HUMAN NATUREAND
THE TRANSFORMINGSOCIETY
A. ETZIONI
Department of Sociology
Columbia University
T
he essence of the question of what kind of society we
may form-once we are freed from our past repressions
and the hangover of our liberation feast-is what kind of
material do we have to work with? As what we reshape is
first of all ourselves, both as individuals and as a social
combine, the question really is: What are humans like, what
are they capable of, and what are their limitations? Is our
present failure to act, i.e., to master our instruments and thus
our fate, congenital or conditioned? Various theories that
base their position on dynamic analysis of social, psychic,
and historical forces, suggest alternative future views that
range all the way from the retightened to oceanic abandonment. But does the "matter" which is being affected by these
forces-human nature-set any limitations or indicate where
we are headed? The questions are almost frightening in their
scope, but it is a mark of the crisis that they are being asked.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is part of a larger project entitled After
Modern-What? carried out under the auspicesof the Center for Policy
Research.
International Journal of Group Tensions, Vol. 4 No.3,
@1974 Sage Publications, Inc.
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September 1974
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They cannot be avoided in the name of scientism, lack of
sufficient data, or measurement difficulties.
To be concerned with the human potential is not to deny
that the historical conditions in which we find ourselves, as
we experiment with new futures, are a significant factor.
Obviously, it makes a great deal of difference whether we
command an affluent economy or are on a starvation diet,
reflect on a tranquil island or face the enemy at the gate,
marshal nature's forces or are overwhelmed by them.
Nevertheless, we are both the creature of our natural and
social environment and its creator. If we do not find at hand
the necessary tools for our purposes, we may make them. If
the tools we have already made stand in our way, we can
remove them. Hence it is insufficient to ask only about the
historical conditions-"where
we are at"; we must also assess
our potential.
Having defined our historical condition as regressive and
hence as "open," removing all forms so that we will be able
to reform, the question as to what our innermost capabilities
are is more important than it would be under less pliable
historical circumstances. How high can man rise? Are we at
our best when we follow our natural inclination, each doing
his own thing? Or is this anarchist's prospective not even an
invitation to a Bacchanalian orgy but rather to a free-for-all
of a quite different kind, that of a Hobbesian jungle?
Is man "naturally"
aggressive and selfish with society
providing the necessary curb, or is the individual cooperative
and sociable until the crooked society distorts him? Or are
individuals highly pliable, largely reflecting forces above and
beyond them, and subject to being made either selfish or
altruistic, aggressiveor loving?
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HUMAN NATURE: THE LIMITS OF
MALLEABILITY
AND LIBERATION
The debate as to what man is "really like" and what his
potentiality is, is highly intricate. It has occupied intellectuals
and citizens at large at least since Socrates walked the olive
groves of Athens' academia. Scores of lines of argumentation
have been advanced, challenged, qualified, extended. The
debate's interwoven web threatens to entangle us and delay
our main purpose. I hence shall try to cut through it as
swiftly as possible, fully aware that I leave many knots still
tied.
PESSIMISTS VERSUS OPTIMISTS
There are three basic views of human nature: negative,
positive, and indifferent. As the list is logically exhaustive,
leaving no other possibility, the ultimate answer must be a
variant of one of these.
The pessimists hold that human beings, in their natural,
ungraced state, are beastly. What has commonly been
referred to as the Hobbesian view of human nature, is that
humans are inherently self-centered and aggressive: "man is
wolf to man." Society, it follows, must set up and enforceconstra
that keep human beings civil. Without taboos and
authority, without social regulation, men would feast not
with but on each other.
Freudian theory, at least as it is commonly understood,
has a strong Hobbesian foundation. The unsocialized human
being is an instinct-driven animal, aggressive, destructive,
fearful of death, in search of unrestricted sexual satisfaction.
It is the sublimation of his destructive urges and the
channeling of his unruly ones into less pleasurable but
socially more acceptable outlets, that make it possible for
humans to live together in aggregates. Regression to the
natural base spells the end of civilization.
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The optimists see human beings in the state of nature as
graceful, cooperative, and loving. Competitiveness, aggression, and destructiveness are introduced by the society which
imposes itself on them. John Locke is set up in civic high
school classes as the opposite of Hobbes from this viewpoint,
with Rousseau's "noble savage" also being referred to. And
while Locke saw a need for a societal curb very much as did
Hobbes, he did see the state of nature-the original society
and natural humans as positive beings-corrupted by a few
aggressive ones against whom associations of the good people
must organize so as not to be bullied or cowed. That is, from
much more optimistic premises, Locke reached the Hobbesian conclusion: societal regulation is vital.
The most optimistic position, which provides the intellectual justification for the ideal of a non repressive society and
the call for scrapping norms and authority, is the view that
human problems are generated by the particular form a given
society takes-or by societability in general-not by the
members' (or some members') individual nature. If only the
alienating conditions (specific societal structure or the
societal bond) were to be abolished, if human beings were
only left to their natural ways, their goodness would be
manifest for all to see and share.
Marx, whose discussion of human nature and the future
society is anything but extensive or detailed, did foresee the
possibility of a harmonious, conflictless society, one without
the need for social order or personal curbs, one in which all
would be like brothers and sisters, living happily together.
Marcuse traced the aggressive nature of individuals, one of
the two characteristics which worried Freud and Hobbes into
accepting the societal curbs, to the capitalist arrangements.
Aggression, he says, is generated by being caught in work that
is not fulfill ing and trying to find satisfaction by chasing the
ghost of false needs of consumerism, implanted by the
market forces. As quoted in Kateb (1970), Marcuse states:
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The system reacts by stepping up the production of goods and
services which either do not enlarge individual consumption at all,
or enlarge it with luxuries. ...To
the degree to which this sort of
work appears as superfluous, senseless, and unnecessary, while
necessary for luxury in living, frustration is built into the very
productivity
of this society, and aggressiveness is activated.
Once people are freed to work only creatively and to pursue
only authentic needs, this core of alienation would vanish.
Similarly, once the societal limiting and channeling of sexual
release, imposed by the capitalist society, were to be
removed, and the innocent, free expression of sexuality
restored, this second most important source of personal
frustration and societal disorder would be eliminated. Fromm
(1955) views man's raw impulses as "good," constructive,
self-containing, and pro-social, among which his needs to
relate to others and to overcome moral aloofness are
paramount. He offers a design for a psychological utopia in
TheSaneSociety.
But neither would go all the way to suggest that human
nature allows for a nonrepressive society in the sense of that
undiluted nature suffices and no regulation is required.
Marcuse moderates his optimism by recognizing that there
may be some societal taboos that would still be needed, some
unpleasant work that may have to be carried out. Although
he focuses his discussion mainly on the surplus regressionthat unnecessary part generated by the particular societal
format capitalism, which can be eliminated-he does see an
element of irreducible alienation. He speaks of the "differential between phylogenetically necessary repression and
surplus repression" (for a discussion of nonrepressive civilization, see Marcuse, 1955: 87; also 5 and 37). Marcuse
accepts Freud's notion that the naive pleasure principle
(id-like) needs to be moderated by a "reality principle" (ego
and superego). However, Marcuse divides the task of the
reality principle into two, that universal part which is reality
(or ego-like) and the modern one" of "performance" (or
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superego). The measure of surplus repression is all of that
repression introduced by the modern forms of political and
economic organization and can be done away with as they
are undone, without sacrificing reality-testing.
Marcuse does not divide the sea of repression into two
equal parts. His mind is on the surplus repression, which is
historically bound, and which the imminent revolution will
abolish. Irreducible repression receives but a passing treatment, Marcuse assuming that most repression is "surplus"
while irreducible repression is a small residual category. It
looks like a small bone thrown to the Freudian aficionado;
Marcuse sounds most of the time like an uitra-liberationist
who calls for man to abolish repression.
Nowhere is Marcuse's latent abolitionist tendency more
evident than in his treatment of sexuality, a central subject
for any Freudian theory of repression. Like Reich and
Brown, Marcuse sees in sexual organization, both in terms of
setting taboos on genital sexuality and in terms of the very
organization of sexuality in genital terms, a core root of
repression.
The unifying process is repressive-that is to say, the partial
instincts do not develop freely into a 'higher' stage of gratification which preservestheir objectives, but are cut off and reduced
to subservient functions. This process achieves the socially
necessary desexualization of the body: the libido becomes
concentrated in one part of the body, leaving most of the rest
free for use as the instrument of labor [Marcuse, 1955: 44] .
Like Reich and Brown, he seesthe progression Freud signaled
as the basis of civilization-from
the generalized eroticism of
early childhood to the genital focus of adulthood-as the
psychic problem of our civilization. Marcuse favors what is
called the polymorphous-perverse orientation, which embraces not only all sexual activities but the eroticization of all
nonsexual acts (Marcuse, 1955: 183-184):
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With the emergence of a non-repressive real ity pri nci pie, with the
abolition of the surplus-repression necessitated by the perform-
ance principle, this process would be reversed. In the societal
relations, reification would be reduced as the division of labor
became reoriented to the gratification
of freely developing
individual needs; whereas, in the libidinal relations, the taboo on
the reification of the body would be lessened. No longer used as a
full-time
instrument of labor, the body would be resexualized.
The regression involved in this spread of the libido would first
manifest itself in a reactivation of all erotogenic zones and,
consequently, in a resurgence of pregenital polymorphous sexuality and in a decline of genital supremacy. The body in its entirely
would become an object of cathexis, a thing to be enjoyed-an
instrument of pleasure.
True, Marcuse (1955: 211) does drop here and there some
pessimistic asides on human nature:
However, even if a maternal libidinal morality is traceable in the
instinctual structure, and even if a sensuous rationality could
make the Eros freely susceptible to order, one innermost obstacle
seems to defy all prospect of a nonrepressive developmentnamely, the bond that binds Eros to the death instinct. The brute
fact of death denies once and for all the reality of a non-repressive existence.
However, his essential position is captured in this line: "the
more sex, the freer."
The ultimate radical position is left for Norman O. Brown
and Wilhelm Reich. They (like Freud) are not so much
concerned with the distortions caused by a particular societal
format, but by societability. They see in regression the
rejection of societal inhibitions and the return to nativity, the
core solution of all problems in this and all societies.
The uitra-liberationists, Reich and Brown at the head,
favor regressing all the way and not coming out at all. Both
hope to find salvation in elimination of sociability, in the
naked biological act. They favor elimination of discipline, not
only that invested in authority or taboos. but also in
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interpersonal relations, reason, and even that involved in the
organization of a self, or in the focusing of the sexual energy.
Brown, who seeks "to uncover the promise of a non repressive
civilization," finds Reich's prescription of more and better
orgasms as too much of a focus, and strips further to "a
return to the anarchic and total sexuality of early infancy; a
truly non-repressive civiliation"-thus,
undifferentiated eroticism. The homosexual is not the prophet of liberation,
insofar as he challenges taboos (as Marcuse has it), but one
more focused man who has not removed his own shackles;
bisexuality would be a minimal admission ticket to the
liberated circle. Playing on all sides-oral, anal, and genital,
actually all nerve endings, the whole body, is the heaven.
"The human body will become polymorphously perverse,
delighting in that full life of all the body that it now
fears" (Brown, 1959: 308). "Political and fleshly emancipation are finally one and the same; the god is Dionysus"
(Brown, 1966: 225). And if this leaves any doubts: "All
fulfillment is carnal" (1966: 222).
A complete immersion, an oceanic, emotive level, in which
the individual will lose (Brown would say, be freed from) any
organization and, hence, also his capacity to direct his
energy, is required. Not just society and super-ego are to be
dissolved but also the self, because "egos are masks, specters,
concealing our unity as body" (1966: 82; also 235). What
hence has been referred to as ego-tripping might have better
been called submersion in the id. He calls for abolishing the
reality principle and ego, replacing it with the id, and a
complete fusion. "Fusion: the distinction between inner self
and outside world, between subject and object, overcome"
(1966: 253). A more complete oceanic prescription could
not be given.
According to Brown, our central trauma is not any hidden
desire to kill our father and make our mother (or Electra-Fy
the mother and be made by the father), but the separation
anxiety from mother. Life was innocent and good as long as
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we were in unity with mother (and, we had no identity, let
alone guidability, of our own). As soon as we are weaned, we
begin to suffer from a separation anxiety, the central neurosis
of our civilization, which gnaws at its roots and browns its
leaves. We engage in a variety of projects, all desperate
attempts to reunite with our mother, and kill-the grand
anxiety. But these flights are to no avail; projects and
organizations will not do it; we must return to a free-floating,
all-embracing sexuality. If we can be recharged and discharged by everything and anything, we may no longer miss
mother, or any other ignis fatuus. Reich (1963: xxix) put it
as basically as: "authoritarian social order and social sexual
repressions go hand in hand, and revolutionary 'morality' and
gratification of sexual needs go together"; and "in order to
make natural instinctual gratification possible, one has to
eliminate the repression and to liberate the instincts" (Reich,
1963: 12).
Thus there is a clear link between one's view of human
nature-the relation between the animal base and the civil
overlay and what constitutes natural relations among individuals-and one's future view as to what needs to be done
and how we shall come out, as to the human potential. The
pessimists see human nature as forcing us to accept a
tight-ordering societal structure and superego; the optimists
see it assuring us we must remove those controls in order to
bring to earth the kingdom of heaven.
A SOCIAL SCIENCE CAVEAT
Before one tries to set forth which view seems more valid,
one must take into account that which so often happens
when a debate such as this runs for centuries; that is, a third
position arises which suggests that the wrong question is
being asked. Over the last two generations, mainstream
sociologists and psychologists have come to agree that both
the pessimist and optimist positions are erroneous because
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they rest on a false assumption, that individuals and society
can be viewed separately. Actually-it
is repeated by the
collective wisdom of a professional choir-individuals
and
society are two sides of the same coin and exist by each
other. "Human
nature?"-mainstream
sociologists and
psychologists scoff-"Have you ever seen one?" Persons are
found only in society, shaped by its culture and institutions.
They see "man at birth as like a blank sheet of paper, on
which the culture writes its text" (Fromm, 1966: 24). If
people in society X seem to oppose one or more of its
dictums, it is not because these are against their nature but
because the objectionable prescriptions clash with the preferences the members of that society evolved in earlier
experiences and during early childhood education-in society.
Ruth Benedict's (1934) Patterns of Culture study proved to
be the turning point. She says, in effect: look at different
primitive tribes; in some, men are violently aggressive,
bitterly competitive; in others, they are peaceful, cooperative; neither is their nature. Their nature is a set of needs
which can be stated in one hundred and one ways; can be
shaped, within very lax limits, at society's will. Rollo May
uses the classical Greek concept of "daimonic" to refer to the
human quality as neither creative nor destructive.
The collective wisdom continues: even when you find a
person before he is imprinted by society-a day-old infant, a
feral child adopted by a wolf, an infant left locked in an
attic-what do you see? A creature that crawls on all fours,
baying at the moon, without any of the human qualities,
even those of walking erect, of being able to make tools,
absorb symbols, or speak. That is, even the most basic human
features, let alone any particu jar shape, are socially and
culturally provided, not inherent. Conclusion-there are as
many "human natures" as there are cultures and societies.
"Man's 'original nature' is seen largely in neutral terms, as
neither good nor bad.. ..If it [sociology] does not quite
treat him as a 'tabula rasa,' modern sociology, nevertheless,
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regards man as a flexible form which can be given all manner
of content" (Inkeles, 1964: 50; see also Wrong, 1968). Geiger
(1964: 188) saw a "nearly infinite adaptability and modifiability" of human nature. It was left to Edgar Z. Friedenberg
(19: 3) to put the sociological bias more extremely: "Human
life is a continuous thread which each of us spins to his own
pattern, rich and complex in memory. There are no natural
knots in it."
In line with this prevalent position, antisocial conductaggressive tendencies, for instance-is itself the result of
societal forces. It is said to be produced in one or more of
three ways: (a) education is inadequate (e.g., because father
left home for good and mother worked, hence moral
upbringing was neglected); (b) subcultural influences are in
conflict (middle-class values, represented by the public
schoolteacher, frowning on violence, but violence glorified by
movies and TV and often the neighborhood); or (c) schooling
is out of gear with the rest of the society.
It is hence argued that any given societal pattern, if it is
well communicated via education and consistently rewarded
by those candies society reserves for conformists, can be
made to be as acceptable to people. And if education and
rewarding are scrapped (regressed), man will be neither good
nor bad, but his personality will be scrapped too; he will
become animal-like (if he should survive at all, because
without his culture he is a rather indifferent, unfit species).
Thus, while the counterculture tends to see high hopes in
regression and the Hobbesians see grave dangers, mainstream
sociologists and psychologists view it as eliminating the
subject matter; nothing is expected to be left to be either
aggressive or pacific. They hold the impossibility of an
unregulated society.
It also follows from this social science viewpoint that no
one society can be judged as more human or in any other
moral sense "better" than any other, in any terms but the
idiosyncratic preferences of whoever judges. If anything goes,
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if man can be shaped to treasure equally a life in Sparta or in
Athens, in Salem or in Sodom, what basis is there to value
one's society more dearly than another other than one's
personal tastes? No wonder mainstream social scientists see
no third alternative to either a neutral descriptive science of
man, or one based on outright value judgments (see Gouldner, 1970: 495 and throughout; Bredemeier, 1971). And, it
follows, all societal arrangements command the same potential for the good society, as long as they are made internally
consistent. We can do what we wish as long as we do it
collectively.
Individuals are malleable but societies have
incontrovertible
needs. We can change the society, it is
written, as long as we keep the centrifugal forces in check.
("Take care of the functional requisites.") Regression must
be stopped at the level where explosive asocial conduct will
cease to be contained. Thus, while societal reformation is
quite possible, not so a retreat to nature. Regression would
eliminate individuals as it scraps societability. However,
repression could be eliminated-if the individuals were to be
completely fitted into the roles assigned for them by society.
Here the ultramodern future view finds a congenial home;
improved social engineering and control will provide the good
society.
THE NATURE
OF INDIVIDUALS
As I see it, the individual has a nature of his own, which
affects and is affected by the societal needs, cultural heritage,
economic opportunities, and the historical conditions he
encounters. It is quite appropriately referred to as "human
nature" because it is shared by all human beings, whatever
culture, society, or historical age in which they live. This
should not be so surprising aswe quite readily see a nature in
other living things, from lions to rats, from olive trees to
sunflowers. It is quite true that we never see, cannot even
conceive of, a person outside society; but we find many other
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analytic concepts useful. Electrons are a case in point; one
can discuss their attributes without being able to invite them
for dinner (or even seethem).
And to state that society is a prerequisite for human
survival is not to say that all societal forms are equally
responsive to their members' nature. Hobbes, Locke, Freud,
and many contemporary social scientists focus on the
condition of existence; Marx, Marcuse, Fromm, and Brown
are concerned with disalienation. Attending to the society's
needs is a prerequisite for collective and individual survival; it
surely does not guarantee individual fulfillment. While all
societies provide for survival, those which set unlivable
conditions of course disintegrate. No two societies are shaped
in the same way and no two societies are equally amenable to
the underlying nature of the individual members. Some
societies are highly repressive, others are less repressive, and
still others quite responsive. Thus, one can accept that human
nature requires a societal arrangement and still ask if it has to
be repressive. If yes, to what extent, and in what ways? Or
can repression be eliminated by finding a societal pattern that
is truly adapted to the members, rather than adapting them
to it? Social science, rather than ruling out the existence of
human nature, would do better to make it its urgent business
to establish the universal qualities of human beings. This may
be achieved by comparative research, by examining the logic
of the definition of the concept of humanity, by extrapolation from the biological base, and by a study of human
genesis from barbaric infancy to mature membership in the
human community.
That there are universal human qualities stands out when
we engage in precisely the kind of cross-cultural and
cross-period comparisons that the man-has-no-nature school
of social science used to justify its boundless relativism. We
soon see that while people "adapt" to all societies, it is also
evident that they do not adapt equally easily to all societal
patterns. They adapt better, more easily, more happily, I
suggest, to those closer to their nature.
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To illustrate this point first rather informally, let us sharethe
observation that in a great variety, of societies, in a very
divergent set of social-cultural-economic conditions, attempts
have been made to impose a severely austere and restrictiveregime.
But in situations as different as those of Calvinist
Geneva, Puritanical Salem, the early postrevolutionary USSR,the
early kibbutzim, and the first Catholic orders, members
soon pushed the system to untighten its rules, loosen the
vows of poverty, and provide more comforts. What else-if
not the human nature of their members-do all these societies
have in common? There may have been somewhere a society
that made its high austerity stick for more than a passing age,
although I am not familiar with one. But I would predict, if
one is ever found, it will also be established that this was
"achieved" only at great cost to individual members and to
the society, a sure sign of opposition. Opposition by whom?
A dissenting mincrity? No, by the average member. And, to
reiterate, what do these average members all share other thantheir
humanity? One must hence conclude, until evidence to
the contrary is presented, that it is natural for human beingsto
seek basic comforts.
To illustrate further our general thesis, let us focus on
another universal human attribute. I n all the cultures I have
examined that were highly prohibitive of sexual expressions,the
pressure has been to reduce tight regulations; and all
sooner or later (most of them sooner) at least partially
untightened-or, "more commonly, their prohibitive norms
lingered, but only as a facade behind which a lot of untying
and unbuttoning occurred.
Out of 148 societies surveyed by Murdock (1949: 265)
120 had a taboo on extramarital relations. '" n 4 of the
remaining 28, adultery is socially disapproved but not strictly
forbidden. It is conditionally permitted in 19 and freely
allowed in 5," but only with specific categories of people.
Murdock points out that the taboo is more honored in the
breach than in observation. Textor lists 43 cultures in which
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extramarital activity is punished and 41 in which it is
permitted under various conditions, which makes 84 societies
in which extramarital relations are reported; there is no
relevant information
from the other societies.! Kinsey
(1953: 437) reports that half of the American males and 26%
of the American females "admitted" to extramarital experiences, back in the late forties. A Hopi man says, "There are
times when a wife is not interested, and a man must find
someone else or live a worried and uncomfortable life."2 A
Navaho tells about his extramarital encounters and adds: "1
know everyone of you has been around with another man's
wife. Nothing can be done about it." Tells a Kawakiute man,
from Vancouver Island, "Sometimes when the husband is
away from the village, we would make arrangements that I'll
go and stay with her at night." And a Kainyang reports from
Brazil, "Once a couple are married they do not drop the
liaisons formed before marriage." The same story is told from
Tikopia, Western Polynesia and Morngin, Australia. It is
obviously a commonplace in all Western societies, widespread
in Latin America and far from unknown in the socialist
societies from the USSR to the kibbutzim. How is one to
account for this universal-as far as we can tell-transgression? Does it make more sense to say that all the highly
varied systems of education and reward have failed, or that
man is not monogamous by nature?
The desire for comfort and for sexual variety might be
attributed to needs whose basis is biological and this, it might
be said, explains their universality. There are enough significant differences in the ways animals seek comfort and sexual
release as compared to human beings to suggest that these
urges, which clearly have a biological foundation, have also a
human and social layer. And, there are universal needs whose
source could hardly be biological-for instance the need for
recognition and for self-expression which agitates in all
cultures we know against individual identity being swallowed
up by the group or mob. Thus, kibbutz children, brought up
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in a world of collectiveness, grab each others' toys, screaming
"this is mine" although the toy is kib;butz property and the
nurses and parents insist on indoctrinating them in the finer
points of socialism. Soviet stress on teamwork has yet to
prevent Soviet sportsmen from playing "solo" (to gain
individual recognition), and reports that ancient tribes had no
concept of self are very dubious.
Moreover, thousands of attempts to provide extremely
close-knit social groups, of the kind now offered by
communes in America, all were either undone or redone, to
be less tight. The untightened communities have varied from
religious to socialist, from hippie to political; the only thing
they have in common is human beings, who apparently
cannot stand such demotion of self as all these subcultures
prescribed.
I cannot provide a definitive or even well-documented list
of the un iversal attributes of human beings, if for no other
reason that that the consensus of social science for the last
two generations has been that there is no such nature to be
studied, and hence there are few empirical studies of the
effects or attributes of human nature. Also, to study one
culture is demanding enough; cross-culture, cross-period
studies, which would be needed to advance the thesis as
suggested so far, are taxing in the extreme. Nor is our
purpose here to evolve a full account of a largely unexplored
terrain, hidden beneath layers of culture; it is rather to
establish the value of recognizing the terrain's existence. As a
highly tentative list, to work with until more research is
done, I propose the following needs may be viewed as
universal:3
(a) Need for basic physiological comfort (food. shelter, and so on);
this need asserts itself most clearly whenever an attempt is made
to impose or foster greater austerity
than the objective
conditions req~ire.
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(b) Ouest for security;
protection
from
self-evident it hardly requires discussion.
physical
harm
is so
(c) Need for receiving affection (or love).
(d) Need for recognition
(or esteem).
(e) Need for transcending the self.
This last need comes into play chiefly after the other ones
have been satisfied, at least to some degree, and is in this
sense a higher need. It expresses itself in projecting oneself
beyond the immediate condition, investing in the future,
envisioning and moving toward it.
To fully demonstrate that these are indeed universal needs,
would require comparing those societies (or subsocieties)
which provide fewer opportunities for the gratification of
these needs with those offering more such opportunities, and
finding that those which are less gratifying impose greater
human costs (e.g., more nervous breakdowns, more psychosomatic illness); have greater education costs needed to fit
people into the required roles (longer years of training to
greater commitment of resources); have more policing to
keep the people conform ing, and generate more pressure for
change. Such a comparison would be demanding enough; it is
further compl icated by the fact that people brought up in a
repressive system may not immediately show a greater
satisfaction when faced with a more liberating one. How long
they must be free in order to overcome their old habits and
how encompassing the liberation must be, is not known.
Marxists refer to those as the problems of "bourgeois
residues" and "islands of socialism"; that is, if workers in a
postrevolutionary society still pursue false needs, this is due
either to their upbringing in the prerevolutionary society or
to the influences which penetrate from societies which have
not yet been liberated. This would suggest that transformation may be a very long and difficult process. While such may
well be the case, one would expect progress in the right
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direction to set in once a whole society is liberated and a new
generation is born, unless, of course, the postrevolutionary
societal format should turn out no more, or even less,
responsive than was the prerevolutionary. In any event, the
need to take into account the time dimension and contextual
factors severely aggravates the difficulties of studying human
nature in this comparative way.
Fortunately, the methodological difficulty in establishing
what are the basic human needs via such comparative studies
(that is, seeing individuals only in culture and hence having to
laboriously derive their naked nature by establishing that
which is common to all cultures) can be overcome by
proceeding along a different route, by studying the genesis of
individuals, focusing on the stage when they are at the
threshold of society and in this sense are still outside it. If we
ask where and how this human nature evolved, it is easier to
ascertain what this nature is than to ferret it out through
comparative studies.
In part, human nature does rest in the biological inheritance man shares with other mammals. Nature seems to
account for the very consequential desire for frequent
gratifications of all the needs listed above. The preferences
seems to hold all the way, except for very frequent
gratification. That is, inasmuch as satisfaction is achieved by
releasing a tension, unless some appetite is built up there is
no satisfaction. Otherwise, frequent release is preferred over
infrequent, unless cultural conditioning has introduced-in
steps which can be readily traced in the education and social
control processes-the opposite inclination, and even this
kind of conditioning cannot go very far. Thus, people in
various cultures differ as to how often they eat; some have no
regular meals at all, just dip into the pot when they feel
hungry, others have highly stylized meals; but in all cultures I
informally surveyed (with the help of anthropologists)
members appear to consume food more than once a day and
the preference seems to be toward more than two-often,
whenever hunger sets in.
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The reason seems to be that the physiological needs are
such that the longer a human being (or other animal) defers
gratification the more frustrated it becomes. A human being
can train himself to eat lessoften, even go on a hunger strike;
however, such infrequent consumption of food in all cultures
will be experienced as a deprivation, feat, punishment, and
even glory, but not as gratifying or pleasurable-that would
be against nature. The same seems to hold for other
abstinences. As all human beings start with the same basic
physiology (warm blood, oxygen-processing lungs, cleansing
kidneys, and so forth), physiology serves as one un iversal
basis in determining how satisfactory a specific societal
arrangement can be expected to be.
Beyond this, however, there is a universal social source
from which the infants attain their human features, and this
also implants shared basic needs. For the infant to evolve so
as to fit the definition of human-either a two-legged erect
being without wings (the Aristotelian definition) or as a
symbol-processing, speaking, hence culture-absorbing creature-it must be provided with a human parent. The parent,
anthropologists keep reminding us, need not be the biological
mother, much less the biological father, but a being already
human, who will take care of the infant and teach it to walk
and talk and the rest of the bundle of tricks which quite
literally make the born animal into a human. I n the process
the infant also acquires a dependency on the symbolic
approval of significant others, the need for affection and
esteem. How this happens has been often described and needs
here only the briefest reminder. Children, as their specific
needs for food and warmth are provided for by a parent,
soon learn that the parent has the capacity to reduce their
pain or discomfort, to increase their pleasure, and thus
generalize some of this capacity to the nurturant person. So
where originally only the mother's milk (or some other
specific act by a parent) was gratifying, now the parent's
generalized attitude, communicated through signs such as a
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pat or a smile, is rewarding. Soon expressions of love are, by
themselves, experienced as gratifying. The human need is
established: the growing person may go elsewhere and may
perform a variety of activities to gain the craved affection,
but he will no longer be satisfied without a regular flow.
Also, the human infant, unlike a lower-order animal,
cannot rely on reflexes-which respond to a need with a
biologically determined line of action. Even after this, his
needs are implanted and specific patterns which will gratify
them must be shaped. Adult guidance provides the pattern
and the assurance that the pattern acquired is appropriate.
Thus the need for approval is further reinforced. Other needs
are similarly evolved.4 Marcuse attacks Fromm and other
"F reudian revisionists" for "theoretical eclecticism"-which
is to say that they plucked the concept of love from their
ideological bags or thin air. While the two authors do not
present or cite empirical evidence and their theoretical
constructions surely are not ideologically neutral, there is
from other sources a rich body of data and careful theorizing
which makes the above conception of human needs about as
"hard" as any could be. Maslow (1962: 37) is surely correct
in stating that "the evidence that we 'need' love [and other
social satisfactions]
is of exactly the same type as the
evidence that we 'need' iodine or vitamin C." If we are
deficient in either love or vitamins, we suffer; if they are cut
out altogether, we cannot function.
The source of human nature is universal; the basic process
is universal; hence the basic nature is universal. True, there
are variations which the anthropologists played up for a
while. However, what has been disregarded for too long is
that all these are variations on a basic unchanging theme;
there is in all these situations a parent (usually two) who is
the agent of socialization, not a robot-like dispenser of food
and diapers but as a source of affection and recognition.
Hence, why is it so surprising that the persons which grow up
have the same basic needs?
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If all human beings have these needs, how is one to explain
the existence of repressive societies? First, the needs have no
political power per se. Those who are frustrated because their
needs are not fulfilled may withdraw (in liquor, drugs,
apathy), strike out aimlessly, or hang new hopes on false and
"undesirable" needs. Only when they understand themselves
and act on this understanding, and do so collectively, can
people remake society in their own true image.
Second, subgroups can increase their own satisfaction by
decreasing that of others; they will attempt this even though
not all or even most desirable items are scarce, and many of
those that are scarce could be made more abundant by
cooperation rather than monopolization. Some highly significant sources of satisfaction are, especially in lean times, in a
"zero-sum" condition. That is, whatever one group uses of
them, others cannot. Hence, groups that command power
because of their societal function (e.g., warriors) or symbolic
status (e.g., priests) are tempted to use it to curtail the
satisfaction of other groups and thus increase their own share
of that which is to be had. The conditions under which all
the needs of all the members acquire the same status as
having effective claims on the resources to be distributed,
must be left to be explored on another occasion. Here, my
purpose is only to defend the theoretical status of the
concept of basic inalienable individual needs and to point out
the possibility, or principle, of evolving a society that could
be responsive to these needs and hence not repressive.
SUBLIMATION:
A CONCEPTUAL
HIGHLIGHT
Sometimes exploring a single concept highlights a complicated issue. The study of sublimation offers such a light.
Freud, who saw in human nature biologically rooted drives
being converted into socially less destructive and more
productive outlets (such as sex into work), held that the
drives have a sticky quality; they cannot be wholly subli-
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mated; there always remains underneath each sublimated
pattern the primordial drive. Hence the frustration civilization entails, the need to maintain controls, and the impossibility of a wholly non repressive society.
The social science approach reviewed above offers an
alternative view which raises the possibility of complete
sublimation (some refer simply to "rechanneling," like
switching a river into a different bed), as the drives are
assumed to be highly pliable-or better yet, there is nothing
to sublimate, as the drives or needs people have are socially
determined (love, for instance). And those needs which do
have a biological origin are open-ended and can be specified
into a large variety of outlets, whatever the society approves.
Hence here it is assumed, at least in principle, a person can be
made fully happy with his social role.
If a substantial number of people are actually not happy,
this is then attributable to deficient social engineering-either
in the sense that ways of fitting them into the system have
not been studied adequately or that the social engineers'
advice has not been heeded. Successful engineering would
provide that a 1984 kind of society, in which-through,
let us
say, stronger use of mass media and behavior modifying
drugs-complete control and happiness could be generated.
There is nothing in human nature as thus perceived to rule
this out, precisely because there is nothing incontrovertible,
nothing to sublimate, only so much psychic clay to be
molded to society's specifications.
As I see it, the needs people bring to the society have a
considerable degree of specificity although they are not as
predetermined as biological instincts or reflexes and, above
all, are not inherently antisocial. Thus, people have a need for
affection which can be satisfied in a variety of ways, but they
cannot be drilled into substituting anything else for it
(sublimation) or doing without it (rejection). And any two
forms of serving this need (or any other) are likely to differ,
at least marginally, in the extent of satisfaction they provide.
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Thus, people afforded fewer opportunities for its expression
will find such a social system less satisfying than one which
offers more frequent ones. Intense, encompassing affection IS
more satisfying than superficial, transient contacts. That is,
social patterns vary in the amounts and kinds of costs as
against satisfactions they generate. A nonrepressive society is
possible in principle, not by carefully and finely grinding the
members to fit its pattern, but by fitting the societal pattern
to the fulfillment of the members' needs.
Will the people not have desires which are incompatible?
To the degree that they will, organization and regulation will
be necessary. But, in a world rich in things, the materialistic
desires may be sated (we return to the question of their
alleged insatiable quality below) and the satisfaction of the
other needs is not governed by scarcity but by needs such as
affection and recognition (love and dignity)-in principle, all
members may award each other.
Also, when people are emphathetic with each other, they
will change their specific preferences out of respect for each
other and the viability of the community, without a residue
of frustration. Thus, a true friend is not frustrated because he
cannot have the love of his friend's spouse. And a truly
integrated member of a commune does not wish to use the
one violin just at the time someone else is playing it,
especially when there are plenty of other instruments around.
This sounds, and is, idealistic because it presupposes that
economic scarcity, social manipulation, and personal pathologies all have been removed and the social system opened to
authentic participation, needed to make it responsive and
harmonize members, for reasons discussed above. That it is
idealistic only means it will not be easy to come by; nothing
indicates that it cannot be approximated. And it does explain
how one can both hold that sublimation of basic needs is not
possible and maintain that in principle a nonrepressive system
is possible (albeit not in the immediate offing). Transforming
forces will be found in those movements which seek to adapt
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the social system to the members rather than the other way
around, and to foster a commitment to treat all members as
purposes (needed if A is to truly accept inevitable limitations
which B sets on his freedom), and which are tolerant of the
reallocations necessary to reduce economic scarcity (because
absence of want lessens interpersonal and intergroup tensions
out of wh ich confl icts may arise).
To make the transformation of society-by having it fit the
needs of individuals-the central project of an attempt to
abolish repression, is not to suggest that just any societal
pattern dreamed up can be realized, that one can ignore the
sociological laws of gravity. Just as architects are free to
redesign buildings as they please, so long as the new design
does not call for a building which is too tall, too narrowly
based, the ratio of weight to structure violated, so the
members of a society can reshape it-as long as its basic
survival needs are not disregarded.
I n the past, the needs of the nation (or the "economy")
have often been used to justify the needs of those in power,
and not real societal ones. The rebellion against societal
demands reflects a backlash against this abuse. But its abuse
suggests that rather than throwing out the concept, citizens
must inform themselves so as to be able to differentiate false
from authentic societal needs. The real societal ones cannot
be ignored. But it is society that is flexible and adaptable,
and there is nothing in its nature which does not allow, in
principle, the satisfaction of all the basic human needs of all
the members.
There is a great confusion in this context between
alienation that results from societability and from particular
social structures. Sartre, for instance, sees in "the other" a
jailor, and in the group, hell with no exit. However, if one
seesthe other as a main source of some of one's most useful
satisfactions, and oneself as a source of his, and that there is
no individual need which cannot be truly satisfied in society,
then we see the source of alienation not in our societal roots
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but in unresponsive formats; we see the way to fulfillment
not in an anarchist abolition of society (beyond that of the
state) but in the transforming of society.
CONCLUDING
NOTES
All said and done, then, it seems quite unarguable that
individuals and society go hand in hand and cannot be found
one without the other, require each other like molecules and
matter. It is hence senseless to ask if people could liberate
themselves from society so as to reveal their natural
goodness, because such a turn would mean restraining to ever
more primary bases, falling back to the animal foundation.
Recently it has become popular to depict the animal
societies as more humane, pacific, and loving than human
ones. A careful reading of the descriptions, though, reveals
that animals will fight to kill, and not just ritualistically,
when they are hungry and when their "turf" is invaded or
they fear it will be. One or both of these conditions prevail
most of the time. To return to the primal life is to return to
the life of the jungle.
The assumption of a human nature independent of societal
shaping allows us to evaluate societies. Sorry indeed is a
social science which cannot differentiate systematically-that
is, on the basis of its concepts and premises-among a Nazi
concentration camp, a Stalinist labor camp, a Danish cooperative farm, and a kibbutz in Israel, or can do so only on
the basis of ad hoc, post hoc, personal value judgments. We
need a social science that can help us anticipate which social
arrangements would be more humane and just.
Societies differ systematically in the extent to which they
respond to the basic needs of their members. It should hence
be possible to rank all societies, or compare periods in the life
of the same society, as to how "good" they are, not from the
standpoint of what an intellectual scholar, or one citizen sees
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as significant, but from the vantage point of the society's
own members, all of them. Thus observers whose personal
preferences may vary greatly would agree that ancient Sparta
and Stalin's USSR were lessresponsive to their members than
ancient Athens or contemporary Russia. That is, there can be
an agreed upon basis for a critical science.
Robert Brownstein pointed out in a personal communication that
you criticize the social science viewpoint for failing to provide a
third alternative to either a neutral descriptive science of man or
outright value judgments. I would argue that value judgments
make up an intrinsic part of any effort to evaluate societies-even
if the existence of basic needs is acknowledged. Knowing that
basic needs exist does not automatically
produce a means of
coping with contradictions
between needs (e.g., security and
self-realization) or of indicating how needs should be limited in a
scarcity situation, or of handling questions of distributive justice
(should society guarantee everyone an equal amount of affection), or allocating priorities among non-basic needs.
In fact, even if a need is natural, one can still argue whether it
ought to be met. One might argue that the need for recognition
interferes with independent and creat)ve innovation which is
unpopular.
This is all quite true. Nevertheless, the assumption that
human needs are universal, shared by all-even pending
empirical validation-provides
an absolute anchoring point
which no theorizing and evaluation can ignore, and thus
breaks the back of relativism, and provides the essential basis
for a scientific discipline-a shared, incontrovertible, empirical base. Thus, whatever value one may put on affection, one
cannot ignore that all persons appear to need it and that all
social systems which do not provide for it distort those
individuals thus deprived.
Finally, the facts about human nature are not neutral. A
misanthrope may argue that a system which answers fewer
human needs is better than one which answers more, but
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what basis could a social scientist have for putting his
preferences before the real needs of all human beings?
As to how priorities are to be set in a scarcity situation,
the answer is-by the members, in a free give-and-take, which
the social scientist may facilitate but dare not determine lest
public policy not be truly responsive.
Does this position deny the basic Marxist dictum that man
is a creature of his social condition? that this fate is
determined by the struggle between classesthat differ in their
property base, a struggle within society, and not between him
(his needs) and society (its unresponsive arrangement)? My
position is consistent with Marx's, but not with the vulgarization of Marx's position-such as the one just cited, often
attributed to him. Marx was quite aware that man has a
nature of his own, that man acts on his historical condition as
he i!) acted upon by it. I n an often cited statement he asserted
(Marx, 19: I, lc, 668): one "must first deal with human
nature in general, and then with human nature as modified in
each historical period." This statement cannot be written off
as coming from a young Marx, seen by the hard-nosed left as
a soft romantic, because it was written by the old Marx. More
significant, it is consistent with his position elsewhere, that
man is active, that only "ultimately,"
in the last account, do
technological economic forces prevail in history. Of course,
he did not, like Nietzsche or Ayn Rand, focus on single
"superior" individuals, able to shape history because each
individual faces all others and their collective social expressions. But if by individuals one understands groups of people,
like Marx I can see them joining hands to change their
condition rather radically and to bring it closer to that which
is responsive to their nature. What other fixed Archimedean
point could there be? People can hardly be expected to act
out a script a historian has conceived to rely on the outgoing,
rejected society's prescriptions. The more they reject the
outgoing pattern and open the society to recasting, the more
they regress, the more they cannot but fall back on the one
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remaining base-that which is in the constant, shared human
nature.
Along with these universal limitations on the freedoms of
societal redesigning, each generation faces the sins of its
predecessors. It cannot start from scratch, as if its members
were a group of day-old infants, meeting to vote on which
conditions to set up. Some-often much-of the available
energy must be invested in opening up the societal and
intrapersonal locks, in overcoming the present, in outgrowing
the past. And the level of energy left for reconstruction is
affected by historical conditions, of which material output
and security are first. I n principle, though, the members of a
society can join to fashion a society that is good for them. A
study of human nature points to reconstruction and transformation, following temporary regression. Retreat from
societability is not possible; to impose new repression is to
prepare for a new crisis.
NOTES
1. See Textor (1968: 155), who cites Ford and Benit (1951: 46, n. 4).
2. This and the following quotes are from Neubeck (19: 119ff.).
3. Other lists have been advanced by Kingsley Davis, Talcott Parsons, and
Abraham Maslow. For additional discussion on how this list was derived and can
be validated, see Etzioni (1968: ch. 21).
4. The details are extremely complex and are widely debated, but the general
thesis is quite well documented. See any standard text on child development or
socialization, for instance, Mussen et al. (19).
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