Monday 19 May 2014

Socialism is human nature?

So I was on Reddit the other day and came across this image. As you can probably see it is promoting the ideology of Socialism by saying that it is human nature. Although I am a socialist, I don't agree with this picture, in fact, I completely disagree with it as I believe that Capitalism is human nature.

In case you're not familiar, here is a very simple explanation of both socialism and capitalism:

  • Socialism is the philosophy that everyone is equal and should be treated equally thus equal rights, equal pay etc. The idea is that everyone works together to make a collective achievement.
  • Capitalism is essentially 'survival of the fittest'. The idea is that we all earn our way through our own individual achievements which build up into power. If someone decides not to work (or cannot) they do not achieve.
Darwin came up with the 'Theory of Evolution' in 1838 which taught us that all organisms on Earth stemmed from the same species 'once upon a time'. The idea is that rather than God creating everything for its individual purposes (ie: Humans at the top because they're are in God's image) we evolved as a result of certain circumstances that forced us to adapt to our surroundings thus suggesting that we humans descended from the apes (ie: we were designed in the image of Rafiki from 'The Lion King'). Along with this came the idea of survival of the fittest which to a certain degree explained the extremely capitalist world of Darwin's time as us humans had gotten to the top of the food chain because we were the smartest and therefore the best of all the other animals. As time passed, we saw that we had dominated the animal kingdom and so we decided to exploit our own through feudalism, slavery, dictatorships and so the Western World and capitalism were born. Despite this some right-wing people still believe that we are "made in God's image" even though Darwinism sums up their ideologies perfectly.

So, if we evolved from the animals then we still have the same instincts as animals. After all, we eat when we're hungry, clean when we're dirty, sleep when we're sleepy etc and it is obvious that we have succeeded in the "survival of the fittest" game almost automatically. As the first point on the poster says: "HUMANS COULD NOT HAVE SURVIVED WITHOUT COOPERATION" which is true, we have helped eachother much like pack animals do (eg: wolves). We have proven that we are individually weak but collectively strong (which, after all, is essentially socialism) but also shown "survival of the fittest" in doing so. We have constantly been in conflict with each other since our species left Africa - fighting for land, resources, POWER because it is "instinctive" to do so in order to survive.

The second point, about charity, doesn't settle well with me at all as charity is not something that we as humans do lightly. Over the past few months Stephen Sutton raised £3 million for cancer charities as part of his bucket list after being diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2012. This was through the help of the British public backed up by various celebrities such as: Jason Manford, Jonathan Ross and Jimmy Carr. In months previous, there was the "No make-up selfie" in which women were urged to pay £3 to Cancer Research and take a selfie with no make up on and post it to social media and in return they receive praise. Although both of these campaigns are both incredibly good and have raised a lot for cancer charities, people still walk by people with money pots looking for the same reasons. In general we only give to charity if we're going to get something out of it. I'll let this video do the talking:


We are capitalist. Capitalism is human nature but despite this I don't think that this always has to be the case. As I said earlier, we have the capability to adapt and change and I do really hope that one day we become less greedy and help each other more. Maybe one day we will change but until then we are capitalist by design.

What do you think? Please leave me a comment.

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