The crew of the Freedom Flotilla boat, Handala, warned Israel to obey international law but are now in captivity, reports LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
Latest editorial
Is the answer really ‘in our genes’?
A Chilean court ruled that funds were illegally taken by the dictator to accumulate family wealth that is now disputed among his heirs, writes PABLO MERIGUET
DAVID HORSLEY remembers communist seaman Bill Bailey, the ‘Kid from Hoboken,’ whose heroics in tearing down a swastika flag from a ship’s mast inspired early anti-fascist resistance
Our Foreign Secretary now condemns Israel in the Commons, yet Britain still supplies weapons and intelligence for its bombing campaigns — as the horror reaches perhaps the final stage, action must finally replace words, writes DIANE ABBOTT MP
I went to bed planning for university, but woke to bombs falling on Gaza, losing my home, best friend, and nearly my hand — yet I am unbroken, and still dream of writing to carry Palestinian voices worldwide, writes EMAN GHASSAN ABUZAYED
The shock suspension of socialist MPs and Diane Abbott’s re-suspension reveals a leadership intent on crushing internal debate — but MERCEDES VILLALBA MSP warns against surrendering party democracy without a fight
RICHARD DAWKINS, author of one of the best known texts on human nature, The Selfish Gene, declares we are “machines created by our genes” – that “[w]e are survival machines – robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes.”
Less dramatically, and often without an appeal to evolutionary processes, how often have you heard an explanation involving the term “it’s human nature” used to justify or explain greed, competitiveness, aggression, inequality or any other (usually negative) aspect of human behaviour?
Arguments for – and against – a “fixed” human nature (or the relative importance of “nature” v “nurture”) go back to Aristotle.
More from this author
Most currently popular arguments for degrowth describe a real problem without recognising its true cause – capitalism’s insatiable need to accumulate, argues the MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY
Most phenomena have an explanation, writes the MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY, but occasionally ‘anomalous’ events have led to new scientific understanding
The fight to defend public services is as important as the struggle over wages, but presents different challenges to workplace organising — especially with regards to bourgeois propaganda and conditioning, writes the MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY
Marx and Engels’ concern with soil provides a focus for understanding the relationship between capitalism and the environment, argues the MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY
