[lbo-talk] Democracy and Rights

Luke Weiger lweiger at umich.edu
Fri Aug 20 16:02:23 PDT 2004


----- Original Message ----- From: "Charles Brown" <cbrown at michiganlegal.org>


> Communism seeks to reaffirm the original principle - communalism - that
> differentiated humans from other species.

As I've said before, I believe there are species that better exemplify communalism than humans (e.g. ant colonies--and it's no coincidence that the workers who selflessly serve and defend the queen share nearly all her DNA). In human societies, we find that a high degree of kin altruism is a universal, and we also find that reciprocal altruism is a universal. However, the inclination to defect is also a universal. And so is competition. Does such a sketch (without further elaboration and support) show that communism is impossible? Not really. (To see why, one could misguidedly argue that the urge to defect would make capitalism impossible--which might've been true, if we hadn't created social institutions to punish cheats.)

-- Luke



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