ViridianNott

You have the palate of a child

I agree completely that Kropotkin is more right than your average social Darwinist or nazi, but all three use “evolution” as a concept to further their political interests, and do not correctly portray the reality or nuance of the Darwinian influences on primates societies. There’s a reason he had a reputation for being a crackpot among evolutionary biologists in the first place.

I’m as much for altruism as anybody else, but as a biologist I can’t pretend that Darwinian evolution promotes unbridled cooperation in groups of primates with no room for selfishness and competition… it is quite the opposite actually. Primate societies tend to be hierarchical and unequal, even within otherwise united groups.

Not to say that Darwinian evolution makes cooperation an impossibility; social conditioning and education overpower evolutionary instincts all over the place in human society. One only needs to look at things like religion and political ideology to understand that evolution and instinct are not the primary movers of human behavior nowadays.

Edit: To be clear, I am not saying that that supposedly Darwinian political beliefs like social Darwinism and naziism are driven by natural human behavior. I just want to point out that Marxist Leninist ideas can’t make that claim either. Almost no human ideas or institutions can. Except for cuckholding. That is a profoundly Darwinian behavior.