1) He offers a critique of Huxley and his soft critique of Spenserian "social Darwinism".
2) He makes claims that cooperative examples taken from nature can provide a different point of view on evolutionary natural selection.
3) He concludes that examples from this natural view shows that humans are a cooperative species and this supports his politics.
His critique of Huxley and his critique of "fundamentalist Darwinism" are still interesting. Leftists and philosophers of science can learn from his critiques. Further, that Kropotkin assumes a perspective that we would call today "evolutionary psychology" and "sociobiology" shows that one does not have to be a "rightist" of any sort to think that some form of cooperative democracy (anarchism, socialism) are compatible with natural human capacities.
But I think the optimism of his assumed conclusion in (3) was wrong and makes the same mistake that many social Darwinists made and many "right wing" sociobiologists made.
I think ~J was correct in saying that Kropotkin was a good sociobiologist to imitate. That does not mean that he was always correct in his conclusions.
On 5/28/06, Louis Kontos <lkontos at mac.com> wrote:
>
> an example of what? someone who attempts to demonstrate that there is
> a biological basis for socialism? is that your argument with regard
> to 'progressive politics'?
>
> On May 28, 2006, at 10:16 AM, J wrote:
>
> >
> > On May 28, 2006, at 10:45 AM, louis wrote:
> >
> >> how does one 'integrate the insights of evolutionary psychology into
> >> progressive politics'? progressive politics revolves around an
> >> entirely different set of insights -- including insight into the
> >> factors that transform biological into social facts.
> >
> > Kropotkin probably the first evolutionary psychologist would be an
> > example.
> >
> > http://libcom.org/library/mutual-aid-peter-kropotkin
> >
> > ~J
> >
> > ___________________________________
> > http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
-- Jerry Monaco's Philosophy, Politics, Culture Weblog is Shandean Postscripts to Politics, Philosophy, and Culture http://monacojerry.livejournal.com/
His fiction, poetry, weblog is Hopeful Monsters: Fiction, Poetry, Memories http://www.livejournal.com/users/jerrymonaco/
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