# Marxism, Human Nature, and Society

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> Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Laurie E. Adkin, Marxism, Human Nature, and Society, bahai-library.com.
> ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
> 
> Marxism, Human Nature, and Society
> 
> Laurie E. Adkin
> published in The Bahá'í Faith and Marxism pp. 1-7
> 
> Ottawa, ON: Bahá'í Studies Publications, 1987
> 
> Assumptions about Human Nature
> 
> Assumptions about human nature lie at the root of all theories that argue
> forthe superiority of some form of social and political order. Liberal
> assumptions, which form the ideological underpinnings of capitalist society,
> are held by their exponents to be true reflections, or interpretations of,
> "reality." Liberal assumptions about human nature consider the individual as
> primarily selfish greedy, competitive; needing to be constrained from
> abusing ''freedom" and doing violence to others, etc. Conservative, elite
> theorists tend to view human beings as essentially irrational, sheep-like,
> apathetic, and so on.
> 
> Modern liberal-democratic theory has its roots in a Hobbesian conception
> of the person as primarily a possessive individual--the individual as
> "essentially the proprietor of his own person or capacities, owing nothing to
> society for them."1 "Freedom" is defined
> almost solely in terms of absolute freedom to own. The Liberal view of
> society is thatsociety becomes a lot of free equal individuals
> related to each other as proprietors of their own capacities and of what
> they have acquired by their exercise. Society consists of relations of
> exchange between proprietors. Political society becomes a calculated
> device for the protection of this property and for the maintenance of an
> orderly relation of exchange.2In other words, the essence of "human
> nature," in liberal theory and political discourse, is derived from
> assumptions about the impersonal market relations of bourgeois
> society.
> 
> The seventeenth century theorist Thomas Hobbes argued that in the natural
> condition of mankind, where there is no central authority to enforce order,
> life must be ''solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short." Hobbes assumed
> that humans have no desire to associate save for the necessities of market
> exchange government, etc.3 Without the
> iron rule of a strong (though preferably benevolent) leader, individuals will
> fall into a state of war of "every man against every man."4 The utilitarian theorists who succeeded Hobbes
> viewed the individual as essentially a utility-maximizer and an insatiable
> consumer.
> 
> These views are central to bourgeois economic theory, especially to the
> laissez-faire type preached by Milton Friedman and the Chicago school.
> In
> 
> __________
> I. C. B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of
> Possessive Individualism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962),
> 3.
> 2. Macpherson, Theory, 3.
> 3. Thomas Hobbes, Rudiments,
> 2: 22-24.
> 4. Thomas Hobbes,
> Leviathan (Penguin, 1968), 188.
> 
> 2
> THE BAHA'I
> FAITH AND MARXISM
> 
> Capitalism and Freedom, Friedman argues that "a free private
> enterprise exchange economy," or "competitive capitalism," is both a direct
> component of freedom and a necessary though not a sufficient condition of
> political freedom, which he defines as "the absence of coercion of a man by
> his fellow men."5
> 
> Again, we have the assumption that interaction with other people interferes
> with individual goals of acquisition, security, etc. Freedom is defined
> negatively--freedom of the individual from society. There is no recognition
> of the social nature and needs of human existence; of the social nature of
> production and of what is produced. This definition of "freedom," moreover,
> excludes the concepts of equity, and of social responsibility for those who
> cannot "compete" in the market.
> 
> Marxists reject this view of human nature and the "natural state" of human
> society. They argue that the liberal assumptions derive from, and seek to
> legitimize, the types of social relations that are specific to capitalist
> society. They do not amount, therefore, to "general,'' "universal" truths
> about human nature, but merely to a portrait of certain aspects of human
> behaviour that are typical of bourgeois society (e.g., possessive
> individualism and competitiveness).
> 
> Marx's concept of a general "human nature" encompasses humankind's
> common material needs, as well as the potential for free development of
> intellectual, creative, and social needs and capacities. These needs form the
> limits of the capitalist mode of production, that is, the limits to
> exploitation. At the same time, they comprise the potential of a socialist
> mode of production; they are the fruits of emancipation.
> 
> Marx's views about human nature are fundamental to his critique of
> capitalism and to his belief in a form of society that must succeed
> capitalism and is a truer reflection of the needs of humankind. The writings
> of Marx express deep compassion and anger about the human suffering
> created by nineteenth century industrialization and reveal his profound
> humanism.
> 
> Contrary to the liberal and elite views of human nature, Marx attributed to
> human beings "the capacity for rational understanding, for moral judgement
> and action, for aesthetic creation or contemplation, for the emotional
> activities of friendship and love."6 These
> are viewed as ends in themselves, not simply as means to possession of
> goods. That is, contrary to the common teachings of bourgeois economics,
> the human being is not merely "a bundle of appetites seeking satisfaction,"
> but "a bundle of conscious energies seeking to be exerted."7
> 
> However, Marx saw these human needs frustrated and degraded by the
> nature of social relations under capitalism. In the capitalist division of
> labour, the worker is "annexed for life by a limited function"--a single
> faculty developed at the expense of all others--"crippled...through the
> suppression of a whole world of productive drives and inclinations,''
> crippled in "body and mind," and attacked "at the very roots of his life."8 The worker--as an appendage of
> 
> __________
> 5. Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom
> (Chicago: university of Chicago Press, 1962).
> 6. C. B. Macpherson,
> "The Maximization of Democracy,'' in Essays on Democracy, 4.
> 7.
> Macpherson, Essays, 5.
> 8. Karl Marx, Capital, 469, 474, 481,
> 484, 614, 615.
> 
> Marxism,
> Human Nature, and Society
> 3
> 
> a machine or as a non-manual functionary--is reduced by the capitalist
> labour process to what Marx called "a fragment of a man."9 Thus, Marx viewed creativity and a variety of
> activities that develop all human faculties to their fullest potential as
> crucial human needs.
> 
> The worker was viewed by Marx as not only physically degraded by the
> exhausting, unhealthy conditions of her labour, but also "alienated"--from
> nature, from herself, and from humanity. In the capitalist labour process,
> theproduct of her labour is appropriated by the capitalist; labour power
> itself becomes a mere commodity. Work is no longer an autonomous,
> creative activity, but rather an experience of drudgery, monotony, and
> subordination.Marx argued that:
> 
> The possessing class and the proletarian class represent one and the same
> human self-alienation. But the former feels satisfied and affirmed in this
> self- alienation, experiences the alienation as a sign of its own power, and
> possesses in it the appearance of a human existence. The latter, however,
> feels destroyed in this alienation, seeing in it its own impotence and the
> reality of an inhuman existence.... [T]his class is, within depravity, an
> indignation against this depravity, an indignation necessarily aroused in this
> class by the contradiction between its human nature and its life-
> situation, which is a blatant, outright and all-embracing denial of that very
> nature.10
> 
> The conclusion is that alienation can only be eliminated by the destruction
> of the system of exploitation that creates it. Here it is important to note
> that Marx saw collective human action as the motive force of history.
> Moreover he saw technological development (or the development of the
> forces of production) as a potentially liberating condition for human
> emancipation.
> 
> What was Marx's conception of a truly emancipated society, of Communist
> society? A common misperception about Marxists is that they advocate
> some kind of totalitarian society in which the "collectivity" suffocates
> individual needs and expression or at least that communism inevitably
> leads to such a society. It is true that there is a crisis of political
> democracy in the countries of so-called existing socialism. However, if we
> look at Marx's views about the "natural" or "ideal" relationship between the
> individual and society, we find these ideas:- The individual is a
> profoundly social being, whose needs cannot be fully satisfied without
> human community and interaction;- Communist society is a society "in which
> the full and free development of
> every individual forms the ruling principle."11We also find the following
> argument:Since human nature is the true community of men, by
> manifesting their nature men create, produce, the human community, the
> social entity, which is no abstract universal power opposed to the single
> individual, but is the essential__________
> 9.
> Marx, Capital, 523, 547, 614, 799.
> 10. "The Holy Family: A Critique
> of Critical Criticism'' (1845), excerpt from the Marx-Engels Reader,
> 2d ed., Robert C. Tucker, ed. (New York: W.W. Norton, 1978), 133-34;
> emphasis added.
> 11. Capital 1: 739, 614, cf. 638.
> 
> 4
> THE BAHA'I
> FAITH AND MARXISM
> 
> nature of each individual, his own activity, his own life, his own
> spirit, his own wealth.l2Moreover:Freedom
> [in the sphere of material production] can only consist in socialized man, the
> associated producers, rationally regulating their interchange with nature,
> bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by
> the blind forces of nature; and achieving this with the least expenditure of
> energy and under conditions most favourable to, and worthy of, their
> human nature.l3Marx
> sees communism as "the positive abolition of private property, of human
> self-alienation... [and] therefore as the return of man to himself as
> a social, i.e., really human, being, a complete and conscious return which
> assimilates all the wealth of previous development."14
> 
> Marxism and Feminism
> 
> How do Marxists explain the oppression of women in our society, and what
> do they think the role of women should be? It is interesting that, in writing
> about the nature of human relations in a Communist society, Marx drew a
> parallel with the nature of sexual relationships--as they might ideally be,
> i.e., based on equality and reciprocity rather than instrumentalism and
> oppression. He wrote:The immediate, natural and necessary
> relation of human being to human being is also the relation of man to
> woman.... [I]n this relation it is... revealed... the extent to which human nature
> has become nature for man and to which nature has become human nature for
> him. From this relationship man's whole level of development can be
> assessed. It follows
> from the character of this relationship how far man has become, and has
> understood himself as, a species-being, a human being.15In other words, the relations
> between men and women in a society are a telling measure of its
> development towards truly nonexploitative and "human" relations in
> general. Marx and Engels argued that in bourgeois society, the oppression of
> women--in fact the degradation of sexual relations in general--takes
> specific forms.
> 
> Engels argued that in the bourgeois family, the wife is an instrument of
> reproduction, bound by contractual obligations intended to secure the
> inheritance line of accumulated bourgeois property. He traces the
> patriarchal oppression of women to (i) the replacement of matriarchal and
> primitive communistic types of household structure by patriarchal
> structures, which accompanied the accumulation of wealth by individual
> males; and (ii) the destruction of small commodity production based on the
> household unit.
> This meant that, whereas
> 
> __________
> 12. Karl Marx, Collected Works, 3:
> 217.
> 13. Capital (Moscow: 1962 ed.), 3: 800; emphasis
> added.
> 14. Karl Marx, Early Writings, 155.
> 15. Early
> Writings, 154; emphasis added.
> 
> Marxism,
> Human Nature, and Society
> 5
> 
> formerly women had participated in all the productive activities necessary
> to reproduce the household, the expropriation of small holders, the
> impoverishment of artisans, brought about by the Industrial Revolution,
> created two spheres of labour: domestic (or private) and social (or wage)
> labour. As the means of subsistence increasingly assumed the form of the
> monetary wage, unpaid domestic labour was degraded to the status of
> domestic servitude.
> 
> When the factories of the Industrial Revolution began to swallow up the
> labour of working class women and children, Engels observed a phenomenon
> still typical of our own times. Despite their proletarianization, working
> class women were not relieved of their domestic burdens.l6 Engels concluded that women could not be
> emancipated until:- they had won full equality with men before
> the law;
> - the proletarianization of women had removed the economic
> bases of monogamous marriage and the patriarchal household;
> - the
> care and education of children had become a social
> responsibility.In a Communist society, therefore, sexual
> relations are an open question. Perhaps monogamous relationships will
> continue to form--indeed, to be more fulfilling than they are in Capitalist
> society. The main point is that the constraints on free will--especially for
> women--in determining their sexual and reproductive behaviour will be
> removed with the abolition of private property. [Note: by the abolition of
> private property, Marxists are referring to the means of production, not to
> personal property.]
> 
> However, in the practice of the Left, many Marxists have tended to assume
> that the abolition of private property alone will bring about the
> emancipation of women and have treated so-called women's issues as
> secondary to the "prior" struggle of the working class in the economic
> sphere. In opposition to this practice, feminists have argued that the
> abolition of private property is not enough. Some aspects of the oppression
> of women (i) predate capitalism, (ii) continue to exist in the so-called
> existing socialist countries, and within socialist movements; and (iii)
> originate in the reproductive function of women and in sexual politics.
> 
> It would perhaps be useful at this point for me to distinguish between
> different "kinds" of feminism, which I would define roughly as
> follows:Bourgeois Feminism
> 
> Bourgeois feminism does not trace the source of women's oppression in the
> work place or home to structural, economic causes, or to the inherent
> patriarchy of social institutions, but to "attitudes" which "discriminate"
> against women gaining entry to certain positions. Its theme is generally
> that women will be "equal" or "liberated" when the legal or attitudinal
> barriers to their occupying positions currently held by men are removed.
> So, for example, bourgeois feminists would approve of women's demands to
> become military aircraft pilots or bank executives. Their role models might
> include such women as Indira Gandhi or Margaret Thatcher. The emphasis, in
> other words, is not on transforming society, but on gaining access to the
> higher echelons of existing
> institutions.
> 
> __________
> 16. Engels, Origins of the Family, Private
> Property, and the State, 744.
> 
> 6
> THE
> BAHA'I FAITH AND MARXISM
> 
> Radical Feminism
> 
> Radical feminists tend to trace the sources of women's oppression to a
> sexual power struggle between men and women. They argue that male
> dominance stems from men's control over biological reproduction--
> reinforced through such institutions as the patriarchal family, certain
> religious strictures, the medical profession, and various aspects of the
> State (e.g., criminal law on abortion; lack of child care funding; absence of
> other economic and legal reforms necessary for women to be independent
> of the nuclear family, etc.). The key struggles of radical feminists are to
> prevent sexual violence (rape, wife-beating, pornography) and to assert
> women's autonomy over all decisions affecting their reproductive lives
> (free access to abortion, birth control, midwifery, the renaissance of
> women's health networks). The mode of struggle typical of radical feminists
> is to organize women separately and to define their concerns as "women's
> issues."
> 
> Socialist/Marxist Feminism
> 
> In my view, it is not possible to be a Marxist without being a feminist; that
> is, without acknowledging the unique oppression suffered by women
> historically and under capitalism, and without making the sexual
> emancipation of women a crucial part of our definition of socialism. Marxists
> are engaged in the struggles outlined above.
> 
> However, where Socialist Marxist feminists differ from the radical
> feminists is in choosing to emphasize the social and economic causes of the
> sexual oppression of women and men. In our every day experience as
> women, it is easy to perceive the source of all evil as being "men,"
> especially if one works at a halfway house for battered wives or a sexual
> assault crisis centre. This is the "front line" in an intensely painful and
> personal struggle. But it is also necessary to have a way of understanding
> where sexual attitudes--sexism, misogyny, female submissiveness--come
> from; to see men and children also as victims of sexism in our society.
> 
> Issues that we commonly hear described as "women's issues" are not of
> concern solely to women. Caring for children is a social responsibility; the
> right of the man to a nurturing role is a social issue; relationships based on
> equality and reciprocity are an essential need of both women and men.17
> 
> Thus, Marxists have tried to determine to what extent the causes of sexual
> oppression are "material," i.e., inherent in the system of property ownership
> and the social relations that underpin it, and how they might be eliminated
> in a socialist society. They have argued that- the sexual
> division of labour benefits capital by (i) cheapening the subsistencewage
> (through unpaid domestic labour); (ii) dividing the working class along
> sexual lines (strikebreaking, sexist ideology, de-skilling); (iii) providing a
> pool of cheap surplus labour for periods of capitalist expansion, which can
> be pushed back into the "private" sphere in downturns (hence the term "last
> hired, first fired"); and (iv) perpetuating a "consumer society" based on a
> mythology of
> the nuclear family;__________
> 17. See note
> 15.
> 
> Marxism,
> Human Nature, and Society
> 7
> 
> - capital and the state have collaborated in controlling the
> fertility of women in accordance with the demands of the labour market
> (just as it controls, for example, the rate and type of immigration) through
> access to daycare, Iiberalization or restriction of contraceptive use,
> abortion, and child bonuses.Marxists have, therefore, tended
> to focus organizing efforts on women in the work place, rather than
> supporting autonomous, interclass women's organizations.
> 
> To return to the question of the relationship between Marxism and feminism
> first, it must be said that feminism has radically transformed Marxist praxis
> in the last few decades. Women working in left organizations developed a
> critique of the practice of their male colleagues, which had far-reaching
> consequences The women argued that- gender hierarchies had
> been reproduced instead of challenged- that there was no real attempt to
> transform gender relations within left organizations themselves. Women
> were still doing the typing, photocopying, still making the coffee, while men
> dominated decision-making. There was still sexist behaviour;
> 
> - the structure and practices of left parties were undemocratic, elitist, and
> exclusive, rather than consensual and encouraging discussion;
> 
> - relationships with people "outside" the organization were viewed
> instrumentally, in relation to the objectives of the organization and its
> preconceived political programme. Sectarianism and dogmatism were
> intimidating to the "uninitiated" and produced sterility of debate;
> 
> - conception of the struggle was in militaristic, tactical terms, instead of
> linkage politics and real interest in cooperating with and learning from
> autonomous movements;
> 
> - the specific forms of women's oppression were not being adequately
> acknowledged or acted upon, due to the "workerist" orientation of left
> organizations--the stereotypical conception of the "worker" (the
> revolutionary subject) as blue-collar and male. This also disregarded the
> significant role of women in the workforce.In response to
> their experience of hierarchical, male-dominated left organizations, women
> emphasized that "the personal is political." That is, how do we envisage
> socialist human relations? How do we change "society'' if we cannot first
> transform ourselves?
> 
> These are some of the criticisms that women levelled at left organizations
> beginning in the late sixties. In some cases the internal conflict contributed
> to the break-up of organizations; certainly many women left their former
> political "homes" and transferred their energies to the "women's
> movement." To some extent, radical feminism is a legacy of this experience
> of women with left parties and groupings.
> 
> However, feminism has also profoundly democratized socialist praxis and
> has been the impetus for a rethinking of internal forms of organization,
> interpersonal relations, and the mode of politics of the Left.
> 
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> — *Marxism, Human Nature, and Society (Used by permission of the curator)*