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"What about human nature?" - how to respond (lemmygrad.ml)
submitted 2 weeks ago* by to c/asklemmygrad@lemmygrad.ml
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It seems that most of the time, my discussions with people about socialism and communism end up on the topic of "but people are inherently bad, or at least a few people are, and will always take advatange of others. Even during natural disorders, some go steal everything in the stores while other help strangers"

I always have a hard time arguing that human nature depend on the environment, that it takes a few generations, and that there is probably always going to be violence but it's marginal and can be taken care of.

What main ideas am I missing? And how to argue about this and respond to this central idea that refrain a lot of liberals?

Thank you!

If you have any theory that you want to point at, that would also be great

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[–] 4 points 2 weeks ago

Aside from all the great comments here already, I've also seen it put like this:

Communism is a social-economic-political system designed to put people first and improve everyone's life. This is (after the revolution at least) a systemic and structural thing, not a choice of individuals. You can be awful and selfish, but you'll either be punished for it or it will end up helping society anyway.

By the same logic, someone who genuinely wants working people's lives to improve under capitalism isn't going to get anywhere. The entire system stands against pro-social choices.

Those are the negative feedbacks, the positive ones are that the people who uplift others will themselves be uplifted in a communist society. In capitalist societies those who are the most selfish and sociopathic are successful by the definition of the system and are promoted by it.

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