“…all history is nothing but a progressive transformation of human nature.” Marx, 1847

AN EARLIER Q&A (number 35) asked “Is the answer really ‘in our genes’?”

The answer — No — challenged the claim (most prominently declared in Richard Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene but recycled endlessly in the media and in common discourse) that our collective identity as humans is determined by our biology. 

Dawkins in many ways merely updated the arguments of Herbert Spencer — in the 1870s probably the most celebrated and influential but right-wing philosopher of his time and whose ashes are interred opposite Karl Marx’s grave in Highgate cemetery. 

Spencer invented the term “survival of the fittest” (never used by Darwin) as the metaphor for his social Darwinism; a trope widely used in economics and politics as a justification for laissez-faire capitalism.  

That answer led to another Q&A: “are humans natural”.  The answer (number 37) was (you guessed it) not a simple one. 

Yes, our species evolved as other species have: we came from and still are “part” of nature: we remain (and probably will always remain) dependent on nature. 

But at the same time humans are unlike other living species in a quite different way from the way that all species are distinct from each other. 

The answer was Yes and at the same time it was No; the relationship between humans and the rest of nature is a dialectical one.  

So — how can a Marxist approach help us to answer the question: does “human nature” exist and if so what is it? 

Among his early writings, the 26-year-old Karl Marx declared:“Humans live from nature… To say that human physical and mental life is linked to nature simply means that nature is linked to itself, for humans are a part of nature.” 

The appearance in 1859 of Darwin’s epoch-making Origin of Species, which Marx declared was “the natural-history foundation of the historical materialism viewpoint,” led both him and Engels to devote a fair bit of time to an examination of whether “human nature” exists and, if so, what that nature is.  

Since earliest times humans have been aware of their biological nature — that we are conceived, live, and die as do all other species. 

And since Darwin (at least) we have been aware also that we are part of the natural world, both in our evolutionary origins and as to the conditions of our survival today. 

Yet we are in many ways different from other species. Some other species also — albeit on a very primitive level — use tools, “grow” food, construct shelters or clothe themselves for camouflage, defence or to attract mates.  

Some primates in particular appear to have the ability to form basic concepts, to “think”; to foresee in advance the likely consequences of their actions rather than having them determined entirely by instinctive responses to environmental stimuli. 

But only humans have an evolving society — a social and an economic (as well as an environmental) history that changes over time, while our biological essence remains largely unchanged.  

That produces a paradox: we are part of nature and at the same time differentiated within it. 

Well before Marx, thinkers had pondered that relationship. What Marx added was the observation that the relationship is a dialectical one, comprising sets of complex, dynamic interactions which change over time. 

In his 6^th Thesis on Feuerbach Marx insisted that the “human essence” (elsewhere he calls it our “species essence”) is neither an abstraction nor something fixed in our biology but rather “the ensemble of the social relations” which are intimately related to our history and which change.  

Central to that history is the changing way in which humans depend on — and exploit — the natural world through work, effort, or “labour.”

In Capital Marx argues that “Labour is, in the first place, a process in which both humans and nature participate, and in which humans of their own accord start, regulate, and control the material re-actions between themselves and Nature. […] By thus acting on the external world and changing it, we at the same time change our own nature. […] A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells.  But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is that architects raise their structures in their imaginations before they erect them in reality.”  

Later (and following Darwin’s publication of The Descent of Man in 1871) Engels developed this theme in an evolutionary context in his essay The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Human. 

Incidentally and in case you ask, it was written in German with the title Anteil der Arbeit an der Menschwerdung des Affen. 

Mensch means “human,” not “man” and Menschwerdung translates as “becoming human.”  

The title you’ll see in most English texts is an outdated mistranslation. 

Written in 1876 and never finished, it was published in 1925 (some 30 years after his death) as part of a collection of his scientific writings as Dialectics of Nature. 

Engels argued that human brains are not fundamentally different from the brains of other mammals, but that particular features of primates (such as the opposable thumb and forefinger, essential in the making of tools) facilitated the relatively rapid intellectual, social — and biological — development of our species. 

Human nature is not fixed; it has changed throughout history and will continue to do so. 

As Marx declared: “The whole of history is nothing but the progressive transformation of human nature. By acting on the world and changing it, humans change their own nature.”  

We know that humans — individually and collectively — are capable of appalling acts of greed, selfishness, cruelty and depravity. 

We also know that humans are capable of inspiring acts of generosity, kindness, caring and self-sacrifice. 

If that were in doubt then the commitment of “key workers” during the Covid-19 pandemic and continuing, many of them low paid, on precarious contracts or phonily “self-employed,” should convince us.

There is enormous individual variation.  And there are also great differences between cultures. 

“Human nature” varies over time and place. The whole of human history — from the earliest hunter-gatherers through slavery and feudalism to modern capitalism — has involved the progressive transformation of human nature. 

The process is a dialectical one, though one ignored by apologists for the status quo who continually assert (against all scientific evidence as well as the common sense of everyday experience) that humans are innately and essentially competitive, acquisitive and self-seeking.  

Ever since the invention of agriculture, people’s natures, like their lives, have been shaped, warped and exploited by their existence in class-divided societies. 

Despite this distortion of people’s attitudes, thoughts and behaviour, humans have at the same time always displayed an enormous capacity for reason, compassion, co-operation, innovation, courage, selflessness, commitment to justice and equality. 

This fact alone should caution against the assumption of some innate, universal “human nature” — equally against those who argue that humans are innately “good” or “bad.”  

So: next time someone tells you “it’s human nature” you could respond with William Morris’s question: “The human nature of paupers, of slaves, of slave-holders, or the human nature of wealthy freemen? Which?” 

And please go on to reply that there’s no such thing as “human nature” except in the most obvious sense of our existence as biological beings. 

All of us, individually and collectively, can begin to understand our place in history and society, to challenge the constraints which prevent us from realising our potential and, in the process, change our own “human nature.”  

The Marx Memorial Library’s rich programme of events, lectures and courses continues on Thursday February 9, with a panel discussion on the current energy crisis, its impact on the industry, workers and the economy and possible ways forward. 

Details can be found at www.marx-memorial-library.org.uk together with downloadable copies of earlier Full Marx Q&A (this is number 91). A list of Q&A with clickable links to pdfs and original text can be accessed at tinyurl.com/FullMarxList.