OnlySubs: Communism, Terrible Idea, Every Species

OnlySubs Episode 99: Communism, Terrible Idea, Every Species is now available exclusively for New Discourses contributors on the following platforms:
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One of the more famous quips about Communism comes from the renowned biologist (entomologist, technically) E.O. Wilson. He said that it was a “great idea, wrong species,” meaning that it’s not suited to human beings and human nature. Wilson studied ants, and he clearly had in mind that the much more hive-like species he dedicated his life to understanding is more suited to Communism. He wasn’t right about that. In fact, he reproduced the key error at the start of Marx’s “Scientific” study of History (Wissenschaftlicher Sozialismus, Scientific Socialism). Marx believed human nature is inherently Communist because he saw tribes exhibiting a kind of primitive Communism within tribes. As Wilson should have realized, this is the same with ants, even though they’re far more communal than humans within their given nests. Each nest, like human tribes, is sundered from the other, and ants from different nests go to war with one another. If Wilson had been right, there would be exactly one family of ants throughout the entire world, or the ants would be working to achieve that, which obviously isn’t what we see at all. To explore this idea, join me for another insightful episode of James Lindsay OnlySubs, my subscribers-only podcast, in which I explore kind of fun and bizarre ideas related in some way or another to all things Woke.

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