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July 2000 Newsletter

A Darwinian Left: Politics, Evolution and Cooperation

Although Karl Marx reportedly was very impressed upon reading Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species, and sought Darwin's endorsement of his own third volume of Das Capital, there has traditionally been an uneasiness in the relationship between Leftist political ideologies and evolutionary biology. The truce has usually been one of dividing up the territories - evolutionary biology describes development up to the formation of human beings, at which point the historical dialectic takes over to describe and predict human individual and social behavior. When principles or models of evolutionary biology are applied to human society, as for example in 19th and 20th century Social Darwinism, the result has always been extremely antagonistic progressive political views.

This pattern of antagonism was repeated in the last few decades in the emergence of sociobiology. Leading proponents of sociobiology, appealing to the 'selfish gene' in the struggle of 'mammalian mating strategies,' very often were interpreted (sometimes quite correctly) as harshly antifeminist, staunch social conservatives, and apologists for callously aggressive and competitive individual and group behavior.

But even in this atmosphere of antagonism, politically progressive intellectuals and theorists have known that if there is any truth at all to evolutionary biology and the mechanism of natural selection (and it is all but impossible anymore for a thinking person to deny this categorically) then it is completely untenable to think that survival-contoured behavioral patterns would stop with the advent of human society. Ernest Becker, for one, consistently insisted that we understand nothing about human behavior if we do not thoroughly digest the starting point, that human beings are evolved animals. Unfortunately, Becker did not live to interact with the full-blown version of sociobiology's "New Synthesis."

Slowly, however, voices are emerging that ground human behavior in the principles of evolutionary biology but suggest ascendant attention be given to cooperative rather than competitive survival strategies. (This, by the way, was Charles Darwin's own reaction to Spencerian Social Darwinism.) In this book, the (in)famous bioethicist Peter Singer synthesizes and ably extends these voices.

Singer, always the consistent utilitarian, bases his own commitment to progressive politics on the principle of 'diminishing marginal utility' - the common sense observation that an extra thousand bucks in my pocket would increase aggregate happiness more than it would in the pocket of Bill Gates.

Singer is known for the forehead-slapping zingers - essentially his willingness to boldly state utilitarian conclusions from which others draw back. There is not much of that in this little book, however. On display here is Singer's admirable ability to interrogate and defend a thesis.

Singer suggests that the Left must revise some of its cherished notions, based on the best data available. One example is the romantic idea that human nature is infinitely malleable and shaped by environment alone; that somehow the "New Man" can be socially engineered - as if Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and Pol Pot were not enough to disabuse us of that notion already. A more poignant example is his suggestion that we get over the idea that all competitiveness and inequalities in wealth and status are results of social conditioning.

At the same time, however, social arrangements can encourage or inhibit human tendencies toward cooperation and altruism. In America, cooperative and altruistic practices are not encouraged and are, in fact, positively discouraged in the exultation of individualistic competitiveness. Yet even here, pure forms of such behavior (e.g., blood-drive donations), continue.

Progressive policies based on Darwinian models would seek social arrangements that encourage and reward cooperative, altruistic practices, while discouraging or minimizing the rewards for competitive, individualistic behaviors. This is not the stuff of which mass social movements are made but certainly give plenty of rallying points for progressive political activism. These ideas are completely compatible with, for example, the Democratic Socialism advocated by Richard Rorty. That Rorty, the consistent pragmatist, and Singer, the consistent utilitarian, could unite on the basis of political Darwinism, is perhaps the strongest evidence one could muster that these ideas should be taken seriously.

A final note of criticism is needed, however. Singer lists three categories of human behaviors - those on which there is wide variance, those on which there is some variance, and those which appear to be strongly set in the species and on which there is no or very little variance across cultures. Concern for kin is one example of this last category.

It is amazing, however, that Singer fails to notice religious behavior, for good or ill, as one of this last category. Recognizing this could have at least as strong implications for a revisionist, Darwinian Left as any of those behaviors Singer does notice. Here is where the wisdom of Ernest Becker's concerns would come forcefully into focus.