Competition vs The Collective - Darwin vs Marx, And There Still Is A Doubt?

Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved 

 

A rule of Natural Law, said Darwin - an incontrovertible, irremediable fact of animal life.  Competition, Survival of the Fittest, the natural order of winnowing, sorting, vetting, sussing to assure that only the strongest, most intelligent, capable, healthy, and agile will continue to people the earth. 

It seems hard to believe that there are many who reject Darwinism, and insist that the nature we share with the animals - ferociously aggressive, territorial, self-interested, and self-defensive - is not innate, hardwired from birth, a legacy of our descendance from the first living organisms all fighting for purchase, advantage and superiority. 

We are above all that, progressives say. Life has made us into kinder, more compassionate, more considerate, and tolerant beings.  We are not only far from our earliest animal ancestors, we are well on the way to a Utopia, a world were our best instincts, inspiration, and spiritual essences will become universal. 

There has not been a scintilla of evidence for this idealism.  War has been the most central, perpetual, and universal expression of human society since the Paleolithic. The first Homo Sapiens battered each other with clubs and animal jawbones right from the start.  They were suspicious of The Other, the outsider, the interloper; and well before The Unknown had a chance to raid, war parties were sent out to kill, to slaughter, and to leave not one trace of life. 

From these small, tribal, territorial fights came larger, more well-organized, armed, and led forces.  Then battalions, phalanxes, legions, and armies and the carnage continued but on a grand scale.  Wars were fought for decades, were constant, and became a part of civilized life.  The wealthier a group became, the more defiantly it had to defend itself. More commonly armed forces left their castles, redoubts, and military fortifications to engage the enemy in a first preemptive strike. 

Wars of conquest were part of the evolution of the civilized world. Access to land and sea routes to secure trade were not agreed upon by codicil and contract, but taken.  Wealth was appropriated, slaves were taken, territory occupied. 

Genghis Khan and his 50,000 Turkic and Mongol horsemen never stopped once as they marauded over vast lands from Asia to Europe, leaving a trail of devastation and establishing one of history's most extensive and impressive empires. 

Europe was always at war, with sides and alliances changing but with the same territorial intent.  No kingdom, dynasty, shogunate, or empire was ever stagnant, settled, complacent, and satisfied. 

This survival instinct - the innate, inherent, permanent, and central feature of human nature - can be seen up and down the phylogenetic scale.  Every time there is more than one individual, there will be a fight for dominance.  Siblings fight for parental favor and attention.  Husbands and wives fight for parity.  Civil societies vie for prominence. City states, regions, nations, and international alliances either fight, prepare to fight, or if defeated reorganize to fight again. 

The Taiping Rebellion cost 30 million lives.  The Ming-Qing War, 25 million. The Thirty Years War, 10 million., the Hundred Years War, 5 million.   Modern wars have been even more deadly - WWII resulted in 85 million dead, WWI 20 million dead. 

The Twentieth Century was the most deadly in all of history.  Evolution toward a more compassionate, considerate, peaceful world? Hardly. 

Communism, the brainchild of Marx, Engels, and Lenin, and put into brutal practice by Stalin and Mao, was one of the darkest period of subjugation, oppression, and persistent brutality, all in the name of equality that the world has ever seen.  Individualism, private enterprise, and opportunity - the bywords of human society since the age of cowrie beads and barter and the commercial expression of human nature - were deemed anti-social and dangerous, threats to the establishment of a universal communist regime.  Gulags, prison cells, and summary executions were carried out in communism's name. 

After the Soviet Union collapsed, the social economist and historian Francis Fukuyama declared 'the end of history - the world without the perennial threat of nuclear war and without the hegemonic communist empire, the world would be at peace. 

How wrong could Fukuyama have been?  Once the Soviet Union and its client states were disassembled, minor wars began.  The Balkan wars were just one example, and Islamic jihad became international. 

One could only conclude that war, violence, territorialism, nationalist ambition, and hegemony were here to stay.  Even a cursory glance at history would confirm this assumption. 

Yet, progressivism, the post-Soviet commitment to socialism, has become a political force in America and Europe.  Although recent conservative victories in the United States, France, Germany, the UK, Italy and Eastern Europe have challenged socialists and pushed back on their Marxist-Leninist opportunism, the Left has not lost its voice, and is more committed than ever to a remaking of European and American society in the image of Soviet utopianism. 

American progressives insist that human society can progress towards a more verdant, peaceful, consensual, and considerate one.  Biology does not determine destiny, they say, for given man's infinite capacity for good, and the willingness of human collectives to work together for a better world, any residual Darwinian traits will disappear. 

In America the creation of a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive society will provide the foundation for the universal values of good which will lead to utopia.  Black and white, Anglo and Hispanic, gay and straight will all live harmoniously in a world which values difference; and when wealth has been redistributed so that there are no longer rich and poor, the goal of a perfect world will be reached. 

These progressives, however, refuse to respect the lessons of history.  America is now more than ever a divided, divisive, and increasingly intemperate and intolerant place because of this forced, engineered social experiment. A country without a mutually accepted ethos, a set of universally respected codes of morality and ethnics, and a patriotism borne of genuine subscription to these principles will come apart and cannot survive. 

Affirmative action - an important piece of the socialist concept of communal harmony - has forced long-suppressed racial suspicion into the open.  Black students from the inner city are simply not up to academic par, and when they take places from more deserving applicants and then taunt, object, and flaunt their blackness in the face of those whites who ignorantly sponsored them, the populace becomes angry, resentful, and hostile. The waves of unwanted illegal immigration is no different.  Forced diversity is far worse than no diversity at all. 

 

Socialism dies hard because idealism dies hard.  It is not easy to accept the fact that we are still basically animals, and that in the few thousand years since the emergence of homo sapiens, we remain as savage, uncivilized, and territorial as our animal forbears.  It is more comforting to believe that human beings can overcome the residual competitiveness within us and march to a different drummer; that progress is actually possible, that a better world is in fact possible. 

Darwinists are far more settled, for the universality and immutability of the idea reduces the anxiety suffered by social reformists.  Life is as it is and will always be, a lot of nasty, unpleasant bits but all there is, so better enjoy it.  We have not been given the choice to be born into a morally vacant world, but those who see the possibility of competitive advantage make the most out of being dealt a bad hand.