country, and a leading practitioner of Liberation Theology, said it best. “To examine capitalism,” said Dom Helder, “is to indict it.” With an actual unemployment rate of almost 29 percent, with almost one adult in three living outside the “money economy” while establishment economists and media creatures lavished praise on the “Brazilian Miracle,” Dom Helder knew well what he was talking about.

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The second “fact,” addressing the supposedly terminally individualistic nature of people, provides a convenient justification for the harsh, dog-eat-dog conditions that prevail under the so-called free-enterprise system. In this vision, derived from classical economics, all human motivation is supposed to flow from the desire for pecuniary gain and self-aggrandisement. Individuals are perceived unidimensionally as simple atoms of unrelenting hedonism, constantly pursuing the calculus of profit and loss, pain and pleasure, as they irrepressibly “maximize” their options to fulfill the dictates of hopelessly greedy natures. This is the fabled “homo economicus” of free market literature; the heroic “rugged individualist” so dear to conservatives, and supposedly the creature on which all human progress and wealth depend.

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History, however, when properly read, is not very kind to conservative social science. As economists E.K. Hunt and Howard Sherman have pointed out, “human nature” seems quite adept at changing to reflect any set of prevailing social circumstances.

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Further, if “human nature” is inherently greedy, competitive and egoist, how do we explain altruism, sharing, selflessness and social cooperation, which can be readily observed to this day in many human institutions and societies throughout the world? It should be borne in mind that class-divided societies and private property made their appearance barely 10,000 years ago, roughly congruent with the rise of agriculture, food surpluses, sedentarism and animal-domestication -- all of which eventually created the conditions for the appearance of a specialized ruling class (warriors and priests) capable of living on this social surplus, literally on the backs of others and of institutionalizing this severely inequitable regime.

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http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_1823.shtml

As the article says, we humans spent most of our evolution in small family groups where there was little or no sense of ownership -- and little evidence of organized war. Ownership, social status disparity and war didn't occur until the agricultural revolution. Individuality is a fairly recent concept. I think we made a terrible bargain with grains!

at the onset of the agricultural age, how can we say it is not a part of our nature?

I suppose it comes down to who gets to define "Nature".

Accordingly if one believes that human nature is defined only by that which occurred prior to the agricultural age, then Christianity, Judaism, Muslim, and all present religion would be unnatural.

Too complex an Idea to be defined and dissected by the division of time frames. Some will say the only thing natural is the instinct to survive.

I would think that if you go back far enough the practice of paternal caring was nonexistent, therefore making it unnatural as well by such time constrained definitions.

have spent the greater part of our hisory in a non-capitalist society speaks volumes about what is natural or not. What I did not say was that everything before agriculture was our 'natural' state and everything after, ' unnatural.' Whatever our nature is and was, is determined by environmental, political and social forces as well as biology - now as in the past.

the end.

It 's been operating for a very long time. Thousands of years. It does seem to be based in the way humans relate to one another.

Co-operation, rather than competition, lies at the foundation of Ladakhi society. It can be seen in all spheres of life; from the sharing of household tasks and rotational shepherding to the interaction between children. One interesting observation that I have made in this regard is that in Ladakh, children are never segregated into age groups. Instead, they spend their entire lives constantly surrounded by and interacting with people of all ages. The implications of this are enormous. Ladakhi children benefit from the help and support that older companions can give. Imagine a room filled with thirty one-year-olds. None of them can walk properly; they are all struggling to gain their balance. How can one possibly help the other? Now imagine another room filled with people aged one to thirty. Imagine the difference. Imagine how different two individuals would become if their lives were spent in such different contexts and societies. This is but one of many reasons why I have had to dramatically alter my beliefs about human nature. In seeing the extreme differences between this completely non-industrial and traditional society and industrial ones, I have had to conclude that one's social environment does affect and mould one to a tremendous extent: especially when it comes to such important characteristics as co-operation and aggression.

Perhaps the most important characteristic of the Ladakhis that forced me to rethink my beliefs about human nature is the remarkable joie de vivre of the people. At first I thought that the Ladakhis smiled a lot and appeared very happy, but surely underneath they were just like all human beings - with their problems and feelings of jealousy, anger and depression. But after some years of living with them, I started realising that all that laughter was connected to a deep sense of peace and contentedness. Even more dramatically, as Ladakh started changing because of outside influences and modernisation, it became very clear that the people in the `modern' sector were beginning to develop the same signs of depression, restlessness, anger and aggression that I was familiar with from the West. Observing the individual Ladakhis change, as the technologies, economic pressures and education - in other words, their society - changed, was the most convincing evidence that human beings are very dramatically affected by social pressures. And traditional Ladakh has proved to me that it is possible to have a society which encourages co-operation and happiness rather than the opposite.

http://www.eco-action.org/dt/ladakh.html

Many of the negative conceptions misperceived as "human nature" are the result of my own industrial culture, rather than of some natural, evolutionary force beyond our control. Without really thinking about it, many assume that human beings are selfish, struggling to compete and survive, and that more cooperative societies were nothing more than utopian dreams.

Mainstream Western thinkers from Adam Smith to Freud and today's academics tend to universalize what is in fact Western or industrial experience. Explicitly or implicitly, they assume that the traits they describe are a manifestation of human nature, rather than a product of industrial culture. This tendency to generalize from Western experience becomes almost inevitable as Western culture reaches out from Europe and North America to influence all the earth's people.

Every society tends to place itself at the center of the universe and to view other cultures through its own colored lenses. What distinguishes Western culture is that it has grown so widespread and so powerful that it has lost a perspective on itself.

But not a real human being nature, captalism is toxic to a real human beings and against the democratic empathic free nature of a real human being.

We lose a little bit of our humanity every time we allow a concept to override concern for humanity IMO.


:(

behind whatever system of government is in place? I would think capitalism could flourish if 2% of us did not own the greatest percentage of the 'free'-market, preventing competition, and legislating for they and theirs. It seems the eventuality of our present circumstance was pre-ordained a long time ago, when the robber barons came to their thrones. Those 'checks and balances' written into the Constitution failed to provide the constant vigilance required to prevent mere mortals from cultivating the more egregious aspects of human nature.

it is the best economic arrangement, considering human nature.