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Does ‘human nature’ exist and if so what is it?
Human nature is not fixed; it has changed throughout history and will continue to do so, argues the MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY
Mannequin

“…all history is nothing but a progressive transformation of human nature.” Marx, 1847

AN EARLIER Q&A (number 35) asked “Is the answer really ‘in our genes’?”

The answer — No — challenged the claim (most prominently declared in Richard Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene but recycled endlessly in the media and in common discourse) that our collective identity as humans is determined by our biology. 

Dawkins in many ways merely updated the arguments of Herbert Spencer — in the 1870s probably the most celebrated and influential but right-wing philosopher of his time and whose ashes are interred opposite Karl Marx’s grave in Highgate cemetery. 

Liberation webinar, 30 November2024, 6pm (UK)
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