this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2023
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To my knowledge, profit only exists in systems that produce commodities to be sold in markets. While markets predate capitalism, they were largely optional. In capitalism, there is no choice but to participate in markets and commodity production.
If a society does not produce commodities, there is no profit. If there is no profit, there can be no profit motive. The profit motive cannot be a part of human nature because it was absent from almost every human society that ever existed.
The profit motive may not be a part of human society once it develops beyond capitalism, either. Even in the transitional Soviet Union and China, which had/has a form of state capitalism (depending on who you ask and how they define it), their planned economies undermine commodity production and made/make inroads into profit. In these two examples, the profit motive did/does not drive the state.
Even in capitalism proper, it is only the capitalists who seek profit. By definition, profit is what remains after paying wages and overheads. Some workers benefit from profit. These are labour aristocrats and petit bourgeois. But on the whole, workers are not motivated by profit.
There is no way that the profit motive is part of human nature if: most human societies were not driven by profit; the vast majority of workers living within a system driven by profit do not seek profit; and states that move away from commodity production in a world governed by profit try to live according to other motivations.
If you were asking about why capitalists, specifically, are profit seekers, I'm happy to go into that.
When we make a statement like "profit motive isnt a part of human nature", I think we need to distinguish between human instincts that are a product of isolated individual academic instincts and introspecions vs the kind of instincts and motive that are inspired in an individual by a system that takes a grand scale.
I say that because it is quite obvious by empirical means that a profit motive does exist in the human occupational pursuit, whatever the source of its existence may be, and hence i believe that its existence and its association to capitalism and other forms of economic system need to be considered and realized as an axiom before developing a dialogue on the issue.
I'm not entirely sure what you're saying. But profit is a result of producing commodities. No commodities, no profit. No profit, no profit motive.
Im speaking from a psychological perspective, even if a motive is a result of a sociological condition, it still exists and has a legitimate psychological base for its existence. Which directly implies that its part of the human nature and nothing alien to it.
We can make an argument that it is an immoral part of the human nature, but denying its very existence and association serves no purpose.
Then I'm afraid we're talking at cross purposes. I was talking about profit as a political economic category. I wasn't making and moral claims when I said that the profit (and so the profit motive) only exists where commodities are produced.
I thought the OP was also asking about profit as a political economic category, because this is the sense in which the word would be used when asking, to paraphrase, 'why do capitalists seek profit if the profit motive is not part of human nature?'
The issue begins when bringing in the "Human Nature" in the field and use it as a starting point to study capitalism. How do we assess the human nature if not psychologically? Whether it is philosophical or scientific psychology.
Do you agree that if something is part of human nature, then it will be present in some form in all human societies?
isnt an agreement to that exactly what im trying to represent?
I'm not sure. Possibly. But you also seem to be disagreeing with me, which suggests not.
I'm not starting an analysis of capitalism with human nature. Capitalism is the name of a particular political economy / mode of production that is based on producing commodities.
If capitalism has unique implications, which by definition only arise in capitalism, it stands to reason that those implications (being unique) do not arise in all human societies. If something only arises in specific era, and not in all human societies, it is specific to that era, and not part of human nature.
Edit: To add for clarity: within capitalism, seeking profit is a political economic necessity for capitalists. I'm not making any moral, psychological, or philosophical claims here.
Human beings produce society, and human beings are influenced by society, so it is all human beings that get into consideration.
for example, Patterns of fascism can be found everywhere around the world, even parts that had no significant itellectual interaction of sorts with each other, ideologies and its exercise such as that of fascism are also found throughout history, without two points in history to have been directly influenced by each other.
My point is that east, west: doesnt matter. If there exists a system inspired by people in one geography, it doesnt matter the geography per se, it can exist everywhere else upon the existence of similar environmental conditions that arent strictly and intentfully sociological.
The first line to my reply to the original post is an explicit evidence on where i stand.
Then we are talking at cross purposes.
I'm not sure what fascism, geography, the environment, or sociology have to do with it.
I agree that humans produce society. But if humans have produced societies that do not involve commodity production, then they have lived without profit and without a profit motive. This was the case for the majority of human existence, perhaps some 300,000 years.
If human societies have lived without a profit motive, then the profit motive cannot be part of human nature—it arises only when humans produce commodities (i.e. rather than because humans are involved).
To accept that the profit motive is part of human nature, one must also accept that it existed in all human societies. It did not. Something (e.g. the profit motive) cannot be part of human nature if it has only been an organising force in human society for 200–500 years.
Im very confused by your definition for the human nature, you're distinguishing between positive traits of humans and negative traits in humans, or primitive traits in humans and evolutionary traits in humans and choosing one of them to represent the human nature while declining the other's association with it, when in a conversation like all it does is deny the existence of empirical evidence and puts forward a virtuous proposition without studying the existing nature of human economy.
The grography, the environmrnt and sociology is precisely the deterministic factors that need to be taken into consideration while concersing on human nature, just as much as the consideration of nature of individual and isolated (if that is even possible) human agency is needed. Given that environmental factors inspire human instincts, and human instincts inspire social phenomenons.
Moral propositions are great to have but using them as an essentialist force to describe humans falls into a purist line of thinking that dissociates one's self from the reality of the human condition. That reality which can be figured out through empirical and scientific study of the geneology of a particular human trait.
If there is something a human does or expresses, no matter where it came from, it is part of the human nature. There is no essence of human nature in the way that you propose, i dont see any evidence for such.
I'm not making any moral claims nor claiming that any trait is positive or negative. I am not proposing that there is an essence of human nature.
I'm saying that the profit motive is unique to commodity production. If there is no commodity production, there is no profit motive. I am also claiming that within a system of commodity production, only a small fraction of the people within that system seek profit. And in a system of commodity production, it is only the owners of the means of production who seek profit.
I am then claiming, which to me seems to follow logically, that if very few humans throughout history have sought profit, then seeking profit cannot be part of human nature.
To that i want to express that the "few" people that we are talking about that pursue profit could literally be any of us, for any number of variables affecting us. These arent some different subspecies of humans we are talking about, theyre just humans whose will was to seek profit, a desire that could have been inspired for any number of reasons.
The same reasons that could have inspired it in you or me, In any socialist, anarchist or a communist if we were born in a certain environment. The said environment doesnt need to be capitalistic in its existence for it to inspire profit motive. One has to ask, what inspired the first capitalist to seek profit. A lot of questions arise from this very question: what is a capitalist, is there a "first" capitalist? does capitalistic endeavour exist in a spectrum?.
This is pan-determinism im referring to. And if a human like you and me can be put in an environment with variables that may inspire capitalistic pursuit in us (even if that environment's economy doesnt rely on capitalism), albeit to a much lower degree (which may or may not escalate with time), how can we not call this pursuit as a part, or for a better word: an element, of human nature.
Not just anyone. Only capitalists. Or, rather, only those who own the means of production within a commodity producing society. In capitalism, those owners are organised as a class. The profit motive is what drives that class, not humans in general.
I must reiterate that we're talking at cross purposes. I'm saying that profit only exists where there is commodity production. If we cannot agree on that, we won't agree about much else. Before commodity production, there was no concept of profit, and there could be no concept of a profit motive, hence humans could not be motivated by profit before they began to produce commodities.
As for your questions relating to the 'first' capitalist, you may want to read:
You will find some support for some of the ideas that you're talking about in these works, relating to the difficulty of pointing to a precise date at which humans began to be motivated by profit (which is impossible to pinpoint). You will also find a rejection of the argument that the profit motive is part of human nature and why. Mainly, this rejection lies in the claim that everything is historically contingent—which follows logically from an historical materialist world outlook. That will support some of your ideas but it will also challenge your main argument about what human nature is and about how we know what we know about capitalism.
For analyses on why and how profit is related to commodity production, try:
I believe i require more nuanced study into the subject. I genuinely appreciate this conversation, thank you for your patience and the proper guidance towards the resources.
You’re very welcome, and I’m glad you’ve taken my comments in the spirit in which I wrote them. I wasn’t trying to be awkward and you are making some good points. I’m happy to keep talking if want to discuss the sources I suggested.
You might also really enjoy David Harvey’s Rebel Cities. He’s a geographer, so he engages with some of your ideas directly. He’s not arguing about human nature, but he takes this notion of profit and commodities and runs with it to see how it shapes cities and how cities shape capitalism.
The book introduces many concepts of historical materialism. It’s dialectical, but Harvey does not use much jargon. Okay, he uses some jargon, but he is good at explaining his terms and using examples. You can see this in the example quote below (at the end of this comment).
One aspect of the book you might like is his criticism of Marx’s concept of primitive accumulation. Harvey argues that a better term is ‘appropriation by dispossession’, which is an ongoing process. This has implications for how we understand modern capitalism, its origins, and its effects on human behaviour.
I read Harvey before any of the other texts cited in my previous comment, and although those other texts are complex, they were easier to read because I could fit the new ideas into the imagery that Harvey provides (he’s good at painting the picture). I also watched the first few videos in his lecture series on Capital, vol I before reading the text myself. These are on YouTube and were very helpful for me.
A quote that may pique your interest, from Harvey, Rebel Cities, p.5:
Harvey seems like a good starting point for me! Your exposition is thorough and insightful, thank you!