Animals cannot be capitalist, but can they be
socialist?
Before
starting up this discussion, I must say that my factual awareness about animal
behaviour is strictly limited. We know
about Washoe, the chimpanzee that learnt American Sign Language: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/my-life-as-a-turkey/joe-hutto-answers-your-questions/7389/, and about Joe Hutto, who learnt wild turkey language: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/my-life-as-a-turkey/joe-hutto-answers-your-questions/7389/ .
Once, when I was visiting a friend in a country
which was then in the Soviet bloc, we saw some ants, and I said that ants were
communist, but had solved the supply problem.
But if we
consider socialism to be about ownership and property, then we might say that
territorial animals are not socialist.
But what about cats? Their
instinct tells them that if you are their ‘master’ (though probably vice
versa), part of their instinct tells them to share their mouse with you. So that in terms of their immobile property
they are capitalist, but in terms of mobile property they are socialist.
Or perhaps
among some animals, the leader of the pack effectively owns the females: a form
of state capitalism?
But perhaps
socialism, when expressed in terms of property, is not a final definition. Perhaps property can be used in a socialistic
way. My own view of socialism is that of
“sharing equally the burdens imposed by the limitations of the natural
environment”, illustrated in the diagram shown below on the left. Then ownership comes in when it is a means by
which the rich get richer and the poor poorer.
But then I
have argued in these issues that this process of creating equality must be
broken down, part integrated with custom, and part by processes of
investigation that transcend custom. This
is illustrated on the right, from an article I wrote for Issue 22. Skills
become critical here.
“share equally the burdens imposed by the limitations of the natural environment”
(i.e. equal wind pressure on each square inch of sail)
processes in equality
I
once heard that experiments on rats in overcrowded conditions were viable
provided the space was shared fairly.
From a brief google I find the work of John B. Calhoun (1917-95), who
found that up to a point the rats would organise themselves into packs of
around twelve, but then serious behavioural problems occurred when crowding was
further intensified, leading to diminished birth-rates which could lead to the
extinction of the community even when numbers were sufficiently reduced.
So
rats and probably other species cannot be explicitly socialist: nor do they
invent the concept for themselves. But
if capitalism leads to a kind of cancer which gets out of control, then it
cannot necessarily be repaired of its own accord.
By Martin
Prior
The Philosophy Takeaway 'Animals' Issue 27
