In South Africa the left shows no sign of vanishing as a political force, in marked contrast with places such as the former communist bloc countries.
In the form of Cosatu and the South African Communist Party it has a significant national presence that includes important Cabinet and ANC positions, plenty of union muscle and no shortage of media attention. The recent spat involving Julius Malema and Jeremy Cronin, and the booing of the former at the SACP’s December 2009 conference, increased this media attention.
Despite these signs of vitality, the decline of traditionally left-wing parties and organisations in many parts of the world makes it necessary to ask whether the left in South Africa really does have a significant future. If so, what kind of left would that be?
The financial crisis that hit much of the West, including South Africa, from September 2008 onwards adds to the need for focusing anew on the left because the crisis has revealed some disturbing problems in the free-market system. Is liberal democracy and the capitalism associated with it indeed the end of history? Or has the financial crisis created an important window of opportunity for fresh thinking about the future of the left?
Even if it has, the collapse of European communism about 20 years ago was a major political setback for its Marxist-Leninist underpinnings. Isn’t a reconsideration of those underpinnings long overdue?
One who thinks so is Peter Singer, the eminent applied ethicist. Best known for his work on animal liberation, Singer, who is certainly of the left himself, is also an authority on Marx and has called for a new paradigm for the left. He calls it a Darwinian left.
What, then, is his proposal? Set out in a short book published in 1999, called A Darwinian Left: Politics, Evolution and Cooperation, it can be summarised in three parts: the meaning of the left, why it needs a new conceptual foundation and why — surprisingly for those who see Darwinism as more likely to be used to further right-wing thinking — Singer sees it as the new conceptuality needed by the left.
The left, according to Singer, is a broad stream of thought shared by people who are concerned about suffering and injustice and who are determined to do something about them. In Singer’s own words: “If we shrug our shoulders at the avoidable suffering of the weak and the poor, of those who are getting exploited and ripped off, or who simply do not have enough to sustain life at a decent level, we are not of the left.”
Understood like this, the left is a broader reality than Marxism and the communist movement, which have dominated it during much of the 20th century. Nonetheless, Singer certainly has things to say to Marxists and members of surviving communist parties such as the South African Communist Party.
This is clear from the second aspect of his proposal, in which he explains why he thinks the left needs a new conceptuality that will replace some central features of Marxism, though not its outrage at exploitation and greed and other themes.
There are two groups of reasons for this need: problems besetting Marxist theory itself and the arrival of modern Darwinian evolutionary science.
The problems besetting Marxism, according to Singer, are firstly its rejection of the idea of human nature and the concomitant belief that humanity is radically malleable and perfectible, given revolutionary changes to the economic and social base of our existence. Biological science allegedly shows that these are mistaken notions.
Singer also thinks that Marxists have erred in ignoring our biological inheritance. Although Marx and others applauded Darwinism in connection with the animal kingdom, they failed to see that evolution also applies to human beings.
The themes faulted by Singer are among the most central to Marxist thought. If they are indeed spurious, that would gravely, even fatally, undermine continued, wholesale acceptance of Marxism as a valid conceptual basis for the left and for its political and economic agendas.
That Singer regards them as indeed spurious is evident from the third aspect of his proposal, namely that in modern Darwinian science a superior, more scientific conceptuality exists and that this is — contrary to widespread belief — friendly to the left and able to rescue it from its long involvement with flaws in Marxist thought.
What, then, makes Darwinism the friend of the left? Singer avers that since the 1960s it has come to recognise cooperation as a significant force for survival alongside competition. It shows that people can, as Singer says, be motivated by a desire to help others.
In addition, modern biology makes it clear that there is indeed such a thing as human nature, grounding both our cooperative and our competitive tendencies in our evolved biology. A shared human nature is why there are the striking similarities shared by all known cultures that Singer cites, such as concern for kin, sociality, readiness to cooperate, some kind of social ranking and sexual role differentiation, as well as the many differences stemming from humanity’s innate capacity for individual creativity.
It is also now clear that humanity is part of the evolutionary process, not somehow separate from it. In Singer’s words: “We are evolved animals.”
While our biology gives us a strong drive to act in furtherance of our own interests, Singer cites evidence to show that it is a serious mistake to define our interests in narrowly individualist and economic terms, as right-wingers are apt to do. Just as powerful is our desire for friendship, acceptance, teamwork and supportive communities. It is as much in our interest to desire and work for these as it is for our own personal, material well-being.
Armed with the knowledge of these realities about humanity, Singer believes that a Darwinian left can embark on a realistic political project aimed at creating a more cooperative society, which can also curb and channel the competitive drives that are as much part of human nature, rather than trying vainly to stamp them out.
For Singer this makes vastly better sense than a capitalist system that so marginalises and excludes masses of people from its benefits that they become its adversaries. It makes much better sense than a left that can’t free itself from serious errors in its understanding of human existence, thereby frustrating its own project of practical concern for all who suffer injustice and exploitation.
For a country such as South Africa, with massive problems of poverty, unemployment, conflict, corruption, crime and bloated elites, Singer’s vision is grounds for realistic hope by all who are outraged by these problems — and therefore truly of the left.
Martin Prozesky is an independent applied ethics consultant and an emeritus professor of the University of KwaZulu-Natal. His most recent book, Conscience: Ethical Intelligence for Global Well-Being, is published by UKZN Press