Recognise our evolution: from ruthless competition to a new relationship with nature.
My entry to a competition run by Doughnut Economics & Rethinking Economics for the best answer to the question, “What’s the 8th Way to Think Like a 21st Century Economist?” in April 2019 – based on Kate Raworth’s bestselling ‘Doughnut Economics’
Doughnut Economics captures brilliantly a new economic story for our times. It exposes how economists, dazzled by the genius of Isaac Newton created a twisted and supernatural portrait of humanity which has done great harm. But something is missing; something that underpins and extends the seven ways.
It’s a story that starts with the mistranslation into economics of another scientific genius: Charles Darwin. It’s a story of how ‘survival of the fittest’ economics led to extreme inequality, ruthless competition, and the trashing of the planet. A story of how evolutionary sciences have moved on in recent decades to reveal a richer portrait of humans as a profoundly social species, part of the fabric of life and uniquely adapted to the Earth.
The eighth way to think like a 21st century economist is to recognise our evolution, how we got it wrong in the past and its profound implications.
Biology’s influence bursts through in several places in Doughnut Economics. The book shows how homo
In economics, analogies to evolution have long been used to critique state intervention in the market as “unnatural”.
To recognise our evolution is to be aware of how our thinking about economics and nature have long been intertwined. In the 1850s, Thomas Malthus’s ideas on population and Adam Smith’s on the division of labour influenced Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species. Other thinkers then fed these evolutionary ideas back into society, often claiming them a ‘natural law’: Friedrich Engels called it a “conjurer’s trick”. The popular liberal philosopher Herbert Spencer coined the term ‘survival of the fittest’, which was used to justify economics which benefited the wealthiest in society and neglected the less fortunate. This bleak portrait of nature and society – known as Social Darwinism – was a central idea of America’s Gilded Age (1870s-1900) of monopolistic capitalism and financial crises.
The parallel between classical theories of economics and natural selection is clear. Both assume ruthless competition between fundamentally self-interested beings (firms, people or organisms) with only the ‘fittest’ surviving. Both believe spontaneous order will result without the need for an all-powerful guiding hand (the state or God). In economics, analogies to evolution have long been used to critique state intervention in the market as “unnatural”. The human cost has been incalculable.
Neoclassical economics and Social Darwinism are deeply connected. Alfred Marshall, a great admirer of Herbert Spencer, said economics is “a branch of biology, broadly interpreted”. Irving Fisher, one of the fathers of American neoclassical economics, was trained by William Graham Sumner, “the most vigorous and influential social Darwinist in America”. F.A. Hayek, one of the architects of neoliberalism, was steeped in evolutionary thinking in his youth, which was the essential background to his ideas. Biology lust has gone hand-in-hand with physics envy in economics.
In recent decades, much evolutionary science has moved beyond the ‘nature red in tooth and claw’ view… [and] brings back focus on neglected areas of Darwin who wrote “we are all netted together”.
Today, Social Darwinism persists but is rarely named. President Obama criticised a 2012 budget plan to gut social spending and lower taxes for wealthy people as “thinly veiled social Darwinism.” In the iconic movie Wall Street, Gordon Gekko’s “greed is good” speech says greed “captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit”. Jeff Skilling, who ran Enron into the then largest-ever bankruptcy, was inspired by his favourite book, Richard Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene.
Dawkins was horrified by what he saw as the misapplication of his ideas, as Darwin was before. But, thinkers as diverse as the clinical psychologist and author Oliver James, the philosopher Mary Midgley, and the biologist Steven Rose have seen parallels between late twentieth-century thinking in neoliberal economics and biology. No wonder some thinkers have tried to argue (largely in vain) that humans are moulded only by society and not biology.
There is an alternative.
In recent decades, much evolutionary science has moved beyond the ‘nature red in tooth and claw’ view. Lynn Margulis, a celebrated microbiologist, showed symbiosis and networking were fundamental to the evolution of all complex life. Franz de Waal, a primatologist, has shown the deep biological roots, perhaps 200 million years old, of “fairness” and “empathy” in mammals. David Sloan Wilson, an evolutionist, has shown the development of human cooperation and altruism through group selection. Astrobiology has shown the imprint of gravity and the Sun on life. This flips on its head the Social Darwinist view. It brings back focus on neglected areas of Darwin who wrote “we are all netted together”.
Recognising our evolution gives a new meaning and perspective – of deep time and space –to our economics. Evolution involves conflict and competition, but it also shows to a far richer image of human nature and our connection with life. Out goes homo economicus and in comes a flesh-and-blood human as a new leaf on an ancient tree of life: dependent at every moment on it for our existence. Evolution has been called a ‘universal acid’ but it is also a ‘universal glue’ showing how humans evolved as a profoundly social species, are all part of one human family, and connected to all other life. A single image captures this: the 50-year-old ‘Earthrise’ photograph of our home planet as beautiful, luminous jewel in the space.
The implications for this new perspective are enormous. The economist Robert Frank has said that in 100 years Charles Darwin will be seen as the founder of economics. We should not derive social values directly from biology, but recognising our evolution has profound implications for our economies: from how we treat animals, to biomimicry – finding technological solutions in nature, and crucially how we safeguard Earth’s life-giving systems. As humanity pushes up to and beyond the planetary boundaries this perspective puts ecology at the heart of economics. It is a powerful new understanding of our relationship with nature: a great, organising idea for the 21st century economist.
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