Are we all just too greedy?
It's a dog-eat-dog world. Whites are susceptible to racism against people of colour, men to sexism against women, etc. But this isn't "human nature". Greed and competition are not instincts. Early tribal societies didn't teach their children concepts like "winning" and "losing". Those values are learned. People have to be taught by the system, to be greedy, selfish and individualistic. Capitalism creates the values it needs to survive.
We're supposed to believe that the only incentives for human effort and progress are material possessions and profit. But think of all the scientists, artists and writers who have worked without consideration for their personal fortune in order to discover and create. Capitalism has distorted and corrupted art and science, but it hasn't been able to completely destroy basic human creativity.
A person in today's society is like a plant trying to survive in a gloomy flat in a large city. The plant has no sun, polluted air, and it's choked with dust. You look at this dying, withering thing and wonder if you can really still call it a plant. But if the same plant grew in some rich, cultivated soil, with plenty of sunshine and fresh air and clean water, it would blossom. If people had the chance to grow in the soil of a different society, isn't it obvious they would change too?
Imagine a society free of violence, poverty and sexist, homophobic and racist oppression, where the individual can develop freely. Imagine a society where human creativity is unleashed for the benefit and enrichment of all, where competing ideas and theories are debated in a spirit of solidarity. That will be an exciting and vibrant society, in which it will be worthwhile being part of. When humanity has been freed from material want and greed, we will be able to discover and learn about what we know least: ourselves.
Imagine a truly equal society where everyone's needs are met, where people work together for each other's benefit, where technology and production are under democratic control, where wasteful production of tanks and bombs has been eliminated.
In such a society, even the need for government would ultimately wither away. When people have overcome the alienation that prevents them from feeling a sense of responsibility for society, when everyone is fully educated and conscious of what needs to be done to ensure human welfare, when no-one has special access to wealth or privileged information at someone else's expense, there will be no need for police, military, bureaucracies or any form of coercion.
Emma Clancy
[Emma Clancy is a national organiser for Resistance. This is an excerpt from the recently published What Resistance Stands For, available from Resistance Bookshops. See listing on page 2.]
From Green Left Weekly, February 22, 2006.
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