So interesting to read. Also we often think modern life disconnected us from nature. But the truth is the exact opposite. our modern life, thinking, and also science is built on that disconnection. The separation happened first and it’s systematic. I just wrote an article trying to trace where this originally came from
Modern man and woman are "alienated" from deep sources of life, in multiple ways: food comes from grocery shops and from the fridge (plant & animal world is severed from world of humans, who are also reduced to grocery consumers); human ties are severed as "employer" and/or via bureacracy (HR department) (Remember the sociopath Elon Musk with a golden chainsaw gifted to him by Argentinian Zionist Fascist President?); governments have no organic ties to the people they govern (or ultimately serve, in theory); populations of humans are severed by hard borders, passports, citizenship, law, etc; and you get the drift.
Exactly, these are the perfect examples of how this alienation manifests today. Everything is turned into isolated, mechanical pieces. My article actually tries to dig beneath these symptoms and look at why and when we started thinking this way historically. My argument is that this mental and philosophical disconnection had to happen first it paved the way for capitalism, which then institutionalized it and carved it into stone. Would love to hear your thoughts on that :))
I am delighted that there seems to be more of a convergence of thought on the type and nature of the ecosystems we nurture. I believe Mariana Mazzucato is another using similar framing. Capitalism - at least how we experience it - as a parasitic system.
Yes I've got Mazzucato's latest and am looking forward to getting stuck in. My book takes a look across all of life (and all of time since the origin of life) to argue that we've been thinking about ecosystems and biology in a skewed way.
Unregulated capitalism is the problem: giving free rein to competitive greed. Mariana Mazzucato has pointed out for decades that much "blue sky" research is funded by governments, from which innovations and whole new industries have sprung--yet governments seldom get any credit for it. And that the "entrepreneurial state" is more likely to have the public good in mind, than selling off all state assets to private interests whose primary concern is making profits.
I think it was an essay by the evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis, that I read a long time ago--in the late 1980s?--that challenged what until then seemed a common belief that "survival of the fittest" meant "nature red in tooth and claw": a world based on competition, as the natural order.
As a self-described Darwinist, Margulis said no, this was all wrong: that what Charles Darwin had actually said was that by far the biggest factor in the success of the human species was our capacity for cooperation.
And she herself had identified numerous symbiotic relationships both within and between species.
But it was only more recently--following the 2008 global banking crash, as a result of financial deregulation and reckless trading in financial derivatives--that the parallel of economics with belief in evolution based solely on competition became clear.
That Social Darwinists--taking a cue from Austrian economists von Mises and Hayek--believed in "nature red in tooth and claw", in unregulated capitalism and "free markets" as the "natural" order of things.
Homo Economicus cared only about money: and anyone who didn't was a fool. It justified the shamelessness of bankers who never got jailed: instead their banks were bailed out--privatising profit, socialising loss.
And too bad about plundering and polluting the environment of course. Until it started to get a look-in as "environmental services", still a subsidiary function of an economic system: rather than the global life support system on whose health we all ultimately depend.
But an interesting new theory of human evolution now puts culture ahead of cooperation...
Really enjoyed this piece. Thank you. There is another link: sociology. We live not too far from his house in Kent, in the village of Down. There is a church which his family including himself attended, within a short walk. Well into formulating his evolutionary biology Darwin stopped attending church: obviously the Creator-centered accounts of Life World were difficult for his empirical mind. [As a young student, for 2 years, I lived -- for room i did some yard work and looked after his pets -- with a renowned plant biologist Charles M. RIck - some of the tomato species were scientifically named after his last name. I asked him about Creationism which he grew up as a young boy growing up in a Quaker family in Pennsylvania, and what he knew as a scientist about life world. He left religion, like Darwin). There was a signed copy of The Capital from one great thinker-empiricist to the other. Marx really wanted a foreword by Darwin, but the latter politely declined. Darwin was NOT a social Darwinist, but his evolutionary framework was anchored in the borrowed sociological concepts which he read. He tested these ideas in the natural world of plants and animals.
Thank you. I will get a copy of your book. Alienation is a universal phenomenon that needs serious remedy, which can only be found in the collective. It is fundamentally a product of structures of capital accumulation which necessarily divide humans into categories, that in turn alienate individuals. Nature is yet another category, out there to be sealed or fenced off, extracted, sucked dry, the same way labour is sucked out of us. I call my own resource rich native Myanmar “ a brother of resources “ for corporate actors. Nature and labourers got thrown out like used condoms.
yes so true problem is Evulution is far more complicated than Darwin was able to understand. We do know a lot more now, including Gentics, DNA and so on. The Bible account I think was a anology, not fact. It was about ions of time not 6 day creation. Even now science such as it is, with all research use of machinary to extend our 5 senses it has become even more complicated and difficult to understand for even the greatest minds of the modern age. For example, consciousness where and how did it arise.? Over 100 plus years and there still no real understanding . Lots of theories which dont really stand up when examined in any sort of depth.
Darwin was so right about evultion as far as his great mind was able to understand it.
Social Darwinism used to justifiy the idea that you get what you want by being more ruthless than anybody else is a myth there is no such thing. Most of nature is cooperative.
I doubt that Marx ever wanted a foreword by Darwin. Perhaps you are thinking of the idea that Darwin declined a request by Marx to be allowed to dedicate a volume of Capital to him. That idea was debunked in the 1970s. It turned out that the request was from Edward Aveling, later to be the partner of Marx's daughter Eleanor, who was writing a book called The Student's Darwin. Darwin's "Dear Sir" letter declining the request had been found among Karl Marx's papers, leading to the initial confusion; only decades later was Aveling's letter to Darwin discovered among Darwin's papers.
As previously commented, another article that diagnoses capitalism, but refuses to prescribe its replacement.
Furthermore, the article says "economists should correct their ignorance of ecology" - this appears reformist. I think Marxists would argue that no amount of ecological awareness can overcome capitalism's fundamental imperative to accumulate capital and maximise profit.
Additionally, the article spends considerable time discussing fungal networks, coral reefs and mutualism. While scientifically interesting, nature contains:
Why not? If nature "knew" it was voting for extinction via behaviour, wouldn't it be tempted to change its behaviour. In fact "nature" seems more flexible than humans (who seem simultaneously part of and yet not part of nature). Sea "Who Moved My Cheese" for a pretty good example of behavioral change in mice for rational reasons (avoiding starvation).
You can’t just choose the bits that match your sensibilities I’m afraid. Substitute the word nature for Capitalism and the five facets fit very elegantly
My overall point is that nature is supremely indifferent to suffering. We humans are part of the natural world. We constantly compete for resources, cooperate when it’s in our mutual self interest, sometimes unsuccessfully and leading to wars etc
I would argue that there is good evidence to suggest that capitalism is a form of Darwinism
While it’s currently fashionable to criticise capitalism for its failings, there has yet to be proposed an alternative
And it is ironic that those who criticise it are the same people that benefit most from it
So, I say to those people, stop moaning about the problem, tell me what you would do differently?
The whole point of the piece is that Darwinism does not support capitalism. Capitalism is an ideology; Darwinian natural selection is an evidence-based theory of life. The point was not to propose an alternative to capitalism, I will leave that to others. The point of the piece, and of my book Togetherness, is to show that there is not scientific/Darwinian support for the ideology of capitalism.
My argument is the opposite - that capitalism acts in very similar ways to Darwinism and that we shouldn’t be surprised about this because it reflects human nature and its ascendancy and success as a species
Cooperative economics, ecological economics, circular economies, and commons-based governance would be fitting alternatives IMO. Approaches that aim to combine decentralised decision making with cooperation, adaption, resilience, and ecological balance rather than relying on competition alone. That feels closer to how natural systems actually operate.
In his book *The Great Transformation* (highly recommended), Karl Polanyi describes the consequences of England's industrialization during the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
While Adam Smith still viewed economic processes as part of society—influenced by and bound to traditions, norms, and obligations—others such as Townsend, Bentham, Ricardo, Burke, and Malthus sought to legitimize the misery and cruelty of nascent industrial capitalism by invoking the iron laws of nature.
In doing so, they severed economic processes from the society in which they took place, creating a distinct economic sphere, the market, governed by its own rules and laws. Political economy evolved into national economics.
The Darwinian approach taken by Joseph Townsend (1739–1816)—long before Charles Darwin (1809–1882)—is of particular interest.
Townsend describes in his book "Dissertation on the poor Laws", the island of San Fernández, where English sailors released goats to ensure a supply of meat for future voyages. Spanish sailors later introduced dogs to cull the goat population.
Townsend depicts the ensuing struggle for survival between the goats and the dogs; only the best climbers among the goats and the fastest dogs survived.
Townsend applies this model to workers (the goats) and hunger (the dogs). Hunger is necessary to compel workers to work; any form of aid for the poor is futile.
Darwin applied the ideas from the new political economy and social theory of his time to biological processes.
Regarding the separation of humanity and nature: In his work, the French philosopher Bruno Latour describes how a new understanding of nature emerged during the Enlightenment and with the rise of the natural sciences.
A new concept took shape in which a sphere of nature existed—distinct from the human and societal spheres.
This sphere of nature could—and had to—be tamed.
Baroque gardens, with their symmetries, right angles, circles, and ellipses, exemplify this new understanding of nature.
Later came the separation of the economy from society, with market forces being described as natural laws.
Most of what modern capitalists call intelligence and survival of the fittest is just blatant corruption and rewarding the people willing to do the most morally bankrupt actions they can conceive of in exchange for more money. They sell their souls trying to buy security and freedom from an economic system that slowly crushes us all with its meaningless and moral bankruptcy and then try to fill the void that was once their souls with shiny objects instead. An individual who owns something as obscene as a Superyacht but cannot be moved to tears by the beauty of a rainforest or the stars in the sky is not even a real human being in my eyes. They are a husk being puppeted by bad ideologies they perpetuate to their own detriment and the rest of society. I look at a man like Elon Musk not with admiration but immense pity. He allowed himself to become a vessel and avatar of evil incarnate seemingly just so he could brag about it on twitter. The system rewarded him financially for it, but the moral stain will last forever. That is a tragedy beyond all comprehension in my eyes. His legacy in life will begin and end with the millions of lives he ruined with his actions at DOGE for essentially no reason whatsoever. What's worse is knowing there are millions of people just like him who would have done the same if given the opportunity. The ancient ideology that Greed is good and might makes right is what must be destroyed and discredited, or our entire civilization will fail from the weight of the dishonor it's believers bring upon all of our heads.
Take a look at the book *Survival of the Sickest*. Dr. Moalem demonstrates that certain diseases once made affected individuals "fitter"—in the sense of being better adapted—which benefited their survival and reproduction. For instance, some people have higher levels of iron in their blood than is healthy for their kidneys (a condition known as hemochromatosis). However, these individuals had a better chance of surviving an infection with *Yersinia pestis*—the plague pathogen—and reproducing. This explains why hemochromatosis, a hereditary condition, is more common than one might expect. The neoliberal version of "survival of the fittest" interprets "fit" as meaning strong, whereas the term actually refers to being adapted—in the sense of "fitting in."
Such an important post bridging the gap between Marx and Darwin. Over half the world’s GDP is dependent on nature. Which is why politicians and big business needs to understand ecosystems and to work to conserve them rather than continually exploit them. Sadly they seem incapable of doing this which is why so many species are heading towards extinction. We are destroying not just our future wealth but our life support system.
Dear Grace, "if ours were a rational society".. we would destroy everything and begin all over again.. And maybe precisely that is what we are doing now..
I wish i could be optimistic.
Thanks "God" or the universal Brahman, I'm not materialistic. But human beings like you are the reason for all existence. 🙏
It’s no wonder that similarities of both nature and animal behaviour seems to mimic human behaviour. After all we are are all creatures of Earth.
Personally I think Darwin was ahead of his time. He realised so much from observation. But so did Marx, Hayek Smith and the rest. They were visionaries. They all had something to say and all needed to be listened to. But they were of their time. And as we know time brings us more. We all grow in knowledge and understanding.
My fear is that just like Mother Nature the human race will just keep going until a catastrophic situation ends the argument. My hope is we start to appreciate what we learned and take forward.
Of course it’s a worry that we are using the planets best goods but what else can we do? We certainly can’t go back to the Middle Ages. But I agree we have to try and think holistically.
We are starting to see the effects of not thinking. So let’s try and collectively be better at seeing the reality. It’s hard to stop industrial or oil production without thinking about the millions who need to live.
But I’m of the firm opinion that capitalism is not being enacted properly. Because the system allows money to be kept by the few who withhold money from the majority. We don’t need to look at nature to realise this is not fair or democratic.
We rely on money to be a fair exchange of work. One for another’s. But the system allows money to be held so to deplete the pot by that amount. But crucially it’s allowed not to be exchanged! They are rewarded by money and fail to reward others by SPENDING it back. This return effect is missing! Instead we are made, by the system, to borrow money and get into debt. This is unsustainable.
Our Banks contribute to this position. By taking hard earned money and treating it like their own for their own profit. And in turn insist upon more money to be paid back plus interest.
Our pot of money from which the majority of people have to fight over is depleted by the money grid by the banks. That money is not in daily use. It’s drip fed back to us.
That shows me that our pot is insufficient to begin with! We don’t need leveraged money we want more money in the pit freely rotating from SPENDING.
That’s the equaliser in our capitalist failure. By all means earn money but you must SPEND it back with those who paid it in the first place.
This isn’t Darwinian it’s just putting right the wrongs of capitalism.
In nature life isn’t fair. It’s similar in capitalism. So life is unfair. But our man made system of monetary rule can put right this imbalance. By insisting on the return of snd full exchange if the money we use as a token.
Then you can see a true balanced economy. Which in turn can take our efforts and do better things.
Remember not all production comes from raping the planet. From waitresses to farmers, from road sweepers to office workers. From sailors to soldiers. It’s not always about oil or coal or the demise of the rainforest.
Yes we have to find better ways but in the meantime we have to keep going. But when we get monetary systems right we can start to take our understanding if the world with us in all decisions.
This is interesting because you are reflecting things I touch on in my new book Togetherness, but also in my previous book How to Spend a Trillion Dollars!
Great minds eh Rowan! I’ve never read your books as I tend to think things through in my own mind. But I’d like to read them. I’ll have to look out for them. I’ve been writing on this subject for the last three decades. My opinion is that money should be just the token of exchange. And full exchange of work for work has to be in the same timeframe say a month. Money must not be kept. It must be SPENT to establish that full exchange. Money itself is and shouldn’t be of value it must just represent value upon receipt and exchange. It’s the work that is needed for production and life’s best.
And taxation must be changed to just a sales tax, vat. If ALL money revolves then it’s easy to tax at point of spending. And that’s sufficient. No other tax needed. Now we have digital money it would be easy to establish that system. Wealth must be what we buy with the money, not money itself. That’s ours to keep not money. Maybe you can enlarge on that in your book! Kind regards, Brian
Reframing things seems to be the order of the political moment. People still are, by and large, innately competitive and ruthless creatures, and I find that comforting, because competition and ruthlessness can be useful for innovation.
Thanks for your comment. You see, I do not think humans are innately ruthless. The data shows otherwise, as I show in my book, Togetherness. Of course, some people are ruthless - but we are condemned to always be competitive and ruthless, and the same is true in nonhuman life.
Engels had his own ecological perspective. But it was William Morris's more radical ecological understanding of Marx – what I call Morris's socialist biophilia – that we should pay attention to.
You see I don’t think Darwinism is limiting at all - it is compatible with a lot of holistic thinking, even Gaia-level/Earth-system explanations. I go into this in my book!
So interesting to read. Also we often think modern life disconnected us from nature. But the truth is the exact opposite. our modern life, thinking, and also science is built on that disconnection. The separation happened first and it’s systematic. I just wrote an article trying to trace where this originally came from
Thanks Nina - I am obliged to say that the book is even more interesting :) https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/459006/togetherness-by-hooper-rowan/9781911717140
Modern man and woman are "alienated" from deep sources of life, in multiple ways: food comes from grocery shops and from the fridge (plant & animal world is severed from world of humans, who are also reduced to grocery consumers); human ties are severed as "employer" and/or via bureacracy (HR department) (Remember the sociopath Elon Musk with a golden chainsaw gifted to him by Argentinian Zionist Fascist President?); governments have no organic ties to the people they govern (or ultimately serve, in theory); populations of humans are severed by hard borders, passports, citizenship, law, etc; and you get the drift.
Exactly, these are the perfect examples of how this alienation manifests today. Everything is turned into isolated, mechanical pieces. My article actually tries to dig beneath these symptoms and look at why and when we started thinking this way historically. My argument is that this mental and philosophical disconnection had to happen first it paved the way for capitalism, which then institutionalized it and carved it into stone. Would love to hear your thoughts on that :))
Yes, but in reply to Maung's point, much of the aim of my book is to de-alienate us from "nature" - to stop talking about nature in inverted commas, as something "over there". It's over HERE! It's US. See: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/459006/togetherness-by-hooper-rowan/9781911717140
https://ninamrz.substack.com/p/why-reconnecting-with-nature-isnt/comment/286005472?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=7gw7
Have you read Iain McGilchrist’s insights on the mental and philosophical disconnection in Western civilisation?
yes anybody who really wants to understand what is really happening it is worth reading Iain MacGilchrist It will make you start thinking
no. thank you. i will check it out. Herbert Marcuse, Angela Davis' PhD mentor, did a brilliant dissection on "the Western mind". i read that one.
I think that Macgilchrist is one of the really great minds of 20th century. should be read by all who are interested in the state of world
Thanks, I will also get this.
I am delighted that there seems to be more of a convergence of thought on the type and nature of the ecosystems we nurture. I believe Mariana Mazzucato is another using similar framing. Capitalism - at least how we experience it - as a parasitic system.
Yes I've got Mazzucato's latest and am looking forward to getting stuck in. My book takes a look across all of life (and all of time since the origin of life) to argue that we've been thinking about ecosystems and biology in a skewed way.
Unregulated capitalism is the problem: giving free rein to competitive greed. Mariana Mazzucato has pointed out for decades that much "blue sky" research is funded by governments, from which innovations and whole new industries have sprung--yet governments seldom get any credit for it. And that the "entrepreneurial state" is more likely to have the public good in mind, than selling off all state assets to private interests whose primary concern is making profits.
Very clear, refreshing and uplifting picture. So wonderful to see a growing grasp of our reality on this earth.
I go into the full, dramatic picture in my book, do check it out! https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/459006/togetherness-by-hooper-rowan/9781911717140
I didn't know that about William Morris, amazing! Will check it out. Thank you for posting.
Ah, Hayek. The stupid gift that keeps giving. A shame it keeps giving stupidity.
I think it was an essay by the evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis, that I read a long time ago--in the late 1980s?--that challenged what until then seemed a common belief that "survival of the fittest" meant "nature red in tooth and claw": a world based on competition, as the natural order.
As a self-described Darwinist, Margulis said no, this was all wrong: that what Charles Darwin had actually said was that by far the biggest factor in the success of the human species was our capacity for cooperation.
And she herself had identified numerous symbiotic relationships both within and between species.
But it was only more recently--following the 2008 global banking crash, as a result of financial deregulation and reckless trading in financial derivatives--that the parallel of economics with belief in evolution based solely on competition became clear.
That Social Darwinists--taking a cue from Austrian economists von Mises and Hayek--believed in "nature red in tooth and claw", in unregulated capitalism and "free markets" as the "natural" order of things.
Homo Economicus cared only about money: and anyone who didn't was a fool. It justified the shamelessness of bankers who never got jailed: instead their banks were bailed out--privatising profit, socialising loss.
And too bad about plundering and polluting the environment of course. Until it started to get a look-in as "environmental services", still a subsidiary function of an economic system: rather than the global life support system on whose health we all ultimately depend.
But an interesting new theory of human evolution now puts culture ahead of cooperation...
I go into this - precisely what Margulis was saying, and what works and what doesn't - in my book https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/459006/togetherness-by-hooper-rowan/9781911717140
Thank you for telling me!
macGilchrist is definetly pointing that out
Really enjoyed this piece. Thank you. There is another link: sociology. We live not too far from his house in Kent, in the village of Down. There is a church which his family including himself attended, within a short walk. Well into formulating his evolutionary biology Darwin stopped attending church: obviously the Creator-centered accounts of Life World were difficult for his empirical mind. [As a young student, for 2 years, I lived -- for room i did some yard work and looked after his pets -- with a renowned plant biologist Charles M. RIck - some of the tomato species were scientifically named after his last name. I asked him about Creationism which he grew up as a young boy growing up in a Quaker family in Pennsylvania, and what he knew as a scientist about life world. He left religion, like Darwin). There was a signed copy of The Capital from one great thinker-empiricist to the other. Marx really wanted a foreword by Darwin, but the latter politely declined. Darwin was NOT a social Darwinist, but his evolutionary framework was anchored in the borrowed sociological concepts which he read. He tested these ideas in the natural world of plants and animals.
Fascinating! I went to that churchyard too, and describe the wonders of Down House in my book. What especially touched me are the orchids growing in beech forest that Darwin himself planted. See: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/459006/togetherness-by-hooper-rowan/9781911717140
Thank you. I will get a copy of your book. Alienation is a universal phenomenon that needs serious remedy, which can only be found in the collective. It is fundamentally a product of structures of capital accumulation which necessarily divide humans into categories, that in turn alienate individuals. Nature is yet another category, out there to be sealed or fenced off, extracted, sucked dry, the same way labour is sucked out of us. I call my own resource rich native Myanmar “ a brother of resources “ for corporate actors. Nature and labourers got thrown out like used condoms.
yes so true problem is Evulution is far more complicated than Darwin was able to understand. We do know a lot more now, including Gentics, DNA and so on. The Bible account I think was a anology, not fact. It was about ions of time not 6 day creation. Even now science such as it is, with all research use of machinary to extend our 5 senses it has become even more complicated and difficult to understand for even the greatest minds of the modern age. For example, consciousness where and how did it arise.? Over 100 plus years and there still no real understanding . Lots of theories which dont really stand up when examined in any sort of depth.
Darwin was so right about evultion as far as his great mind was able to understand it.
Social Darwinism used to justifiy the idea that you get what you want by being more ruthless than anybody else is a myth there is no such thing. Most of nature is cooperative.
I get into this point in my book. It's fascinating how Darwin groped towards a guess at genes before they had been discovered. https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/459006/togetherness-by-hooper-rowan/9781911717140
I doubt that Marx ever wanted a foreword by Darwin. Perhaps you are thinking of the idea that Darwin declined a request by Marx to be allowed to dedicate a volume of Capital to him. That idea was debunked in the 1970s. It turned out that the request was from Edward Aveling, later to be the partner of Marx's daughter Eleanor, who was writing a book called The Student's Darwin. Darwin's "Dear Sir" letter declining the request had been found among Karl Marx's papers, leading to the initial confusion; only decades later was Aveling's letter to Darwin discovered among Darwin's papers.
Interesting! I saw Darwin's copy of Capital in his library at Down House. The pages uncut!
As previously commented, another article that diagnoses capitalism, but refuses to prescribe its replacement.
Furthermore, the article says "economists should correct their ignorance of ecology" - this appears reformist. I think Marxists would argue that no amount of ecological awareness can overcome capitalism's fundamental imperative to accumulate capital and maximise profit.
Additionally, the article spends considerable time discussing fungal networks, coral reefs and mutualism. While scientifically interesting, nature contains:
- cooperation
- competition
- predation
- parasitism
- extinction.
We (human society) cannot simply imitate whichever ecological relationship seems morally attractive.
Absolutely, I make the point repeatedly in my book that cooperation can just be a way to compete better. Mutualism can turn into parasitism. But still we tend to look at nature in the wrong way. More here: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/459006/togetherness-by-hooper-rowan/9781911717140
Why not? If nature "knew" it was voting for extinction via behaviour, wouldn't it be tempted to change its behaviour. In fact "nature" seems more flexible than humans (who seem simultaneously part of and yet not part of nature). Sea "Who Moved My Cheese" for a pretty good example of behavioral change in mice for rational reasons (avoiding starvation).
I repeat
Nature includes
cooperation
- competition
- predation
- parasitism
- extinction
You can’t just choose the bits that match your sensibilities I’m afraid. Substitute the word nature for Capitalism and the five facets fit very elegantly
My overall point is that nature is supremely indifferent to suffering. We humans are part of the natural world. We constantly compete for resources, cooperate when it’s in our mutual self interest, sometimes unsuccessfully and leading to wars etc
I would argue that there is good evidence to suggest that capitalism is a form of Darwinism
While it’s currently fashionable to criticise capitalism for its failings, there has yet to be proposed an alternative
And it is ironic that those who criticise it are the same people that benefit most from it
So, I say to those people, stop moaning about the problem, tell me what you would do differently?
Otherwise you’re wasting my time
The whole point of the piece is that Darwinism does not support capitalism. Capitalism is an ideology; Darwinian natural selection is an evidence-based theory of life. The point was not to propose an alternative to capitalism, I will leave that to others. The point of the piece, and of my book Togetherness, is to show that there is not scientific/Darwinian support for the ideology of capitalism.
Thanks for your reply
My argument is the opposite - that capitalism acts in very similar ways to Darwinism and that we shouldn’t be surprised about this because it reflects human nature and its ascendancy and success as a species
You see, that's a misunderstanding and misrepresentation of Darwinism, which is exactly what I cover at length in my book!
Cooperative economics, ecological economics, circular economies, and commons-based governance would be fitting alternatives IMO. Approaches that aim to combine decentralised decision making with cooperation, adaption, resilience, and ecological balance rather than relying on competition alone. That feels closer to how natural systems actually operate.
Agreed. I give some examples of these kinds of economies in my book Togetherness
yes nature does include cooperation ,. In fact its central. what do you mean by extension I wonder.?? Smarti
Extinction, not extension
apologies extinction ok what do mean ???
My overall point is that nature is supremely indifferent to suffering. We humans are part of the natural world. We constantly compete for resources
not much that is really meaningful there smarty. Needs a lot more research me thinks
Thought not
now smarti what is you thought not. Just interested but not expecting to much.
"When the debate is lost, insults become the loser's tool"
Socrates
Or you could explain why my arguement isn't valid?
does say anything apart from statements so difficult eh Smarti
In his book *The Great Transformation* (highly recommended), Karl Polanyi describes the consequences of England's industrialization during the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
While Adam Smith still viewed economic processes as part of society—influenced by and bound to traditions, norms, and obligations—others such as Townsend, Bentham, Ricardo, Burke, and Malthus sought to legitimize the misery and cruelty of nascent industrial capitalism by invoking the iron laws of nature.
In doing so, they severed economic processes from the society in which they took place, creating a distinct economic sphere, the market, governed by its own rules and laws. Political economy evolved into national economics.
The Darwinian approach taken by Joseph Townsend (1739–1816)—long before Charles Darwin (1809–1882)—is of particular interest.
Townsend describes in his book "Dissertation on the poor Laws", the island of San Fernández, where English sailors released goats to ensure a supply of meat for future voyages. Spanish sailors later introduced dogs to cull the goat population.
Townsend depicts the ensuing struggle for survival between the goats and the dogs; only the best climbers among the goats and the fastest dogs survived.
Townsend applies this model to workers (the goats) and hunger (the dogs). Hunger is necessary to compel workers to work; any form of aid for the poor is futile.
Darwin applied the ideas from the new political economy and social theory of his time to biological processes.
Regarding the separation of humanity and nature: In his work, the French philosopher Bruno Latour describes how a new understanding of nature emerged during the Enlightenment and with the rise of the natural sciences.
A new concept took shape in which a sphere of nature existed—distinct from the human and societal spheres.
This sphere of nature could—and had to—be tamed.
Baroque gardens, with their symmetries, right angles, circles, and ellipses, exemplify this new understanding of nature.
Later came the separation of the economy from society, with market forces being described as natural laws.
I agree with some of this - Darwin setting his work in the cultural contemporary context, I talk about this with respect to the key year of his work, 1837-8, when Darwin lived in Soho. https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/459006/togetherness-by-hooper-rowan/9781911717140
It was not my intention to diminish Darwin's scientific merit.
There is a certain irony in the fact that Darwin drew inspiration from a flawed economic theory to arrive at a correct biological theory.
fascinating but missing out so much I think
Please explain.
Most of what modern capitalists call intelligence and survival of the fittest is just blatant corruption and rewarding the people willing to do the most morally bankrupt actions they can conceive of in exchange for more money. They sell their souls trying to buy security and freedom from an economic system that slowly crushes us all with its meaningless and moral bankruptcy and then try to fill the void that was once their souls with shiny objects instead. An individual who owns something as obscene as a Superyacht but cannot be moved to tears by the beauty of a rainforest or the stars in the sky is not even a real human being in my eyes. They are a husk being puppeted by bad ideologies they perpetuate to their own detriment and the rest of society. I look at a man like Elon Musk not with admiration but immense pity. He allowed himself to become a vessel and avatar of evil incarnate seemingly just so he could brag about it on twitter. The system rewarded him financially for it, but the moral stain will last forever. That is a tragedy beyond all comprehension in my eyes. His legacy in life will begin and end with the millions of lives he ruined with his actions at DOGE for essentially no reason whatsoever. What's worse is knowing there are millions of people just like him who would have done the same if given the opportunity. The ancient ideology that Greed is good and might makes right is what must be destroyed and discredited, or our entire civilization will fail from the weight of the dishonor it's believers bring upon all of our heads.
Good point, Andy. I get into some of this in my book, do check it out: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/459006/togetherness-by-hooper-rowan/9781911717140
A lifetime of being a nature lover and endlessly curious has led me to much of the same conclusions as you. I will add it to my list for sure.
brilliant Andy
Take a look at the book *Survival of the Sickest*. Dr. Moalem demonstrates that certain diseases once made affected individuals "fitter"—in the sense of being better adapted—which benefited their survival and reproduction. For instance, some people have higher levels of iron in their blood than is healthy for their kidneys (a condition known as hemochromatosis). However, these individuals had a better chance of surviving an infection with *Yersinia pestis*—the plague pathogen—and reproducing. This explains why hemochromatosis, a hereditary condition, is more common than one might expect. The neoliberal version of "survival of the fittest" interprets "fit" as meaning strong, whereas the term actually refers to being adapted—in the sense of "fitting in."
Such an important post bridging the gap between Marx and Darwin. Over half the world’s GDP is dependent on nature. Which is why politicians and big business needs to understand ecosystems and to work to conserve them rather than continually exploit them. Sadly they seem incapable of doing this which is why so many species are heading towards extinction. We are destroying not just our future wealth but our life support system.
Dear Grace, "if ours were a rational society".. we would destroy everything and begin all over again.. And maybe precisely that is what we are doing now..
I wish i could be optimistic.
Thanks "God" or the universal Brahman, I'm not materialistic. But human beings like you are the reason for all existence. 🙏
I think you would be interested in the Zen concept of jita funi, which I talk about a lot in my book Togetherness - on which this essay was based.
It’s no wonder that similarities of both nature and animal behaviour seems to mimic human behaviour. After all we are are all creatures of Earth.
Personally I think Darwin was ahead of his time. He realised so much from observation. But so did Marx, Hayek Smith and the rest. They were visionaries. They all had something to say and all needed to be listened to. But they were of their time. And as we know time brings us more. We all grow in knowledge and understanding.
My fear is that just like Mother Nature the human race will just keep going until a catastrophic situation ends the argument. My hope is we start to appreciate what we learned and take forward.
Of course it’s a worry that we are using the planets best goods but what else can we do? We certainly can’t go back to the Middle Ages. But I agree we have to try and think holistically.
We are starting to see the effects of not thinking. So let’s try and collectively be better at seeing the reality. It’s hard to stop industrial or oil production without thinking about the millions who need to live.
But I’m of the firm opinion that capitalism is not being enacted properly. Because the system allows money to be kept by the few who withhold money from the majority. We don’t need to look at nature to realise this is not fair or democratic.
We rely on money to be a fair exchange of work. One for another’s. But the system allows money to be held so to deplete the pot by that amount. But crucially it’s allowed not to be exchanged! They are rewarded by money and fail to reward others by SPENDING it back. This return effect is missing! Instead we are made, by the system, to borrow money and get into debt. This is unsustainable.
Our Banks contribute to this position. By taking hard earned money and treating it like their own for their own profit. And in turn insist upon more money to be paid back plus interest.
Our pot of money from which the majority of people have to fight over is depleted by the money grid by the banks. That money is not in daily use. It’s drip fed back to us.
That shows me that our pot is insufficient to begin with! We don’t need leveraged money we want more money in the pit freely rotating from SPENDING.
That’s the equaliser in our capitalist failure. By all means earn money but you must SPEND it back with those who paid it in the first place.
This isn’t Darwinian it’s just putting right the wrongs of capitalism.
In nature life isn’t fair. It’s similar in capitalism. So life is unfair. But our man made system of monetary rule can put right this imbalance. By insisting on the return of snd full exchange if the money we use as a token.
Then you can see a true balanced economy. Which in turn can take our efforts and do better things.
Remember not all production comes from raping the planet. From waitresses to farmers, from road sweepers to office workers. From sailors to soldiers. It’s not always about oil or coal or the demise of the rainforest.
Yes we have to find better ways but in the meantime we have to keep going. But when we get monetary systems right we can start to take our understanding if the world with us in all decisions.
This is interesting because you are reflecting things I touch on in my new book Togetherness, but also in my previous book How to Spend a Trillion Dollars!
Great minds eh Rowan! I’ve never read your books as I tend to think things through in my own mind. But I’d like to read them. I’ll have to look out for them. I’ve been writing on this subject for the last three decades. My opinion is that money should be just the token of exchange. And full exchange of work for work has to be in the same timeframe say a month. Money must not be kept. It must be SPENT to establish that full exchange. Money itself is and shouldn’t be of value it must just represent value upon receipt and exchange. It’s the work that is needed for production and life’s best.
And taxation must be changed to just a sales tax, vat. If ALL money revolves then it’s easy to tax at point of spending. And that’s sufficient. No other tax needed. Now we have digital money it would be easy to establish that system. Wealth must be what we buy with the money, not money itself. That’s ours to keep not money. Maybe you can enlarge on that in your book! Kind regards, Brian
Reframing things seems to be the order of the political moment. People still are, by and large, innately competitive and ruthless creatures, and I find that comforting, because competition and ruthlessness can be useful for innovation.
Thanks for your comment. You see, I do not think humans are innately ruthless. The data shows otherwise, as I show in my book, Togetherness. Of course, some people are ruthless - but we are condemned to always be competitive and ruthless, and the same is true in nonhuman life.
See: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/459006/togetherness-by-hooper-rowan/9781911717140
I will take a look, thanks.
I think people can hide their ruthlessness or disguise it well.
Engels had his own ecological perspective. But it was William Morris's more radical ecological understanding of Marx – what I call Morris's socialist biophilia – that we should pay attention to.
https://www.academia.edu/14499857/Inhaling_All_the_Forces_of_Nature_William_Morriss_Socialist_Biophilia
I definitely want to check this out about William Morris!
For anyone who's interested, here's an essay of mine:
The Significance of Darwinian Theory for Marx and Engels
https://www.academia.edu/14496754/The_Significance_of_Darwinian_Theory_for_Marx_and_Engels
Thanks Angus, I'm pretty sure I came across that piece while I researching my book: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/459006/togetherness-by-hooper-rowan/9781911717140
think we have to move on from simple Darwinism it is so limiting .
You see I don’t think Darwinism is limiting at all - it is compatible with a lot of holistic thinking, even Gaia-level/Earth-system explanations. I go into this in my book!