Support-Bargaining, Economics and Society

Patrick Spread

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136172328
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Support-Bargaining, Economics and Society links support-bargaining to Darwin's theory of natural selection and traces the implications of support-bargaining and money-bargaining across society. It provides a wholly different account of the functioning of human societies from anything that has gone before. Social scientists, ever since there have been such people, have missed the crucial human characteristic – the propensity to seek support – that has given rise to group formation and the evolution of human society.

1 The problem with natural selection

Darwin was fully aware of an important problem relating to his theory of natural selection. It lay in the relationship between an individual of a species and the species itself, or other individuals of the species. It is apparent in his approach to the struggle for existence in Chapter III of The Origin of Species, where he writes:

I should premise that I use the term Struggle for Existence in a large and metaphorical sense, including dependence of one being on another, and including (which is more important) not only the life of the individual, but success in leaving progeny.¹

The struggle for existence may involve the dependence of one individual on another. This may mean that one individual is dependent on the help of another for survival. But it may mean that one individual depends for survival on forcing aside another, or even eliminating the other. The former seems the more straightforward reading of dependence, but the latter has been more generally understood from the overall account of the struggle, perhaps partly because Darwin continues immediately, ‘Two canine animals in time of a dearth, may be truly said to struggle with each other which shall get food and live.’ The ‘dog-eat-dog’ characterisation of natural selection has been the more prominent. At the least, the metaphor suggests uncertainty regarding the nature of the struggle and its protagonists. The ‘help’ side of dependence is lost for much of The Origin of Species, but it is taken up in The Descent of Man.²

The Origin of Species is concerned almost exclusively with animals and plants. Specific references to the behaviour of humans are rare. Readers wishing to know something about the origins of their own species must infer it from the behaviour and experiences of animals and plants. They were encouraged to do this by the publication in 1863 of Thomas Huxley's study of human and ape anatomy in Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature, identifying the similarities and deducing an evolutionary connection.³ But in The Descent of Man Darwin gives humans centre stage. He recognises that man differs in one very important respect from the animals and plants of the Origin, and this difference affects the understanding of natural selection as a process operative on biological variations over long periods: ‘The high standard of our intellectual powers and moral disposition is the greatest difficulty which presents itself, after we have been driven to this conclusion on the origin of man.’⁴ He emphasises the importance of what he calls ‘social qualities’ or ‘social instincts’. He writes, ‘Such social qualities … were no doubt acquired by the progenitors of man in a similar manner, namely, through natural selection, aided by inherited habit.’⁵ These social qualities are not confined to man, but cause animals, including man, to associate with others of the species: ‘… the social instincts lead an animal to take pleasure in the society of its fellows, to feel a certain amount of sympathy with them, and to perform various services for them’.⁶ The social qualities bring about the formation of human groups. Darwin recognises in a single sentence the importance of the group: ‘Selfsh and contentious people will not cohere, and without coherence nothing can be effected.’⁷

Survival of many individuals, species, and groups within species all depends on the formation of groups. Buffalo, birds, ants, chimpanzees, wolves and a host of other animals depend on operations in groups for their survival. The formation of groups is central to the survival of many, perhaps most, animal species. For humans, the formation of groups is central to their survival, whether it be through warfare, in pastoral communities, or in industrial communities. Without group formation it is impossible to explain the survival of species, and individuals within those species. If ‘… without coherence nothing can be effected’, then the achievement of coherence is a central issue. Yet Darwin's theory of natural selection scarcely provides any stronger indication of how groups are formed than the idea of ‘social instincts’.

He sees difficulties in reconciling even this idea with natural selection. Those imbued with social instincts seem least likely to be naturally selected:

Therefore it hardly seems probable, that the number of men gifted with such virtues, or that the standard of their excellence, could be increased through natural selection, that is, by the survival of the fittest; for we are not here speaking of one tribe being victorious over another.⁸

If any individual is strongly disposed to work for the advantage of the group, he is likely to neglect his own interest, and is consequently unlikely to be selected for survival. The process of natural selection will tend to eliminate such individuals.

Darwin, nevertheless, seeing the importance of cohesion, seeks reasons why those imbued with social instincts might be naturally selected. He suggests first that, ‘… as the reasoning powers and foresight of the members became improved, each man would soon learn that if he aided his fellow-men, he would commonly receive aid in return’.⁹ Darwin suggests that from this ‘low motive’ there might develop a habit of help, and this would strengthen ‘… the feeling of sympathy which gives the frst impulse to benevolent actions’.¹⁰ The development of social instincts across a group might be strong enough to develop reciprocation for favours performed by individuals sufficient to create a cohesive group. However, a ‘free rider’ on the aid of others, focused solely on his own advantage, might still be naturally selected at the expense of more generous others.¹¹

The evidence of group formation and group behaviour provides substantial evidence in support of the idea that giving and receiving of aid so benefits the individuals of the exchanging group that a sufficient number will fulfil their obligations to a sufficient degree to sustain the convention, and hence the groups of which they are members. Peter Kropotkin, an aristocratic Russian anarchist, published Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution in 1902.¹² Kropotkin specifically took up Darwin's idea of the giving and receiving of aid as an essential process through which individuals exercising social instincts could survive under natural selection. He argued that more conventional studies of society tended to emphasise combat and warfare between humans, and specifically committed himself to writing about the ‘mutual aid’ that individuals provided to each other, and which held groups together in contented lives. He makes a strong case for Darwin's and other writers’ exaggerations of human and animal propensity to violence and the efficacy of mutual aid in human society as a means of sustaining communities. If he exaggerates the facility with which autonomous groups form through mutual aid, it is perhaps only a consequence of his avowed attempt to redress an imbalance.

Mutual aid implies returns to altruism, which is hardly compatible with the meaning of the word ‘altruism’. Altruism as commonly understood means doing something for someone else, or for others, without seeking or expecting any return. If a return is required, then the act ceases to be altruistic. It is perhaps a common experience that, at a certain point, people who are apparently acting altruistically may turn round and say, ‘I do everything for you, and you do nothing for me’. Returns are often expected, even though social conventions require that they are not specifically identified. R. L. Trivers introduced the term ‘reciprocal altruism’ to describe what he took to be the underlying reality of altruism, belying the common understanding of altruism.¹³ The point is, perhaps, that altruism is not ‘something for nothing’, but a term for communal contributions for which there is no immediate and specifically identifiable return. Kropotkin's ‘mutual aid’ suggests a process that might bind individuals together in groups.

Praise and blame

Darwin follows Adam Smith¹⁴ in identifying ‘sympathy’ as an important social instinct. ‘Sympathy’ sustains the giving and receiving of aid, hence promoting the emergence of social groups. But he suggests that there is a more important function relating to the formation of groups arising from our sense of sympathy:

But another and much more powerful stimulus to the development of the social virtues, is afforded by the praise and the blame of our fellow-men. To the instinct of sympathy, as we have already seen, it is primarily due, that we habitually bestow both praise and blame on others, whilst we love the former and dread the latter when applied to ourselves; and this instinct no doubt was originally acquired, like all the other social instincts, through natural selection.¹⁵

Darwin sees the allocation of praise and blame as the social instinct which most shapes social behaviour and hence, given the importance of cohesion, constitutes the main basis for the survival of individuals with social instincts under natural selection. He sets the highest importance on this instinct: ‘It is, therefore, hardly possible to exaggerate the importance during rude times of the love of praise and the dread of blame.’¹⁶

Both ‘sympathy’ and the importance of praise and blame are themes of Adam Smith in his Theory of Moral Sentiments, read by Darwin in 1838/39.¹⁷ Smith gives the meaning of sympathy as follows:

Pity and compassion are words appropriated to signify our fellow-feeling with the sorrow of others. Sympathy, though its meaning was, perhaps, originally the same, may now, however, without much impropriety, be made use of to denote our fellow-feeling with any passion whatever.¹⁸

Among the examples he gives of the working of sympathy is the writhing and twisting of an audience as it watches a dancer on a slack rope.¹⁹ ‘Sympathy’ for Smith seems to have much the same meaning as ‘empathy’ today. On praise and blame, Smith writes, ‘Nature, when she formed man for society, endowed him with an original desire to please, and an original aversion to offend his brethren. She taught him to feel pleasure in their favourable, and pain in their unfavourable regard.’²⁰ In Smith's understanding, pleasure or pain is derived not simply from praise or blame, but from knowing that we are worthy of praise or of blame:

We are pleased, not only with praise, but in having done what is praise-worthy. We are pleased to think we have rendered ourselves the natural objects of approbation, though no approbation should ever actually be bestowed upon us: and we are mortified to reflect that we have justly merited the blame of those we live with, though the sentiment should never actually be exerted against us.²¹

We have, from some unspecified source, a sense of what is right and wrong, so that the praise and blame of those around us gives us pleasure and pain only in so far as they confirm the sense we already have of our worthiness or unworthiness. Thus:

The most sincere praise can give little pleasure when it cannot be considered as some sort of proof of praiseworthiness…. A woman who paints could derive, one should imagine, but little vanity from the compliments that are paid to her complexion.²²

In modern understanding, Smith may underestimate the pleasures of compliments, whether merited or not, and overestimate the fixity of ideas of what is praiseworthy. He does not, however, underestimate the importance of praise and blame: ‘Men have voluntarily thrown away life to acquire after death a renown they could no longer enjoy. Their imagination, in the meantime, anticipated that fame which was in future times to be bestowed upon them.’²³ Imagined praise is sufficient to induce men to give their lives for their people. Darwin's emphasis on the importance of praise and blame, particularly in ‘rude times’, in moulding social behaviour thus echoes the thoughts of Smith.

Darwin cites sensitivity to praise and blame as a mechanism by which individuals might achieve coherence in an environment in which cohesion was essential to survival. Individual survival is predicated on group formation. Darwin develops his ideas of cohesion and the mechanism of praise and blame in the context of tribal society. Tribes are here the units of survival:

When two tribes of primeval man, living in the same country, came into competition, if (other circumstances being equal) the one tribe included a great number of courageous, sympathetic and faithful members, who were always ready to warn each other of danger, to aid and defend each other, this tribe would succeed better and conquer the other.²⁴

Tribes expand by conquest: ‘All that we know about savages, or may infer from their traditions and from old monuments, the history of which is quite forgotten by the present inhabitants, shew that from the remotest times successful tribes have supplanted other tribes.’²⁵ In Darwin's time nations were following a similar path. Nations, however, lack the intimacy of tribes, and Darwin attributes the advance of nations to intellectual faculties rather than praise and blame. The success of nations arising from deployment of intellectual faculties leads him to suggest that those faculties are a consequence of natural selection:

At the present day civilised nations are everywhere supplanting barbarous nations, excepting where the climate opposes a deadly barrier; and they succeed mainly, though not exclusively, through their arts, which are the products of the intellect. It is, therefore, highly probable that with mankind the intellectual faculties have been mainly and gradually perfected through natural selection; and this conclusion is sufficient for our purpose.²⁶

Intellectual faculties and ‘arts’ are, in this context, at least partly understood in terms of technology:

Of the importance of the intellectual faculties there can be no doubt, for man mainly owes to them his predominant position in the world. We can see, that in the rudest state of society, the individuals who were the most sagacious, who invented and used the best weapons or traps, and who were best able to defend themselves, would rear the greatest number of offspring.²⁷

Some nations were predominating over others because of their superior intellectual faculties, manifest in superior weapons.

Tribes and nations constitute ready-made and easily identifiable groups, however they come together and identify themselves. Similarly races constitute ready-made and obvious groups. The Origin has the alternative title The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Survival, though the book has little or nothing to say about human races. The neglect is remedied in The Descent of Man, where Chapter 7 is ‘On the Races of Man’. A large section of the chapter is an account of the distinctive features of different races in a quest to establish whether they should be regarded as different species by reference to the criteria used by naturalists to distinguish species. In the same chapter he describes the extinction of Tasmanians and steep declines in the populations of other races after invasion by Europeans. Elsewhere in the Descent he adopts the popular classification of...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Routledge frontiers of political economy
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 The problem with natural selection
• 2 Natural selection and support-bargaining
• 3 Power and hierarchy
• 4 Power elites and pluralist democracy
• 5 Sexual selection and kinship
• 6 The evidence for support-bargaining
• 7 Theory making and social Darwinism
• 8 Common theory and Personification
• 9 Money-bargaining and the evolution of economies
• 10 Social symmetries
• 11 Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index