Sociobiology: A capitalist & patriarchal analysis of nature
âNo natural or human science has been unaffected by these technical and theoretical transformations. Precisely how each scientific discourse relates to these historical changes is a matter for detailed study; it is certain the connections will not often be direct or simple. But it is a striking fact that the formal theory of nature embodied in sociobiology is structurally like advanced capitalist theories of investment management, control systems for labour, and insurance practices based on population disciplines. Furthermore, sociobiology, like all modern biologies, studies a control machine as its central object. Nature is structured as a series of interlocking cybernetic systems, which are theorized as communications problems. Nature has been systematically constituted in terms of the capitalist machine and marker. Let us first look at the market.Â
The market is best approached in terms of the history of the concept of natural selection. Contemporaries realized that a Darwinian natural economy, the competitive struggle for all against all for profit, suggested troubling parallels to political economy. Darwin himself realized his debt to Thomas Malthus; scarcity was the motor of nature as well as of history (Malthus, 1798, pp. 26-30, 73-5, 98). Biological populations increased at a rate that guaranteed permanent scarcity, as well as permanent technical improvement in the means of production. Progress and scarcity were the twin forces in capitalist development. Reproduction of biological organisms seemed the basic process in both nature and history, and reproduction was inherently competitive. Scarcity seemed inevitably linked to a natural process, and not to a historical limiting form of appropriation of the product of human production. Reproduction, not production, seemed the proper focus for a natural science of society. Similarly, as Marx noted, bourgeois political economists focused on equal and competitive exchange in the market, while obscuring the relations of domination in production. Those relations were enforced by particular mechanisms (including technology) which were designed to transfer the locus of control away from the worker. All of this is familiar. From this point of view, sociobiology is merely an extension and development of the theory of natural selection.Â
Sociobiology (Wilson, 1975, p. 10) is a biological understanding of groups - societies and populations. As for all capitalist science, the fundamental problem needing explanation is the combination of individuals for the common good. From a starting point of atomic individualism, reproduced in Darwinâs theory of natural selection, altruism needed explanation; it seemed an irrationality for a consistent theory of selection. Altruism in sociobiology is defined as âself-destructive behavior performed for the benefit of othersâ (Wilson, 1975, p. 578). How could individuals profit in the long run, if they wasted time and courted danger in self-destructive generosity? The problem seemed particularly acute in the most advanced natural societies - social insects and non-human primates, not to mention human orders. Sociobiologyâs solution is the quantitatively sophisticated extension of natural selection and population genetics, producing the notion of âinclusive fitness: the sum of an individualâs own fitness plus all its influence on fitness in its relatives other than direct descendants; hence the total effect of kin selection with reference to an individualâ (Wilson, 1975, p. 586).
The ideas related to inclusive fitness - kin selection, sexual selection, parental investment - permitted a refocusing of an old argument; that is to say, at what level can selection occur (Wynne-Edwards, 1962; Trivers, 1971, 1972)? In particular, can the social group be the locus of selection? If so, is the group a kind of superorganism, physiologically as well as genetically analogous to an individual? The answer for sociobiology is no. Or rather those suggestions no longer make sense. The genetic calculus of sociobiology concerns maximization strategies of genes and combinations of genes. All sorts of phenomenal orders are possible, from asexual individuals to cast-structured insect societies with only one reproductive pair, to role-diversified societies with many reproducing members. None of these orders is the central object of concern. That noumenal object is the gene, called by Richard Dawkins the âreplicatorâ, within the gene pool. Sociobiology analyses all behaviour in terms of the ultimate level of explanation, the genetic market place.â
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âThe theoretical view of nature underlying genetic engineering and bioethics as a kind of quality control industry appears clearly in sociobiology. On Human Nature emphasizes constraints and deeply established trajectories, but there is no logical, much less moral, barrier to a full engineering approach to outmoded systems. In that sense, the status quo rationalizations of the book, though extensive and explicitly sexist, racist and classist, are on the surface. The foundation of sociobiology is a capitalist and patriarchal analysis of nature, which requires domination, but is very innovative about its forms. The limits of engineering redesign in sociobiology are set by the capitalist dynamic of private appropriation of value and the consequent need for a precise teleology of domination. The fundamental sexism is less in rationalization of sex roles as genetically predisposed, than in the basic engineering logic of âhumanâ domination of ânatureâ. The humanism of sociobiology which Wilson correctly cites in his defence, is precisely the core of his scienceâs sexism. In addition of course, sociobiological reasoning applied to human societies easily glides into facile naturalization of job segregation, dominance hierarchies, racial chauvinism, and the ânecessityâ of domination in sexually based societies to control the nastier aspects of genetic competition. But, ironically, sociobiology is probably less tied to explicit sexism and racism than psychobiology and other organic functionalist biologies were. Sociobiology is a radical engineering science which can readily cleanse its objects of obsolescent flaws in natural design.â
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âIn an important sense, science, like capital, has been progressive. The computer is not just a machine built according to laws of domination related to labour and war. Communications sciences, including sociobiology, are human achievements in interaction with the world. But the construction of a natural economy according to capitalist relations, and its appropriation for purposes of reproducing domination, is deep. It is at the level of fundamental theory and practice, not at the level of good guys and bad guys.Â
A socialist-feminist science will have to be developed in the process of constructing different lives in interaction with the world. Only material struggle can end the logic of domination. Marx insisted that one must not leap too fast, or one will end in a fantastic utopia, impotent and ignorant. Abundance matters. In fact, abundance is essential to the full discovery and historical possibility of human nature. It matters whether we make ourselves in plenty or in unfulfilled need, including need for genuine knowledge and meaning. But natural history - and its offspring, the biological sciences - has been a discipline based on scarcity. Nature, including human nature, has been theorized and developed through the construction of life science in and for capitalism and patriarchy. That is part of the maintenance of scarcity in the specific form of appropriation of abundance for private and not common good. It is also part of the maintenance of domination in the form of escalating logics and technologies of command-control systems fundamental to patriarchy. To the extent that these practices inform our theorizing of nature, we are still ignorant and must engage in the practice of science. It is a matter for struggle. I do not know what life science would be like if the historical structure of our lives minimized domination. I do know that the history of biology convinces me that basic knowledge would reflect and reproduce the new world, just as it has participated in maintaining an old one.â
 - Donna J. Haraway, The Biological Enterprise: Sex, Mind and Profit from Human Engineering to Sociobiology, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (1991) Â

















