Spreading the Wealth: An Introduction to Political Biology
By James A. Montanye • Wednesday October 7, 2009 9:41 AM PDT • 5 Comments
President Obama’s commitment to use the compulsions of regulation, tax policy, and individual mandates to “spread the wealth” prompts thinking men and women of good virtue to wonder anew whether Karl Marx and his acolytes were right about communism’s inevitability.
Economic theory predicts that collectivist policies of the sort now being advanced are inherently destructive; Ludwig von Mises early treatise on Socialism (1922) remains both timely and instructive in this regard. Twentieth century history richly confirms the predictions by Mises and others. How is it, then, that Mankind can deconstruct the atom and yet remain unable to grasp and retain the simplest insights of economics and history? The answer, it seems, lies not in our political stars, but in our genes.
Evolution has predisposed Mankind for numerous behavioral tendencies that foster survival and reproduction. Every predisposition benefits individuals privately; evolution could not have selected for them otherwise. Many are publically beneficial as well. But some are not, and therein lies the indelible rub.
Predispositions that are both privately and publically beneficial are those that foster cooperation, reciprocity, and trust among individuals. Biologists term this class of behaviors ‘reciprocal altruism.’ The propensity for reciprocal altruism underlies all of mankind’s innate civilizing virtues, including the golden and silver rules of moral conduct, categorical imperatives of ethical behavior, concepts of fairness and justice, and the intuitive sense of natural law (without which the ‘rule of law’ concept would be empty). Reciprocal altruism grounds Max Weber’s ‘Protestant ethic’ and Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand,’ and it is the source of value in Smith’s moral sentiment of “approbation and esteem.”
Also embedded within reciprocal altruism, however, is a socially destructive predisposition that the biologist Matt Ridley labels “parasitism of reciprocity.” He describes this as:
“a human invention to exploit our pre-existing natures, our innate respect for
generosity and disrespect for those who would not share. And why would we
have such an instinct? Because to be known as intolerant of and punitive towards
stinginess is an effective way to police a system of reciprocity, to extort your share
of others’ good fortune.” The Origins of Virtue (1997), pp. 123-24
Reciprocal altruism fosters social cohesion and wealth-creation through cooperation, voluntary exchange, and the division of labor. Parasitism of reciprocity, by contrast, promotes only redistribution and consumption. It exhorts reciprocity without cooperation, engenders envy, stimulates free-riding, and dulls private incentives to produce.
The law ordinarily restrains individuals from indulging this and other publically detrimental instincts. Where the law is weak or silent, parasitism is suppressed, and cooperation is re-encouraged, through the spontaneous social devices of shunning, excommunication, and occasional violence.
The modern State unfortunately inclines toward indulging parasitism on behalf of its citizens. Neo-liberal politicians project their own parasitic predispositions into feckless legislation geared toward producing conditions that the Nobelist F.A. Hayek pejoratively titled The Mirage of Social Justice (1973). (Classical liberals, by definition, foster social justice by promoting instead the productive virtues of cooperation, reciprocity, and trust.) Cynical politicians of every stripe benefit privately by demagoging resonant collectivist issues in pursuit of electoral support and side payments. Voters, in turn, are encouraged to abuse the democratic process by exercising their own parasitic instincts without regard for the predictably detrimental public consequences.
Individuals are intrinsically parasitic. Mankind, however, is not collectivistic by nature. Asked once to comment on communism’s merits, the distinguished behavioral biologist E.O. Wilson is reliably quoted as having replied simply, “Wonderful theory. Wrong species.” The leveling instinct that we generously characterize as an expression of public morality is essentially a manifestation of private selfishness. Hence the enduring political appeal of collectivist policies despite their predictable public failure.
Classical liberalism once constrained parasitic instincts by limiting the State’s power to take and redistribute property rights. Conversely, it promoted reciprocal altruism’s beneficial public virtues by defining and protecting every individual’s right to associate freely, to enter into voluntary relationships and commitments, to expect that agreements would be kept, and to trust that arbitrary and odious public burdens could not be imposed without voluntary consent.
Politics, both for better and for worse, is an expression of biology. Mankind’s inherent nature has not varied perceptibly over the last century. Our politics, however, have completed regular cycles of production and parasitism. We have re-entered that phase in which politicians eagerly indulge one of Mankind’s most destructive behavioral instincts. We must pay careful attention to the better angels of our nature at this juncture lest the light of national prosperity be dimmed.
Tags: Civil Society, Natural Law, The State, Uncategorized 
Jim,
Your post on reciprocal rights theory and altruism provides the standard evolutionary biological (evo-devo) view, but as such fails to explain pure altruism or “radical altruism” and is inadequate to defend any consistent system of morality, including natural law and natural rights, individual liberty and the rule of law. As the analytic philosopher Alvin Plantinga has shown in his book, Warrant and Proper Function, the evo-devo, naturalist, reductionist attempt to explain morality, free will and reason is self-refuting. In this regard, here also is Plantinga’s essay, “Naturalism Defeated.”
In effect, your claim that “Politics, both for better and for worse, is an expression of biology” is fundamentally flawed as are all materialistic, determinist models (e.g., Hobbes, Hume, Marx, Darwin, Freud, Skinner, etc.).
1. If all human action is based solely on self-interest, then choosing pure sacrifice vs. pure narcissism ends up in an unworkable dilemma since they both cannot be “fit” for survival. The man who seeks to pet a tiger is not as “fit” as a man who runs away. But in choosing, the man can make a gigantic multiplicity of choices that can also avoid his being eaten, but since only one choice is true, the probability that he will choose false assessments of reality is virtually assured. He may decide that the tiger is a ghost and run away or that the sky is green and run away or that there are witches in the trees and run away or that two plus two is five and run away, etc., etc. The probability of his choosing the truth is virtually non-existent, and the evo-devo theorist fails because in assuming that all brain states make selections solely based of “fitness,” he rules out the existence of reason and free will in the process. Such evo-devo reductionist scenarios end up as speculative “just so stories” that do not explain at all but instead conform to a naturalist ideological presupposition.
2. In addition, if all of human behavior is simply matter in motion, determined mechanically and materialistically by “fitness” as somehow programmed by the laws of physics, then no thought, including the theory of evolutionary biology itself, can be known to be true or not. Indeed, no free will to infer and make arguments can exist since all human thought is merely bio-chemical reactions determined genetically. Such reductionism refutes itself because all human inferences (including those you have made here) assume as pre-conditions the properly basic knowledge that your mind, free will and other minds do exist, refuting your very theory. Hence, all human inferences necessarily first assume a metaphysical dualism (substance dualism) which means that that evo-devo alone cannot explain reality.
3. Moreover, if morality is based solely on reciprocity, then no objective standard exists to determine what is or is not moral other than subjective self-interest. The evo-devo advocate then tries to conflate the “is” with the “ought” but ends up in an unworkable dilemma. As such, if someone believes that using invasive violence against another (e.g., murder, theft, rape, etc.) can advance one’s own interest and the chance of being caught is slim to non-existent, then morality (“fitness”) for this person equals aggression against the innocent because all morality is merely subjective and situational. For the evo-devo advocate, the man “is” capable of doing harm to benefit himself and necessarily “ought” to do so since only “fitness” applies. Hence, Nazi ethics would be equivalent to Thomist or Jeffersonian ethics, depending upon the situation because “fitness” assumes that there is no objective standard and that all brain states and truth are subjective. Indeed, this is the dilemma that all utilitarian-rights theorists have in trying to achieve a standard for morality and explains the historical decline of classical liberal thought which once abandoning natural law theory was left clinging to the shifting sands of moral subjectivism. Interestingly enough, since radical altruism has been considered the highest standard for human behavior since the dawn of mankind, this powerful evidence for natural law suggests that self-interested “fitness” cannot explain morality.
In Plato’s The Republic, Socrates is presented with the story of “The Ring of Gyges” in which Glaucon asks whether objective morality exists or self-interest is the only standard. Socrates responds by refuting subjectivism as the basis for morality. In this regard, here is a video that discusses why the subjective/utilitarian theory of morality is incoherent, self-refuting, and in fact the basis for all of the tyrannies in history.
And C.S. Lewis’s superb book The Abolition of Man is (also available free online here) highly recommended in refuting subjectivism in aesthetics, epistemology, and moral ethics.
David Theroux | Oct 7, 2009 | Reply