Can you guys give me a good counter to the "human nature" argument? I know you like to make fun of it a lot, but I haven't seen one single thought-out counterargument to it. Is it not true that human nature is to be greedy? Let me know please.
Can you guys give me a good counter to the "human nature" argument? I know you like to make fun of it a lot...
Jordan Cruz
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Juan Collins
It is. That is why we need a socdem state to BRUTALLY TAX and ANALLY ANNIHILATE inheritance money and rentiers.
socdem gang unite
Connor Hill
There's no science behind "human nature". We may act a certain way when certain situational factors arise. Capitalism tends to bring out the worst in people.
During the USSR, almost no one was ever laid off, if you joined a job you'd be there forever (job security), paid well, felt fulfilled and satisfied. That's only possible when people are free to freely organize each other in a society that doesn't place barriers between cooperation. History has already shown us that human beans don't react exactly the same in every socioeconomic situation. Capitalism breeds self-preservation, contempt, bigotry, and other morphed human behaviors. Place people into a fucked up system and it will have an impact on people.
People are highly adaptable and will adapt just fine, if not optimally, under a socialistic system that cherishes cooperation and mutual aid.
Easton Jones
We take unlawful capitalists wealth and control and give it back to the people, that seems pretty greedy to me. Imagine all those hard working bootstrap pulling kulaks having their wealth taken from them. Seems to me being "greedy" is entirely allowed in Communism.
Eli Parker
The whole "human nature" thing is more about government corruption rather then greed though. Capitalists would call peasants wanting rights and land greedy while peasants would call the capitalists themselves greedy. Is it greedy to redistribute Jeff Bezos's wealth to a poor family? Yeah I know that's not how it really goes but it's an example.
Michael Jackson
this meme sums it up.
Aiden Price
It is human nature to work in your self interest.
Communism is in the self interest of a huge number of the population.
I don't see a problem here.
Wyatt Edwards
My argument is "so what?"
Every society is about containment of the natural, paleolithic human condition. It is a condition that society itself has outmoded to a large degree.
It is natural for men to want to bed everything with tits. That was wonderful in our natural habitat but uncontrolled population growth in a society is an apocalypse.
Something being "natural" is not an argument to its favor, contrary to the foolish meowing of mommy bloggers everywhere.
Sebastian Green
It is human nature to simultaneously be greedy and charitable; a backwards tribalist and a brilliant entrepreneur; warlike and peaceful; egoistic and cooperative. Depends entirely on who is speaking and what point they are trying to defend. Sometimes the human even possesses two mutually contradictory natures, like how Libertarians posit humans are naturally greedy but also charitable.
There is no good counter-argument to "human nature" because it is by itself never an argument. It is a desperate mantra. There is no reason or science behind it, it's literally on the level of "God wills that communism doesn't work" or "no u"
Connor Jackson
You have to understand that "human nature" only depends on the social and situational elements.
Everyone needs to piss, shit, eat and fuck, but the rest just depends on the environmental elements.
It's the same as when someone says "that's not normal", maybe it isn't normal in your current place of habitat, your culture or country, but elsewhere it's not.
Like some cultures being polygamist, while some are polyandrous or monogamist.
Those differences are "natural" to them, but that's only because they developed like this.
Some cultures have one father and mother who take care of the child.
In other cultures in that upbringing you also have the grandparents.
While somewhere else the whole village/tribe takes part in the upbringing (Some researches go with saying that these were cultures where the death rate of adults was high, so an extended family was needed to bring up the children or they'd develop without parents.
This is your "human nature" and what you think is "natural" for people to do/be will be considered "unnatural" in 20-50-100-500 years.
Jacob Williams
Greed is a social behaviour: outside of society, the word simply makes no sense. Therefore, it is absurd to try and explain greed by the sole inner nature of this or that individual; an explanation must necessarily takes into account the nature of social relations. Moreover, these social relations preexist, and expand much beyond the reach of, any individual.
Camden Torres
The argument is a strawman because it assumes socialism is some sort of egalitarian economic system where people share their wealth, hence, "socialism doesn't work because people are greedy" In reality it would also have a consumer good market involving competition, but based around labor time (labor vouchers) instead of capital accumulation which is what you get with money. Marx described this in fucking 1875; It boggles my mind how people believe socialism is about "free shit."
If it's the evolutionary part of argument then it's handled by Kropotkin's Mutual Aid I believe. From what I know, it argues human nature evolved to be cooperative.
Asher Campbell
tl;dr "Google Bookchin". But to expand on that, as Bookchin said "We may be animals physically, but we are no longer animals culturally". The field of anthropology is ripe with endless ethnographies of various human potentialities, and with regard to a supposed competitive human nature, we need only look at the fact that for something like 95% of humanity's history, our social organisation has been characterised by mutual aid rather than competition.
Samuel Butler
That argument only works if you unironically think socialism is when everybody gets paid the same no matter what. Even if humans are naturally greedy (which is a questionable assertion in the first place) then it still doesn't invalidate socialism, since there is no contradiction between socialism and providing increased rewards for increased contributions. In fact Marx explicitly argues in favour of every individual taking out of society exactly what they contribute, in other words the more you contribute the more you are rewarded.
Tyler Gomez
Doesn't this logic fall apart when you point out that someone who is "naturally greedy" wouldn't want an economic system where the wealth that they work to produce is mostly taken from them through surplus value?
Like if you are naturally greedy and not a fucking CEO then capitalism doesn't really offer you a lot of opportunities.
I guess they will refute this by saying that everyone is given the opportunity to become a CEO and that the proles with ambition will eventually be promoted to higher positions but the reality doesn't support this.
In conclusion; Don't even waste time with this debate, if anyone starts talking about human nature then the debate you're having is not worth your time and nothing can be gained from furthering it in my experience.
David Turner
He has a bit of a utopian view of socialism but it's a nice read nonetheless and deals with the "human nature" meme.
marxists.org
Sebastian Ramirez
I believe it's called neuroscience and psychology.
Jeremiah Thompson
retarded tbh
Thomas Jones
Read this book. It explains how communism is human nature.
Also unironically go read The Selfish Gene. If you think it's in the nature of social animals to be selfish then you're conceptualizing natural selection at the wrong organizational level. It's not the individual that's selfish, but the gene that is selfish insofar as it pushes the organism to do whatever is best for propagating the gene, which often includes pro-social behavior (since there are likely to be other copies of the gene in similar organisms).
Jose Nelson
Saying there exists something as human nature is philosophical abstraction. It is essentially same as methaphysics or theology and no natural science is concerned with some secret essence of humanity that is present in each individual human.
Leo Cook
When was capitalism, fiat currency, banking, compound interest, stocks, industrial production, and other aspects of modern human activity natural?
Henry Myers
None of it gives a simplistic understanding of "people are greedy, therefore no socialism. Sorry boys". That was the point my post was addressing.
Christopher Jackson
It is human nature to want to stick around near one's mother country
long distance migration is happening
Therefore economics overides human nature
It is human nature to live in social groups of not more than 200 people
Cities exist therefore…
I can keep going indefinitely with this
William Hernandez
Speak for yourself, brainlet. Modern Times was a successful Mutualist commune that exchanged labour vouchers based on labour time. The town had no police yet was crime free for the 13 years' of its existence.
en.wikipedia.org
Jacob Bailey
A couple centuries ago people believed that feudalism was human nature and ideal, because the relationship between peasant and king mirrored that of man and god. Slavery was once considered human nature - they thought it apparent that some races were meant to serve others, that slavery's widespread use in history meant it was just inherently something humans do. Social Darwinism, eugenics and staggering poverty was human nature according to the Victorians.
Looking back on history, I see people living in radically different societies, cultures and economic systems, with people in each claiming that it was ideal and in accordance with human nature.
Be skeptical of anyone telling you that a particular economic or social arrangement is natural, inevitable, just how people are, etc. Isn't it odd that "human nature" just happens to promote whatever system is currently in power and a narrative that is convenient for those running it?
Jeremiah Kelly
Who cares loser