Forum Post: Noam Chomsky & Gar Alperovitz on Capitalism and Workers' Self Management
Posted 12 years ago on March 17, 2012, 3:53 p.m. EST by struggleforfreedom80
(6584)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
Good stuff
nice
Glad you liked them :)
I always love talking anarchism, but I do think we should use the work of scientists like Dawkins or Trivers carefully. Theories like reciprocal altruism and even Dawkins' "selfish gene" ... can be used to support the idea that people act in their own self-interest. For instance, the theory of reciprocal altruism should be understood along with the theory of kin selection (e.g. people will help those who share their genes much more readily than they're willing to help those who do not). All of these theories are consistent with one another, but it's just as easy to use these ideas to support a theory based on self interest as it is to support a theory based on egalitarianism.
Moreover, there's other aspects of human nature to consider. Fight or flight (a biochemical response to acute distress), tribalism, irrational pattern seeking, etc., all have evolutionary roots.
Cooperation is obviously an important aspect of our evolutionary history, but when people do not view cooperation as advantageous, they tend to fight (implying self-interest is an important predictor of human behavior).