Human Nature: Marx, Nietzche, Russell, Weber, Constant, Durkheim

IMPORTANT NOTE: DON'T CHEAT. DON'T PLAGIARIZE. Notes and Papers are shared here for reference and for studying. Footnote as appropriate.

My complete collection of Grad School Notes can be found here (Africa, IR, Ethnic Conflict, Economics, Writing, Islam, Comparative Politics).

(These notes are from my grad school Comparative Politics Class)

MARX

Marx's view of human nature was that we change nature. And that this labour is a social act. I'd imagine he'd say human nature was capable of reaching perfection, since communism require people to fulfill their work perfectly in cooperation with others.


They disagree in that Marx has emphasis on the man doing work for the benefit of society, while Nietzsche quite plainly states man works to achieve his own power.












NIETZSCHE

              Nietzsche believes that there is no such thing as a good or evil human nature, and that the thought that there would be these two values derives from master-slave morality as he liked to call it. These values arise from life-affirming and life-denying things, such as wealth vs. poverty, strength vs. weakness, etc. He also believed in something called the will to power, basically saying everything we do is an attempt to further our own power in some way. Another important concept is the Ubermensch - superperson. Basically this is his ideal person. There's really no concrete definition of what this is, although i personally just hold to the idea it's someone who has completely separated himself from morality.

             They disagree in that Marx has emphasis on the man doing work for the benefit of society, while Nietzsche quite plainly states man works to achieve his own power.

RUSSELL

Believes that the lust for power is a part of human nature.

"The love of power is a part of human nature, but power-philosophies are, in a certain precise sense, insane. The existence of the external world... can only be denied by a madman... Certified lunatics are shut up because of the proneness to violence when their pretensions are questioned; the uncertified variety are given control of powerful armies, and can inflict death and disaster upon all sane men within their reach."


Nature of power: 

Russell's view of human nature, like that of Thomas Hobbes, is somewhat pessimistic. By Russell's account, the desire to empower oneself is unique to human nature. No other animals besides Homo sapiens, he argues, are capable of being so unsatisfied with their lot, that they should try to accumulate more goods than meet their needs. The "impulse to power", as he calls it, does not arise unless one's basic desires have been sated. (Russell 1938:3) Then the imagination stirs, motivating the actor to gain more power. In Russell's view, the love of power is nearly universal among people, although it takes on different guises from person to person. A person with great ambitions may become the next Caesar, but others may be content to merely dominate the home. (Russell 1938:9)
This impulse to power is not only explicitly present in leaders, but also sometimes implicitly in those who follow. It is clear that leaders may pursue and profit from enacting their own agenda, but in a "genuinely cooperative enterprise", the followers seem to gain vicariously from the achievements of the leader. (Russell 1938:7–8)
In stressing this point, Russell is explicitly rebutting Friedrich Nietzsche's infamous "master-slave morality" argument. Russell explains:
"Most men do not feel in themselves the competence required for leading their group to victory, and therefore seek out a captain who appears to possess the courage and sagacity necessary for the achievement of supremacy... Nietzsche accused Christianity of inculcating a slave-morality, but ultimate triumph was always the goal. 'Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. '" (Russell 1938:9, emphasis his).
The existence of implicit power, he explains, is why people are capable of tolerating social inequality for an extended period of time (Russell 1938:8).
However, Russell is quick to note that the invocation of human nature should not come at the cost of ignoring the exceptional personal temperaments of power-seekers. Following Adler (1927) — and to an extent echoing Nietzsche — he separates individuals into two classes: those who are imperious in a particular situation, and those who are not. The love of power, Russell tells us, is probably not motivated by Freudian complexes, (i.e., resentment of one's father, lust for one's mother, drives towards Eros and Thanatos (Love and Death drives, which constitute the basis of all human drives, etc.,) but rather by a sense of entitlement which arises from exceptional and deep-rooted self-confidence. (Russell 1938:11)

WEBER

He thought that what moved people was a religious principle so that catholics who could get resolution at any time for their sins within the framework of a loving god could basically be childlike and play whereas the protestants had a harsh god whom you had to devote your life to pleasing and even then could not guarantee your good works would get you into heaven as god is a god and all powerful and has his choice so protestants are more driven to good works and piousness and driving social change.
look up protestant work ethic we still use the term now-

Given that we choose our brand of religion it would be safe to say that he thought people were driven by that choice about how to act in society In Northern Ireland Where there is roughly 60/40 protestants to catholics there is the notion that the catholics are the childlike ones whilst the protestants are responsible and running the country.
Weber sees that human beings are animals oriented toward meaning, and meaning, as we’ve seen, is subjective and not objective. Weber also understands that all humans are oriented toward the world and each other through values.

Further, Weber sees the primary level of analysis to be the social action of individuals; for Weber, individual action is social action only insofar as it is meaningfully oriented toward other individuals. Weber sees these meaningful orientations as produced within a unique historical context. Weber’s perspective, then, is a cultural one that privileges individual social action within a historically specific cultural milieu. This orientation clearly sets him apart from Spencer, Durkheim, and Marx, who were much more structural in their approaches.

CONSTANT

“that noble disquiet which pursues and torments us, that desires to broaden our knowledge and develop our faculties… it is to this self-development that our destiny calls us” (Constant 1816). Industry, innovation, and production are all key-words in this tradition.
“Here lies a man who did honor to human nature”

Constantian theses contained in the work on religion and referring to the human nature can be formulated as follows: 1. A man is not entirely the product of society in which he lives and its culture, but he is a being that can be defined by his stable and unchangeable nature. 2. What the human nature is like can be judged by examining the behaviours common to all people and their creations, for example religion. 3. The human nature is unchangeable . However, the forms change, through which it manifests itself in various periods of the development of humanity. In people's religious behaviour, for example, there is manifested something which is the permanent source of every religion and is inherent in human nature. Constant calls it "le sentiment religieux" (a religious feeling). The religious forms, beliefs, rites, institutions etc., in which it manifests itself, change but, itself, it remains the permanent element of the human soul. 4. Rationality constitutes the essence of humanity. There exist, however, such spheres of human behaviour which indicate that the human nature cannot be described only in the rational categories. Besides reason, the man is governed by at least two forces: the above - mentioned feeling and egoism.

DURKHEIM

In Suicide (1897), Durkheim explores the differing suicide rates among Protestants and Catholics, arguing that stronger social control among Catholics results in lower suicide rates. According to Durkheim, Catholic society has normal levels of integration while Protestant society has low levels. Overall, Durkheim treated suicide as a social fact, explaining variations in its rate on a macro level, considering society-scale phenomena such as lack of connections between people (group attachment) and lack of regulations of behavior, rather than individual's feelings and motivations.[37][56]
This study has been extensively discussed by later scholars and several major criticisms have emerged. First, Durkheim took most of his data from earlier researchers, notably Adolph Wagner and Henry Morselli,[57] who were much more careful in generalizing from their own data. Second, later researchers found that the Protestant–Catholic differences in suicide seemed to be limited to German-speaking Europe and thus may always have been the spurious reflection of other factors.[58] Durkheim's study of suicide has been criticized as an example of the logical error termed the ecological fallacy.[59][60] However, diverging views have contested whether Durkheim's work really contained an ecological fallacy.[61]More recent authors such as Berk (2006) have also questioned the micro-macro relations underlying Durkheim's work.[62] Some, such as Inkeles (1959),[63] Johnson (1965)[64] and Gibbs (1968),[65] have claimed that Durkheim's only intent was to explain suicide sociologically within a holistic perspective, emphasizing that "he intended his theory to explain variation among social environments in the incidence of suicide, not the suicides of particular individuals."[66]
Despite its limitations, Durkheim's work on suicide has influenced proponents of control theory, and is often mentioned as a classic sociological study. The book pioneered modern social research and served to distinguish social science from psychology and political philosophy.[67]
The duality of Human Nature is the opposition of the two following concepts: Soul VS. Body. (From a religious point of view) The Body is egoist and the Soul is Reasonable. These two concepts are in opposition and makes us the contradictory beings we are.

This opposition gives us the need for spirituality in order to bind them. (Or at least make them coexist peacefully.)

Durkheim call the duality of human nature: Homo Duplex. 

Durkheim thus returned to the conception of the duality of human nature first found in The Division of Labor:

... social man superimposes himself upon physical man. Social man necessarily presupposes a society which he expresses or serves. If this dissolves, if we can no longer feel it in existence and action about and above us. whatever is social in us is deprived of all objective foundation... Thus we are bereft of reasons for existence: for the only life to which we could cling no longer corresponds to anything actual; the only existence still based upon reality no longer meets our needs... So there is nothing more for our efforts to lay hold of, and we feel them lose themselves in emptiness.24
It is in this social (rather than the earlier. psychological) sense therefore that our activity needs an object transcending it; for such an object is implicit within our moral constitution itself, and cannot be lost without this constitution losing its raison d'être to the same degree.

Is nationalism a social movement?

IMPORTANT NOTE: DON'T CHEAT. DON'T PLAGIARIZE. Notes and Papers are shared here for reference and for studying. Footnote as appropriate.

My complete collection of Grad School Notes can be found here (Africa, IR, Ethnic Conflict, Economics, Writing, Islam, Comparative Politics).

To address whether or not nationalism is a social movement requires the examination of both terms’ definition in detail.  In this essay I argue that while nationalism generally meets many of the tenets of a social movement, its categorization as one depends on which theory of the origins of nationalism to which one ascribes.

Connor notes that most scholars define a nation as a group of people that share a common language, geographic territory or religion.  A primordialist would expand upon this definition and assert that nations are defined by groups of people that have the perception (if not the genetic reality) of “shared blood.”  In the majority of cases, these groups of similar people can also be called ethnicities.  When formal boundaries are drawn for a given ethnicity—this is effectively politics—a nation is created.  This process of creating a border and seeking self-determination by a mobilized common group of people is nationalism.  It nearly always involves conflict with another group.  Muller notes that most Americans are far more familiar with civic nationalism (i.e., a common geographic territorial identity as the definition of a nation) despite the fact that ethnic nationalism has been a far more prevalent occurrence globally, as well as throughout most of the United States’ own history.

A social movement is a group of people that band together with a specific goal (e.g., autonomy, equal rights) and a collective identity (e.g., Mormon, Black, Gay).  They occur most often when there is not a political or institutional means by which they can solve their grievances.  A group’s collective identity is important because one of the primary goals of a social movement is to push that identity to the forefront of the political establishment.   In parallel with their efforts for recognition and a public platform, their overall goals emerge as an organic product of their identity.  The process of mobilization itself is paramount as it is typically characterized by initial steps to raise public awareness of the problem (e.g., media, letter-writing campaigns, social media) and then by steps intended to provoke corrective action by a government (e.g., public demonstrations, strikes, marches, boycotts).  Typically successful social movements are nonviolent, especially when they aim to effect regime change.  Efforts to topple a regime qualify as social movements when there are no established mechanisms to change a state’s leadership (i.e., under a dictatorship or authoritarian regime).  Sharp successfully argues for a nonviolent strategy to overthrow a recalcitrant regime in his seminal work From Dictatorship to Democracy, a book that has become a playbook for social movements globally.  By espousing nonviolence, social movements avoid playing to a government’s strength—its monopoly on force.  Through defiance and disobedience—coupled with an overarching grand strategy—movements can provide the necessary pressure to achieve their goals.

The process of an ethnic group mobilizing for the common goal of their own nation certainly meets the cursory definitions of a social movement.  It often stands a separate, however, for several reasons.  Namely, the gap occurs because of the many competing theories for why nationalism occurs.  The primordialist explanation asserts nationalism occurs in an ancient, timeless plane that emerges out of fixed unchanging identities.  This slow and organic process does not match the mobilization elements and speed of a social movement.  The structuralist believes that the state makes the nation and that nationalism emerges as a product of modernity.  This idea of nationalism as a product of an environment ignores the role of people so crucial to a social movement.  Only the instrumentalist explanation matches the categorization of nationalism as a social movement.  Instrumentalists believe that the choices of people matter and that nationalism is a dynamic process that can occur quickly.  Ultimately, all three theories on the origins of nationalism have merit and can be substantiated empirically at various points in history.  The process of identifying the instances when nationalism was a social movement proves useful as it highlights the cases where a group did affect, promote and establish their own identity and nation.

What role does ideology play in the establishment of a welfare regime?

IMPORTANT NOTE: DON'T CHEAT. DON'T PLAGIARIZE. Notes and Papers are shared here for reference and for studying. Footnote as appropriate.

My complete collection of Grad School Notes can be found here (Africa, IR, Ethnic Conflict, Economics, Writing, Islam, Comparative Politics).

In this essay I argue that ideology plays a critical role in the establishment of a welfare regime.  The modern welfare regime is inexorably tied to the ideology of liberalism, in stark contrast to its Marxist roots.  

In addressing the role of ideology within the creation of a welfare regime it is useful to define these terms.  An ideology usually develops when someone makes an observation about a phenomenon in society or history and creates a theory to explain it.  When this theory is transformed and becomes an explanation for everything—usually as a normative mindset—it becomes an ideology.  An ideology asserts that its worldview can explain any problem, conflict  or occurrence.   In its comprehensiveness then it is very useful but logically it can be very circular and unsatisfying.  Ideologies are most often characterized by an -ism (e.g., communism, marxism, objectivism, liberalism, fascism, feminism).  

A welfare regime is a government whose laws and policies seek to provide for some measure of the wealth (in the holistic sense) of the entire people.   Typically the elements of this welfare include shelter, security, education, health care and subsistence.  This idea’s ideological roots harken back to Hobbes’ conception of the social contract—the agreement by which people cede elements of their individual freedom for the good of the whole.  The abdication of rights transforms a person’s natural state from one that is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short” to one that emerges in concert with a state’s creation.  With only the church and private charities to provide for a population’s welfare prior to the emergence of the welfare state, Hobbes’ description of most people’s lives was an apt one.

The specific ideology that a state embraces plays a pivotal role in the development of its welfare regime.  Today this development is a foregone conclusion as nearly every state is a welfare one in some measure.  There are a plethora of catalysts for this progression but the most fundamental one is that of risk mitigation.  Failing to provide at least a modicum of welfare puts a state at risk for social instability and upheaval (from revolution), international economic decline (from competition) and strategic political decline (from global competitors).  If risk management is the primary influence on a welfare regime, then a state’s interpretation of social justice is an important secondary factor.  

While the modern (post World War II) welfare state is a product of liberalism’s influence on the tension between democracy’s conception of political equality and capitalism’s conception of economic inequality, its true roots are in Marxism.  The normative concept of class equality is a central underlying principle of a welfare regime.  Few states espouse the severe notion of class conflict as a sole driving force anymore but nearly all now recognize the insidious destabilizing effect of chasmic economic and political inequality.  When an ideology eventually disappears (and all do), it does so either because it failed or because everyone ended up believing it.  Whereas an idea like fascism failed, echoes of Marxism live on today.  

The liberalist notion that individual freedoms must be protected is the balancing factor that tempers the excesses of the capitalist market.  As Crepaz points out, this balance manifests uniquely in different states.  Sweden, Germany and the United States all place their baseline level of economic equality at different marks.  The width of an acceptable gap determines the level of welfare provisions by the state.  In these examples the aforementioned circular nature of ideology is instructive as Crepaz shows that even the liberal belief in individual freedom for all becomes tempered when the all includes people deemed to be outsiders.  The evolving notion of liberalism will continue to affect the level of welfare provided as states continue to embrace liberal democracy.