Dawkins in the swamp of idealism

excerpt from Reason in Revolt by Alan Woods and Ted Grant

The Selfish Gene

Richard Dawkins, who came to fame with his controversially entitled book The Selfish Gene, has been at the centre of a heated polemic over genetics. Molecular biologists have identified the importance of DNA in replicating copies of DNA molecules. They possess coded instructions which produce the building blocks of life, amino acids. These make up proteins which shape cells and organs. Because of this, some molecular biologists and also sociobiologists have argued that all natural selection acts ultimately at the level of the DNA. This has led a number of scientists to have become so obsessed with the wondrous nature of the gene, that not a few are unable see the wood for the trees. Some have given the gene mystical qualities from which reactionary ideas are drawn. The idea that a person’s physical, mental and moral characteristics are handed down unaltered and unalterable from genes is certainly not supported by the facts of genetic science. Yet it has cropped up again and again in literature and has had a serious effect on social policy throughout the 20th century.

The gene transmits its influence from parent to offspring. It can only be defined as a difference between a number of different genes (called allelles) influencing the same thing (e.g. blue/brown allelles for eye colour). The difference is identified by means of biochemical, physiological, structural or behavioural testing/observation (after other sources of variation, like environment, have been excluded).

Unfortunately, many scientists and others use a misleading shorthand for the above definition. Particularly, that a gene that contributes to an individual animal behaving differently becomes the gene for its distinctive behaviour. Dawkins is not the only scientist that falls into this trap. In the 1970s many spoke of a gene coding for physical and behavioural characteristics. Also a gene must be compared with another for the same trait. It is not an entity that stands alone in its own right. As J. B. S. Haldane correctly pointed out, genetics is the science of differences not similarities. Quite simply, you and I can both be selfish—the differences between us cannot. You cannot apply personal characteristics to a comparison. In his book, The Selfish Gene, Dawkins jumps back and forth from one definition to the other, claiming that they are interchangeable—which they are not. The result has been to encourage biological determinism. A whole generation of American and other scientists are being brought up on this confusion.

The scientific research into genetics shows the possibilities for medicine, where gene disorders such as Huntington’s chorea, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, and others have been identified. However, there are widespread assertions that in some way genes are responsible for all kinds of things, like homosexuality and criminality. This genetic determinism reduces all social problems to the level of genetics. In February 1995, a conference on Genetics of Criminal and Anti-Social Behaviour was held in London. Ten of the thirteen speakers were from the United States where a similar conference in 1992 with racist overtones was abandoned because of public pressure. While the chairperson, Sir Michael Rutter of the London Institute of Psychiatry stated "there can be no such thing as a gene for crime," other participants, like Dr. Gregory Carey of the Institute of Behavioural Genetics, University of Colorado, maintained that genetic factors as a whole were responsible for 40-50% of criminal violence. Although he said it would be impractical to "treat" criminality through genetic engineering, others said there were good prospects for developing drugs to control excessive aggression, once the responsible genes had been found. He suggested, however, that abortion should be considered when antenatal testing indicates a child is likely to be born with genes predisposing it to aggression or antisocial behaviour. His view was endorsed by Dr. David Goldman from the Laboratory of Neurogenetics at the US National Institutes of Health. "The families should be given the information and should be allowed to decide privately how to use it." (The Independent, 14th February 1995.)

According to Professor Hans Brunner of Nijmegen University Hospital in Holland, men in a family who inherited a particular genetic abnormality of the X chromosome which led to a deficiency in an enzyme concerned with messages in the brain, have shown "impulsive aggression" including arson and attempted rape. Dr. David Goldman of the NIH Laboratory of Neurogenetics in Maryland, and Professor Matti Virkkunen of the University of Helsinki said they were discovering aggression-related genetic variations in the way people process brain chemicals. "Pharmaceutical companies are already interested in our findings," said Virkkunen. (The Financial Times, 14th February, 1995.)

Steven Rose described the conference as "troublesome, disturbing and unbalanced." The event was attacked in a letter by 15 scientists. Dr. Zakari Erzinclioglu, director of the Centre for Forensic Science at Durham University, called it "very disturbing, simple minded and mischievous." Ashley Montague pointed out that "it is not ‘criminal genes’ that make criminals, but in most cases ‘criminal social conditions.’"

Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene, originally published in 1976, makes some startling assertions. "We are born selfish," says Dawkins. Although he says that "genes have no foresight" and "they do not plan ahead" Dawkins imbues genes with a consciousness and a "selfish" identity. They strive to replicate themselves, as if they are consciously planning how best this could be achieved:

"Certainly in principle, and also in fact, the gene reaches out through the individual body wall and manipulates objects in the world outside, some of them inanimate, some of them other living beings, some of them a long way away. With only a little imagination we can see the gene as sitting at the centre of a radiating web of extended phenotypic power. And an object in the world is the centre of a converging web of influences from many genes sitting in many organisms. The long reach of the gene knows no obvious boundaries." (86) Because for Dawkins individual organisms do not survive from one generation to another, while genes do, it follows that natural selection acts on what survives, namely, the genes. Therefore, all selection acts ultimately at the level of DNA. At the same time, each gene is in competition with each other to reproduce themselves in the next generation. "What after all, is so special about genes? The answer is that they are replicators."

In this view, the replicator of life is the gene; thus the organism is simply the vehicle for the genes ("survival machines—robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes"…"they swarm in huge colonies, safe inside gigantic lumbering robots"). It is a recasting of Butler’s famous aphorism that a hen is simply the egg’s way of making another egg. An animal, for Dawkins, is only DNA’s way of making more DNA. He imbues the genes with certain mystical qualities which is essentially teleological.

"I suspect," says Dawkins in his defence, "that both Rose and Gould are determinists in that they believe in a physical, materialistic basis for all our actions. So am I…whatever view one takes on the question of determinism, the insertion of the word ‘genetic’ is not going to make any difference." He then adds, "if you are a full-blooded determinist you will believe that all your actions are determined by physical causes in the past…what difference can it possibly make whether some of those physical causes are genetic? Why are genetic determinists thought to be any more ineluctable, or blame-absolving, than ‘environmental ones’?" (87)

Everything in nature has a cause and an effect, in which an effect in its turn becomes a cause. Dawkins mixes up determinism and fatalism: "An organism is a tool of DNA." Genetic determinism has a precise meaning, where genes are said to "determine" the exact nature of the phenotype. There is no doubt that genes have a powerful effect in the form of the organism, but its entity will be decisively influenced by the environment. For example, if two identical twins are placed into two totally different environments, two different characters will be produced. As Rose explains, "In reality, however, selection must act at a multitude of levels. Individual gene-sized lengths of DNA may or may not be selected in their own right, but that DNA is expressed against the background of the entire genotype; particular assemblies of genes or whole genotypes must therefore themselves represent another level of selection. Further, the genotype exists within a phenotype, and whether that phenotype survives or does not depends on its interaction with others. Hence it will only be selected against the background of the population in which it is embedded." (88)

Dawkins was forced to back-track to some extent, modifying his arguments in the later editions of The Selfish Gene (1989) and in The Extended Phenotype (1982). He says his flamboyant language left him open to misrepresentation and misunderstanding: "It is all too easy to get carried away, and allow hypothetical genes cognitive wisdom and foresight in planning their ‘strategy.’" He nevertheless defends his fundamental argument and views life "in terms of genetic replicators preserving themselves by means of their extended phenotypes." And that "natural selection is differential survival of genes." Dawkins now says "genes may modify the effects of other genes, and may modify the effects of the environment. Environmental events, both internal and external, may modify the effects of genes, and may modify the effects of other environmental events." But this concession aside, Dawkins’ main thesis remains.

For instance, he says: "Contraception is sometimes attacked as ‘unnatural.’ So it is, very unnatural. The trouble is, so is the welfare state. I think that most of us believe the welfare state is highly desirable. But you cannot have an unnatural welfare state, unless you also have unnatural birth control, otherwise the end result will be misery even greater than that which obtains in nature." He continues, "the welfare state is perhaps the greatest altruistic system the animal kingdom has ever known. But any altruistic system is inherently unstable, because it is open to abuse by selfish individuals, ready to exploit it. Individual humans who have more children than they are capable of rearing are probably too ignorant in most cases to be accused of conscious malevolent exploitation."

According to Dawkins child adoption is against the instincts and interests of our "selfish genes." "In most cases we should probably regard adoption, however touching it may seem, as a misfiring of an in-built rule," says Dawkins. "This is because the generous female is doing her own genes no good by caring for the orphan. She is wasting time and energy which she could be investing in the lives of her own kin, particularly future children of her own. It is presumably a mistake which happens too seldom for natural selection to have ‘bothered’ to change the rule by making the maternal instinct more selective."

He says that "if a female is presented with reliable evidence that a famine is expected, it is in her own selfish interests to reduce her own birth-rate." Dawkins also believes that natural selection would favour children who cheat, lie, deceive and exploit and that "when we look at wild populations we may expect to see cheating and selfishness within families. The phrase ‘the child should cheat’ means that genes which tend to make children cheat have an advantage in the gene pool." (89) He concludes that the organism is a tool of DNA, rather than the other way around.

These comments are interesting not so much for what they tell us about genes, but for what they reveal about the state of society in the last decade of the 20th century. In certain societies, powerful muscles or the ability to run fast can confer a genetic advantage. If a similar advantage is attributed to the propensity to lie, cheat and exploit, it must mean that such features are the qualities most necessary to succeed in modern society, and this is perfectly correct from the standpoint of the advocates of "market values." While it is extremely questionable that such qualities can, in fact, be passed on through the genetic mechanism, it is certainly the fact that they form the most essential features of the egoism of the bourgeois. The "war of each against all," as old Hobbes puts it, is the basic standpoint of capitalist society.

Is it true that such a mentality is a genetically conditioned part of "human nature"? Let us remind ourselves that capitalism and its values has only existed at most for the last 200 years out of approximately 5,000 years of recorded history, and 100,000 years of human development. Human society, for the overwhelming majority of its existence, has been based on the principle of co-operation. Indeed, human beings could never have raised themselves above the level of animals without this. Far from being an essential component of the human psyche, competition is a recent phenomenon, a reflection of a society based on the production of commodities, which twists and perverts human nature into patterns of behaviour which would have been considered abhorrent and unnatural in the past.

It is too easy to blame some mysterious phenomenon such as "our genes" for the grasping self-centred morality of the market-place. Moreover, this is not a question of zoology, but of social class. Individual capitalists compete against each other and do not hesitate to use any methods to ruin their rivals—lying, cheating, industrial espionage, insider dealing, predatory take-overs—these are considered to be normal commercial practice. From the standpoint of the working class, things are very different. It is not a question of individual morality, but precisely of social survival (the sociological equivalent of "the survival of the fittest"). The only power the working class possesses against the employers is the power of unity, that is precisely of co-operation.

Without organisation, beginning at the trade union level, the working class is only raw material for exploitation. The workers’ need to combine in the defence of their interests is a lesson that has to be learned over and over again. Selfishness and "individualism" (in the bourgeois sense of the word) is quite self-defeating for the working class. Every strike-breaker is presented as a great defender of "individual freedom" by the millionaire press because it is in the interest of the employers to atomise the working class, to reduce it to its component parts, utterly at the mercy of Capital. Here too, the dialectical law holds good that the whole is greater that the sum of the parts. Consciously or not, those who present selfishness as an ideal, or at least as "human nature," have taken up a definite position in relation to the struggle between wage labour and Capital, and cannot complain if they are criticised for providing grist to the Thatcherite mill.

Dawkins sees evolution not as the outcome of a struggle of organisms, but as a struggle between genes seeking to copy themselves. The bodies they inhabit are secondary. He discards the Darwinian principle that individuals are the units of selection. This is a fundamentally false idea. Natural selection deals with organisms, with bodies. It favours some bodies because they are better suited to their environment. The gene is a piece of DNA enclosed within the cell nucleus, large numbers of which contribute to the development of most body parts. This in turn is affected by a whole series of environmental factors, internal and external. Selection does not work directly on parts. Natural selection works on bodies because they are in some way "fitter," i.e., stronger, fiercer, warmer, and so on. If there is a particular gene for strength or other such specific attributes, then Dawkins may be correct. But that is not the case. There is not one gene for one bit of anatomy. For instance, the instructions for the construction of the ear is contained in a host of separate genes, half of which have come from either parent.

As Stephen Jay Gould explained: "It (natural selection) accepts or rejects entire organisms because suites of parts, interacting in complex ways, confer advantages…Organisms are much more than amalgamations of genes. They have a history that matters; their parts interact in complex ways. Organisms are built by genes acting in concert, influenced by environments, translated into parts that selection sees and parts invisible to selection. Molecules that determine the properties of water are poor analogues for genes and bodies." (90)

This analysis is backed up by Steven Rose in his criticism of Dawkins: "In reality however selection must act at a multitude of levels. Individual gene-sized lengths of DNA may or may not be selected in their own right, but that DNA is expressed against the background of the entire genotype; particular assemblies of genes or whole genotypes must therefore themselves represent another level of selection. Further, the genotype exists within a phenotype, and whether that phenotype survives or not depends on its interaction with others. Hence it will only be selected for against the background of the population in which it is embedded." (91)

Dawkins’ method leads him into the swamp of idealism, when he attempts to argue that human culture can be reduced to units he calls memes, which, apparently, like genes, are self-replicating and compete for survival. This is clearly wrong. Human culture is passed down from generation to generation, not through memes, but through education in the broadest sense. It is not biologically inherited but has to be painstakingly relearned and developed by each new generation. Cultural diversity is bound up not with genes but social history. Dawkins’ approach is essentially reductionist.

Societies are broken down to organisms, organisms to cells, cells to molecules, and molecules to atoms. For Dawkins, human nature and motivation are to be understood by analysing human DNA. The same is true of James Watson (the discoverer, with Crick and Franklin, of the double helix) who said "What else is there but atoms?" They never allow the existence of either multiple levels of analysis or complex modes of determination. They ignore the essential relations between cells and the organism as a whole. This empirical method, which emerged with the scientific revolution at the birth of capitalism, was progressive in its day, but has now become a fetter on the advancement of science and the understanding of nature.