Anarchists Are Not Naive About Human Nature

0:00 hi everyone in the popular imagination anarchists are assumed to be naive optimists it is thought that anyone who thinks humans can live a good life without capitalism and the state must do so because they think humans are angels who are naturally caring and benevolent anarchists in the 19th and early 20th centuries in fact had a very nuanced understanding of human nature anarchists thought that all human beings across all societies have some characteristics in common michael bucunin wrote that the key elements of human existence will always remain the same to be born to develop and grow to work in order to eat and drink

0:46 in order to have shelter and defend oneself in order to maintain one's individual existence in the social equilibrium of his own species to love reproduce and then to die the exact same point is made by rudolf rocker he claimed that we are born absorb nourishment discard the waste material move procreate and approach dissolution without being able to change any part of the process necessities eventuate here which transcend our will we are not compelled to consume our food in the shape nature offers it to us or to lie down to rest in the first convenient place but we cannot keep from eating or sleeping lest our physical existence

1:33 should come to a sudden end since these common characteristics are constant across all human beings they must stem from certain basic facts about human biology anarchists did not however regard human nature as a static unchanging entity humans are just like all species of animal subject to evolutionary change by various processes including natural selection as a result of this peter krapoken thought that there were fundamental features of human character which could only be mediated by a very slow evolution nor did anarchists view human nature as an abstract essence which exists outside of history anarchists distinguished between the

2:20 innate characteristics which constitute all human beings and the manner in which these innate characteristics are developed during a person's life within a historically specific society bikunin thought that although humans possessed innate faculties and dispositions which are natural it was the organization of society which develops them or on the other hand halts or falsifies their development given this all individuals with no exception are at every moment of their lives what nature and society have made them kropotkin similarly wrote that man is a result of both his inherited instincts and his education

3:06 anarchists thought that one of the main processes which modifies and develops the innate characteristics of human nature is human activity itself anarchist conceptualized human activity in terms of practice humans engage in practice when they deploy their capacities to satisfy psychological drive and through doing so change the world and themselves simultaneously for example when a person makes a sandwich they deploy their relevant capacities such as being able to spread jam on bread in order to satisfy their drive for a jam sandwich in so doing they changed the world a jam sandwich now exists where before there was none and they changed themselves

3:52 they acquired the drive to have sandwiches with other kinds of jam or reproduce their capacity to make a sandwich this idea can be seen in kropotkin's advocacy of teaching which by the practice of the hand on wood stone metal will speak to the brain and help to develop it and thereby produce a child whose brain is developed at once by the work of hand and mind if the capacities and drives a person has are continually determined by practice and the practice people engage in varies across different social and historical contexts then what capacities and drives people have in turn varies both socially and

4:39 historically this idea can be clearly seen in anarchist discussions of psychological drives which were historically called needs luigi galini thought that when a human being develops themselves they acquire a series of ever more growing and various needs claiming satisfaction which vary not only according to time and place but also according to the temperament disposition and development of each individual the consequence of the theory of practice was that even capacities and drives which are universal among human beings are always mediated through and developed by historically specific forms of practice

5:25 all human beings for example have the drive to consume water but how they do so and what specific kinds of liquid they have a drive to consume varies between and within societies one person may satisfy their drive for liquid through drinking tea from a mug whilst another person drinks milk from a glass through a straw the universal capacities and drives which all human beings possess except in cases of pathology are in turn what enable people within specific contexts to develop historically specific capacities and drives the universal capacity to acquire language for example

6:11 enables human beings to invent learn and alter a vast array of different specific languages such as french mandarin and welsh the characteristics which all humans have in common are in other words the foundation from which the great diversity of human life emerges the extent to which anarchists thought this was the case can be seen in the fact that several anarchists claim that there is an infinite number of different kinds of person a rico malatesta for example wrote that in an anarchist society the full potential of human nature could develop in its infinite variations this was not to say that humans could

6:56 transform themselves into anything they wanted the nature of the innate characteristics which constitute all human beings places definite limits on what they can be shaped into humans cannot morph their arms into wings their feet into claws or their hair into feathers although a human can develop themselves in many different directions the scope of what they can possibly become is limited by the kind of animal that they are as rocker wrote man is unconditionally subject only to the laws of his physical being he cannot change his constitution he cannot suspend the fundamental conditions of his physical being nor alter them according to his wish

7:41 anarchists thought that human beings were social animals who had a tendency to engage in two main kinds of behavior struggle and cooperation malatesta wrote that humans possessed the harsh instinct of wanting to predominate and to profit at the expense of others and the thirst for domination rivalry envy and all the unhealthy passions which set man against man these negative passions coexisted with another feeling which draws him closer to his neighbor the feeling of sympathy tolerance of love as a result human history contained violence wars carnage besides the

8:27 ruthless exploitation of the labor of others and innumerable tyrannies and slavery alongside mutual aid unceasing and voluntary exchange of services affection love friendship and all that draws people closer together in brotherhood from these facts mala tested you the conclusion that human beings were a social animal whose existence depends on the continued physical and spiritual relations between human beings which are based either on affinity solidarity and love or on hostility and struggle the same position was advocated by kropotkin it is sometimes falsely claimed that

9:12 krapoken only focused on the second tendency of human beings to cooperate with one another and ignored the darker side of human nature this stems from a lack of familiarity with kropotkin's book mutual aid a factor in evolution as the book subtitle and introduction makes clear kropotkin thought that mutual aid was one among several factors of evolution rather than the soul factor kropotkin expanded upon this point in chapter one he argued that a naturalist would be wrong to view the life of animals as only a field of slaughter or nothing but harmony and peace the animal world instead featured both conflict and cooperation

10:00 he wrote as we study animals we at once perceived that though there is an immense amount of warfare and extermination going on amidst various species and especially amidst various classes of animal there is at the same time as much or perhaps even more of mutual support mutual aid and mutual defense amidst animals belonging to the same species or at least to the same society sociability is as much a law of nature as mutual struggle kropotkin thought that human beings were not different from other animals in this respect he wrote in his book ethics origin and development that there are two sets of diametrically opposed

10:46 feelings which exist in man these are the feelings which induce man to subdue other men in order to utilize them for his individual ends and the feelings which induce human beings to unite for attaining common ends by common effort the first corresponds to that fundamental need of human nature struggle and the second to the equally fundamental tendency the desire of unity and mutual sympathy charlotte wilson similarly wrote that the history of men living in a social state is one long record of a never-ending contest between certain opposing natural impulses developed by the life in common this struggle which humans observe

11:33 within our own nature and in the world of men around us occurred between the antisocial desire to monopolize and dominate and the social desires which find their highest expression in fraternity anarchists did not think that there was a strict dichotomy between domination and cooperation such that a social structure only ever contained one or the other anarchists understood that people can cooperate with one another to engage in domination such as the police working together in order to effectively beat up protesters it is furthermore the case the institutions which are based on domination are generally reproduced through cooperative social relations under capitalism for example workers are

12:19 subject to domination and exploitation by the capitalist who employs them yet the same capitalist businesses would quickly go bankrupt if workers did not cooperate with one another in order to collectively produce various goods or services anarchists repeatedly emphasized both the good and the bad aspects of human beings in the overviews of history within mutual aid kropotkin noted multiple examples of the san people in south africa cooperating and being sympathetic towards one another such as hunting in common engaging in affectionate behavior and rescuing someone if they were drowning in water this went alongside kropotkin noting examples of domination

13:06 he wrote when european settled in their territory and destroyed deer the bushmen began stealing the settlers cattle where upon a war of extermination too horrible to be related here was waged against them 500 bushmen were slaughtered in 1775 3000 in 1808 and 1909 they were poisoned like rats killed by hunters lying in ambush before the carcass of some animal killed whenever met with so that our knowledge of the bushmen being chiefly borrowed from those same people who exterminated them is necessarily limited far from being naive about human nature anarchists were extremely aware of the fact that humans are capable of

13:53 committing atrocities against one another anarchists in addition to this thought that the extent to which human beings engaged in domination or cooperation varied significantly between different contexts kropotkin wrote the relative amounts of individualist and mutual aid spirit are among the most changeable features of man both being equally products of an anterior development their relative amounts are seen to change in individuals and even societies with a rapidity which would strike the sociologist if he only paid attention to the subject and analyzed the corresponding facts given their conception of human nature anarchists thought that the main reason for this variation in human behavior was

14:41 differences in people's environment and the forms of practice they engaged in and were subject to this led anarchists to argue that the oppression and exploitation which occurred within existing society was not the product of human nature considered in isolation they instead stemmed from the manner in which the raw materials of human nature were developed through participation within social structures to quote malatesta social wrongs do not depend on the wickedness of one master or the other one governor or the other but rather on masters and governments as institutions therefore the remedy does not lie in changing the individual rulers instead

15:26 it is necessary to demolish the principle itself by which men dominate over men anarchist viewed capitalism in the state as hierarchical social structures based on a division between a minority who command and a majority who obey they are pyramids in which decision-making flows from the top to the bottom the majority of the population are workers who lack real decision-making power over the nature of their life workplace community or society as a whole they are instead subject to the rule of an economic ruling class capitalists bankers heads of state-owned companies etc and a political ruling class politicians heads of the police

16:14 generals etc the decisions of the ruling classes are in turn implemented by a vast array of individuals raised up above the rest of the population and granted special powers of command such as corporate managers police officers and prison guards those at the top of hierarchies not only wield power over others but also transformed and corrupted through doing so due to the forms of practice they are engaging in bakunin argued that nothing is as dangerous for man's personal morality as the habit of commanding the best of men the most intelligent unselfish generous and pure will always and inevitably be corrupted in this pursuit

17:00 two feelings inherit in the exercise of power never failed to produce this demoralization contempt for the masses and for the man in power an exaggerated sense of his own worth the same point was made by elysee recluse he wrote anarchists contend that the state and all that it implies are not any kind of pure essence much less a philosophical abstraction but rather a collection of individuals placed in a specific milieu and subjected to its influence those individuals are raised up above their fellow citizens in dignity power and preferential treatment and are consequently compelled to think themselves superior to the common people

17:48 yet in reality the multitude of temptations besetting them almost inevitably leads them to fall below the general level it is common for defenders of hierarchy to claim that capitalism in the state are necessary due to the negative characteristics of human nature if humans are incapable of governing themselves then they must be led by enlightened ceos if people murder steal and rape then society must be protected by the police prisons and the law yet it is these hierarchical systems which bring out the worst in people and make the greatest atrocities possible as kropotkin wrote when we hear men saying that the

18:33 anarchists imagine men much better than they really are we merely wonder how intelligent people can repeat that nonsense we maintain that both rulers and ruled are spoiled by authority both exploiters and exploited are spoiled by exploitation while our opponents seem to admit that there is a kind of salt of the earth the rulers the employers the leaders who happily enough prevent those bad men the ruled the exploited the lead from becoming still worse than they are there is the difference and a very important one we admit the imperfections of human nature but we make no exception for the rulers anarchists argued that if human beings

19:20 are in perfect animals capable of committing the most appalling acts against one another then this imperfection is the strongest reason for why no person should be raised up above the rest of society and granted the institutionalized power to command and impose their decisions on others through force or the threat of it an individual serial killer can do a great deal of harm armed only with a knife their capacity for violence is however nothing compared to what rulers wielding the knife of state power are capable of this can be seen in the fact that millions of people have been killed by states during the history of imperialism and colonialism an individual thief may break into my

20:06 home and steal my television but their theft is nothing compared to the vast plunder of resources destruction of the natural environment and depression of workers carried out by the corporations which manufactured my television and extracted the raw materials it is made out of the greatest crimes are carried out not by isolated sadistic individuals but by vast social structures which enable a ruling minority to violently impose their will on the working classes as a result of this anarchist concluded that hierarchical and centralized institutions should be abolished in favor of horizontal free association between equals

20:52 within an anarchist society people with the desire or predisposition to oppress and exploit others would still exist they would not however find themselves in a situation where there are positions of power they can take over and use to engage in oppression and exploitation on a large scale in bakunin's words do you want to prevent men from ever oppressing other men arrange matters such that they never have the opportunity do you want them to respect the liberty rights and human character of their fellow men arrange matters such that they are compelled to respect them compelled not by the will or oppression of other men nor by the repression of the state and legislation which are necessarily

21:39 represented and implemented by men and would make them slaves in their turn but by the actual organization of the social environment so constituted that while leaving each man to enjoy the utmost possible liberty it gives no one the power to set himself above others or to dominate them given the above anarchists would argue that it is not they who are naive about human nature but the defenders of hierarchy authoritarians imagine that emancipation can be achieved if good people with the correct ideas take control of the reigns of power anarchists realized that this has never happened and will never happen irrespective of people's good intentions

22:25 or the stories they tell themselves they will be corrupted by their position at the top of a hierarchy and become primarily concerned with exercising and expanding their power over others in order to serve their own interests if human beings are not inherently good then no person is good enough to be a ruler i hope everyone listening liked this video it's been a struggle to record due to my sore throat but i hope it came out okay if you like my videos please support me on patreon so i can keep doing this as a full-time job and if you want to see me post random takes and quotes by dead

23:10 anarchists please follow me on twitter have a nice day everyone goodbye