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published on March 29, 2014
Karsten J. Struhl
Why Socialists Should Take Human Nature Seriously
It is tempting for socialists to claim that there is no human nature. I argue that we should resist this temptation and that the socialist project needs to take human nature seriously. To make this argument, I put forward a view of human nature derived from Marx, from Kropotkin, and from some recent work in evolutionary psychology. I also argue that while a socialist society is more in accord with the potentials for human flourishing and self-realization, we would do a disservice to the socialist project to simply wish away certain negative tendencies which may be built into the human genome.