Why our mental health matters

For me who has had a number of down times and felt very low at points due to various factors I do know how important it is to look out for our mental health. Often one of the most misunderstood forms of our health our mental well being is often over looked for someone just being a bit down or just needs to cheer up. As a society we simply do not understand mental health and this is no more so than for us living under the constant pressures and worries of life under capitalism. For me and many others mental health is an anti capitalist issue which must be firstly understood and secondly tackled as best we can on a day to day basis. Our small worries which can turn into bigger more long term problems must be understood and we must always try and reach out to those who are most in need. Not by preaching to them at what they need but offering our solidarity and support in any way we can if necessary. Sometimes just letting others know you are there if they need anyone to talk to can be a great comfort. I know many disabled people like myself who struggle day to day with what life has given them and the society which perpetuates disability and how they find it a constant challenge to “fit in” to a “normal” lifestyle whatever that means. I have had two blocks of councilling myself since loosing my eyesight 10 years ago now with that always be an issue for me which I return to a lot in my thinking other material conditions and daily situations also frustrate me and this can can come out in a multitude of ways. Learning to deal with your frustration and to channel it in to a positive direction for change is what I have tried to do. This is where my politics comes in. For me who has always identified myself with fighting injustice and unfairness I’ve taken a critical look at the society we live in. How society affects us on an emotional level and hew we can go about supporting each other in that transition to changing the world into a better place for all. A brilliant article found on www.libcom.org a few years back detailed a lot of where we are at in the current times the limits to our campaigns and where we could possibly improve in areas. When it comes to mental health and activism. “The ‘anti-capitalist movement’ we have been a part of in the UK (we offer this definition very broadly and with caution!) constantly strives to create its own infrastructure, whether this is motivated by apocalyptic visions of the future or autonomy from capitalist social relations (or both) everyone’s at it. Squats, housing co-ops and social centres. We build our networks to consist of people who can do accounting, plumbing, squat defending and cooking. We like doing things together and creating our own spaces, and we know how to do it. But for the past too many years we’ve arrived in fields around the UK and Europe, put up some tents, made the running water happen, fought the cops and then… invited a group of ‘action medics’ to set up a tent where we’ll later go to them with our splinters. On the one hand we strive for autonomy and on the other we treat some of our individual and social needs as services to be provided by others. The effect of this is not only that we hand over responsibility and control of our physical and mental health to others, but that we fail to engage with health as a political issue. For example, in another time and place, some people are starting a transition town group in their local area. In transition town collectives working groups for all the vital aspects of life are set up. This time we remember that health needs addressing. At our first transition town meeting, we attended the health brainstorm. We listened to people discuss the morally deplorable manner with which the NHS disposes of its waste, and casually (probably under-)estimate the amount of plastic that the NHS uses so irresponsibly, “How can we go about persuading them to return to sterilising metal equipment?” Beside providing another example of our obsession with carbon emissions at the expense of social issues, we again failed to identify health as political. We always seem to forget about health. We talk about authoritarian immigration laws, ID cards infringing on our civil liberties, incarceration of political prisoners (etc. etc.) but a quick look at the health section of Indymedia shows a fine example of the lack of debate there is in our movements around healthcare. There are hardly any posts under the health section of the web page and the ones that are there are mostly concerned with animal rights and incinerators. Why don’t we talk about how capitalism creates mental and physical health problems on both a global and individual level? Or health inequality? Or arbitrary diagnostic criteria that attempt to pathologise the personal burdens we carry from living in such a demanding society? Mental health and anti-capitalism When attempts are made to tackle issues surrounding mental health we seem more than happy to tolerate a conspiratorial understanding of society and power that we deplore elsewhere (psychiatrists controlling the masses etc. etc.). The authors believe it makes more sense to understand mental health discourses and practices as largely economically contingent, rather than as the result of some reactionary ideology peddled by a brain washing elite. Mental health practitioners are bound by the same economic limitations and requirements as everyone else, drugs are always the first port of call because they’re cheap, and, as we all know, medical science and research is dominated by pharmaceutical companies because the research just couldn’t happen without their money (significantly the majority of randomised clinical trials undertaken to evaluate the efficacy of drugs versus other forms of therapy are sponsored by the very same companies who manufacture the drugs). But the problem runs deeper than this, historically the industrial revolution facilitated new attitude to ‘madness’ and health, the transformation of nature through manufacture opened the way for ideas about the transformation of people, through transformative therapies and rehabilitation. We saw a move away from the view that madness was an incurable affliction and a move toward therapies intended to ‘cure’ what were now understood as mental illnesses with the view of rehabilitating people back into cooperative and productive members of society. Capitalism requires us to be productive and thus mental health practices and discourses are oriented towards this necessity. Attempts at reforming mental health services without addressing capitalism inevitably fail. Moves to community care were seen as a great success for the democratic mental health movement in Italy where psychiatric institutions were abolished and all psychiatric and mental health services were outsourced into the community. The eighties and nineties saw a similar move in the UK. Victorian asylums were closed and psychiatric and psychological services were moved into the community. Whereas there is no doubt that psychiatric services are now ‘better’ than they were in the sixties, the failure to challenge the entirety of the system within which mental health services are situated led to what has been described as the mere outsourcing of psychiatric services into peoples homes. The asylums may have gone but the institution hadn’t and couldn’t change. On a more grass roots level we also limit our potential for change when we revert to DIY life-stylism rather than radically critiquing the health service and the economic system and social processes that produce it. Anarcha-feminists are generally better at politicising health, it was feminists who focused the idea of autonomous health by starting to check their own breasts for lumps. But they also fall into a trap of lifestylism often talking about how to deal with ’so called’ PMT or how to make your own sanitary towels (we hope never to sit through one of these again) rather than how political and economic forces negatively affect people’s everyday experience of healthcare. Why do we never have a radical position on why most health resources are used treating the results of excessive food, alcohol and drug consumption? It’s not enough to encourage healthy, green, organic and active lifestyles or tell people to stop watching telly and get an allotment. In practice this is what doctors try to do everyday in order to lower peoples’ cholesterol and blood pressure, but after years of experience, they know they will always revert to drugs. Similarly it’s one thing to tell someone with high blood pressure to do a bit more exercise and quite another to tell someone suicidal who probably has inadequate housing and may be unemployed to radically change their lifestyle. That just doesn’t cut it for the majority of people. Instead let’s talk about society and what makes it that way. Consumer and individual choices alone do not carry the antagonistic element that would have the potential to realise change in our society. Whilst this reduction of social problems to the individual diverts attention it also places undue pressure on people who already live in a highly pressurised and externally managed environment. Many attempts at linking Marxist theory and mental health have identified alienation as having psychological or individual origins, but alienation originates from social organisation. Capitalism and the State require us to be active and productive citizens, to embrace our ‘rights’ and responsibilities and to participate equally in liberal democracy. We are dispossessed by society and labelled mad or unfit not then, because we are seen as being ‘possessed’ (as was once the case), but because we are no longer useful. Our focus therefore has to be on this form of social organisation that requires us to participate in limited and pre-determined ways. This leads us to one other concern, and that is the anti-medical, anti-corporate or anti-progressive streak that dominates some areas of mental health activism. A progressive socially critical position recognises that capitalism manifests in the ways we relate to each other in our everyday activities and not just in the big corporate monster or your local super-market. Rather than throwing the baby out with the bath water we feel that certain technological and social advances, whether that’s drug treatments, medical science or professionalised health services, should be embraced as the product of human creativity and innovation with a valuable and necessary role in society rather than purely as the product of an exploitative capitalist economy. For example rather than shouting down anti-depressants, we should talk about why capitalist economics make antidepressants the best and most ‘effective’ treatment for every person experiencing depression? Instead of criticising health and social care workers, we should recognise the time pressures on their work, the necessary corporate funding that keeps training courses, institutions and research centres afloat and the knock on effect this has on how health services are delivered. Finally, we feel it’s worth saying here that we are not denying the truly debilitating impact of some emotional and psychological experiences on people’s lives. By saying that mental health has a social and economic dimension we do not intend to belittle the experience of the individual, rather we are asking that our understanding of and activism on health issues has an antagonistic element and a social orientation. Continuing the conversation Like we said earlier we’re not pushing for another single issue campaign, rather we’re asking that when we are confronted with issues regarding mental and physical health we see them as political and as part of our struggle as anti-capitalists. Alternative approaches to a range of psychological ‘illnesses’ and experiences exist all over the country, the Hearing Voices Network works with people on an individual and collective level toward finding new ways of understanding and living with experiences of voice hearing. Mad pride and ‘bed pushes’ through city centres are examples of attempts to highlight the injustices experienced in the mental health system and to offer a voice for the ‘dispossessed’ to shout back. But rather than focusing too much on solutions and protest we want to continue exploring how ‘madness’ and health are embedded in social and political processes. We believe that the movement towards a truly democratic ‘mental health’ must be an anti-capitalist movement.” With thanks and extracts from the full version you can read over at https://libcom.org/library/possessed-or-dispossessed-jane-stratton-lauren-wroe Jane Stratton is involved in the No Borders network, an action medics collective, and studies Medicine. Lauren Wroe is co-editor of Shift magazine, researches in critical social psychology and is involved in the No Borders network.

The potential for Socialist Students

The socialist party has had various student organisations and even back to our militant days we were always heavily involved in the Labour Party young Socialists. With the success of youth Fight for jobs which is still only a few years old itself Socialist Students is our party’s latest attempt to gain a voice for students on university and college campuses up and down the country. I’m excited about this prospect with Hertfordshire University set to have its new society set up for the new academic year. There are already successful socialist students societies set up and functioning across the country you may wish to check some of them and our website out at http://socialiststudents.org.uk/wp/ the potential for recruits and the spread of socialist ideas is vast in today’s world young people especially are out there newly radicalised looking for answers to why they are having to pay huge fees while the most wealthy in society walk away with golden goodbyes whilst being able to bring the world economy to its knees. We aim to answer your questions and allow you to have a voice on campus and beyond. To join the fight to change society for the 99%. Student’s politics I’ve been told is a messy affair with lots of bitching and infighting within the scene but as Socialist students we are not interested in the sectarian nature of what is thought of as student politics. We’re here to provide a voice, an arena for discussion and to get students organised in what is one of the most difficult times for students ever. With the tripling of tuition fees and the cutting of EMA there is plenty of reasons for students to be angry and want to hit back. We advocate a constructive fight back putting forward an alternative of free education and support for all students whatever background you are from. What We Stand For Education  Abolish tuition fees. Write off student debt.  Restore EMA. Campaign for full living grants to cover the living costs of all students in post-16 education – including those at university.  No to higher and further education funding cuts. Defend every course, job and service.  No to academies and Free Schools.  For exam boards and all other privatised services to be taken back into public ownership – no repeat of this year’s exam mistakes fiasco!  Stop the marketisation and privatisation of universities in Britain. No to the government’s white paper and a two-tier Higher Education system. No university should be allowed to go to the wall!  Lift the cap on places and publicly fund the expansion of high quality higher education.  Build local anti-cuts campaigns and ‘Youth Fight for Education’ groups in every school, college and university, linked on both a regional and a national level.  Support action taken by education workers to defend their conditions and our education –their fight is our fight.  For the transformation of Students’ Unions into fighting organisations, with bottom-up democratic structures.  For a fighting NUS.  For education that is fully funded, publicly owned, democratically run and universally free at all levels – a socialist education system. Work and Welfare  Support the Youth Fight for Jobs campaign.  No to mass youth unemployment- for a decent job for all.  No to the government’s slave labour ‘workfare’ schemes. For decent training opportunities and apprenticeships for young people which pay at least the minimum wage, with a guaranteed job at the end.  No job losses in the public or private sector. When private bosses claim they can’t afford to maintain jobs, we say open the books. Let us see where the money has gone.  For nationalisation of companies threatening closure, under democratic control with compensation given on the basis of proven need.  Fight for a minimum wage of at least £8 an hour as a step towards a living wage.  No cuts to housing or other benefits.  End lower benefit rates for young people – for the right to Job Seekers Allowance at 16.  No to ‘workfare’ and slave labour internships. For decent jobs paid at least a minimum wage of £8 an hour.  Support the National Shop Stewards’ Network anti-cuts campaign which fights all cuts to jobs and services  The immediate re-opening of all youth services that have been closed, including reinstating sacked staff. Rights  Defend the right to protest. No to the victimisation of student protesters. For the right to organise in every school, college and campus.  No to ‘kettling’ and police violence on demonstrations.  No to racism, sexism, homophobia and all other forms of discrimination.  Fight the far-right racist BNP and EDL. Jobs, homes and services- not racism. Build mass campaigns to defend communities.  No platform for fascists in education.  Rape is never the victim’s fault. For a mass campaign against sexism.  No to reactionary attacks on women’s rights.  Defend and extend abortion rights.  No to the three main bosses’ parties. For a new mass workers’ party that fights in the interests of ordinary people. For International Solidarity and Socialism  For solidarity between working class and young people across the world.  Solidarity with the Arab Spring – No to western intervention – it is on behalf of big business and capitalism.  No to war and imperialist intervention. For the Immediate withdrawal of all foreign troops from Afghanistan and Iraq.  End the siege of Gaza.  No to Trident nuclear missile replacement  Support the Sri Lanka Tamil Solidarity campaign – for the right of all people to self-determination.  No to environmental destruction. For a sustainable democratic socialist plan of production that won’t destroy the planet.  No to capitalism. For a socialist world, where the big monopolies are taken into public ownership, the economy is democratically planned and resources are used to meet the needs of all humanity.

Can a planned economy work by producing for peoples needs?

We are often asked as socialists well how would your socialism work? Well for a start it wouldn’t be ours it would be everyone’s everyone would have a true stake in society at long last.
Capitalism has created enormous wealth, science and technique. We have technology today that was unimaginable a generation ago.
The world economy is 17 times the size it was a century ago. Yet we are being told that the most basic public services - a decent public health service, the right to an affordable home - cannot be afforded by capitalism.
The current crisis is not caused by a bloated public sector but by the worst crisis of capitalism in 70 years. This is a crisis of the private not the public sector.
Yet all the major capitalist parties - Tories, Lib Dem and New Labour agree that it should be the working class and public services that pay for it.

It is clear to me and many others that there is the wealth in society to pay for all that we need. It is a lie that there is no money left and something we must and I mean must smash as there is huge amounts of money out there if it wasn’t so concentrated among a select rich few.

Capitalism has always been a system based on the exploitation of the majority, the working class, for the profits of a few at the top.
There was a brief period, from around 1950-73, when capitalism developed rapidly. At least in the more economically developed countries, including Britain, working-class people were able to win a few crumbs from the capitalists' table.
In Britain, a National Health Service and a mass council house building programme made a real improvement in workers' lives.
However, when capitalism went into crisis, it set about restoring its profits by driving down the share of the wealth taken by the working class. Production was moved abroad to countries with cheaper labour, wages were driven down, and spending on public services was cut back.

During the last boom profits reached an all-time record. However, they had difficulty finding profitable fields to invest in.
Investment in science, technique and production remained at an historic low. Why? Because working-class people lacked the means to buy the goods that could potentially be produced.
This is the terrible reality of capitalism. It does not matter that two billion people are without the most basic necessities of life; they are not 'a market' because they lack the money to buy what is produced.
Instead of investing in industry, the capitalist class made its profits in the last boom by gambling on the world's stock markets in a speculative frenzy. To try and increase their markets the working class got its own little share in the credit frenzy: cheap credit cards and mortgages - not crumbs but bubbles from the table.

How does Socialism create and maintain jobs and keep the economy functioning effectively and growing?
The first thing that would happen under socialism is that unemployment would be eliminated overnight. Even in 2000, during a boom period, the UK had 2 million people unemployed. The cost of this is estimated at £5,000 per family per year in terms of lost production and benefit claims. Under socialism everyone would be guaranteed a job by reducing the working week without loss of pay. The reason this doesn’t happen under capitalism (or at least neo-liberal capitalism) is because getting fewer people to do more work is a fantastic way to make profit! However, as Tony Benn said, if full employment can be used to fight Hitler why can’t it be used to feed people? Jobs would be created for the benefit of society as a whole, not for the bank balances of the rich.
As for allowing the economy to grow; even in a bureaucratically deformed workers’ state with no democracy such the USSR and other planned economies they had production levels that were for decades on a par and often better than in the West. This phenomenon would be magnified in a true socialist society with the active engagement of the population and the ‘oxygen’ of workers’ democracy.
Besides, as we’ve all seen recently, capitalism by no means guarantees economic growth indefinitely. What is happening at the present time is precisely what Karl Marx analysed years before, a classic case of over-production. Products such as cars were produced for people to buy but we could no long afford to buy back the things we had produced. And who suffers as a result of this system? Not the capitalists who caused this crisis but the ordinary workers who one day were in a job (so long as it made profit for the bosses) and the next on the scrapheap! This anarchy and unjust ‘employment strategy’ would be consigned to the dustbin of history.
How does it invest in research and development, and find new alternatives for industry, for example switching from dirty fuel such as coal to clean and renewable energy such as wind or hydroelectric power?
How does it create innovation and entrepreneurs, and inspire young people to work hard and achieve?

Under capitalism, the majority of people (i.e. the working class) are coerced to work, we literally have no choice but to otherwise we starve! We are compelled by the logic of capitalism to sell our labour and, as such, capitalism calls the shots, not the people who produce the wealth in society. Under socialism, people would of course be expected to work, but for very different reasons. Instead, workers would be encouraged to work for the benefit of society and not just reasons for of survival. Despite the arguments of conservatives, socialists believe that humanity is basically good but is shaped by the society it lives in. Therefore, I believe that people that believe in a society that works for them, and is, ultimately, run by them will make sure it works. As a socialist society is run by the working class it is in our interests to make sure it works. Every effort will be made to make people’s lives easier and it stands to reason that innovation will still be needed under socialism. A society can never be too efficient.
Again, under capitalism, innovation and entrepreneurship reflect class interests and is therefore only utilised to make profit and not for the overall good of society. The technology exists for everyone to drive around in environmentally-friendly cars but capitalism will not allow this to happen on a mass scale because it will cut into its profits. Production would be based on human need not personal greed.

As always the capitalists will fight back to maintain their profits and their system at the heart of all this.
That is why a crucial step towards solving the economic crisis would be to take the big corporations that dominate Britain's economy into democratic public ownership.
This would allow for production to be planned for need and not for profit. Even some of the representatives of capitalism have inadvertently recognised that this is the only way to solve the crisis.
Alan Greenspan, head of the US federal reserve during the boom years - once treated as a god by capitalism and how reviled as being responsible for the crisis - recently excused his role in the crisis by saying: "Unless there is a societal choice to abandon dynamic markets and leverage for some sort of central planning, I fear that preventing bubbles will in the end turn out to be unfeasible. Assuaging their aftermath seems to be the best we can hope for."
Democratically planned economy
In the coming years, on the basis of their experience of capitalism, millions of workers will draw the same conclusion as Greenspan. 'Central planning' in Britain - in the sense of a democratically planned economy - would mean that building workers, for example, could be put to work building and refurbishing high quality, environmentally friendly affordable social housing for the five million people who want it.
Huge resources could be put into the development of environmentally friendly technologies. The working week could be cut, without loss of pay.
This measure, combined with an expansion of public services, could quickly eliminate unemployment. All of these and much more would be possible on the basis of a democratic socialist plan of production.
Of course, capitalism is an international system, and any alternative could not stop at the shores of Britain. However, if a democratically elected socialist government in any country was to begin to implement the kind of programme outlined here it would act as an enormous inspiration to workers in the rest of the world struggling against capitalism's devastation of their living standards.
The ideas of genuine democratic socialism would spread like wildfire.




With extracts taken from Portsmouth socialist party s excellent blog and the socialist party’s website at www.socialistparty.org.uk

Marx on human nature and peoples ideas on peoples greed

I thought I’d blog about human nature and peoples perceived ideas on the matter. I was having a debate with someone on twitter earlier who was so gloomy about the future and what change we can affect. I naturally disagreed as I am new to revolutionary politics learning all the time and very keen and enthusiastic for socialist politics and Marxist ideas to boot.

MANY PEOPLE think socialism is impossible not because the ruling class is too powerful or the world’s resources are too limited, though many people believe this but because “human nature” will not allow it. They think “people are too lazy,” “too passive,” “too greedy,” “too self-absorbed,” “too violent,” “too ambitious.” They think that people are inherently racist, sexist, and homophobic, that they can’t help but hate people from other countries, cultures, and religions. They think that “people like being told what to do” and “people can’t think for themselves” and “people like to boss other people around.” Nevermind that some of these “inherent” traits are contradictory. Together they work to prevent socialism in the minds of many. And, as if all this weren’t enough, human nature is thought to be not only negative, but permanently fixed: “There will always be good people and evil people” and “You can’t change human nature.”
It is no surprise that people often think this way. Marx once said that the ruling ideas of any age are the ideas of the ruling class. The ruling ideas about human nature under capitalism—that it is static, and for the most part awful—greatly benefit the capitalists. On the one hand, they suggest that, because of traits inherent to human beings like greed, ambition, and a tendency towards violence, capitalism—which rewards greed and requires violence—is not only the best and most efficient economic system ever, but also the most natural. On the other hand, such ideas make it possible to blame the enormous inequality and suffering produced by the system on the “natural” defects of certain individuals. If it is natural for some people to claw their way to the top, it is also natural for others to remain stuck in squalor at the bottom.
Socialists argue something quite different. We say that human nature is flexible and multifaceted, and that the behaviors of human beings are shaped by their social circumstances. We are all capable of greed as well as generosity; which one gets expressed has more to do with the values of a society than with the inborn tendencies of the individual. As Karl Marx put it: “the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of social relations.”1 From a socialist perspective, there is such a thing as human nature, but its most prominent feature is its changeability. What makes us distinctly human is our ability, not only to change as our circumstances change, but to create new and different social relations and then adapt to them. Socialists argue that if humans could create capitalism, humans can create socialism.
There is a lot at stake in this argument. If it is natural for humans to engage in the practices that capitalism supports or requires, then any attempt to change the system is pointless.

Today, when the ruling class controls weapons and oversees business practices that threaten the existence of the planet, promoting a socialist understanding of human nature is not only correct, but urgent.
From the beginning
The tendency to revert to human nature to justify social and economic structures and to explain their failures has been present from the very beginning of United States history. James Madison rationalized the system of checks and balances between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches that, at the time, distinguished the U.S. form of government, on the basis of a negative view of human nature.

The idea that capitalism’s failures should be blamed on the poor also got an early start. Eager to please their ruling-class benefactors, scientists and scholars have always been willing to develop theories and misinterpret or fabricate experimental results to support this notion. In the nineteenth century, eugenicists and “Teutonists” (think of an upper-crust Aryan Nation) fudged test scores and measured heads to produce what was considered scientific backing for the idea that poverty is the result of inherited weaknesses of character or intellect called “social inadequacy.” The resulting conviction that “poverty begets poverty” led to forced sterilization and enforced illiteracy; if the children of illiterate parents cannot be taught to read, the argument went, why waste money on schools?
This “scientific racism,” which was applied to all members of the lower classes regardless of skin color, existed alongside of and in combination with the racism used to rationalize the enslavement of Blacks and the genocide of Native Americans. An excellent example of the way these ideas came together is a statement by Oxford University Professor Edward Freeman, who toured America in 1881, speaking to university and “learned society” audiences. According to Freeman, and to the delight of his “learned” listeners: “the best remedy for whatever is amiss in America would be if every Irishman should kill a Negro and be hanged for it.”


What is human nature?
Although the human race has seen enormous and rapid cultural evolution, human beings’ basic physical needs have remained the same for hundreds of thousands of years: we need air, water, food, shelter, or other protection from the elements, sleep, parenting for the young, and sex to propagate the species.18 These general needs are accompanied by a set of specific abilities: because humans have large brains, walk upright, have hands with opposable thumbs, and vocal chords that allow speech, we are able to use our physicality, our bodies and brains and the five senses they afford us, in ways that other creatures can’t. First and foremost, we work in a distinctively human way and, through social labor, we change our environment and the conditions that determine our “nature.”
Friedrich Engels, writing in 1876, placed labor at the very center of human development: “[Labor] is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labor created man himself.”19 Engels goes on to attribute changes in human anatomy to work in general and working with tools in particular, comparing the bone structure of the human hand to that of other primates and noting “the great gulf between the undeveloped hand of even the most man-like apes and the human hand that has been highly perfected by hundreds of thousands of years of labor.”20
In addition to working with tools, humans have always lived and worked in groups: “The development of labor necessarily helped to bring the members of society closer together by increasing cases of mutual support and joint activity, and by making clear the advantage of this joint activity to each individual.” From cooperative labor arose the need to speak and the development of language: “In short, men in the making arrived at the point where they had something to say to each other. Necessity created the organ; the undeveloped larynx of the ape was slowly but surely transformed.” The development of complex systems of language allowed for human social consciousness: the transmission of culture and history from generation to generation.
Of course it can be argued that animals also work: they hunt, gather, and in some cases store food; they build nests and dens and tend their young. Some cooperate; some communicate, albeit nonverbally; some even use tools. But the work done by animals is mostly instinctive and unchanging. Otters may use stones to crack open sea urchins but they can’t invent a sea urchin cracker. Beavers take down trees to build their dams but they’ll never use a chain saw. Whales may communicate through songs, but they can’t write lyrics or mass produce CDs. Only humans have the ability to record their history and create art. Only humans can conceive of a project, plan out the various steps to completion, and reflect with satisfaction on a job well done. Only humans can invent and construct complex tools that alter the environment and allow for enormous increases in productivity—tools that enable us to make a lot more stuff with a lot less effort.

By acting on nature to produce their subsistence, human beings change themselves. Laboring socially, humans change the material forms of what Marx called their means of production. These engender new social relations, allowing, in the end, for the distinctive variability of human behavior through history, and from one society to the next.
Marx observed that, under capitalism, human productive capacity increased so much that, for the first time in history, it was possible to have enough of everything for everybody. What’s more, the satisfaction of basic needs and the ways in which they were satisfied led to the development of more complicated needs. Crowded living conditions create a need for systems of sanitation. Complex machinery creates a need for higher education. These complications further the development of human tastes and abilities, and could lead, under conditions of socialized, planned production, to the fullest expression of human nature:
Just as the savage must wrestle with Nature to satisfy his needs, to maintain and reproduce his life, so must civilized man, and he must do so in all forms of society and under all possible modes of production. With his development this realm of physical necessity expands as a result of his wants; but, at the same time, the forces of production which satisfy these wants also increase. This realm of natural necessity expands with his development, because his needs do too; but the productive forces to satisfy these expand at the same time. Freedom, in this sphere, can consist only in this, that socialized man, the associated producers, govern the human metabolism with nature in a rational way, bringing it under the collective control instead of being dominated by it as a blind power; accomplishing it with the least expenditure of energy and in conditions most worthy and appropriate for their human nature.
But there was (and is) a problem. Capitalists were not (and are not) “rationally regulating their interchange with Nature.” They compete in an irrational and unplanned manner with an eye towards maximizing profit rather than meeting human need. Promoting “conditions most favorable to, and worthy of, their human nature” does not concern them either. Instead, their interests lie in getting people to work as hard as possible for as little as possible. And so, despite its potential to do so, capitalism does not allow most of humanity to satisfy its basic needs with “the least expenditure of energy.” Instead, it works some people to the bone while others are thrown out of work. Under capitalism, advances in technology like automation create, not leisure, but unemployment for some and overtime hours of mind-numbing repetitive labor for the rest.
Capitalism created the conditions for the fullest expression of human nature, but simultaneously denied them to the vast majority of humanity by directing all the wealth up to the tiny minority at the top of society. Members of the ruling class collect homes and cars and gadgets, attend first-rate universities, travel the world, eat exquisite food and drink exquisite wine, enjoy operas and the fine arts , and develop whatever talents or abilities they have, and often those they do not. Meanwhile, the majority of the working class struggles from day to day to make ends meet, with a few weeks off per year to develop ourselves in areas other than work—if we’re lucky. Capitalism not only stunts further human development, it is also a stupendous failure when it comes to providing for the basic needs of most people. Every day, all over the world, tens of thousands of people starve or die young of curable diseases.
Far from being naturally adapted to capitalism, most humans are battered or broken by it. If it doesn’t straight out kill them, it stunts their physical and mental development; their intellects are neglected, their artistic talents remain undiscovered or unappreciated, and the distinctively human capacity to engage in creative, socially useful work is reduced to a commodity worth only as much as the capitalist can pay and still turn a profit.
Even those who recognize that capitalism thwarts and distorts human nature—and that we now possess the means to eliminate inequality and want—may still wonder whether humans are capable of the kind of truly egalitarian society that socialists envision. Forced to compete with each other for limited opportunities, compelled to work mindlessly at jobs they don’t like, encouraged to view themselves and those around them as commodities, many people might not seem prepared, at any given moment, to plan and create, “in place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms…an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”24 We are swimming (or, more accurately, treading water) in what Marx called “the muck of ages”—racism, sexism, homophobia, competitiveness, conformity, passivity, insecurity—all the ideas capitalists require to divide and enervate the masses and maintain their minority hold on power.
And it is easy to feel, after a few hundred years of capitalism, that things have always been the way they are now and always will be. Luckily for us, this is simply not true. Capitalism is a fairly recent development, and prior to the rise of class society some several thousand years ago, human society was not characterized by classes or inequality or systematic warfare. There are class-free societies on the planet at this very moment, societies that are “egalitarian, cooperative, and on the move.”25 All of the Ju/’hoansi (!Kung) Nharo Basarwa (San or Bushmen) from Ngamiland, Botswana, lived until just recently in societies where egalitarianism—notably along gender lines—was the rule. As some communities shift from nomadism to sedentism, this has started to change—not due to some “resurgence” of human nature, but rather to “the adoption of the economics and attitudes towards gender from non-foraging neighbors [that] facilitates the emergence of gender inequality.… [In addition, some] current development programs designed by Westerners exclude women and contribute to the increase in gender inequality which is emerging in these societies.”


SO to conclude human nature is a big beast and something we cant simply target to being the failings of everything we fail to do. Thinking that things will stay the same forever is a very unmarxist way of thinking and fails to take account of history and the class struggles.

There is nothing about human nature that makes socialism impossible, but there is also nothing that makes it inevitable. According to Marx, people make their own history but not in circumstances of their own choosing.28 If we want socialism—and the possibility of developing human nature to the fullest—we will need to organize and fight for it. This may seem like a pipe dream given the low level of class struggle in the Uk . at this time. But a socialist conception of human nature also allows us to understand how groups of people that for a long time appeared to be hardwired for one set of behaviors—like not fighting back—can transform radically and rapidly in response to social changes.



with extracts used to back up my opinions from http://www.isreview.org/issues/47/wdss-humnature.shtml

Is this the end of occupy London or just the start?

Last night riot police and bailiffs moved in out of the blue although the camp had been expecting them at some point to evict occupy London.

By the time last night had come there left around 40 tents and 100 activists the majority had left before clearance day fearing the end.

I was another one who was first sceptical of what the movement was all about as was not a traditional workers movement I thought it was some petti bourgeois adventure. But it turned out to grow in peoples consciousness and gain a lot of support from far and wide.

One of the things people have levelled at occupy is their failure to link up with the wider working class and link with workers struggles, but they did to a extent hosting debates with trade unionists, Jarrow marchers and actively supporting the sparks on their regular protests every week. So they tried but it was still a very early movement in its infancy.

I think many workers were sympathetic to the aims of the camp even if they were not sure where it was heading.

There was much criticism of occupy in its early days for not having any real demands. But this I think was answered by the fact that it was a chance to debate democratically what has gone wrong and what can be the solutions to the crisis.

In some ways the camp was very mixed with some reformists wishing for a nicer capitalism others green activists with climate change at the heart of their message and others there to learn off others.

All in all I think the whole 4 months covering some of the coldest temperatures we’ve seen for some time and all sorts of difficulties with the ST Pauls church and surrounding areas. But eventually I think they got their message through.

I think the strongest message to come out of it will be the idea of the 99% and the 1% starting to form an idea of class again and injustice in society again. Class has b even off the radar for sometime and I personally felt this was a good step forward to regaining this consciousness.

I listened to the eviction last night of occupy London with sadness really as these were people who protested peacefully not harming anyone. Despite the media’s claims it was not an inconvenience to the public or an eye sore. They opened up an avenue of debate actively bringing back capitalism to be talked about. I don’t think Ed Miliband and David Cameron would have been talking of an “ethical capitalism” if occupy hadn’t had an impact on peoples moods and anger out there.

Many activists say this is the end for the movement and the camp, in some way it is but I do think many lessons can be learned from this e experience and bedded in to peoples consciousness that occupy has a role to play in the future movement. Occupying an area or a building is a powerful symbol and puts into question the role of private property that it is the 1% who still do very much hold all the power in society. In other ways this is just the beginning for occupy as they look to regroup and re assess where they go from here.

Whatever happens it will be interesting to see where they go from here as they are right this crisis is not going away its only going to deepen as the year progresses