Why do people use such a dull and thoughtless argument...

Why do people use such a dull and thoughtless argument? It seems like lolbertardians and rightists use it to make it seem like they're intellectuals without actually having to back up their opinion.

Yes Muke we really needed another thread about this

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Well since the Lenin hat adds absolutely nothing to the post I can only assume you're using it to identify yourself.

because its a way of arguing against communism without even remotely understanding it and still trying to sound smart at the same time.

the people who state "human nature" have never read marx, they don't know what communism is. i was having an argument with my little brother who is a genuine 12 year old who doesn't even know what socialism means yet when i mentioned the word communism he said "communism doesn't work because human nature, people want to make a lot of money"

its a non-argument made by delusional fools, like how people argued for slavery because of "its human nature for some to be born as slaves"

So human killing human isn't human nature?

RiP grammar. Meant to say "humans killing humans".

Because they're faggots. It's the same as muh iphones or muh gorgillions, an ad hominem designed to shut down an argument without addressing it.

I mean if we want to dissect the argument it fails initially because it does not define what "human nature" is. I have never gotten a straight answer when asking them what "human nature" is, by their answers I have to conclude it's an ambiguous intangible force that opposes communism because muh liberty. You could counter with some of Kropotkin's work, but quite honestly if they're faggot enough to initially use the hoomun naytur (not an)argument then it's probably not a good idea to waste time talking to them.

Topicly reminder that human nature is a thing that exists and the shitty argument is "the status quo is human nature". If you think human nature isn't real you're not a materialist. Don't give me that "we can't separate human nature from socialization" there's a lot of work in this scientific field. Either way there are obvious aspects of human nature like needing to eat, sleep and breathe. If you think that humans are pure rational agents without evolutionary baggage and special among all organisms, you are as maximally idealist as people who don't believe in irrational numbers.

tell them to read kropotkin

"human nature" doesn't exist outside of eating and fucking.

Tbh if anything human nature is more collectivist than individualist. Humans are social animals, we naturally co-operate and work together. As Aristotle said, anybody who can live without their fellow man is either a god or a beast.

Humans are not blank slates. If human behavior is entirely down to culture, at what point did humans transition from lowly animals to higher beings that don't have an animal nature? If human culture is not influenced by some animal nature, where do the problems with that culture come from in the first place? If humans only behave according to their culture, where does the culture come from, i.e. where did it come from originally?

Humans are not blank slate, yet humans don't grow up in information vacuum.

Since you ask these questions, humans are brought up in the community of other humans around them. They absorb the information that the humans around them broadcast. There also other means how to convey that information to the children and teenagers. Books, media, spoken words.

There was no precise point where humans transitioned from animals to higher beings. The change was gradual over time. A culture started to emerge over time, from a primitive one, to more complicated ones, as the culture of previous generation gets processed by this generation and then the next generation absorbs it.

Engels' The Part played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man explains it much better.

Muke please stop

t muke

Humans don't need to be "blank slates", that is a straw man. That people pick and choose how they act IS our nature, not some kind of violation of it. Sapience is what separates us as a species from the rest of kingdom Animalia.

I'm not claiming that socilaization plays no role. Other people are claiming that biology plays no role, which is demonstrably false.


The distinction between humans and other animals is largely artificial except for a few biological factors unique to our species. I used the phrase "higher beings" ironically to indicate the absurdity of drawing such a hard boundary between groups that are so similar.

Yes, and the initial conditions that shaped that culture, even if you believe that there is no human nature today, was shaped by the human nature that existed before humans developed culture. Here's a hint to how absurd this argument has become: animals have cultures as well, they just don't have records other than a chain of imitative learning passed down through the generations. To spell it out, the primary difference between humans and animals is the human ability to willfully effect changes on a large scale and affect our environment. This doesn't mean that we're fundamentally different or that we transcend being animals (until transhumanism kicks in). Just like every other species humans have traits that are biologically inherent to us that constitute our nature. That doesn't mean they are the only factor. For some reason anyone who acknowledges biological factors existing tends to get labeled as biological determinists or essentialists.

Man is still an ape, and the overwhelming majority of of anthropology wrt human evolution came after Engels' time. If you go with a 19th century theorist's book over modern science you're a shit materialist.

M8 human nature itself is shaped by our environment. The distribution and access to resources is the fundamental question of economics, and it's the question that determines not only our biological evolution, but our social and political structures. Tbh even the entire concept of natural selection is largely in line with a Marxist worldview. All species are physically and biologically shaped by their environment, so it only makes sense that our environment (of which the distribution and access to resources is a key part) shapes our behaviour.


The environment didn't adapt to humanity, humanity adapted to its environment. The irony of suggesting that communism is incompatible with human nature is that humanity more or less lived in a communist society for the vast majority of its existence.

Yeah, no shit. But the result is that certain traits get encoded biologically and becomes common to almost all members of the species. If you attempt to shape society and force people to conform to it, the way that would work is that the people who have traits that aren't suited to that society die off. That's how evolution works. It could happen quickly via purges or slowly via poverty or something.

This is just plain wrong for one, considering what a profound effect the human species has had on the biosphere, but there's an even bigger problem here. "The environment" includes both the natural environment and the social environment created by humans together. The latter is shaped as a function of how to adapt human nature and the outside world such that they are productive and meet human needs and desires (until of course the metrics of society's success get abstracted to something intangible).

I never suggested this; in fact I stated this. Try reading people's posts next time. I specifically said that the bad argument is "the status quo is human nature," which in this case would be equivalent to "capitalism is human nature," instead of "human nature exists," which is obviously true.

Fair enough, but meeting our basic biological needs and desires isn't that hard. Sex, a sense of community, food, shelter, entertainment. I would argue that the desire for these things is the extent of human nature. As long a system satisfies these needs it doesn't matter how else it is structured, meaning that the human nature argument isn't really worth much.

You'd be wrong. It's not just about needs, it's about aptitude. Our brains are well suited to particular tasks. This should be inescapably obvious given how difficult AI has been to develop. Engineering is one of the things we're the best at, and that's because our ancestors evolved specifically to have high spatial intelligence. On the other hand, we are very bad at long-term planning by and large. We're susceptible to manipulation from strongman types, especially when the chips are down. The main reason this kind of thing isn't common knowledge is because we don't have any non-humans to compare to regularly.