One Myth of Capitalism: Survival of the Fittest, the strongest individual, the lone entrepreneur

Progress has always been on the back of a number of factors, cooperation, community and hard work by the workers.

Let’s take an example, let’s take Adam Smith, widely regarded as the father of modern capitalism. He wrote the book, the Wealth of Nations which is lauded as the Bible of modern capitalism. Smith could not have done that unless his stomach was full and his clothes ironed. Smith spent much of his life living with his mum and was the greatest beneficiary of community and cooperation. If, after one day, his mum stop feeding him, he would not have been able to think about economics and write his book.

Because we value what we measure, we don’t put any value on Mrs Smith because there is no wage, no monetary value put on her care, but arguably the most important thing in Smiths life was the person who sheltered him, fed him, clothed him, yet economically all this is valueless.

For some children aspects of this mothering ends at various stages throughout their life, for Smith it never ended. The care a mother gives never ends. What do mums get paid for this? Absolutely nothing. Is that because its worthless? No, the total opposite.

I write this example, because capitalism is supposed to be based on the power of the individual. Those crazy individuals in the market each making their own decisions which collectively drive the market to meet their demands. The magic of capitalism. Magic we are told because it matches the individualistic selfish properties which reflect the true nature of humans, selfish individuals looking to satisfy their needs and wants.

Nasty socialism on the other hand is discredited because it is not a natural way and not the natural order, its not how humans arrange their lives. Humans don’t do things for each other, humans don’t do selfless acts, they don’t do things without the possibility of a gain, they don't like having central organisation.

Although isn’t the father of capitalism living off someone else who is selflessly giving up her time and labour to allow him to prosper and organising his life? Wasn’t Adam just living in a communist commune that we call a home? If you take into account that a patriarchal society measures the things men do whilst failing to even see the tasks of a woman, you can see how the myths surrounding the economic system have come into being. The great individual Adam Smith producing an amazing book, just ignore his life support machine and let him take the credit for everything.

Ah, but people say, capitalism is nature, because even Darwin said that its how all of nature arranges itself. "Survival of the fittest" Darwin said. Although unfortunately he never said that and its not mentioned in the Origin of Species either. The Origin of Species was groundbreaking for sure, linking all lifeforms back through millions of years to basic forms of single cell life. During that time evolution tries many things and many things fail, but some become useful for survival of the species.

However, when it comes to apes, and the annoyingly dominant ape that became homo-sapiens, we could easily fall into the trap of thinking the strongest and fittest must be the healthiest most well built ape, and in the modern age, these are our winners in the capitalist economy. That strongest individual. Socialism wouldn’t deliver these wins because it provides cover for the weak.

But providing cover for the weak is exactly what made the slightly more clever ape survive. In neanderthal times, a physically strong male who was violent and aggressive could not be contained in the tribe and would have to be banished to the woods and to certain death. This would have been the only way to ensure the survival of the tribe, cooperation and getting along, not violence and surpression through strength.

Even today, a gorilla may fight to show that he is the strongest male, but once he has fought he sits around and does literally fuck all. He would be expected to step up and fight a lion should that attack but thats not the best recipe for his survival. It is however a good recipe for survival of the community. One strong male is singled out then knows his role is the potential sacrifice of himself for the group.

Homo-sapiens, gorillas, all in fact living in social communities where cooperation and shared gathering of resources is the real reason for their survival.

And nature gives us an even better example, my favourite example, one which totally smashes the survival of the fittest myth and thats mycelial networks. Networks of mushrooms and fungus that live beneath our feet. They have always been there and were there before us and dinosaurs, and will probably outlive us too.

Strangely mycelial networks look like neural networks in our brains and you have to wonder if there is some connection there, our brains expanded from a monkey giving us enormous intelligence in comparison to our monkey relatives, perhaps from our consumption of fermented and rotten fruits from forest floors.

And interestingly when the American military wanted to create a network that would survive total obliteration from a nuclear attack by an enemy the internet was born which in diagram form also looks like a random network of connections between every computer hub. Something designed to survive Armageddon looks just like a mushroom network. That cannot be coincidence.

But how does this network survive? How has it lasted so long? On capitalist principles, it must be the winner who takes it all, who drains the environment of all minerals and resources, it must be somehow the strongest? All wrong. This network is purely about cooperation.

This network trades and swaps resources with trees, it allows trees to communicate danger throughout the forest. Its been proven that if a pest attacks one tree by the time that pest reaches the next nearest tree chemical signals have passed through the mycelial network and the next tree has already prepared defense's against the exact pest detected. The trees are not selfishly competing for limited resources as capitalism would have you believe is the way of nature, they are helping their neighbours survive via the network.

But what is in it for the mushrooms? Surely there must be something. We are so programmed to believe that people don’t do anything for nothing that we cannot accept that the network does this for free. And that is true, it doesn’t. What it gains is community, by organising and sharing resources the whole environment survives and can thrive, things do die off, but overall, there is survival, evolution can continue to work and improve things, and with all that cooperation, everything lives on.

So there we have it. Capitalism is not be the most natural form of working. It goes directly against human nature. It’s unnatural and it's not found in nature. And that should be no surprise. Marx said capitalism will eat itself. The most selfish will not survive or be sustainable. Evolution dooms capitalism to die.

Society, community, family, cooperation, sharing. These are the natural behaviours of human life and the sooner we design our economic system around it the better.