ROGER D HARRIS and SARA FLOUNDERS challenge propaganda against the blockaded socialist island
Latest editorial
Is the answer really ‘in our genes’?
Marx and Engels incorporated in their writings a critique of the way that capitalism destroys the environment but it is only in the last half century that environmental concerns have become an integral part of the fight for socialism, writes the Marx Memorial Library and Workers’ School
The racist Republican tactic of redistricting to keep Trump and his base in power is turning the clock back to the 1950s, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
With a political crisis engulfing the Labour Party, the case for PR is back on the agenda. TONY BURKE argues trade unions must now engage on changes to our voting system
YVETTE WILLIAMS and JOE DELANEY dissect the institutional dawdling that rubbed salt into the Grenfell open wounds prolonging the agony of survivors
The HS2 debacle exposes what happens when public infrastructure is handed to private contractors – especially when set against China’s state-led high-speed rail success, says CARLOS MARTINEZ
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.
Similar stories
RICHARD SHILLCOCK examines an enjoyable, but philosophically conventional book, and urges Marxists to employ their capacity to embrace the totality in any explanation
The selection, analysis and interpretation of historical ‘facts’ always takes place within a paradigm, a model of how the world works. That’s why history is always a battleground, declares the Marx Memorial Library
New research into mutations in sperm helps us better understand why they occur, while debunking a few myths in the process, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT
GORDON PARSONS is enthralled by an erudite and entertaining account of where the language we speak came from