FOR HUMAN NATURE
NORMAN GERAS
The view is commonplace on the Left that Marx rejected any notion of 'human nature' Norman Geras examines this view below in a foretaste of his forthcoming New Left Books
publication Marx and Human Nature:
Refutation of a Legend.
You will not go very far in discussion either within or about Marxism before encountering the view that one of the things bequeathed to this intellectual tradition by its founder was a denial of the idea of a universal human nature. That view, which had already had a good life when Althusser's theoretical anti-humanism' imparted to it a new confidence and vigour, has long struck me as being pretty remarkable, and my attendance at a certain seminar one evening in early 1979 led me to want to confront it. The seminar, in fact, was not about Marx or about Marxism. It was on the subject of human needs. I no longer recall the details of the discussion, only that the theoretical and practical viability of a concept of common human needs was received with general scepticism, and this was sustained in part — or so it appeared to me - by impulses of a relativist and idealist kind. Since much of both philosophy and social science is thick with relativist and idcalist themes, there is perhaps no great cause for puzzlement here. Nevertheless, the occasion did crystallise in my mind the thought of how surprising it was that Marxists also, would-be materialists amongst them, should often sponsor more or less similar themes in support of a similar scepticism; how very extraordinary indeed, in view of what I had read in Marx, in view equally of some obvious facts about the world, that the claim that he rejected the idea of human nature should be so widely made and believed.
I decided to look and see just what from Marx's work is generally given as confirmation of the claim. The answer is: not very much - actually only a single passage that can be said to amount to anything, though Marx himself did not think publish the text containing it; and, apart from that, a few other odds and ends which, considered for the role of evidence in this matter,
amount to nothing at all. The one item of any plausibility is some lines from the Theses on Feuerbach and it is with a close and extended analysis of those lines that i chose therefore to begin the essay on this question (Marx and Human Nature: Refutation of a Legend) which will be published by NEB in the Spring. Some of those who read it may perhaps find this analysis of a few lines rather too extended and wonder why, when so much in Marx's writings can be brought against the claim in question, I was not content simply to appeal to that and to see off the passage from the Theses with more despatch.
However, there are already plenty of commentaries on Marx which draw attention to this contrary evidence. Nothing was to be gained by just repeating them. On the other hand, by focusing initially on the best of the textual support for the disputed claim, we square up to the latter on its own chosen terrain, so to speak, meet it at what may be supposed to be its strong point. From doing this, as it happens, there is something to be gained. It may be a few lines only that become thereby an object of detailed attention, but they have been made to bear a heavy weight in the exegesis of Marx. Relying on their support, the legend that he dispensed with the concept of an intrinsic human nature manages to survive in the face of textual evidence that he did not: either this is simply ignored or else, if its existence is conceded, it is treated as the basis merely of one 'reading' of Marx to which however another, alternative
"reading" can be opposed, or else it is said not to represent the real, or the most profound, tendency of his mature thought; and so on. Yet, examination of the relevant lines from the Theses on Feuerbach reveals that their sense is not, in fact. transparent. They can be understood in a number of ways. And when the various possible meanings of this passage are placed within the only possible framework for a proper assessment of it - namely, the rest of Marx's writings - the interpretation of him that has been so reliant on it is shown not to be a viable one at all. It is left without even the slenderest title to philological respectability.
Marx — like everyone else - did reject certain ideas of human nature; but he also regarded some as being true. It is important to discriminate the sort that he rejected from the sort that he did not. More important still is it to try to discriminate such of these ideas as are indeed true from such of them as are false. Neither purpose is served by talk of the dismissal of all conceptions of a human nature, and I hope I may have contributed something to replacing it by more limited but, at the same time, more accurate statements of what, in this matter,
It should not be thought that I can see no valid preoccupation whatever amongst the factors that have led many Marxists to persuade themselves of this view of Marx. In the final section of Marx and Human Nature, when consideration of the textual materiais has been concluded, I examine the reasons that dispose people to want to deny the existence of a human nature. Although my main purpose is to show that they are not good ones, I do say, wherever I think there are grounds for doing so, what legitimate concern any particular argument may exaggerate or in some other way reflect. To give one example, whilst I criticise the oft-expressed belief that the concept of human nature is simply reactionary, acknowledge nonetheless that there are reactionary variants of it, as well as how frequently these are met with.
conservative and reactionary assumptions
about what is inherent in humanity's
make-up are pervasive
This may well be the principal obstacle to a readier accep tance of the concept amongst those committed to fundamental and progressive change: conservative and reactionary assumptions about what is inherent in humanity's make-up are pervasive. That they are owes a lot, probably, to the historical influence of the Christian doctrine of original sin, but there are other doctrinal sources aplenty, secular as well as religious, new beside old, for assumptions of innate human wickedness and belief, correspondingly, in the permanence of social malignancy of one kind or another. Such ideas close off the avenues of thought against the prospect of liberation from manifold social oppressions. Their pervasiveness, relative to progressive conceptions of human nature, must perhaps always be the norm while class society survives. A long past and continuing present of exploitation and its associated evils will tend to yield pessimistic generalisations about the character traits and typical behaviour of human beings. Anyone who has tried to present socialism as a serious practical proposition before virtually any audience not already convinced of it, will almost certainly have had to contend with pessimistic argument from "human nature".
And yet to attempt to respond to that kind of argument, and to the weight of conservative culture supporting it, by denying that there is a human nature, is to meet a powerful ideological opponent with a weapon that is useless. Not only this or that ideology, but also widely accessible facts and truths
- some derived from common experience, others the product of scientific rescarch — will tell one's interlocutors that this is foolishness. A proper regard for what are the real basic needs and capacities inherent in our human nature is the only adeAs there are those who will concede the truth of the idea of a general human nature — of some general human needs, capacities and other uniformities — only to deny or belittle its importance, let me suggest a couple of contexts in which this judgement too can be seen to be plainly wrong. A first, immediate and urgent practical context, showing why, though this may be obvious, it is nonetheless important that human beings need food, a healthy living and working environment and so on, can be overlooked only by very secluded and comfortable minds. This context is — that 40,000 children die every day; that of the 122 million born in 1979, 17 million (nearly 14 per cent) will die before they are five; that between 350 and 500 million people are disabled, the major cause of this being poverty: about 100 million have been disabled by malnutrition; that 180 million children are not getting enough food to sustain health and minimal physical activity: protein deficiency, which can lead to mental retardation, affects 100 million under five in developing countries, around 6000 children go blind every year in Tamil Nadu alone because their diets lack vitamin A, and there are in Bangladesh something between 50,000 and 200,000 blind children; that over half the people in the Third World have no access to safe water and that water-borne diseases kill some 30,000 people every day and account for about 80 per cent of all illnesses: every year 400 to 500 million are affected by trachoma and six million children die of diarrhoca; that there are 15 Celebrate!
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Internacional January-April 1983 21
KARL MARX 1818-1883
million human beings who have been disabled by their work; that in the tin mines of Bolivia a miner's life expectancy is reduced to 35 because of silicosis and tuberculosis; that 375,000 or more people in the Third World will this year be poisoned by pesticides ... And all this is to say nothing of the brutalities directly meted out in many countries by agents of the state: of the beating, the burning, the cutting, the drowning.
It will be urged that these realities are conspicuously historical and political ones. Of course they are, but they have an irreducible "human-natural' component: of general and basic human needs, in this case unsatisfied, disregarded, thwarted, sometimes savagely repressed. The moral, if not the sheer numerical, enormity of them has something to do with that. And although they are realities contemporary with ourselves rather than with Marx, they are of a kind with ones he manifestly regarded, and publicised, as important. In what present socialist political perspective could they be regarded otherAnother relevant context, at once practical and theoretical, is this. Marxists and socialists dismissive of the assumption of an intrinsic human nature are generally committed to the project, and believe in or at least are not dissuaded of the possibilijust as no fish could have been Mozart
no species could achieve socialism if its
members were incapable of the virtues appropriate to socialism
ty of a radically different social order, however variously they may conceive this. They must believe, consequently, or must allow, that people in their generality can, or might, develop the qualities that will sustain such a social order, whatever these qualities may be thought to be: civic intelligence, interest, responsibility; mutual sympathy or respect, a deep feeling of human equality, the ability to use and enjoy a very extensive individual freedom; and so on (for present purposes, the precise shape of this list does not especially matter; each person may construct her own). The whole weight is placed, with this sort of belief and by this sort of Marxist and socialist, upon the anticipated effect of new social relations and practices.
Yet,
although much weight properly belongs there, by itself this will not quite do. If new relations and practices are thought able to have the effect in question, human beings must be assumed capable, if only in the 'right' circumstances, of developing the necessary qualities.
These must be capacities potentially
available to members of the human species. Just as no fish could have been Mozart, no species could achieve socialism if the generality of its members were inherently incapable in all conditions of the virtues appropriate to socialism.
Of course, this is exactly how many of the latter's opponents view things: that irrespective of historical circumstances, the generality of humankind will be stupid or ignorant rather than intelligent, apathetic instead of interested, in awe of leaders and not capable of genuine responsibility; and too selfish, greedy and competitive to sustain any wide sense of human solidarity or community; afraid of too much freedom and unable to use it. A string of conservative, elitist and antidemocratic thinkers could here be cited. The point, though, is this. It is quite specious to contend that those only who thus deny, but not also those who affirm, the possibility of socialism, rely upon a conception of human nature. For the affirmation just presupposes the sort of human capacities that the denial disputes. The standard practical commitment within Marxist and socialist belief rests, whether explicitly or implicitly, upon the theoretical hypothesis of a human nature - at least if it is to have a coherent theoretical basis. NORMAN GERAS is a lecturer at Manchester University and author of The Legacy of Rosa Luxemburg, published by New Left Books.
22 January-April 1983 International
KARL MARX 1818-1883
MARX AND WOMEN'S OPPRESSION
PENNY DUGGAN
The work of the founders of the Marxist
movement, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels,
in providing a coherent theory of the
development of women's oppression, has
provided a reference point for all those,
Marxist or not, who have attempted to
analyse this phenomenon themselves.
Penny Duggan examines Marx's views on
The influence of Marxist ideas on the theories of women's
oppression is absolutely logical. Because the work, brought to
fruition by Engels in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, provides a practical explanation for the process of how women became oppressed, and thus indicates at least the first steps that have to be taken for this oppression to
be combated and removed
Although Engels authored the most significant work on the
question, as he himself states: "The following chapters constitute in a sense the fulfilment of a bequest. It was no less a person than Karl Marx who had planned to present the results of Morgan's researches in connection with the conclusions arrived at by his own — within certain limits I might say our own — materialist investigation of history and thus to make clear their whole significance."
This dedication by Engels also makes clear that Marx and himself did not produce their work in isolation. Other important writings on the question of women, and the historical development of women's position, were being published at the time. The work of Bachofen, who studied the myths and legends indicating that at a previous stage of society descent and heredity had passed through the female line brought to light useful information, However, as an historical materialist Marx used the work of Bachofen in a quite contrary way — rather than attributing the position of women in society to their position in these various myths, he considered these myths as reflecting the actual position of women at the time.
More important was the work of the ethnologist Lewis Morgan. He conducted a study of the family systems in different tribes of American Indians and tried to define the historical process through which the development of kinship systems had passed. His researches were widely used in Engels" Origins. The year before the publication of Origins, the German Marxist August Bebel published Woman Under Socialism. This drew heavily on the ideas developed by Marx and Engels to give an account of the roots of women's oppression, the forms that it has taken over the centuries, the historically progressive role of the integration of women into production, and the need for the socialist revolution to clear the way for women's libera-