Published: 1994
Written: 1994
First Published: 1994
Source: Freedom Socialist, Vol. 15, Issue 2 (April-June 1994)
Transcription/Markup: Philip Davis
Copyleft: Internet Archive (marxists.org)2014. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.
The following was the third in a series of ten articles known as Socialism for Skeptics which were written from 1993 through 1996.
ANYBODY WHO SPEAKS UP for socialism is bombarded with the objection that cooperative and mutually supportive relations among people are a fantasy.
Homo sapiens are intrinsically individualistic, competitive, and egotistical, claim the cynics - it's just the way we're genetically programmed. Survival of the fittest and all that jazz.
This robotic response from apparently thoughtful folk is nonsense. The overwhelming historical evidence about our true nature amounts to an incredible chronicle of humankind's endless struggle to make life better — for everyone.
Confirmed Cynic (CC): STARS IN YOUR EYES soap opera. All people care about is taking care of numero uno, by any means necessary.
That's the way it's been since we first walked erect. In the movie Being Human, Robin Williams' caveman feels most passionately about "mine." In 2001: A Space Odyssey, Primitive Man resorts to violence instinctively before he's hardly clambered out of the primordial gloop.
Me: THAT PORTRAIT OF HUMANITY is as phony as Bill Clinton's liberal image. Early humans lived in matriarchal and later patriarchal clans in which everybody contributed to the group welfare. The norm was the collective ethic.
But things changed — because different kinds of economic and social organization create different kinds of people. Today, in a system designed to produce profits for the few at the expense of the many, we are slugged into brutalizing each other for money, jobs, education, love, food, a place to live, recognition, self-esteem, everything.
The poor rarely understand that they lack the basics because of the way international capitalism works. They think they suffer because other cultures, races, religions and countries deprive them of what is rightfully theirs. So they resort to hysterical nationalism, unwarranted patriotism, rapacious competition, and desperate acquisitionism - convenient substitutes for revolutionary action on a global scale to remove the root cause of all the terrible infighting. When "me" replaces "we," everybody dies.
CC: WRONG. WITHOUT COMPETITION, where's incentive? We might be spared embarrassments like Tonya Harding, who went a bit too far. But then again, we'd never have seen Satchell Paige pitch a ball at 90 miles an hour. Why, the free market has brought the world to an apex of prosperity and consumer satisfaction. If men didn't have to make it or starve, why would they strain to do their best? Left to their own devices, most people are lazy bums.
Me: YOU CAN TAKE YOUR ORIGINAL SIN fixation and shove it. It doesn't compute. Everybody loves winning by virtue of excellence and talent. But everybody doesn't love beating down others, degrading and impoverishing millions, and fomenting a host of enemies in order to be a success.
When every aspect of life becomes a virtual duel to the death, the winner generally ends up more tormented than the loser. You actually feel better if you do right.
The only proven motivator is the lure of coming up with a product or outcome or idea that will empower and raise the comfort level of the masses. Billionaires who ream the opposition may be envied, but they are never loved or immortalized in that pantheon of wonderful individuals who left the world a finer place. Who will weep for Donald Trump?
Your specious claim that dog-eats-dog is our paramount inducement to accomplishment is a calumny against history, and a vicious assault on the overwhelming global majority who make their lives meaningful by uplifting others.
CC: PEOPLE MAY WELL BE a mix of good and evil, but stop ignoring the evil part. You can't simply change human nature by writing a new software program!
Me: OH, YES, YOU CAN - with hardware based on a different operating principle.
All great evils - war, poverty, selfishness, religious manias, class and caste divisions, bigotry - are produced by a social machine that runs on exploitation. This terrible Pandora's box poisons human nature just as inevitably as an incinerator burning toxic waste pollutes the environment with dioxin.
Given the proper social technology, we can write our own destinies. A shared and planned socialist world provides the material pre-conditions that impel us to do this.
"But you can't get there from here," say the skeptics. "Never mind our potential in the abstract; those living in the here-and-now are too debased, divided, and demoralized to achieve societal and personal change." That paradox will be lassoed next.