Are Humans Naturally Capitalist or Communist?

Freeman writes at some length about ”libertarian communism” and the notion that it involves an ignorance of market principles: http://freemanlc.blogspot.com/2006/03/in-defense-of-libertarian-communism.html. He aptly points out that much of the debate between libertarian “communists” and libertarian “capitalists” arises from a disagreement about human nature. How would humans organize themselves under conditions of complete freedom? Would they be atomistic and competitive or sociable and cooperative?

I reckon that individual humans vary in their degree of natural baseline sociability and cooperativeness and that these characteristics would be subject to the effects of socialization depending on the social environment in which an individual finds himself. A cooperative individual might not thrive as much in a competitive environment, whereas a competitive individual might find himself at a disadvantage among cooperators. In a free society, one might choose from among any number of groupings.

In our present society, humans manifest both rationalized market type relationships and other more cooperative relationships. We ordinarily do not treat our families in the same way that we treat our clients or vendors. We do not think about our churches in the same way as we do commercial enterprises, and it would be considered unseemly to do so. Indeed, we often subordinate rational market relations to other social relationships as when we throw business to a kinsman or friend despite a price disadvantage.

In the “wild”, humans tended to organize themselves in extended family groupings, the size and structure of which varied with the prevailing means of subsistence and other factors. Certainly, the “nuclear family” was not the norm, and relations among extended family members may not usefully be described in the language of capitalism. There were “economies” of exchange and the creation and maintenance of mutual obligations and expectations, but a significant factor in valuation was relational rather than strictly material.

Our wild forebears were considerably constrained in their lifestyle choices by their limited technology, and free men armed with our present level of technology may very well form unprecedented social groupings. The “nuclear” family would probably not have been possible for most people until the last 200 hundred years. As it stands, it is now difficult to maintain households that deviate from the “nuclear” model. It is illegal in some localities for more than three unrelated persons to share a home, and it would be difficult in most areas to get permission to construct a family compound to house a larger group. Even where it is not forbidden, social disapproval of communal living makes it unduly hard, and such families would be subject to increased surveillance by child welfare agencies and other police. Nonetheless, some people form larger groupings despite the obstacles, eg Hasidic Jews, Hutterites.

In any event, in a free society libertarian communists will be free and more fully able to live in communal groups while libertarian capitalists will continue to be free to live alone and count their money or do whatever it is they do, if anything, when they are not engaging in rational market oriented behaviors.