This Text Can Be Found in the Book,
The Evolution of Consent: Collected Essays (Vol. I)
This was composed for a speech given to the People’s Arcane School
on November 25, 2012 in Fort Worth, Texas.
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Cooperation comes naturally to humanity. If left to nature, outside of our conscious and ethical influence, we would still be living in a world where the strongest and most violent of creatures prey on the weakest and most docile. In many ways we still are, but, while this is true, we experience a level of conscious consideration for others which is unheard of in the primate order, or historical chain of evolution, and which pushes us forward.
As humans, we are under the impression that we are part of a world completely separated from the rest of nature. We call this world artificial. What is it that makes us feel separated from the rest of the animal kingdom? As humans in America today, we no longer have to fear cougars, bears, cholera, smallpox, or —for the most part— one another. Our fear of other animals, macro- and microscopic, is gradually being eradicated. No longer do we have to callous our feet as we follow herds, and flee from harsh weather, in a nomadic lifestyle. How is it that humanity is finding the ability to accomplish such extraordinary feats of modern civilization?
Unlike the elephant, who has taken to great size to defeat attacks from predation, humans have not evolved great physical features of defense, but something, in my opinion, much more impressive. We have evolved consciousness, thinking ability, and from this thinking ability developed cooperation, innovation, shared production, as well as mutual aid in defense. We have developed economies by which specialization can occur and by which labor can be divided, to allow maximum efficiency. We have developed associations, teams, and alliances to allow our goals to be reached. What is it, though, that is the binding mechanism for these goals? What is the incentive to cooperate?
There are two ways that cooperation is oftentimes used. One we all grow up with in modern societies is unfortunately the least virtuous of ways, and is arguably not a form of cooperation at all. This is cooperation with authority; when to cooperate is to do what an authority tells you, even when it is disagreeable. The second form of cooperation is cooperation for the sake of a commonly-shared goal. In the forms of cooperation lie their causes.
Aristotle named causation in four different parts, which he referred to as the Four Causes. According to Aristotle, there is the material a thing is composed of and the form that it takes, but then there are also efficient and final causes, which correspond, respectively, to past and future causes. These causes can explain the different incentives and definitions of cooperation.
Our material and formal causes explain our strengths and shortcomings as humans. Our material causes are generally similar—flesh and blood—, but the formal causes shape us into unique individuals. Since my vision of cooperation does not depend on sameness, and takes place in highly ordered society, I will not focus on these individual causes, as they play a minor role in political and economic conflict. Individuals differ, it is true, enough to have an assortment of abilities and disabilities, but when thrown into a sea of the generally capable, these differences are reduced to mere specialization in trade, rather than positions of power. Most individuals are of similar stature, mentally and physically. Our differences are, for the most part, minute, riding an equilibrium with rather tight margins. Homo sapiens sapiens, all genetically similar enough to be classified as the same species, did not evolve such coercive hierarchies as we experience today until later in history, suggesting a cultural rather than biological foundation. If it is not genetic superiority that creates power, then it is something else. What is it? We must look elsewhere.
In the first form of cooperation, benefitting authority, the reason, mechanism, or cause is based largely in the formal past. That is, there is likely some form of pressure being used to assert such cooperation, some form of coercion or aggression being exercised. If I point a gun at someone, I can likely make them cooperate in such a manner. The pointing of a gun is a mechanism of past causes; having pointed the gun, I now have control.
In the second form of cooperation, being mutually beneficial, the cause is based in the conceptual future form. There is no need for human compulsion for this kind of cooperation. Instead, only the communication and synthesis of goals can provide the incentive to cooperate in such a manner. This is a future cause, as it represents higher ideals, of goals actualized. The cause of the future is the good, and we are drawn toward it by way of conceptualization.
Each form of cooperation is, in truth, composed of both future and past causes, but to differing degrees. For instance, the cooperation of the first scenario, authority, relies on the future vision of survival and success on the part of the dominated, as well as the dominator. It is the goal of living that keeps them from opposing authority. Nonetheless, their goals are largely affected by authority, and for this reason are largely due to past causes. The cooperation of the second scenario, mutuality, relies on the coercive nature of the environment we are surrounded by, which induces us to cooperate as we face the hardships of weather and other life, but not on human-induced hardship of a political orientation. Hardship, provided by nature, is sufficient to induce cooperation. Human coercion is unnecessary and, in fact, detestable for this purpose. For this reason, we will say the human cause of mutual aid is a future cause (so far as people did not have to interfere by means of human violence with one another to induce cooperation). Because they share goals— ideas of what is good—, they cooperate.
Since this is a discussion of economics, and not of technology, I will not focus on the ways by which humans solve natural coercion and cooperate better with nature, but in the ways we solve human coercion and cooperate better with one another. I do, however, recognize the importance of solving antagonisms with nature, but, in order to enact any solution for the environment, we must first induce human cooperation, and free people to make good, enriching, decisions together. We must first understand the two incentives to cooperate.
What is it that allows for the potential of both kinds of human cooperation, coercive “cooperation” and truly cooperative mutual aid? The capacity for human choice and consequence, atop geographical differences.
Humanity started as small groups, without large economies of trade and distribution. We formed these groups in order to better cooperate against the coercive reality of nature. Nomadic groups of hunter-gatherers started on equal grounds and in similar bio-regions, without any one group able to accumulate a surplus. That is, until humanity reached the Nile and Tigris-Euphrates rivers in the Fertile Crescent, and learned to stay put. This was the Cradle of Civilization because it was filled with fertile ground, animal life useful to humans, rivers that allowed for a sedentary lifestyle, and for more permanent homes to be built. Perhaps just as important to the success of the area was that it was perfect trading grounds between Africa and Eurasia. This, alongside a sedentary lifestyle, allowed for a surplus to develop, and with surplus came the ability to defend private property. With such power, states were formed in Mesopotamia and Egypt. Later, strong maritime states we are all familiar with from ancient history— such as the Minoans, the Phoenicians, and Greeks— developed.
It is clear that cooperation, naturally developed, was suited for small groups, and when populations rose with surplus (unequally distributed, and not due to the virtue of labor, but to the monopoly of fertile grounds for living) the larger groups became states, capturing slaves and implementing class stratification. Michael Cheilik, once associate professor of history at Lehman College, and Author of Ancient History says,
According to many scholars, at first there was very little class distinction among the citizens. To be sure, there was a variety of economic functions among the inhabitants, but there is little indication of aristocracy or monarchy before 2800 B.C. It seems to some scholars that all citizens met in an assembly to select a leader. Slavery began at a very early period, as it occurred to conquerors that killing one’s adversaries was wasteful. Why not take them alive and use their labor? But the number of slaves was quite small.[i]
This suggests that, internal to the societies, the second form of cooperation— solidarity and mutual aid— was still being practiced, and was in fact the reason that the first form of cooperation— authority and domination— could be established over the slaves in the first place. Indeed, Michael Tomasello suggests that
The remarkable human capacity for cooperation […] seems to have evolved mainly for interactions within the local group. Such group-mindedness in cooperation is, perhaps ironically, a major cause of strife and suffering in the world today. The solution—more easily described than attained—is to find new ways to define the group.[ii]
It was not superiority that allowed for authority to be established, but geographical difference, formal causation, presenting itself to cultures that had not yet developed a mechanism for the proper distribution of land. These cultures— the ancient Mesopotamian and Egyptian city-states, and later kingdoms and empires— used their control of the land to dominate and enslave other societies, and built their nations partially on their forced labor.
Before these kinds of social relationships, though, humanity was much more kind to one another. Hunter-gatherer, and even early horticultural and herding, societies have a stronger sense of kinship and mutual dependency than did those living under the rule of kings. Band societies were much more likely to make lasting decisions as a group. Even mental illness is unlikely to have occurred in such large amounts until the rise of nations and states.
The Hebrew people long rejected kingship, until King Saul, and were instead organized into loose confederations that were presided over by ad hoc officials called judges. Judges were not the same as kings, but they did perform public functions such as presiding over policy, filling judiciary roles, warfare, etc. Similarly, early Germanic, Norse, and Celtic peoples were organized into confederations, and would meet in mass meetings called Things. There would be Things of various scales, between multiple villages. They were presided over by officials, called Lawspeakers, who— originally, before developing into kings— were not rule-makers, but were instead responsible for remembering and reciting the laws that the meeting collectively agreed upon. In the Americas, though long after, but under somewhat similar technological circumstances, Native Americans, such as the Iroquois— and many others—, also formed confederations of a large scale, with much more participation in legal affairs from the general population.
Humanity did not develop to dominate one another. Through evolution, we have developed further toward mutual aid, and this has gotten us to where we needed to be. Mutual aid, though, relies on a similarity of power, which has not been thrown off intrinsically (by genetic differences), so much as extrinsically (by environment). As long as costs can be exchanged, and not fully returned, power can continue to assert itself. The problem that allows for power to assert itself, though, is not only based on the first form of “cooperation,” but also on the altruistic side. We let the thieves keep what they have taken.
The problem is clearly the current claim to property rights, and, as long as one group can claim to own property that is more productive, by its very nature, the general balance of power inherent in humans— that has encouraged our cooperation— is thrown out of equilibrium. This imbalance of rights to resources relies on both forms of cooperation in protecting property rights. The state protects it by force, and we protect the state, and its cronies, by allowing them to continue having rights to the stolen property, and not stopping it. Our own values and ethics, falsely applied, keep us enslaved. We patriotically share goals with thieves, not realizing their roles in our lives, not realizing the goal we ultimately share is the transferal of our liberty.
Land, out of the three factors of production (land, labor, capital) is the only factor that is not the result of human labor. If one should have claim over one’s own labor, land properly belongs in the commons, to be used by all. Otherwise, it may be used to extract labor from others (as when serfs worked the lands of lords). That’s why John Locke added his proviso to his Second Treatise. As it was not produced by humanity, land is a gift from nature, and we should treat it as such. Without a population that respects monopoly property rights over land, rulers would find themselves hard pressed to assert their power.
Perhaps what is most sickening is that naturally developed mechanisms of self-preservation, such as ethics, are working against the people who use them most, when they defend the rich’s position of power and control, as staples of “law and order.” As long as the poor respect the property of the rich, as a monopolist instead of a harder-working producer, they will continue to fall victim to the bargaining power of the rich, and will kneel to the troops that accept their pay, which was appropriated by the mere collection of rent and not at any cost of effort. We pay for our own repression, and, in a state of ignorance, perpetuate it with inaction and/or loyalism.
It is also the tendency toward altruism that is to blame on the side of the state, the rich. If not for their own internal cooperation, they could not assert such power over the masses and establish such laws. Mesopotamia was not claimed by individuals, but by a society of cooperators, asserting themselves against other cooperating groups. It is only because they had a geographic advantage, and not because of genetic superiority, that the rulers could establish themselves as the private users of the Fertile Crescent, and extract slaves from other societies.
Thus it is, that domination is not only the inclination toward narcissism, rare in the human species, but is also a symptom of the natural human inclination toward trust and cooperation, atop geographic (and thus, technological and economical) advantages that we (our ethics and culture included) did not yet adapt to in our long process of natural selection (genetically or culturally). Both parties express the two forms of cooperation. The ruling class support one another, and repress us, and we support them, cooperate with them, and, in so doing, repress ourselves. This is largely due to the lack of our own shared goals, and the presence of theirs, which is further attributed to a lack of information on our behalf, and presence on theirs, attributed further to who has leisure time and money for learning. The two forms of cooperation are but one, expressed according to the terrain in which they are placed.
Cooperation is an inherent human value. It is not genetic superiority that has allowed for domination, it is geographic, economic, and legal injustice, and we all support it when we do nothing to change it or subscribe thoughtlessly to ethical norms that only serve to keep society repressed.
[i] Michael Cheilik, 14.
[ii] Michael Tomasello, 100.
