Filozofija i drustvo 2016 Volume 27, Issue 1, Pages: 119-130
https://doi.org/10.2298/FID1601119P
Full text ( 180 KB)
Is capitalism in our genes? Competition, cooperation and the idea of homo oeconomicus from an evolutionary perspective
Portera Mariagrazia (University of Rijeka, Center for Advanced Studies, Southeast Europe, Rijeka, Croatia)
In the last few years a growing number of academic disciplines in the
Humanities and Social Sciences have turned to the evolutionary approach:
Evolutionary Economics, among these disciplines, is a thriving subfield of
Economics, which adopts Darwin’s evolutionary ideas and concepts for the
understanding of economic system and modes of production. Evolutionary
hypotheses such as the „selfish gene“ idea, the ideas of „inclusive fitness“,
„struggle for life“ and „survival of the fittest“ may suggest - and have
indeed suggested - that humans are rational self-interest individuals, doing
what they can to increase their own reproductive chances or at least the
chances of their close relatives („inclusive fitness“). To put it
differently, evolutionary theory seems to suggest that capitalism (in a broad
sense) is a system that has co-evolved with humans and best fits our evolved
psychology. Is this the whole story? Is capitalism „in our genes“? In this
paper I argue that conclusions such as „we are born to be rational
self-interested agents“ or „capitalism is encoded in our genome“ are the
result of a misleading application of Darwin’s evolutionary theory to human
socio-economic processes, mainly to justify a (Western) society based on
selfish principles, but which is not naturally selfish in itself. Evolution
seems to be the result of cooperative, not only (or not mainly) competitive
processes, and the model of Homo oeconomicus, that is the idea that humans
are rational self-interested agents always trying to maximize profit, is,
also from an bio-evolutionary perspective, nothing more than a fictional
exercise.
Keywords: Charles Darwin, survival of the fittest, evolutionary economics, symbiogenesis, altruism, cooperation, Elinor Ostrom