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THE DOORS OF WISDOM

CONTEMPORARY EAST EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY

Mihailo Markovic:

Human Nature and Social Development

The fundamental assumption of all revolutionary thought is that it is possible to build up a genuine community of free individuals who have equal opportunities for development, creative work and satisfaction of their basic material and spiritual needs. The traditional Utopian way of justifying it was its derivation from an  overly optimistic conception of human nature.

Partly directly, partly mediated by German classical philosophy, the optimistic spirit of the Enlightenment found its place in the thought of Marx. It is true, Marx rejected the then contemporary concept of human nature as abstract and ahistorical. One of the implications of his dialectical approach might have been the discovery of internal, contradictory features in the Gattungswesen of men : good and evil, sociability and class egoism, rationality and powerful irrational drives, creativity and destructivity, etc. Marx’s very description of early capitalism implicitly suggests the idea that something must have been basically wrong with man if he was able to build up such kinds of social relations. His description of early communism is surprisingly realistic : “Crude communism is the culmination of universal envy and leveling down.... Universal envy setting itself up as a power is only a camouflaged form of cupidity which re-establishes itself and satisfies itself in a different way”. And still, in spite of the fact that both his philosophical method and his empirical knowledge pushed him toward a recognition of the dark side in human nature, Marxism stood ambiguously, with one pole in the Enlightenment, with the other in the 20th Century, and the dilemma which he had faced remained unsolved. The dilemma could be formulated in the following way : If the human essence really is “the totality of social relationships”, then, this is a concrete and historical conception embracing all basic contradictions of its time. However, in this case, the question arises : Is there a human nature in general or is it relative to a specific historical epoch? If it does not make sense to speak about human nature in a general sense, with respect to the whole history of mankind, then the concept becomes not only relativistic but also purely descriptive; it is value-neutral and inadequate as an anthropological basis for an activistic and a critical social thought and praxis. A historically given totality of social relationships can be critically assessed and transcended only when confronted with a vision of possible, more human social relationships, which presupposes a general value-concept of human nature.

But, on the other hand, if a general and honorific concept of human nature is assumed as the fundamental criterion of all critical assessment and ultimate goal of human praxis, then there is a serious danger of a naive, romantic and Utopian idealization of man.

There is no doubt that for Marx a general idea of human nature was not only possible but necessary. He draws a distinction between “constant drives which exist under all conditions and which can be changed only in the form and direction they take”, and the relative drives and appetites which “owe their origin to a definite type of social organization”. Then, arguing against Bentham in Capital, Marx said, he who “would criticize all human acts, movements, relations, etc. by the principle of utility must first deal with human nature in general, and then with human nature as modified in each historical epoch”.

When we study carefully Marx’s early anthropological writings, we must come to the conclusion that evil is excluded from his concepts of the human essence and human nature and referred to an historically transient phase of alienation. While there still exists private property, exploitation, wolfish relations among men, irrationality, selfishness, greediness, envy, aggressiveness, etc., man is alienated from his essence. These negative features of empirical man - such as they have existed so far in history - are not part of human nature; as long as they characterize human relations, man is not yet truly human. However, “communism is the positive abolition of private property, of human self-alienation, and thus the real appropriation of human nature through and for man. It is, therefore, the return of man himself as a social, i.e. really human being, a complete and conscious return which assimilates all the wealth of previous development”.

Although Marx (contrary to the often repeated objections of his critics) did not consider communism the ultimate goal of history but only “the necessary form and the dynamic principle of the immediate future”, he did say that communism was the “definitive resolution of the antagonism between man and nature and between man and man”.

The experiences of 20th century man no longer give him reason to believe that evil in man exists only in the sphere of “facticity”, and only in the time which preceded genuine humane history.

Our century will enter history not only as an age of technological rationality, efficiency, and of considerable liberation, but also as an age of an incredible eruption of human irrationality and bestiality. The scope and character of bloodshed and mass madness in the two World Wars, because of racism, during Stalin’s purges, yesterday in Korea, the Congo and Algeria, nowadays in Vietnam, can no longer be explained by the romantic, dualistic picture of a latent positive essence and a transient bad appearance. Evil must lie very deep. Obviously, it is also a latent pattern of human behavior, which is the product of the whole previous history of the human race, always ready to unroll as soon as favorable conditions arise. It will certainly be transmitted to many future generations and will need a very long period of time to vanish in its present forms.

What further complicates the picture is a variety of new unexpected forms of evil. Life in abundance and comfort has removed much suffering, illness, fear, primitive forms of struggle, and oppression; but it has created a whole new pathology. The most developed societies have the highest percentage of suicide, mental illness, rape, juvenile delinquency, drug addiction, and alcoholism.

Industry and civilization have made man more rational, powerful and efficient in some important spheres of human life, but at the same time they have reduced warmth, sincerity, solidarity, and spontaneity in human relations. Emotional hunger in material affluence, desperate loneliness amidst the crowd, boredom in spite of a huge variety of entertainment for sale, utter powerlessness amidst gadgets which multiply our senses and extend our hands : that is the situation to which modern civilized man often reacts by developing strongly aggres­sive and destructive habits.

Another surprising and indeed alarming 20th century experience is an obvious deterioration of motives and a sharp moral decay within the leadership of many victorious revolutionary movements. For most ordinary participants of those movements the phenomenon was so astounding that they never grasped what happened. By now the sociological dimension of this process is clear: it is the transformation of the revolutionary avant-garde into a privileged bureaucratic elite, and it takes place whenever the society as a whole is not sufficiently developed and integrated. The anthropological dimension, though, remains obscure if only positive features have been projected into the notion of human essence. That great revolutionaries, makers of history, could have been tragically defeated due to a general immaturity of historical conditions sounds plausible. That so many of them were able to become great demagogues and tyrants seems incompatible with the whole traditional Utopian anthropology.

The alternative offered is negative, pessimistic Utopian thought : evil is a permanent, constitutive feature of human life. There is constantly in man : anxiety, fear, hatred, envy, egoism, feelings of guilt, lust for self-affirmation and power. All modern culture: psychoanalysis, social anthropology, philosophy of existence, surrealism, expressionism and other trends of modern literature and of the arts have strongly emphasized this darker side of human nature. Thus a strong anti-Enlightenment and antirationalist attitude has emerged and prevailed in many countries, especially in both immediate post-war periods. That is why, nowadays, any projection of a happier and better future society must answer the questions. Is it still possible to believe in man, is he not basically irrational and sick and lost to unknown, uncontrollable, evil forces in himself, which, like Furies, destroy every good intention, every noble project?

The only answer which can be given by a modern dialectical thinker is : stop considering man as a thing. He is neither good nor bad. It is not true that there is a logos of historical process which will inevitably make empirical man increasingly similar to an ideal harmonic, all-round entity. It is also not true that man be confronted by such a chaotic world, outside and within himself, that all his conscious striving to change, to create his world and himself anew, were a labor of Sisyphus.

Such views are false because all known social laws hold only under definite conditions and with many deviations in individual cases. While these conditions last and while the individual is atomized and isolated, he has no power to change the laws. However, associated individuals can, within the limits of their historical situation, change the conditions and create a new situation in which new laws will hold. In spite of considerable uncertainty and all possible surprise for man whenever such a radical change takes place, at least some implications of the conscious collective engagement might be predicted, as both historical process and human nature have a definite structure, no matter how many-valued, contradictory, and open for further change. That is why the second extreme conception is also not acceptable. Human freedom cannot be construed (à la Sartre) as a total lack of any fixed content in man, as a lack of being something, therefore a burden and a yoke. The world is not condemned to stay eternally absurd as Camus believed. Man is net a complete stranger in his world, and he differs from Sisyphus in so far as he is able to change both the world and his own nature. At least some stones remain at the brow of the hill. Furthermore, in some historical moments large masses of people act in a way which leads to considerable modifications in human nature.

Change is possible because human nature is nothing else than a very complex and dynamic whole full of tensions and conflicts among opposite features and interests.

There is, first, a discrepancy and an interaction between interests, drives and motives belonging to different levels of socializations individual, group, generation, nation, class, historical epoch, mankind as a whole. Thus, great personalities by their character, their exceptional influence on the behavior of their class, nation, generation and sometimes of the whole epoch, contribute to the constitution of human nature as a concrete universal. Vice-versa, one of the fundamental functions of culture is to make individuals interiorize and appropriate universal human values in a particular local, regional, national, class form.

Second, there are in man internal contradictions between positive and negative, good and evil, rational and irrational, desire for freedom and reluctance to assume responsibility, creative and destructive, social and egoistic, peaceful and aggressive. Both are human, and it is possible for these conflicting features to survive indefinitely. But it is also possible that man will act during a prolonged period of time in such a way that one pole would prevail over the other. We have a chance to choose, within certain limits, what kind of man we are going to be. While practically bringing to life one of the possible futures, we at the same time consciously or involuntarily mould our own nature by fixing some of our traits, by modifying others, by creating some entirely new attitudes, needs, drives, aspirations, values.

An historical fact which is often overlooked is that some values which have been very important in the recent past lose their sense and evoke satiety and revolt among the new generation. In such a moment a sudden mutation in human behavior can be observed. This is especially the case with those values which had originated in powerlessness and all kinds of privation, and which have influenced human behavior for such a long time that many theoreticians took them for lasting characteristics of human nature. Thus for example;

(1) Material scarcity has brought about a hunger for goods, a lust for unlimited private property. This intemperate hunger, this typical mentality of a homo consumens developed especially when, for the first time in history, in industrial society, conditions were created for mass satisfaction of material needs. However, it loses a good part of its meaning in the conditions of abundance in a post-industrial society. On the scale of values some other things become more important—and one can already observe this tendency in advanced industrial countries where people increasingly give preference to travelling and education over food and clothing,

(2) A situation of powerlessness and insecurity against alienated political power gave rise to a lust for power and obvious overestimates of political authority. This kind of obsession especially developed on a mass scale in the most civilized countries in our century, due to the introduction of various forms of semi-democracy, i.e. such a type of society in which political power is still alienated and established in a strict hierarchical order, but at the same time open to a much larger circle of citizens. On the other hand, the rise of the will to power is caused by the destruction of other values : it is a substitute for a will to spiritual and creative power, it is an infallible symptom of nihilism and decay. However, it loses any sense to the extent to which the basic political functions would be deprofessionalized and to a considerable degree decentralized, to the extent to which every individual would have a real possibility of participating in the processes of management.

(3) In a society in which a person is condemned to a routine technical activity—which was not freely chosen by him, and does not offer opportunity for the realization of his potential abilities, the motive of success naturally becomes the primum mobile of all human activity, whereas pragmatism takes the ground as the only relevant philosophy. Nevertheless, one can already envisage conditions under which basic changes in human motivation might take place. If an individual could have the real possibility to choose his place in the social division of labor according to his abilities, talents, and aspirations, if in general, professional activity could be reduced to a minimum, and to a function of secondary importance with respect to freely chosen activities in his leisure time; the motive of success would lose its dominant position. Success would no longer be regarded as supreme and worthy of any sacrifice, but only as a natural consequence of something much more important. This more important and indeed essential thing is the very act of creation (no matter whether in science, art, politics, or personal relations), the act of objectification of our being according to “the laws of beauty”, the satisfaction of the needs of another man, putting together a genuine community with the other man through the results of our action.

In general, scarcity, weakness, lack of freedom, social and national insecurity, a feeling of inferiority, emptiness and poverty, to which the vast majority of people are condemned, give rise to such mechanisms of defense and compensation as national and class hatred; egoism, escape from responsibility, aggressive and destructive behavior, etc. Many present-day forms of evil really could be over­come in a society which would secure for each individual satisfaction of his basic vital needs, liberation from compulsory routine work, immediate participation in decision-making, a relatively free access to the stores of information, prolonged education, the possibility to appropriate genuine cultural values, the protection of fundamental human rights.

However, we are not yet able to predict today which new problems, tensions, and conflicts, which new forms of evil, will be brought about by the so-called post-industrial society. For this reason, we should be critical towards any naive technicist optimism which expects all human problems to be solved in the conditions of material abundance.

A considerable improvement in the living conditions of individuals does not automatically entail the creation of a genuine human community in which there is solidarity, and without which a radical emancipation of man is not possible; because it is possible to overcome poverty and still retain exploitation, to replace compulsory work with senseless and equally degrading amusement, to allow participation in insignificant issues within an essentially bureaucratic system, to let the citizens be virtually flooded by carefully selected and interpreted half-truths, to use prolonged education for a prolonged programming of human brains, to open all doors to the old culture and at the same time to put severe limits to the creation of the new one, to reduce morality to law to protect certain rights without being able to create a universally human sense of duty and mutual solidarity

The key problem which mankind will have to face for another long period of time is how to avoid that ruling over things does not, time and again, in every new social model, revert to ruling over people.

This problem is of fundamental importance for any radical vision of the future. The existence of alienated concentrated economic and political power in the hands of any ruling elite (warriors, private owners of the means of production, managers, professional politicians, or even scientists and philosophers) impedes any radical change in the sphere of human relationships. The division of people into historical subjects and objects would entail a hypertrophy of the apparatus of power, a conservation of the ideological way of thinking, a control over the mass media of communication, a limitation of political and spiritual freedom. Consequently, a permanent concentration of power in the hands of any particular social group would be an essentially limiting factor of the entire further development.

Fortunately, scientific and technological progress with all its far-reaching consequences in the economic, social, and cultural plane opens up possibilities for a radical supersession of all those institutions which in past history have served to rule over people (such as the state, political parties, army, political police, security service, etc.).

(a) These institutions are necessary to hold together, to protect, regulate, and direct society, only while it is dismembered and disintegrated, which is the case with all backward and even semi-industrial societies. While there is a multitude of clashing particular interests of various enterprises and economic branches, various regions and nationalities, a particular force is needed which will mediate, arbitrate and direct in the name of the general interest, although the general interest has not yet been constituted. However, one of the most important consequences of the present scientific and technological revolution is the dissolution of all artificial barriers and the integration of small , relatively autonomous economic systems into big ones.

(b) Until recently the huge system required huge bureaucratic apparatuses. However, a profound change is taking place while we are entering a new phase of the technological revolution—the era of cybernetics. All routine administrative operations including the analysis of information and the search for optimal solutions within some given programmes will be performed much faster and in a more accurate way by electronic computers: a considerable part of bureaucracy would thus lose any raison d'être.

(c) Of all the various strata of contemporary bureaucracy, the only one which will surely survive are experts who make and test the alternative programmes within the framework of the goals, criteria, and established priorities of accepted general politics. It is essential that the only remaining professional politicians—highly skilled administrators and executives—be strictly subordinated to the elected political bodies. In their hands still remains a con­siderably influential power. In contrast to other citizens they have free access to all information. They have more time than others to study data and to try to establish certain general trends. By mere selection and interpretation of data, by the choice of certain possibilities and elimination of others in the process of the prepara­tion of alternative solutions, finally, by a biased presentation of the results of accepted programmes, professional politicians will retain a considerable capacity to induce a desired course of action. In order to check this capacity and keep it within certain limits, several possibilities are open.

First, the subordination of professional politicians to the corresponding assemblies, and councils of self-government must be as complete as to allow full responsibility and immediate replacement of any official.

Second, professional political experts will have different roles and to a certain extent different interests. They should not be allowed to form a political block nor to control any kind of political organization. Their function as experts will be best performed if they eliminate any personal or group loyalties and any ideological considerations, and if they would be obliged to follow the principle of technological rationality, i.e., to try to find the most adequate means for the goals laid down by their elected representatives.

Third, their entire work should be critically examined by independent political scientists. Future society must pay very serious attention to the scientific study both of politics in general and of actual political practice. Contrary to the present day “politicology”, which is either apologetic or turned toward remote events, future society will need a political theory which will try to discover limitations in actual practice and which will not only study phenomena a posteriori, but will also make projections and prepare solutions parallel to the work of the experts in the state apparatus.

(d) The most important and indeed revolutionary change in the political organization of the future society should be concerned with the determination of general policies, with the definition of general goals, and the criteria of evaluation of possible alternative political programmes. It is not only the case that these key political functions must be radically democratized : the very idea of politics implicit in them will be fundamentally altered. According to Weber politics is (1) the set of efforts undertaken in order to participate in ruling or in order to influence the distribution of power either among states or among different groups within one state, (2) this activity is basically the activity of the state, and (3) the state is “a relationship of domination of man over other men, based on the means of legitimate violence”. Politics in this sense, as compared with true praxis, was characterized by Marx as the sphere of alienation. Political activity could then become praxis under the following conditions; (1) Political praxis is the domination of man over things. The things, however, in the human world are the products of objectified human work. Therefore, political praxis is essentially a control and a rational direction of the social forces which, in fact, are les forces propres of the social man.

(2) The criterion of the evolution of various alternatives in this process is the satisfaction of authentic human needs in all their richness of specific manifestations in given historical conditions.

(3) The goal of political praxis is not the domination of one social group over the rest of society; therefore, this is an activity which has a universal character and concerns each human individual.

(4) Political praxis is not isolated from other modes of praxis. Contrary to alienated political activity, it is based on a philosophical vision of human nature and history, it need not violate moral norms, its choices presuppose a scientific knowledge of all real possibilities in the historical situation.

(5) Such an activity without subjugation, tutelage, and fear is extremely attractive. By participating in such an activity, the individual develops an important dimension of his social being and gets hold of ample space in which he can express many of his potential capacities and possibly affirm himself as a gifted, strong, and creative personality.

This conception of political praxis is far from being only a piece of pure imagination and of philosophical poetry. All those who have participated in a really revolutionary movement have experienced what politics could be, for at least a limited period of time, when it is not a monopoly of a privileged elite. The question arises, however? Is not every such attempt at the democratization and humanization of politics limited in time and eventually doomed to failure? Is it not possible only in the period of revolutionary transformation and destruction of the old power? Does not time and again a moment come when the principle of freedom has to be replaced by the principle of order, when a new social organization begins to function, when the revolutionary avant-garde becomes a now bureaucracy overnight? Is there not always the need for some kind of elite in a complex modern society?

The decisive, now historical fact relevant to this question is that the considerable reduction of compulsory work and production, which will take place on a mass scale in an advanced future society, will liberate enormous human energies and talents for political life. The general education and culture, including political knowledge of these potential political “amateurs” need not be inferior to that of the “professionals”. By participating in local communal life and in various voluntary organizations many of them have acquired a satisfactory experience in public relations and the art of management. It should also not be overlooked that due to the penetration of modern mass media of communication into most of its corners and secrets, politics has been demystified to a large extent, and many of its institutions and personalities are losing the magic charm they had in the past. Thus the old-time distance in competence between the leaders of political organizations and their rank and file, and, in general, between a political elite and the large masses of people is melting away. For the first time in history it becomes clear that in the social division of labor there is no need for a special profession of people who decide and rule in the name of others. Bureaucracy as an independent, alienated political subject becomes redundant.

The socialist movement until this moment did not succeed in developing a consistent and concrete theory about the transcendence of bureaucracy and about the political structure of the new society. This is the consequence of a really paradoxical development during the last two decades.

First, a series of revolutions took place in backward East European and Asian countries guided by a theory of democratic socialism, such revolutions being theoretically constructed in the conditions of relatively advanced Western capitalism. Marx would never call “socialism” an essentially bureaucratic society. He knew that in the initial phase of industrialization really communal social control over productive forces is not yet possible. That is why in his Grundrisse der Kritik des Politischen Oekonomie he stated explicitly that such a possibility will be created in an advanced society in which “the relations of production will become universal, no matter how reified”, in which man will no longer be directly governed by people, but by “abstract reified social forces”. Only then will the freely associated producers be able to put the whole process of social life under their conscious, planned control. But this requires such a material basis which is the product of a long and painful history of development”.

It is pointless to argue now to what extent Lenin and the Bolshevik Party were aware of the essential difference in the conditions in their country (1917-1922) and the conditions under which Marx’s theory of self-government was applicable. The fact is that Lenin and his collaborators did not believe that socialist revolution in Russia would be successful without a revolution in the whole of Europe. The institution of Soviets, introduced already during the first Russian revolution in 1905, was a specific form of self-government. Unfortunately, by the end of the Civil War, there were no longer Soviets, no longer a strong, organized working class. In order to survive, in order to defeat the external enemy, counter-revolutionary forces, white terrorism, hunger, and to overcome total economic collapse, the Bolshevik Party had no other alternative but either to surrender or to proceed by military and other bureaucratic methods. While this dilemma was an historical necessity, nothing of the sort can be said about Stalin’s crimes or about the purely ideological identification of this new type of post-capitalist bureaucratic society with socialism.

It follows then, that the revolutionary movement in Russia, China, and other underdeveloped countries did not develop a theory about the supersession of bureaucracy by the system of self-government, because historical conditions for such a radical change of the political structure did not yet exist.

Paradoxically enough, such a theory has not yet been developed by the “New Left” in much more favorable conditions. Due to the high level of material development, economic integration, education, and also to the considerable democratic achievements in the past, at least in some Western countries, bureaucratization in the post-capitalist development is by no means the only way. Instead of looking for alternative forms of political organization based on the principle of self-government, a widespread attitude in the Student Movement and among the New Left is distrust toward any kind of political institutions. This kind of attitude is easy to understand as a violent reaction to the process of obvious degeneration of the revolutionary state in the victorious revolutions in the East. It involves, however, a mistaken generalization from experiences which have a specifically regional character. A dialectical denial of the state is much less, and at the same time much more, than a contestation totale; much less, because some of th functions and institutions of the state will have to survive and to be incorporated into the new political structure. Further, this is true because a total negation of the establishment is practically no negation at all. A real negation of the state is the abolition of its essential internal limit; monopoly of power in the hands of a particular social group, use of apparently legitimate violence in order to protect and promote the interests of this privileged elite. This abolition does not lead to anarchy and lack of any organized authority, but to the alternative of a really democratic system of management, without any external alienated power.

It is of essential importance to undertake every measure to preclude alienation of that limited power which is concentrated in the hands of central bodies of self-government. This power must be temporary (implying a necessary rotation of individuals in possession of political authority); it must not bring with it any permanent place in the hierarchy of power, and by no means any material privileges, any salary exceeding incomes of highly qualified and creative workers and scientists.

In order to hinder possible deformation of its political institutions, society in advance should undertake certain measures to protect itself from demagogy, lust for power, and potential “charismatic” leaders. Surely, the best protection is appropriate political education, development of a critical spirit, building up free and independent public opinion. This will be the most efficient way of promptly identifying these retrogressive political tendencies and securing mass resistance to them. The traditional, collective psychological attitude to glorify, to adore, to be always ready for a new myth and a new cult of personality should be replaced by an attitude of criticism and resistance to any potential Machtmensch, to any authoritarian pattern of behavior. In a future society this will be much easier to achieve than nowadays, not only due to new accumulated historical experience and greatly improved education, but also due to a new feeling of legal and economic security, which is, for mast individuals, the indispensable psychological condition of a critical public participation.

Ruling people like things is the fundamental social evil produced by previous history. It is doubly evil because it degrades both the one who rules and the one who is being ruled.

This future will become practical human reality, only if some essential preliminary steps toward it are made at once, now.

UNIVERSITY OF BELGRADE, YUGOSLAVIA