Human nature always wins: The fatal flaw in left-wing politics

MY BOOK, CLIMATE CHANGE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE, explored the “science” of climate change and the flawed energy policy response, but also considered the psychology of people who embrace and promote the dogma. They reject Enlightenment values for unrealistic utopianism, jettisoning truth for convenience.

I compared the philosophies of David Hume, Adam Smith and Charles Darwin with those of Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud.

“The former studied the actuality of human nature, economic mechanisms and the natural environment, and built on that foundation, while the latter despaired about the way the world was and sought radical new orders in a utopian fashion. The former led to the success of democracy (individualism), free-market capitalism (consumerism) and ecology (humans as a part of nature), in contrast to the dire consequences of communism, national socialism and the pseudo-science of psychoanalysis.”

A new book, The Origin of Politics by Nicholas Wade, considers how the left ignores our inherited instincts. He talks of intellectuals who

“belong to the social constructionist school that denies that evolution has had any role in shaping human nature or that a suite of human behaviours is embedded in the genes. Rather, say the social constructionists, all human behaviour is learned or cultural.”

We are a blank slate, and left-wing politicians must impose their worldview on us because they know better.

Desmond Morris’ 1967 book The Naked Ape demonstrated that we are fundamentally instinctive animals. I can also recommend Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment Now and The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature to bring sanity to this debate. He identified Franz Boas as the originator of an ideology which has pervaded Western intellectual circles: “Every aspect of human existence must be explained in terms of culture.”

Left-wing ideals contradict human instincts

The ideological debate goes back to Graeco-Roman times. Do humans sit above natural laws? Today’s activists have the arrogance and stupidity to believe we can control the weather with a carbon dioxide dimmer switch. The Enlightenment rediscovered truths from antiquity from the likes of Epicurius, Lucretius and Horatio. As the last of these said: “sapere aude” (dare to know) and “carpe diem” (seize the day).

The anthropologist Donald Brown identified 400 human behaviours that are present in almost all people, like specific facial gestures for emotions, family structures, dominant male behaviour, etiquette, hospitality, sexual modesty, beliefs beyond the visible and palpable, rites of passage, dance and music. Wade:

“Because of their universality, these behaviours are doubtless either genetic or reflect combinations of genetically based behaviours with cultural practices.”

Wade identified the kibbutz as a utopian venture which abolished pay and private property, and dissolved the family as a social unit. It failed because it ignored human instincts. I’m sorry, John Lennon, I cannot “imagine no possessions” but am content to dream about “a brotherhood of man” since we all share certain basic values. If only authoritarian politics didn’t get in the way.

Genetic determination goes even further back if we consider similar attributes in our closest animal relative:

“Chimps and humans… last had a common ancestor some seven million years ago, quite recently in evolution’s grand time scale… Every individual struggles for his or her own advantage but competitiveness is moderated by the structure of society and the threat of punishment for those who ignore its rules … The blunt assertions of superiority and inferiority, however distasteful to our egalitarian way of thinking, serve the vital function of supporting a stable hierarchy and preventing unnecessary fights.”

So much for an equality agenda, a distaste for competition, and a dependency and welfare culture that prevents people from striving to do their best (and sometimes failing, an essential lesson in life). Left-wing ideals contradict human instincts.

A degree of egalitarianism was present in hunter-gatherer tribes but if entrepreneurs such as John D. Rockefeller or Elon Musk had been born into a hunter-gatherer community, “they would never have been allowed to innovate, amass wealth, or benefit society with their enterprises.”

“Reconciliation, rule-following, empathy, reciprocity; a genetic basis for these distinctive behaviours was probably present in the joint ancestor of chimps and humans and therefore inherited by its two descendant species … Female chimps are keenly aware of the peril that serious fights between males can pose to the community … To prevent such a fate, female chimps will do their best to deter or moderate fights between the males of the community.”

Perhaps women should oversee all peacekeeping negotiations.

“This is an error made by many social scientists to the present day. They don’t want the genes to extend their reach into politics and society, so assert there is some invisible line the genes cannot cross. But culture is an extension of what human genes make possible, not an independent entity … Culture may create knives, guns and nuclear weapons, but this armoury would have no purpose were it not an extension of the human genes for aggressive behaviour.”

Aggressive behaviour is a primeval essential for survival which today we channel into organised sport. The British invented football, rugby, golf and cricket which tame competitive tribal instincts, knowing they are inherent in us and that suppressing them would diminish the human condition.

Self-worth and fairness are natural human emotions such that when some people gain more from benefits than from work, but are capable of work, they are devalued as people and taxpayers feel cheated. One’s sense of fair play must be radically distorted to believe that immigrants, especially illegal ones, should jump the queue for benefits.

The Victorians eschewed charity, this only appropriate for the “deserving poor”. In Scotland, the 1649 Poor Law Act placed a responsibility on wealthier rural parishioners to provide poor relief, with the 1845 Act responding to urbanisation. There was a direct link between donor and beneficiary, the duties of the former being inherent within Christian morality. By the twentieth century this was unworkable and the centralised state took over.

Socialism inevitably leads to fiscal failure and the least advantaged in society suffer most

I wonder if we can restore a better appreciation of social benefits. There is nothing free in life, with some people having to work hard to fund benefits. Perhaps if a railway ticket stated the taxpayer contribution to the journey, or an NHS visit were accompanied by a voucher stating the cost of the treatment and “free” prescriptions, we might appreciate them more.

Our opponents call Reformers divisive, mistaking this for disruptive, a strategy necessary to wipe away cosy, collectivist values at odds with basic human aspirations and motivations. Socialism inevitably leads to fiscal failure and the least advantaged in society suffer most.

A speaker at the 2025 Reform National Conference postulated that all legislation from the last twenty years should be reconsidered because it has been corrupted by a flawed mindset. With my Reform hat on, I found it easy to review in detail the Scottish Building Regulations and the National Planning Framework, ripping out all the ideological nonsense and replacing it with common sense.

Have recent arrivals from other parties fully made the transition to a new outlook and or do they still harbour the flawed attitudes and understanding that plagued their former political tribes? A return to prosperity under Reform can involve no appeasement of cosy consensus and flawed platitudes.