This post is part of a new biweekly series posting chapters of Frank Cunningham’s Understanding Marxism: A Canadian Introduction (Toronto: Progress Books, 1981). Through these excerpts, readers will come to understand the basics of Marxist theory through a Canadian lens in a digestible, accessible, and easy-to-understand way. As 2021 marks 100 years of the communist movement in Canada, and as more young workers and students become interested in Marxism, we hope that this educational series will benefit our readers.
The following two chapters (Ch. 1 and Ch. 2 of Understanding Marxism) explain what the terms “scientific socialism”, “socialism”, “Marxism”, and “communism” refer to, and further debunks basic arguments against Marxism: notably, that humans are inherently selfish, or that humanity is a game of the “survival of the fittest”.
The original text is available to borrow through Archive.org. It has been amended minimally to include links to relevant texts and remove footnotes relevant only to the physical book.
Frank Cunningham, 1981
Chapter One: Scientific Socialism
Try the following experiment with your friends, co-workers or classmates. First ask them what they think Marxism means. Everyone will have something to say, such as one of the following wrong answers:
“It’s the theory of communism; therefore it’s against democracy.”
“It thinks everyone should be the same.”
“It reduces everything to economics.”
“it’s the unrealistic belief in a cooperative society.”
“It’s a subversive theory that preaches violence and terror through revolution.”
Now ask your friends how they know this. Have they read anything by Marx, Engels or Lenin, or have they heard Marxism explained by someone who actually agrees with it? In most cases the people you question haven’t read anything by a Marxist; nor have they discussed Marxism with anyone who both agrees with the theory and can explain it. The exceptions are probably those who have read sections of something like the Communist Manifesto in a high-school social studies course, but because of the boring way the course was taught they remember little about what they read.
Why is it that although most Canadians have not been exposed to a sympathetic explanation of Marxism, all have views on the subject, and sometimes very strong views? The answer, of course, is that we all learn how bad Marxism is supposed to be — or how it doesn’t work — in school, in the newspapers and magazines, and on T.V.
But why is this? In my job as a teacher of social and political philosophy I encounter dozens of theories about history and society. New ones, or variations of old ones, are invented every few years. Why don’t the major sources of “information” and “education” in our country tell us how to think about these new theories as well?
Again, the answer is not hard to find. Marxism is not just one theory among others. Its founders called it “scientific socialism” because it is a scientific theory intended to help working people change a society of private ownership into a socialist society. Marxism already has helped about a third of the world’s population to succeed in this task.
In large parts of the industrialized world and among many less developed countries close to socialism, Marxism is the leading perspective. The reason we are told what to think about Marxism is because it is an actual world force that is feared by those, like the owners of big monopolies, who stand to lose something (their super-profits) whenever working people succeed in gaining socialism.
Canadian working people need Marxism to understand the sources of the problems that confront us, such as unemployment, rising prices and the lack of control over how we live and work. We need Marxism to help us take control of our own lives and change society into one that answers our needs. What working people need in this country are not myths and distorted versions of Marxism, that is, what anti-socialists want us to believe about it, but an understanding of the actual principles of scientific socialism.
This book is meant to help Canadian working people gain this understanding by introducing the most important views of Marxism and defending them against their most common criticisms.
Marxism
Marxism grew out of the political and economic struggles of nineteenth-century Europe. It developed from previous work done by economists and philosophers going back yet a century earlier and from the efforts of working people to organize themselves against capitalism. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels put their skills at the disposal of these revolutionary workers. They brought together previous thought and advanced it to serve working-class needs, developing the theory wherever the police would let them, mainly in Germany, France and England.
Marxism concludes that war, inequality, and poverty cannot finally be eliminated from the world until large-scale private ownership of the means of production is eliminated. Naturally enough, big businessmen have not appreciated the theory much. From the beginning they have tried to suppress or discredit Marxism, a task that has been made easier for them since they have a large say in what is taught in the schools, what books are printed, and what is said in newspapers and on radio and television. During the cold war in the 1950s Marxism was rather effectively suppressed in North America. Only a few books by Marxists were available, and these could only be found in certain book stores. Marxists were barred from teaching, film-making, publishing, and so on. People’s growing frustrations about their problems and democratic resistance to cold war policies finally changed the political climate, although it is still harder to find out what Marx said about capitalism than it is to find out what some astrologer or other crank says about anything at all.
Now, as before, there are a variety of ways used to discredit Marxism. One method is to confuse people about its scientific nature. Since it was Engels and Lenin who explicitly argued in favour of the need for a scientific approach to society, some “scholars” of Marx have attempted to separate Marx’s ideas from those of Engels and Lenin. In this book I will be writing about the theory common to Marx and Engels and developed by Lenin and other Marxists.
Another, more common, attempt to discredit Marxism has been to classify it as a kind of religion that Marxists dogmatically hold as a matter of faith. Although there are some who like to think of themselves as Marxists and who do regard it in this way, nothing could be further from the truth. Marxism is the theory Marx and Engels developed from practical experience and much painstaking scientific research. They, and others since them, have continued to follow the theory because further research has confirmed its basic insights, and it has actually worked in practice.
Perhaps its growth provides the best example of the scientific nature of Marxism. In spite of anti-Marxist claims it is completely against the basic principles of Marxism to relate everything back to a few sacred texts that are supposed to be the last word. In the light of advancing experience and knowledge, Marxism has been added to and improved over the past hundred years.
Lenin was instrumental in expanding the theory to take imperialism into account, and other Marxists throughout the world have been busy applying, testing and developing the theory in practically every field of inquiry — economics, history, culture and natural science.
Another attempt to discredit Marxism in Canada has been to label it as something that does not apply to Canadian conditions. I will discuss this allegation in the last chapter, and in the course of the book I will indicate some of the ways I think Marxism applies to us. The allegation is sometimes based on the fact that socialism does not appear to be just around the corner here. Despite Marx’s and Engels’ optimistic calculations about how soon some socialist revolutions would occur, Marxism does not lead one to expect that revolutions in countries like Canada are easily won. In any case, before judging whether Marxism can be applied some place it is necessary to understand what the theory actually is rather than what some anti-Marxist claims it is.
Sometimes it is said that Marxism does not apply to Canada because Canadian working people are not interested in socialism; hence theories designed to help them conduct effective campaigns for socialism are useless. Despite attempts of the pro-capitalist media to portray Canadians as complacent supporters of capitalism, some Canadian working people are far from satisfied with the status quo and want a socialist Canada. Many more, also dissatisfied, are at least open to the idea.
Socialism
A socialist society is one in which the major means of production and distribution (factories, mines, large food and clothing chains, and so on), as well as financial institutions like the banks are owned and controlled by the working people of that society. Marxist theoreticians did not invent this concept, and they did not discover that it is in the best interests of working people to gain socialism. The idea grew out of working people’s movements themselves. What Marxists have provided is a scientific theory of human society, human history and the relation of humans to their natural environment. Without a scientific understanding of these things it would be impossible for working people to take control of society and govern it in their own interests. Marxism is called “scientific socialism” for this very reason. Its scientific nature also explains why it has been no accident that successful socialist movements have been guided by Marxism.
While Marxists did not invent the idea of socialism, they have refined it in very important and practical ways. This is especially true of the Marxist concepts of “revolution” and of the “state”. When anti-socialists today talk about revolution, they conjure up images of irrational violence in which masses of people, ruthlessly led by self-seeking manipulators, run amok. Mind you, when these same anti-socialists are from countries like France or the United States where capitalist forms of society were themselves secured by violent revolution (the French Revolution of 1789 and the American Revolution of 1776), they refer to these revolutions almost in a religious way as the best things that have ever happened in human history. Marxism replaces both these biased ideas of revolution with a concept that is scientifically useful for understanding the actual nature of important historical changes.
In the Marxist view a social revolution is the basic and thoroughgoing transformation of a society that takes place when one social and economic class succeeds in taking political power away from another class, and uses this power to reorganize society to serve its own interests. For instance, in the French Revolution of 1789, merchants and manufacturers, aided by other classes and groups, took power from the feudal king and reorganized society to promote the acquisition of profit through trade and industry. This revolution was accompanied by violent armed combat, as were later socialist revolutions like the Russian Revolution of 1917. This is not because the classes that want revolution also happen to like bloodshed, but because in a social revolution the classes that lose power are prepared to turn to arms, even if they have lost their power through completely democratic procedures.
A careful study of any social revolution bears out the fact that where there has been violence, this has not been because revolutionaries wanted it, but because they were driven to it in self-defence. For the Marxist the only sense in which all social revolutions must necessarily be “violent” is that they involve basic and far-reaching changes in the whole of a society.
When Marxists say that revolutions involve a class taking political power, they are referring to the power of the state. Marxists recognize that the state (the government, the army and police, courts of law, a professional civil service and so on) is not a neutral body that somehow exists outside the efforts of working people to make a better life for themselves.
Under the capitalist system of private ownership of the means of production and distribution, the state actually combats the efforts of working people and serves the interests of big business instead. Under socialism the state is an instrument used by working people to guide and protect their society. With this view of the state Marxists have been able to distinguish socialism from “social democracy” or the “welfare state” on the one hand and from the stateless society of “communism” on the other.
Unlike Cuba, for example, Canada is not a socialist country. Neither are “social-democratic” countries, where the government in some ways plays a larger role in regulating the economy. Current examples are England and the Federal Republic of Germany (“West Germany”). It is true that some important social services have been gained by working people in some of these countries, as, for example, in Sweden, when it had a social-democratic government. However, the most profitable large means of production and distribution are still owned by private business, and governments in these social-democratic countries regulate their economies to maintain the profits of the largest corporations, but not to eliminate inflation or unemployment. Most importantly, these states do not build a society geared to people’s needs. Instead, as in Canada, each gain for working people must be fought for by them, and there is the constant threat that existing gains will be taken away. Failure to distinguish between socialism and these forms of “regulated capitalism” keeps working people from seeing that they must take control of the state and reorganize it to serve their own interests.
“Communism” is sometimes used to refer to the theories and efforts of Communist Parties. Marxists use “communism” also to refer to a stage of human society, which will follow the successful building of socialism. In communist societies, as under socialism, the means of production and distribution will be socially owed and controlled, but unlike previous societies, including socialist ones, the massive apparatus of the army, a professional administration, and other parts of the state will no longer be needed. While socialism lays the basis for communism, there are no communist societies in this technical Marxist sense of the word yet, and until capitalism has been virtually eliminated from the globe, such a society is probably impossible.
Failure to distinguish between socialism and communism leads to a misunderstanding of socialist revolutions and of the efforts to build socialism. A socialist revolution occurs when the working class takes state power and dismantles those aspects of the state that serve the interests of private ownership. The working people rebuild the state to serve themselves.
Creating a working people’s state is of crucial importance. First of all it is no small task to reconstruct a society that has been geared to the private profit of large corporations. The educational systems, communications and entertainment facilities, cultural institutions, public services of all sorts, not to mention the economy itself, all need to be transformed to serve working people, and a state apparatus is needed for this.
In the second place, no movement for socialism and no attempt to preserve and build socialism has been free from anti-socialist attempts at economic and military sabotage. Such attempts failed to prevent socialism in Russia, China, Cuba and Vietnam, but succeeded in setting socialism back in other places, such as in the 1973 U.S.-inspired fascist coup in Chile. While transitions from socialism to communism will be peaceful, socialist revolutions are always accompanied by the threat of violence — through no fault of the pro-socialist forces. A peaceful socialist revolution, such as one achieved through elections, is obviously something to be hoped and worked for (only a lunatic would think otherwise). But it must be recognized that capitalist forces will always turn to violence if they can get away with it. A peaceful socialist revolution would require such overwhelmingly strong support that anti-socialist couldn’t even attempt violence against it.
Marxists know that a pro-capitalist state will not give socialist revolution to working people. Nor can it be willed into existence or achieved without danger and struggle. To win and build socialism against the wishes of powerful enemies it is necessary to create the broadest possible support. Just how difficult this is has been shown more than once by the problems and mistakes of socialist movements and governments. The task requires an understanding of the balance of forces in a country and in the world, of the level of people’s political consciousness, of the nature of people’s struggles, and of a vast number of other economic and political realities. For all this a correct scientific theory of society is needed, and Marxism is that theory.
Readings for Chapter One
At the end of each chapter, I will list some of the classic works by Marx, Engels, Lenin, and will occasionally note books by Marxists that relate to the subject matter of the chapter. I have not attempted to list all of the books and articles, classic and more recent, pro-Marxist and anti-Marxist, that someone who wanted to become an expert on Marxism would have to read.
I will refer to primary sources by their titles only. They can be found individually or in collections of Marx, Engels and Lenin’s writings. The complete set of Lenin’s works is available in English in 45 volumes: V.I. Lenin, Collected Works (Moscow, 1966). The complete English translation of the works of Marx and Engels is right now in the process of being published (RY-JM note: This collection is available in 50 volumes from Lawrence and Wishart/Progress Publishers).
Some relatively inexpensive books containing important writings of Marx, Engels, and Lenin are:
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Works (Moscow and New York, 1968). The New York edition (reprinted in 1977) is in International Publishers’ New World Paperback series.
V.I. Lenin, Selected Works (Moscow, 1968, reprinted 1975).
Two other books, both in New World Paperbacks, that are worth acquiring are:
Reader in Marxist Philosophy, edited by H. Selsam and H. Marten (New York, 1963, reprinted 1977).
Dynamics of Social Change, edited by H. Selsam, D. Goldway, and H. Martel (New York, 1970, reprinted 1975).
These two books contain selections, grouped by topic, from different books, pamphlets, and letters of Marx, Engels, and Lenin. Good introductions to Marxism by its founders are:
V.I. Lenin, The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism.
K. Marx and F. Engels, The Manifesto of the Communist Party.
F. Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific.
Chapter Two: Working-Class Rule and Human Nature
Under capitalism the major means of production and distribution are privately owned by a small handful of people whose property and the profits they extract from it are protected by a pro-capitalist state. Capitalist economy is based on competition. In socialism the major means of production and distribution are publicly owned and the society is governed by a working-class state. The economy is based on cooperation. Decisions about what to produce, how much to produce, what wages and prices should be, and so on, are based on estimates of what is best for the entire society rather than for the profits of individual, capitalist owners.
Socialism is the worst possible nightmare of capitalists since it runs counter to everything they believe and, more importantly, since it challenges their profits. Therefore, it is not surprising that they promote the opinion that a cooperative society governed by the working class is against human nature. Pro-capitalists have advanced many arguments to show either that a socialist society is impossible or that it is undesirable. The main arguments that socialism is against human nature are: (1) that it would dampen individual incentive; (2) that it would hold back the best people so that the “fittest” would not survive; (3) that it is unfair to people who are naturally better than other people; and (4) that a cooperative society is impossible since people are naturally selfish.
Put together, these four arguments form the capitalist view that societies must always be ruled by a selfish elite who deserve to rule because they are “naturally” better than others. In one way or another, the attitudes expressed by the arguments are found in the movies and on T.V., in popular literature, and in the schools. Unfortunately, a capitalist, competitive society like ours creates things like selfishness and inequality, so to some extent the arguments match people’s experience. It is worthwhile to examine each of these arguments against socialism.
Incentives
The argument about incentives starts from the fact, which Marxists and everybody else recognize, that people will not work indefinitely or strive to improve themselves unless they think something is to be gained by it, if not for their own generation, then at least for their children’s. But the anti-socialist wants to conclude from this that in a cooperative society people will not have the incentive to work and improve themselves. Why not? As Marxists maintain and contemporary history is already proving, cooperative societies are more efficient at providing a decent standard of living for the entire population; so wouldn’t people have more incentive in a socialist society than in a capitalist one? Very few people still believe the capitalist myth that anybody can become rich. Many people are born into economic poverty or into systems of racial or ethnic discrimination from which they know there is little likelihood of escape under the present system.
Sometimes advocates of the incentive argument try to turn the example of present-day socialist societies into evidence for their own case. They claim that these societies have had to adopt competitive measures in the form of economic incentives. While the income differences under socialism are quite narrow compared to those under capitalism, skilled jobs still pay higher than less skilled ones, and there are economic incentives to reward high production within some industries. Actually, socialism, unlike capitalism, frequently pays more to people who do particularly unpleasant jobs.
Economic incentives in socialism, far from contradicting economic cooperation, are part and parcel of it. Training people in certain skills and increasing production in a certain industry are cooperative decisions in socialist society and are for the good of society as a whole. One way of accomplishing this is to pay people more for acquiring those skills or for stepping up production.
The argument about incentives supposes a false view of the nature of socialist societies. Socialism does not immediately eliminate all economic problems, and it does not magically create people who are willing and able to make large sacrifices with no hope of personally gaining from their work. The pro-capitalist often paints a completely unrealistic picture of what “true socialism” should be and then argues that socialism has failed because it does not match this idea.
All this serves to blur the fact that “true socialism” is not an imaginary idea, but an actual form of social organization. Depending on the particular conditions, socialist societies take a variety of measures in the interests of the working class. They build industries; they increase production here, decrease it there; they find ways to market goods; they centralize some parts of the economy, decentralize others; and, within limits, they encourage the development of certain skills or increased production by the use of incentives. To the extent that these and other measures do in fact serve working people’s interests by creating a better life for them and their children, the system of socialist cooperation succeeds.
Survival of the Fittest
The argument that in a cooperative society the weak would drag down the strong is a version of a theory called “Social Darwinism”. Charles Darwin, the great nineteenth-century biologist for whom Marx and Engels had the highest respect, developed a theory of evolution in the animal world, called by some the “survival of the fittest” theory. Darwin showed how species of animals survived to the extent that they were well-equipped to obtain food and shelter in their environment. Species that could not adapt to changes in their environment were not well-equipped and died off. Social Darwinists are pro-capitalist social scientists who claim to apply Darwin’s theory within human societies. They maintain that in a competitive system, those who are well-equipped to survive, that is, those who are smart, strong and imaginative, rise to the “top” (become capitalists), and those who are not well-equipped sink to the “bottom” (become workers) or even die off. In a cooperative society, these Social Darwinists maintain, the ill-equipped would overwhelm the strong and the human species would grow weaker and weaker.
By way of criticizing this view it is worth noting in the first place that almost all of those who are at the “top” in capitalist societies were born there. They did not get where they are by any characteristic other than having rich parents. This is more than just an oversight on the part of Social Darwinists. It reflects an entirely mistaken conception of human nature. It supposes that individual people somehow come into the world with ready-made desires (for instance, to make super-profits) and with ready-made, individual abilities (for instance, to be a factory manager) and that society is a sort of arena where people try to satisfy their desires by using these abilities. This view ignores the fact that humans are social beings. What a person wants and what a person can do depend on the society that person lives in. It is thanks to the labour of millions of people stretching back through the centuries that there exists a system of factory production today so that somebody is able to become a factory manager. It is because there is an economic system of competition among individual owners that anybody can want to accumulate private super-profits. The Social Darwinists assume that individuals, or at least the individuals whom they consider worthy, are what they are independently of history and society.
Another problem with the Social Darwinist argument in favour of capitalism is that is misses the whole point of Darwin’s own doctrine. Darwin was thinking about characteristics of entire species that make them likely to survive. Do the characteristics of capitalist competitiveness really contribute to the survival of the human species? Capitalism has dominated the world for less than 200 years, a very short period of time considering that the human species is about three million years old. But in that short period there have never been more than a few years at a time without a major war. Within months of its invention, the atom bomb was used twice by a capitalist government against civilians. Biochemical warfare has been “perfected”. The atmosphere, land and water supplies of large parts of the planet have been polluted, and there have been regular cycles of economic inflation and depression.
Can anyone seriously hold that the capitalist system is conducive to the survival of our species? We’ll be lucky to get rid of capitalism before it kills everybody. On the other hand, there are several reasons to suppose that a cooperative society run by the working class is conducive to survival. Everybody agrees that there is strength and safety in cooperation. Even the capitalists recognize this and are prepared to cooperate with one another when threatened by socialist revolution. A system based on cooperation should be a stronger and safer one for humans.
Unlike capitalists, the working class forms the majority of a society’s population, and therefore workers have a stake in building a society that will serve the interests of most of the human species. In a socialist economy there are no such people as war profiteers so the risk of war is lessened. Finally, in present-day socialist countries, despite adverse conditions, cooperative economies have already eliminated such things as starvation and have created truly impressive systems of public health. All these things surely contribute to human survival, not the opposite.
Inequalities
The argument that socialism is unfair rests on the view that there are natural inequalities among people. It assumes that some people are naturally better and hence deserve more than other people. There are several things wrong with this argument. In the first place is it not very wise of capitalists to advance the argument, since most of them owe their privileged place in society to the accident of being born into rich families. Moreover, what are their special talents that make them so deserving? The ability to write checks? The ability to scheme and plot against one another and the people in order to make profits?
In the second place, nobody can deny that there are differences among people, that they have different skills and are better or worse at the same skills. The question to ask whether capitalism or socialism allows people best to develop their skills, and which kind of society rewards people whose skills are really beneficial to the people of that society. The Marxist maintains that it is socialism that encourages and rewards worthwhile skills.
Another problem with this pro-capitalist argument is that it assumes the inequalities people have are inborn. However, a better case can be made that the skills people have in the main are acquired as they grow up. In Canada, as elsewhere in the capitalist world, education involves “streaming” where children from working-class and rural backgrounds are sent to schools that equip them only for certain kinds of work. Moreover, the quality of education is quite a bit lower in working-class schools than in middle- and upper-class schools. Classes are often more crowded; there are fewer facilities; and students are not encouraged to have a high opinion of their potentials. Surely these are important in determining how people develop their individual skills. Similarly, where there are differences of ability in people from the same economic backgrounds, these differences are more likely to be caused by factors in their environment than by some inborn ability.
The theory that there are inborn inequalities not only serves as a criticism of socialism. It is also used to justify the inequalities that exist in capitalist society. I mentioned the differences in quality of education in capitalist countries. The following is a defence of these inequalities by the 1975 curriculum director of the Toronto Board of Education in response to the charge that the board does not give everybody a high level of education:
“Well no, we’re not, because everybody isn’t capable of that — ability and intelligence just aren’t equal. No society has ever had a majority of really literate people.” (quoted in Maclean’s, Sept. 1975, p. 3.)
Is it supposed to be an accident that all the “capable” students in Toronto are in the upper-class parts of the city?
Selfishness
People are selfish to the extent that they are not prepared to make sacrifices for other people. A very widespread theory in capitalist society is that everybody is naturally selfish. This theory, like the others, is designed to protect capitalist interests against socialism. Socialism cannot be gained or constructed unless people unite with one another and are willing to cooperate. The task of gaining socialism is very difficult and requires the forging of alliances among the large majority of a society’s population. It requires much long and difficult work on the part of many people. But, the argument goes, since people are selfish they will not trust one another enough to make alliances and they will not work for something unless they know they will personally gain from it.
In one sense this argument represents the daydreams of pro-capitalists and is irrelevant to whether or not people will struggle to build socialism. People strive to build socialism when they find capitalism intolerable, when their needs and values and the possibilities of modern society causes them to see socialism as in their interests and capitalism as against their interests. In these circumstances, people will take the risks involved in socialist revolution or make the sacrifices necessary to gain and build socialism because they do not see any acceptable alternative.
The argument also presents a distorted view of human nature. It is certainly true that people are partially selfish, and it is no wonder. In a society based on competition and dominated by a class with no concern for the well-being of working people, people have to learn to look out for themselves. But at the same time, most people are also unselfish. In disasters like floods or fires a small minority take to looting. But most people will help complete strangers, often making personal sacrifices or even risking their own lives to do so. If everyone is entirely selfish by nature, then how can there be people who do not act selfishly?
If examples of non-selfish behaviour were very rare, then those exhibiting this behaviour could be explained away as abnormal. But unselfish behaviour is not rare. One does not need to look to fires and floods to find it. Many in our society, such as the very old people and children, are relatively helpless, and some take advantage of this by cheating or robbing them. But most people do not. If everybody is completely selfish, then why not? Why don’t people prey on anybody who is weaker than they whenever there is personal advantage to be gained with little risk? (An explanation sometimes given for the existence of people who make sacrifices for others is that they are really selfish after are, since they take pleasure in helping others. Well if this is to count as selfishness, then let there be more such “selfish” people!)
Recognizing that humans are capable of both selfish and of unselfish behaviour raises the question of why people sometimes act selfishly and sometimes unselfishly. There is no mystery. It depends on a person’s social and economic circumstances. In a dog-eat-dog society such as is promoted by capitalism, where it is often impossible to get ahead except at someone else’s expense and cooperativeness is often pictured as a sign of weakness, it is no surprise that many people often act selfishly.
Aggression. There are two common variations in the selfishness theory. One is that people are not only selfish but also hostile to other people or naturally aggressive. This view was expressed by the popular psychological theorist, Sigmund Freud:
“I cannot enquire into whether the abolition of private property is expedient or advantageous. But I am able to recognize that the psychological premises on which the system is based are an untenable illusion. In abolishing private property we deprive the human love of aggression of one of its instruments, certainly a strong one though certainly not the strongest; but we have in no way altered the differences in power and influence which are misused by aggressiveness, nor have we altered anything in its nature.”
Freud was explicitly saying that socialism will not change human relations, since people are naturally aggressive and will express their aggression some way or other. The clear message is, don’t waste your time trying to change things.
This addition to the selfishness theory makes the theory less plausible. While there are people who are aggressive, they are the exception and not the rule. People who are regularly aggressive or hostile are unusually spotted by those around them and thought of as having something wrong with them, not as being typical examples of humanity.
Private property. Another version of the selfishness theory is that everybody has a natural desire for private property. Some writers say that humans, like all other animals, have a “territorial imperative,” which takes the form of striving for private property. This argument often confuses private property with personal possessions. Of course people want to have some things they do not share. If everybody shared the same toothbrush, it would be impossible to brush in the mornings due to the long queues, not to mention the danger of transmitting diseases. Also, there are only so many people who can share the same house or car. For that matter, only so many people can farm the same land or hunt in the same forest, which is why in tribal hunting and farming societies the land for each tribe was staked out. It makes sense for people to want personal access to certain things they need that cannot realistically be shared or can only be shared with a few.
On the other hand, the desire for “private property” is the desire to personally control things that people other than yourself need and could realistically share. Thus a man who privately owns a factory or a supermarket controls something that provides for the satisfaction of more than just his own needs or controls goods that can be realistically shared, as in socialist collective ownership. Even under capitalism, people attempt to set up distribution collectives such as food co-ops. It is doubtful that the desire for private property is one everybody has. If people thought that factories and supermarkets could be collectively controlled and provide for their needs adequately, it is unlikely that very many of them would still be dissatisfied until they personally owned them as well.
Cooperation and the Survival of the Species
According to the Marxist, selfishness, aggression and the desire for private property are not inborn in the human species but are acquired under certain circumstances, and then only in differing degrees. In the Marxist view, the human species could not have survived if these sorts of attitudes were dominant. Humans as a species do not have the sharp claws and speed of the leopard or the tough hide of the elephant. Taken individually humans are quite weak. What makes human survival possible is our high degree of cooperation.
If humans were generally selfish and aggressive through all of our history, how could the species have survived? The anti-Marxist has only one answer to this question. He argues that in addition to being selfish, humans are also smart. Each figures out that in order to survive personally, he/she/they will have to cooperate with others, even if this means making some sacrifices. However, this theory leaves an important question unanswered, namely, how did humans become smart in the first place? How did humans acquire the degree of intelligence necessary to figure out that cooperation was individually necessary? To the Marxist, human intelligence did not appear magically, but developed out of language. And language developed out of the needs and habits of cooperative work. It was in social work that language and therefore intelligence developed. Hence, for the Marxist it is putting the cart before the horse to explain cooperation as a result of intelligence.
The best book by a Marxist, or anyone else I know of, on the subject of selfishness was written by Barrows Dunham and is called Man Against Myth. In this book Dunham makes an important distinction between people’s desires and the conditions for satisfying them. He points out that there is nothing selfish at all about having desires, and in fact some very basic human desires require cooperation in order to be satisfied, such as sexual desires and the desire for companionship. Selfishness only arises when the conditions for the satisfaction of desires are such that some people cannot satisfy their desires unless others do not have theirs satisfied.
I say this distinction is important for two reasons. First, it suggests one more explanation for why so many people are prepared to believe that everyone is selfish. It is a puritanical tradition in many religions to hold that there is something wrong with having earthly desires. And to the extent that people are raised in puritanical religious environments, I think they believe that just having desires makes one selfish. Obviously, this is a mistake. Some desires (like sadistic ones) are wrong in themselves, but these are rare and usually considered psychopathic. In most cases there is nothing wrong at all with having desires. Selfishness only arises when one is prepared to satisfy one’s own desires at others’ expense.
The second reason to distinguish between desires and the conditions for satisfying them is that it changes the focus of attention from debates over human nature in general to concrete problems concerning the actual conditions under which we live. If social and economic conditions are such that people can only satisfy desires by being selfish, then shouldn’t we strive to get rid of those conditions? One of these conditions is scarcity. If there is simply not enough to go around, then some people will have to suffer. The other main condition of selfishness is having an economic system based on private property, where production is privately controlled by people who are not prepared to share no matter how much they make, since they must keep making bigger and bigger profits to avoid being squeezed out of business by competition. These are both conditions that can be changed. To eliminate scarcity it is necessary to produce and distribute things in accord with people’s needs rather than in accord with private profit for the few. To eliminate having an economic stake in being selfish, it is necessary to change the economic system. In short, it is necessary for working people to replace capitalism with socialism.
Readings for Chapter Two
K. Marx, F. Engels, The German Ideology. This book contains a defence of the view that human nature is part of society and history and thus changes. Part I (on Feuerbach) summarizes the main points Marx and Engels made.
F. Engels, “The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man.” An essay that discusses the role of social work and the use of tools in the shaping of human nature.
Barrows Dunham, Man Against Myth.
Chapter Three will be posted on Monday, May 17th.