Norman Geras - Marx & Human Nature: Refutation of a Legend

It is fascinating to read a book whose author I know mostly for being one of those socialists who'd moved so far from their politics that they ended up supporting Tony Blair's war on Iraq. Yet in the past Geras had been linked to the International Marxist Group. His earlier politics led him to write several useful books including this short essay on Marx's views on human nature. The "legend" that the subtitle refers to is the idea, common on the left in the past, that Marx rejected the idea of human nature. If the reader can penetrate the extremely specific approach to the subject, Geras offers some very useful insights. He begins by arguing that

Marx - like everyone else - did reject certain ideas of human nature; but je also regarded some as being true. It is important to discriminate the sort that he rejected from the sort he did not. More important still is to try to discriminate such of these ideas as are indeed true from such of them as are false. Neither purpose is served by talk of the dismissal of all conceptions of human nature. 

The author's style, as exemplified in the quote here, gives the reader some sense of what to expect. This is not a book that begins from the real world, but from the pages of Marx's writings, in particular a very specific paragraph, the sixth of Marx's theses on Feuerbach. Let's remind ourselves of what Marx said.

Feuerbach resolves the religious essence into the human essence. But the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of the social relations. Feuerbach, who does not enter upon a criticism of this real essence, is consequently compelled:

1. To abstract from the historical process and to fix the religious sentiment as something by itself and to presuppose an abstract – isolated – human individual.
2. Essence, therefore, can be comprehended only as “genus”, as an internal, dumb generality which naturally unites the many individuals.

It is then a very specific exploration of what Marx meant here. Geras says, for instance, writing about the final sentence of the above that, for Marx "Feuerbach is mistaken not because he views man in terms of 'inner', 'general', 'species' (or 'natural') characteristic but because he views him exclusively in those terms. He is wrong for a one-sidedness of perspective rather than wrong tout court... Feuerbach, Marx wrote, 'refers too much to nature and too little to politics.'"

Geras argues that Marx had a more dynamic approach. He say human nature as a thing that was shaped by circumstances.

If diversity in the character of human beings is in large measure set down by Marx to historical variation in their social relations of production, the very fact that they entertain this sort of relations, the fact that they produce and that they have a history, he explains in turn by some of their general and constant, intrinsic, constitutional characteristics; in short by their human nature. This concept is therefore indispensable to his historical theory.

So what is human nature? This is a harder question to answer from Geras book, because Geras is more concerned with proving (as he writes in his final sentence) that the sixth theses "does not show that Marx rejected the idea of human nature... He was right not to do so." This exercise in logic might be useful academically, particularly in the context of a general academic debate around the issue. But it doesn't help the reader who is trying to get to grips with Marx in order to change the world.

In fact, as the earlier quote suggests, Marx's concept of human nature, arises out of his understanding of how all human societies rest upon the natural world. We, in a myriad of different ways, have always laboured to change nature in order to satisfy our needs - most important of all, food, water and shelter. The societies we have created to do that in turn shape us, transforming our nature and relationships. We might think that human nature is to be greedy, violent or competitive. But those traits arise from the type of society we live in today. Time and again, even under capitalism, we have seen situations where what is supposed to be "human nature" is broken down as the nature of society is challenged collectively.

Unfortunately, Geras' defence of Marx's approach is lost in a jumble of self-referential arguments. There is nothing here (in fact Geras explicitly rejects this approach) that looks at anthropological studies or attempts to expand on Marx's historical materialist approach with examples from real human history. The argument is proved theoretically by Geras, but few are any wiser.

Related Reviews

Burkett - Marx and Nature: A Red and Green Perspective
Marx & Engels - The German Ideology
Molyneux - The Point is to Change it: An Introduction to Marxist Philosophy