dagwolf:

dagwolf:

When you hear your friends say, “people are inherently selfish,” remind them that statement is ideological and is not representative of any characteristic of people. Tell them ‘People are inherently selfish’ is a generalization that educates us how to talk about humanity so we will excuse all of the abhorrent aspects of capitalist culture. 

Not many have time to read the history and philosophy relating to this issue, but it doesn’t matter because the statement isn’t philosophical; it’s political. ‘People are inherently selfish’ results after applying one of several principles about how people should behave in the market as consumers, employers, employees, and owners. The principle, in this case, is People should behave in their own self interest. Clearly, an answer to what we should do is not an answer about how people want to behave. Don’t confuse capitalist ethics for an objective statement describing human being. 

Moreover, to insist that people are inherently selfish is to promote a problematic representation of community. Community becomes a necessary hindrance to the self-interested pursuits of individuals and cooperation is relegated to transactions between consumers and producers, employees and employers. Communities become spaces occupied by individuals who voluntarily submit to a social order for themselves and, according to the US version of this order, can decide to leave at any time as well as can assume a privilege to benefit from the products of social living without having to work to produce the benefits. (See, Right to Work) Two problems emerge.

1. We know we have good reasons to be selfish at times and the generalization about self-interest conveniently ignores those reasons. People are inherently selfish is another way to say all people are already selfish. We are composed as always already selfish. This causes problems. When poor people struggle together to take control of local resources, for example, they are easily blamed for breaking the rules rather than acting in their own self interests. Henry Ford is spoken about as the first person to institute the 8-hour work day to great success. What an innovation, right? Except, workers struggled in commune for the 8-hour work day for a long time. It was not an innovation the result of individual genius; it was the result of community struggle. This theory of self-interest only works if and when we treat people primarily as individuals. Anti-socialism in capitalism is a tool to keep working and poor people apart, as individuals at work or home, and out of the streets, where they might choose to cooperate to achieve greater benefit for all. Capitalist culture is good at breaking up communities. The selfish discourse destroys communal struggle because such struggle is never legitimate.
   
2. People are inherently selfish insists we ignore social hierarchy that rewards unearned ambition. To be successfully selfish is to reach an upper class social status, to be able to afford expensive durable goods, to become a boss and owner. Inheritance and other forms of unearned ambition are viewed as rights. To benefit from fortunate circumstances and privilege are the fruits of proper self-centered behavior. To join in class struggle, then, or to insist we examine and make reparations for white supremacy, or to seek to destabilize patriarchal institutions, or to work against oligarchy, monarchy, and plutocracy is to transgress against not only the free market but a social contract that has been organized to permit individuals access to nature’s destiny for “human being”. To struggle against this social order is to be an unsuccessful individual, to be a bad subject. Check out Kant addressing nature’s plan for mankind. See what Hayek and von Mises did with this idea. (It’s important to insist we use “human” and “man” here because this is a patriarchal representation of selfishness in capitalist culture and society. The idea was developed by white men for white men. Don’t forget that.)