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.
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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)