********   What about human nature?  *********
                 from Workers Solidarity No 33

A WORLD without war, famine, poverty, 
racism?  A world where there are no bosses 
ordering us around and living off our work?  A 
world where competition is replaced by co-
operation and individual freedom?

Sounds nice.  Who wouldn't like to see it?  But it can 
never happen, it runs against human nature.  How 
many times have you heard that line?  How many 
times have you been told that people are naturally 
selfish, greedy, prone to violence and short-sighted?

We are constantly being told that there will always 
be leaders and led, rulers and ruled.  These ideas are 
powerful because they seem to make sense.  We do 
live in a nasty, competitive society.  

IT WOULD BE A MIRACLE

Capitalism is based on competition.  Countries 
compete, companies compete.  At work you are 
encouraged to compete for promotion (or to avoid 
being let go), in school you compete against other 
students to get the best exam results.  With so 
much competition around it would be miraculous if 
people were not competitive.

The question is whether this is natural?  The idea 
that there is some eternally flawed human nature 
that we can't do much about gets lots of support 
from those with a stake in the existing set-up.  
Anarchists reject this as self serving nonsense 
churned out by those who are doing well out of 
capitalism and don't want to see it got rid of.

WHO DOESN'T CARE?

Despite the odds stacked against it we can find just 
as many examples of caring and co-operation as we 
can of selfishness and competition.  Solidarity 
strikes are an obvious one.  We even saw workers in 
Dunnes Stores go on strike for months in support of 
black workers in South Africa whom they had never 
even met.  

Look at any working class neighbourhood and you 
will find people caring for each other.  They are 
organising football teams for the teenagers, summer 
projects for the younger children.  This doesn't make 
sense if greed is part of our human nature.

WILLIE BERMINGHAM

Greed and selfishness don't motivate people to carry 
kidney donor cards or make them want to donate 
blood to the transfusion service.  Greed did not 
inspire the late Willie Bermingham to start up 
ALONE to care for the elderly living on their own.

Selfishness does not lead people to give money to 
charities.  It does not explain why nurses volunteer 
to work unpaid for Concern projects in the less 
developed countries.

But, we are told, there are those better suited to 
ruling, that inequality is natural and inevitable.  
Before capitalism the ruling class used the 
argument that God had chosen them, the 'divine 
right of kings'.  With capitalism came a new 
justification.  We are told that our bosses and rulers 
owe their position to superior talent.  They 'merit' 
their position.

ARE THEY BETTER
THAN YOU?

We are told that with intelligence and hard work 
anyone can make it.  The other side of the coin is 
that those at the bottom of society are there 
because of their own laziness or because they are 
not as bright as the likes of Haughey or Ben Dunne.   
Are we really expected to accept that Dan Quayle is 
an intellectual giant?  Are we to believe that the 
child of a millionaire has only the same chances as 
the rest of us?

This is crap pushed at us to stop us questioning why 
the many do all the work while the few make all the 
important decisions and live off the fat of the land.  

The true story is that we are products both of the 
environment  we live in and of the changes we make 
on it.  We have no control over what sort of society 
we are born into but we can change it.  

CHANGING VIEWS OF 'NATURAL'

To law-abiding parents stopping the heroin dealers 
was a job for the gardai.  When the gardai were not 
moving against the Larry Dunnes and Ma Bakers 
those same law-abiding parents thought it quite 
natural to organise into the CPAD and put the 
pushers out of their areas - even though doing that 
was illegal.

To the conscripted American soldier in Vietnam 
blindly obeying orders from officers seemed perfectly 
natural.  After years of slaughter and massacres, 
desertion and even mutiny seemed natural.

To most workers getting in to work each Monday 
morning and taking orders from the boss seems 
natural until they are forced to strike.  They may 
even challenge the right of the boss to control their 
workplace by occupying it.  

WE CAN DO IT

We have the power to change the world.  The ruling 
class know this and try to divide us.  They split us 
into Protestant and Catholic, gay and straight, 
black and white, working class and so-called middle 
class (white collar workers).

But again and again the system throws us together 
in struggle.  It is in struggle that we we come to 
depend on each other and co-operate for a common 
goal.  This is the first step towards building a society 
where selfishness is replaced by co-operation, where 
the dictate of the boss is replaced by freedom, where 
we take control of our own lives and futures.

Alan MacSim—in
