What matters more in determining human history and social organisation? Ideas, or material conditions?
Idealists would argue that it is primarily ideas and the way people’s minds work, that drive human history.
Idealism can promote a reactionary attitude towards politics. For example, an idealist might posit the existence of some inherent and immutable “tribalism” in human psychology, as an explanation for warfare among hunter gatherers.
Materialists would counterargue that hunter gatherer conflicts are driven by resource scarcity and environmental conditions, and levels of violence vary according to socioecological context.
Academics and intellectuals with a more psychological background, such as Jordan Peterson, Steven Pinker, and Jonathan Haidt, I have observed to express more reactionary, or “enlightened centrist” political attitudes.
By contrast, evolutionary biologists and anthropologists with a non-psychological or behavioural ecological background, seem to tend towards more left-leaning politics. I personally know at least one evolutionary biologist with socialist politics.
Emphasis on socioecological, as opposed to psychological explanations for human behaviour, is a good antidote to right-wing fatalistic “human nature” arguments.
Whenever someone invokes “human nature” or psychology in a political discussion, it’s almost certainly to fill the gap in their lack of understanding or ignorance of the material conditions that drive people’s choices. It’s about as useful as saying, “I don’t know, therefore God”, but replace “God” with “human nature”.
Psychology is a tool of the reaction, and anthropology is a tool of the revolution.
