Are Humans naturaly greedy?

[originofopinion]

Are Humans naturally greedy or do they become Greedy from Material? :confused:

I have no clue, so id like to see some Opinions so i could make an educated answer for myself.

Thanks!

[Nwoye]

i don't think humans are "naturally" anything.

[ZeroNowhere]

There's no good reason to believe so.

[MilitantAnarchist]

Your a product of your enviroment, and in the western world we are surrounded by materialistic attitudes...
So, in a word, yes, not because its 'original sin' or whatever... its because we're grown in it and we have no choice over it... but obviously it can be overcome to.
Or somthing like that.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

What do you mean by "greedy"?

[Barry]

Humans are products of their enviorment, in western capitalism people are rared from early childhood to want material things, this continues through out our lives as we are told to get bigger houses, better cars etc. due to this the natural sense of community is disrupted and results in people putting material gains before the sense of good amongst their community.
In reality greed is not a natural part humanity, primitive humans lived in a commune system were everything was spread equally and all done their part within the group for the better of the group, we can see that it is only when a surplus of materials was gathered and a heirarchy was established that greed was encouraged

[NecroCommie]

My ass is naturally greedy... greedy for the souls of humankind! MUAHAHAHAHAAAA!!!

Seriously speaking, no. Greed is a cultural phenomenon, something you are grown into and to which you succumb out of peer preassure. So currently people are geedy yes, but after the revolution that growing and peer preassure can be used to erase greed.

[Kwisatz Haderach]

Why does it matter?

Clearly, human greed is not strong enough to cause most people to break the law in order to satisfy their greed. Most people do not break into their neighbors' houses to steal their stuff, even though that is what a greedy person would want to do.

So, if greed is not strong enough to cause widespread chaos and law-breaking, then, even if this greed were natural, it would not be a problem for a socialist society. All we have to do is enforce laws or social norms that restrain people's greed. It works in capitalism, so it should work in socialism as well.

[Искра]

Can you empirically define "human nature"? You can't which means that it do not exists.

[Atrus]

I think "human nature" is always a product of the society in which a human is brought up
Therefore, most humans currently are "naturally greedy"; such is being brought up in a Capitalist society
However, when brought up in a society which values equality and fairness as the cornerstone of society, then no one will be "naturally greedy", and people will look back on the attrocities committed driven by greed and wonder how anyone could ever have thought that Capitalism was the best solution...

[Olerud]

Seriously speaking, no. Greed is a cultural phenomenon, something you are grown into and to which you succumb out of peer preassure. So currently people are geedy yes, but after the revolution that growing and peer preassure can be used to erase greed.

Capitalist culture has made us greedy. It's not human nature to be greedy it's Capitalist nature.

[red cat]

Human character changes with the society. At present, people want more than what they have. They want money. But when money will have no meaning, and everyone will get what he wants, then people won't get a chance to be greedy.

[ZeroNowhere]

Can you empirically define "human nature"? You can't which means that it do not exists.How does one go about defining things empirically?

[Luís Henrique]

Why does it matter?

Clearly, human greed is not strong enough to cause most people to break the law in order to satisfy their greed. Most people do not break into their neighbors' houses to steal their stuff, even though that is what a greedy person would want to do.

So, if greed is not strong enough to cause widespread chaos and law-breaking, then, even if this greed were natural, it would not be a problem for a socialist society. All we have to do is enforce laws or social norms that restrain people's greed. It works in capitalism, so it should work in socialism as well.
I think we do have a tendency to underestimate the degree to which we have been socialised under capitalism. As Bertrand Russell says, "free market" was never ever really "free"; it was never allowed to kill competitors, or steal from them, etc. So all the competition and "greed" under capitalism is firmly subdued to rules which in turn are the expression of the degree into which labour has been socialised.

I find it also funny that pro-capitalist ideology uses the word "greed" in one hand to justify the existence of the system ("socialism is impossible because 'greed' is part of 'human nature'") and to deny that the system is the cause of crises ("the cause of the depression is 'greed'").

Luís Henrique

[Muzk]

Except for the last post like 10 were the same -_-

[Dave B]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAFQ5kUHPkY (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAFQ5kUHPkY)


http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/09/0917_030917_monkeyfairness_2.html (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/09/0917_030917_monkeyfairness_2.html)

http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/15381 (http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/15381)

And;

http://www.marxists.org/archive/pannekoe/1912/marxism-darwinism.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/pannekoe/1912/marxism-darwinism.htm)

Pannekoek’s anthropogenisis was much better and really well thought out and includes ‘language’ but is hard to get and not online.

[Tatarin]

It depends on the environment I quess. Throughout history humans have had a need for other humans (companionship, the psyche, etc) - is that greed?

Many wealthy sons and daughters of various company owners could consider themselves non-greedy, because it is easy for them not to be. They could be the most helpful people ever, helping with everything from giving food to the homeless to building a children's hospital.

But of course, many people are worse off, and thus have to resort to greed constantly. Criminal gangs and such could be one example (where people often start with nothing and "learns" to live only for him/her self).

However, I think more recent history have shown that people are not greedy. One is the civil rights movement in the United States, where millions fought for their rights. Or what about the anti-war demonstrations of 2003, where millions around the world demonstrated against the invasion of Iraq? These events didn't really lead to personal gains (in form of wealth and glory).

So yes, when socialism will finally be here, greed will diminish greatly because people will have a much safer life. Until that time, I believe greed will grow in all walks of life. :(

[JazzRemington]

One better: suppose humans are naturally greedy. How is this the case? Is it a gene, an organ, a part of the brain? Usually when asked this, people don't know - but yet they know enough to know humans are naturally greedy.

[Tyrlop]

Humans are born Greedy, its a simple fact, many scientists has researched this. and they have concluded that the only cure from greed is 5 to 10 years in a "Volunteer Labour Camp", in the early life of the child we could place the children in these amusement parks, where they can learn how to live a collective life, where you either share or die. this is how the mother nature-law is, and there is no way it can be changed.

seriously? no...
Greed is just people that don't have any real values in their life and try to seek the values through materialisme. i actually saw a quite interesting documentary about commercials and the consumer society's affect on children... it was quite nasty, in the future 60% of all people will be hannah montana clones.

[revolt4thewin]

Yes but some are more than others.

[hefty_lefty]

One post stated that a surplus of materials creates greed.
What about the lack of materials? Would that not spur a survival reaction in the community?
Would you give up your food to feed another if it meant your own starvation? Maybe your lover, your mother, or child...but an aquaintance?
Greed might just be a mutated form of the survival instincts that we no longer use or require, living in such stable and nourishing environments.

Greed may be a modified animal instinct attributed to living in an over-enriching environment made possible by technological and scientific breakthroughs.
One could argue that these breakthroughs were sped up by capitalism, but I do not think it was their catalyst.

[BurnTheOliveTree]

I think we can say with confidence that we are naturally self-serving. This is genetic, right? If we weren't self-serving we would not be here as a species.

But there's nothing wrong with being greedy inherently, it is only a problem socially if that greed translates into the oppression of everyone else - that's capitalism.

I suppose it's analogous to sex drive. it's fine to want lots of sex, it's not fine if that desire translates into rape.

[Parker]

You might argue that people aren't greedy enough. They now work longer hours for less money, with most of the gains in productivity going to capital, while in real terms workers' own paypackets shrink ... Sounds like generosity to me ...

Just a thought - and it depends on how you define "greed". ;)

Still, I remember reading about experiments done by behavioural economists/psychologists which found that most people did not behave like the calculating self-interested homo economicus of economic theory. I can't remember who undertook this research though.

[Hit The North]

I think we can say with confidence that we are naturally self-serving. This is genetic, right? If we weren't self-serving we would not be here as a species.



If individuals were purely self-serving then we wouldn't survive as a species. The secret to our success is the ability to cooperate with each other and this necessitates placing our immediate self-interest into abeyance.

As to the question of whether we are greedy one only needs to look at the nature of most strikes by workers, even under the pressure of consumer capitalism. Largely, they are defensive and fuelled not by the desire for more, but the desire to maintain a standard of living.

In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, the sociologist, Max Weber, discussing the barriers to the development of capitalist accumulation, cites the existence of "traditionalism" amongst the majority of labourers. He uses the example of "piece rates" in agriculture o illustrate his point:


One of the technical means which the modern employer uses in order to secure the greatest possible amount of work from his men is the device of piece rates. In agriculture, for instance, the gathering of the harvest is a case where the greatest possible intensity of labor is called for, since, the weather being uncertain, the difference between high profit and heavy loss may depend on the speed with which the harvesting can be done. Hence a system of piece rates is almost universal in this case.


He goes on:


And since the interest of the employer in a speeding up of harvesting increases with the increase of the results and the intensity of the work, the attempt has again and again been made, by increasing the piece rates of the workmen, thereby giving them an opportunity to earn what is for them a very high wage, to interest them in increasing their own efficiency. But a peculiar difficulty has been met with surprising frequency: raising the piece rates has often had the result that not more but less has been accomplished in the same time, because the worker reacted to the increase not by increasing but by decreasing the amount of his work. A man, for instance, who at the rate of 1 mark per acre mowed 2½ acres per day and earned 2½ marks, when the rate was raised to 1¼ marks per acre mowed, not 3 acres, as be might easily have done, thus earning 3¾ marks, but only 2 acres, so that he could still earn the 2½ marks to which he was accustomed. The opportunity of earning more was less attractive than that of working less. He did not ask: how much can I earn in a day if I do as much work as possible? but: how much must I work in order to earn the wage, 2½ marks, which I earned before and which takes care of my traditional needs? This is an example of what is here meant by traditionalism. A man does not “by nature” wish to earn more and more money, but simply to live as he is accustomed to live and to earn as much as is necessary for that purpose. Wherever modern capitalism has begun its work of increasing the productivity of human labor by increasing its intensity, it has encountered the immensely stubborn resistance of this leading trait of pre-capitalistic labor. And today it encounters it the more, the more backward (from a capitalistic point of view) the laboring forces are with which it has to deal. [emphasis added]
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/weber/protestant-ethic/ch02.htm

He then goes on to discuss the opposite strategy of reducing the peice rate in order to make workers work more efficiently to maintain their standard of living. This, on the face of it, is the better strategy as it forces workers to work harder, to produce a greater surplus for the capitalist, in order maintain his/her traditional standard of living. The limit to the usefulness of this strategy for the capitalist, however comes when:


Low wages fail even from a purely business point of view wherever it is a question of producing goods which require any sort of skilled labor, or the use of expensive machinery which is easily damaged, or in general wherever any great amount of sharp attention or of initiative is required.

But this further discussion takes us away from the original point of the OP.

My point is that if we actually study the behaviour of the proletariat under capitalism, rather than assume the ideological representation of "human nature" which we find in bourgeois discourse, then there is no evidence that people are naturally greedy.

[hefty_lefty]

Bob, you may be right but your example of piece work wages only took into account the blue collar working force, which is only part of the working class.
People who work hard, like those who harvest crops, perhaps do not wish to work harder but are indeed happy to accept more pay for the same amount of work.
My collar is blue, and it is not an easy life, and the compromise lies between physical comfort, living life somewhat energetically and making the money that will buy you the things that you need and want.
So no, those who work hard are in general not greedy because their bodies cannot handle it.

And what of the white collar work force?
I cannot say personally. Any office workers wish to reply?

[bcbm]

If individuals were purely self-serving then we wouldn't survive as a species. The secret to our success is the ability to cooperate with each other and this necessitates placing our immediate self-interest into abeyance.


how are cooperation and self-interest mutually exclusive? i think we are a self-interested species, and that cooperation is in our self-interest.

[Stranger Than Paradise]

It is my view that humans are naturally co-operative and wish to live in community. Humans are greedy because of our Capitalist society. Competing every person against each other. If we are forced to compete to survive we breed greed. An unnatural concept for humans. When living in co-operation where the values of society are mutual aid and equality then human nature will be restored.

[Muzk]

I think humans get rid of all their instincts while they grow up in this system, their only purpose is to serve as machines for the capitalist pigs:cursing::cursing::cursing:
http://i362.photobucket.com/albums/oo69/MUZKROX/greedyness.jpg?t=1255183298

No instincts, only intelligence!



And if they are so greedy, why don't we just steal each others things? Or maybe is it that people rather get together to get rid of the greedy ones, be it capitalists, landowners or slave traders?!

[Hit The North]

how are cooperation and self-interest mutually exclusive? i think we are a self-interested species, and that cooperation is in our self-interest.

They aren't and I don't they claim they are. I think you're right that they stand in a dialectic relationship to each other. Either are the result of our rational calculation and/or cultural sentiment, and not our natural inclination. That's my point.

[Vanguard1917]

You need to define greed. Is humanity naturally made up atomised individuals who are governed by a drive to increase their own material wealth at the expense of others? No. There's nothing eternal about such a state of affairs; it's the influence of the social relations of capitalism, which encourage atomisation and an individuated world outlook. (Although, of course, thinking dialectially, we also know that the increased socialisation of labour under capitalism and the contradictions inherent within it can also create conditions favourable for building solidarity and unity between individuals. Thus the possibility of building a revolutionary mass movement for socialism.)

But the desire to always want more and better from life, including materially, certainly does characterise humanity and sets it apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. In today's culture, this is more and more seen as 'human greed'. We're constantly told that the desire of the masses to want a better and more prosperous life for themselves is leading to all sorts of problems, from global warming to not having your post delivered on time. Those who think that it's somehow radical to blame the current recession on a few 'greedy bankers' can also turn around and in the same breath blame the downturn on the supposedly gluttonous, credit-hungry masses -- i.e. working class people not knowing their place and wanting bigger houses and more holidays abroad. There is, therefore, nothing inherently progressive about attacking this so-called 'greed'.

For example, the Sun newspaper played a leading role in scapegoating 'greedy bankers' for the recession. And during the recent tube strike, it also played a leading role in attacking the strikers for supposedly wanting too much.

Our position, therefore, is: yes, we do want so much more from life than capitalism can provide. We want a world fit for human beings, where there is material abundance for all, where society produces enough to meet the material needs and desires of all, and, if possible, much more on top.

However, at the same time, we reject outright the classical bourgeois notion that the route to prosperity for working class people is through narrow self-interest and an individuated worldview. But, then again, class-conscious workers thoughout history have, through their actions, rejected such a notion more forcefully than anybody else.

[noway]

yes, yes, yes.. be skeptical of people who say otherwise...........
as long as the ego exists, selfishness will flourish..

without ego, I am nothing

[The Red Next Door]

Yes, Human are naturally greedy, greed don't just come in the form of money, so it wouldn't make any sense to say that a capitalist society is responsible for greed. people in communist nations are greedy, like example stalin were a perfect example of a greedy human in a communist country. he was greedy for power and he killed for it

[CossackOfAnarchy]

No, humans are not naturally greedy. The Capitalist system is one built on the profit motive so why is it not unusual to see greed in today's world when greed is an inherent side effect of capitalism?

Normal people placed in an environment where the community manages the means of production and agriculture collectively could theoretically be absent of greed because people would not have to fight for necessities as they do under capitalism.

[ZeroNowhere]

It is my view that humans are naturally co-operative and wish to live in community. Humans are greedy because of our Capitalist society. Competing every person against each other. If we are forced to compete to survive we breed greed. An unnatural concept for humans. When living in co-operation where the values of society are mutual aid and equality then human nature will be restored.
Heh, it's like the capitalist human nature argument inverted, and still as baseless as always.


without ego, I am nothingVery poetic. I, however, am skeptical, as it seems likely that you are just making ostensibly profound but, in actuality, empty statements.


I think humans get rid of all their instincts while they grow up in this system, their only purpose is to serve as machines for the capitalist pigsPlease don't use discriminatory and dehumanizing language on Revleft.


I think we can say with confidence that we are naturally self-serving. This is genetic, right? If we weren't self-serving we would not be here as a species.What does 'naturally self-serving' mean?

[Hit The North]

Is it unacceptable to refer to our class enemies as pigs, now?

[Luís Henrique]

Is it unacceptable to refer to our class enemies as pigs, now?
The Pig Liberation Front (Marxist-Orwellist) objects such deswinising language.

Luís Henrique

[The Red Next Door]

No, humans are not naturally greedy. The Capitalist system is one built on the profit motive so why is it not unusual to see greed in today's world when greed is an inherent side effect of capitalism?

Normal people placed in an environment where the community manages the means of production and agriculture collectively could theoretically be absent of greed because people would not have to fight for necessities as they do under capitalism.
Have there ever been a time, in which you are greedy.

[Schrödinger's Cat]

The definition of "greed" by egoists has been stretched to encompass any organic thought. If you start out a statement with "I think..." you're greedy according to a contemporary egoist. This has led to some preposterous statements relating to hive animals. Apparently a worker bee that dies just to protect its queen is selfish because that action is what it desired to accomplish.

Humans are self-interested insofar as they must relate every thought to their own experiences, but that is out of necessity. We have one consciousness. If a child were locked away in a closet for his entire life, and was incapable of feeling pain through physical brutality or emotional stimuli, he would never feel empathy.

I would argue those who are so insistent on labeling all humans greedy are just trying to compensate for a tingling sensation in the back of their brains that is telling them their despicable actions are not justified.