The Capitalist Ape — Human Nature and Socialism

Kyle Mulholland
Aug 31, 2018 · 4 min read

“Socialism sounds nice and all, but it only works on paper, it just doesn’t take human nature into account.” Any proponents of socialism will be more than familiar with this line. It insinuates that there is something encoded into the human genome that ensures wealth hoarding and poverty are regrettable, but inescapable features of civilisation. Just like bureaucracy and street performers. It states that humans are at their core, a capitalist ape.

Supporters of capitalism frequently posit that the current world order, capitalism, is the best we can hope for. That the daily exploitation of millions of workers worldwide is, for lack of a better term, just as God intended.

Fun Fact: This is a visual metaphor, there are no recorded examples of giant dish stack banquets.

Oddly enough, a few short centuries ago, God had other intentions for humanity. Previous to capitalism, the social and economic worlds were organised in a system called Feudalism.

The Divine Right of Kings

Feudalism is a system where all the land is under the control of a king. The king portions this land out to various lords in exchange for fealty and military service. The lords in turn allotted estates to knights who protected them. Finally serfs were allowed to live on lords and knight's land work land providing they forked over the majority of anything they produced and tried to keep their stench upwind of the lords.

Lynx body spray wouldn’t be invited for another few centuries.

Feudalism is a system based entirely on land ownership and rigid hierarchy. The knights are legitimised by the lords, who are in turn legitimised by the king, who is legitimised by God via the divine right to rule.

Anyone who criticises this system is criticising God’s will. Which is pretty risky, God built the universe, are you saying you know better than God? How many universes have you build recently?

All Natural Bullshit

Isn’t it funny that the hegemonic system wants to be portrayed as the only way to organise society? That it is the natural outcome of human nature? Of course it always seems to be those who benefit most from the system who say this. Why does this always seem to happen? Well, its probably so when someone questions the fairness of the hegemony they are implicitly framed as rebelling against nature itself.

Pictured: Nature

Cultural theorist, Mark Fisher calls this ‘Capitalist Realism’. This is a phenomenon where capitalism has established the image of itself as the only viable political and economic system. The effects of this are stark, as he says in his opening chapter; “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” Capital is king, and we’re all beholden to it’s divine right to rule every aspect of our lives. It defines our work, rest, and our very sense of self, and to question it would be to invite chaos as you try in vain to fight human nature.

Fisher writes how “Radical theorists from Brecht through to Foucault and Badiou have maintained, emancipatory politics must always destroy the appearance of a ‘natural order’”. Before you can argue for socialism you first have to shoot down the erroneous idea that it is against human nature. It has to be made clear that capitalism isn’t a pre-ordained state of balance, but merely a social and economic system that showed up a century or two ago. It supplanted feudalism, grew, and is now facing decline. Much in the way superhero movies replaced disaster movies, and now in turn, have become trite, formulaic, and of interest only to people I would hate to be stuck in a conversation with.

Sharing is Caring

So capitalism isn’t as all encompassing and omnipresent as it likes to pretend it is. It is just the latest form of human civilisation. But, humans remain intrinsically selfish, grasping, materialistic, uncivil, ugly, badly dressed, and totally incapable of socialism.

All they’re good for is proliferating increasingly elaborate hats.

If you look at your bog standard human, you’ll be forgiven for finding them underwhelming. Hairless, clawless, armourless, and clueless, humans are pretty vulnerable. The one advantage we have over the horrors of nature, like bears and baboons, is our capacity for cooperation. Humans are capable of taking down prey many times our own size, we can , and we can form barbershop quartets. Mutual aid, cooperation, and pooling resources aren’t anathema to human nature, they are the reason we have dominated the planet.

Greed may be a feature of human nature, but it isn’t our defining feature, it didn’t get us where we are today, but, if we the current system go on, it could end up damning us.

Kyle Mulholland

Written by

Tall boy writer with nice hair.

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