Eugenics

What a stupid attack on Dawkins. Dawkins wasn’t advocating eugenics ( as artificial selection to produce humans with particular characteristics) but merely pointing out that this is theoretically possible. Read again what Dawkins tweeted:

”It’s one thing to deplore eugenics on ideological, political, moral grounds. It’s quite another to conclude that it wouldn’t work in practice. Of course it would. It works for cows, horses, pigs, dogs & roses. Why on earth wouldn’t it work for humans? Facts ignore ideology.”

This is not saying that eugenics should be tried but that, if it were to be, it would in theory work. I don’t think that this can be denied. Whether or not it should be tried is a quite different matter.

The author’s bid to deny that artificial selection has worked with other animals and with plants is pathetic and is indeed based on ideology not fact. The results of artificial selection are all around us, not just in domesticated animals but also in the foods we eat. In fact Darwin got the idea of natural selection to explain the evolution of species from observing how pigeon fanciers bred different types of pigeons.

Of course it “works”. He does have a point that the technique is being misused to produce shows dogs and cats but that’s a different matter.

We have our bone to pick with Dawkins over his Selfish Gene book but he is not an advocate of eugenics nor a racist (nor an islamophobe) as claimed by those who have put him on their list of speakers to be banned and shouted down.

I don’t think Dawkins can be branded as a Social Darwinist (Darwin couldn’t be either) any more than as a eugenist and racist like that idiot Podur does.

The objection to him is that he gave credence to biological determinism as the view that human behaviour is to a large extent determined by human biology. The title of his book of “The Selfish Gene” does this as it gives the impression that there is a gene for selfishness. In fact he argued that the basic unit of biological evolution is the gene rather than, say, a group — an argument for experts in the field to settle for themselves on the basis of the facts. We can just note that in every book he published since that one Dawkins has backtracked on his original claim so as to take account of other influences on biological evolution.

In politics he is not a rabid rightwinger but a wishy-washy middle of the road liberal.

As for Darwin, the “survival of the fittest” does not mean the survival of the strongest in the day to day struggle to survive  but the survival in the long run of those with biological characteristics that are the best for surviving in the environment that a group of life-forms finds itself in.

Social (or rather Anti-Social) “Darwinism” has nothing to do with Darwin but was an ideology concocted in the last decades of the 19th century to defend those capitalists who emerge the most successfully from the economic competition amongst them to make the most profits.

Whilst Dawkins is technically correct, the difference between the “artificial” selection that humans have undertaken with plants and animals and doing the same thing with humans is the reproductive rate.

In plants reproduction is usually yearly, however the large number of seeds, tubers, etc produced each year means that one plant can reproduce potentially thousands of offspring in one year from which to select the most suitable, and it is quite quickly apparent which are the most suitable to select.

In animals cows usually start reproducing after 2 years and can have up to about 20 calves in their lifetime, but it’s usually about 7-10 produced over a 7-10 year period. In cats, dogs, etc. reproduction and maturity is much quicker. So in effect selection for particular characteristics can take place relatively quickly. However dogs and cattle have taken centuries of selective breeding to get to the point achieved today.

In humans, if we say that reproduction starts at about 16 and reproduction numbers are likely far fewer that cows, for example. Also it takes much longer for the characteristics (if you believe in this type of thing) to become apparent, so it would potentially take much longer, for instance at what age do you decide who the fastest runner is, some sprinters peak in their mid 20s, whilst middle distance and long distance runners peak much later, the same could be said for intelligence (again is you believe in such things)

So again to start to get any really differences emerging, you would probably have to wait at least 25 years and to confirm even a sight modification would take 50 years, with no guarantee. (For example Kenny Dalglish’s son Paul played for Newcastle for a few years. He looked like Kenny, he spoke like Kenny, he ran like Kenny, he even had his tongue hanging out of his mouth when playing, just like Kenny, however unlike Kenny, he was rubbish at football)

If we want to go down that road a much quicker way would be gene therapy in which a person’s genes are altered to remove some manifest defect. I know this raises ethical problems too eg over what is a “defect”. But I don’t think that anybody would deny, would they, that the genetically-inherited condition Huntington’s Disease, with the horrible fate that awaits those who are going to get it, is something that should be eliminated?

There is no separation of ‘is’ and ‘ought’.

That belief, in a separation, is a part of bourgeois ideology, to buttress bourgeois ‘science’.

This applies to all ‘science’, and obviously ‘eugenics’. There is no ‘good’ (‘objective’) or ‘bad’ (‘morally objectionable’) eugenics. We humans determine.

Any ‘is’ is premised upon an ‘ought’ – that’s what Marx’s method of ‘theory and practice’ is all about.

To argue for an ‘is’, is to argue that there is an ‘unchangeable’ – which is the polar opposite of Marx’s social productionism.

If we don’t create our ‘ises’, based upon our ‘oughts’, someone else will – an elite, who claim to be the ‘educators’.

It ought to be.

Matthew Culbert wrote “As he says, it raises ‘ethical’ questions and these would be requiring society as a whole to make the decisions, as to whether such a  thing should be implemented.”

Yes, as you argue, any ‘truth’ or ‘reality’ or ‘objectivity’ or ‘fact’ “raises ‘ethical’ questions and these would be requiring society as a whole to make the decisions, as to whether such a  thing should be implemented”.

You seem to agree with Marx’s political analysis, Matthew, except for one slip of the typing finger, perhaps.

The ‘material’ can only be determined democratically. ‘Matter’ would be subject to a vote.

The 18th century ‘materialists’, like Lenin, are determined to divide society into two, an elite of ‘educators’ (who claim to already know the ‘material’, before it has been socially produced, and so can ‘educate’ the masses), and a mass of ‘educated’, who must obey the opinions of your ‘specialist interrogators’.

Only society as a whole employing democratic methods can determine ‘science’. Any ‘specialist interrogators’ will be elected, and if their opinions don’t fit with the opinions of the mass of society, they will be democratically replaced.

We cannot allow ‘specialist’ educators. Socialism is the self-education of the whole of society.