ARE WE PRISONERS OF OUR GENES?

If our social arrangements were determined by our biology then there would never have been the great diversity of behaviour patterns, relationships and culture that is the real story of our past and which is evident even in the way we live now. The argument that our behaviour is determined by our physical inheritance may pose as science but in reality it is a socially determined prejudice used as part of a crude political ideology.

Faced with such objections to socialism, the first thing that needs to be done is clarify what is going to be meant by the term “human nature".