In 1975, the left-wing critics of Ed Wilson's Sociobiology accused him of promoting a genetic determinism and a conservative (or even neo-Nazi) politics that denied the possibility and desirability of the social change through cultural learning that could establish a socialist society. Nicholas Wade, writing for the journal Science, responded by pointing out that Wilson could not be a strict genetic determinist because he recognized that human social behavior was largely shaped by cultural learning. The evolution of social behavior works through the interaction of genes and culture, so that genetic evolution both enables and constrains cultural evolution.
Wade also dismissed the charge that Wilson was supporting Nazi-like eugenics as unfairly inflammatory political rhetoric. After all, Wade noted, Wilson "describes himself as a liberal." Wilson himself had said that human sociobiology could explain the human resistance to oppressive despotism as an expression of those human rights that are rooted in human biological nature--"rights that are innate, rooted in the ineradicable drives for survival and self-esteem." So it seemed that if Wilson's sociobiology promoted conservatism, it must be a liberal conservatism--conservative in the sense of conserving those genetically evolved behaviors and traditions that have worked in the past, but liberal in the sense of being open to the cultural evolution of the liberal institutions that secure human liberty.
In his new book The Origin of Politics: How Evolution and Ideology Shape the Fate of Nations, Wade elaborates both of these themes--the gene-culture coevolution of human social behavior and the need for both liberal and conservative attitudes to sustain a free, flourishing, and enduring social order. He also adds a third theme--the evolution of the modern nation-state--that supports an illiberal nationalism that seems to contradict his liberal conservatism.
THE GENE-CULTURE COEVOLUTION OF POLITICS
Many of the leftist critics of sociobiology worried that any conception of a genetic human nature as a constraint on cultural change would deny the possibility of creating a socialist society. Wade confirms that fear by arguing that the history of socialis utopias--particularly, the socialist kibbutzim in Israel-- shows that any attempt to conquer human nature in establishing socialism must ultimately fail.
The kibbutzim were collective farms established in Israel in the early 20th century. To achieve complete equality, they abolished the family, abolished the traditional division of labor between men and women, abolished private property, and abolished differential compensation for workers.
The kibbutzim practiced a pure socialism that came as close to absolute equality as any human community has ever achieved. The members rotated jobs. They took all of their meals in a common dining hall. They had no private property. They did not even own the clothing they wore, which was provided for them by the community. When children were born, they were sent to a children's house to be cared for and educated by the community. Children were allowed to visit their parents only a few hours in the afternoon. This was understood as necessary for the sexual equality of men and women, because women were free from the burden of caring for their children. All decisions about the organization of the community were made by consensus in a general assembly, usually held weekly, where every member participated equally. The kibbutzniks saw themselves as putting into practice the Marxist principle of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need." They also seemed to be following Plato's recommendation in The Republic that the Guardians in the just city should not have private property or private families, because they should care for the common good of the whole community rather than their selfish private interests.
But then, beginning in the 1950s and 1960s, young mothers began to complain that they did not have enough time with their children. They wanted at least to be able to put their children to sleep at night. As the children matured to adulthood, many of them left the kibbutz because they didn't like the communal childrearing. Beginning in the 1970s, many of the kibbutzim decided to allow family sleeping rather than collective sleeping. Socialists complained that allowing children to live with their parents would lead to the privatization of other things and inequality.
The kibbutzniks wanted not only private families but also private property. Some of them returning from serving in the British army in World War Two came back with teakettles. Allowing some people to own private teakettles, and to drink tea privately in their homes rather than in the communal dining room, violated socialist equality. Then some people wanted to own their own clothes and to select their clothing. They also wanted to own their homes.
The kibbutzim had to abandon job rotation to keep skilled people in their specialized jobs. The most skilled workers wanted extra pay for their work, and they complained about those people who didn't work hard but received equal pay. By the end of the 1990s, many kibbutzim were assigning wages according to skill level.
So socialism was successful for the founding generation of the kibbutzniks because of their ideological commitment to the project. But it ultimately failed because the second and third generations rejected it as frustrating their natural human desires for familial bonding, private property, and earnings according to merit. The socialist culture of the kibbutzim failed to abolish evolved human nature.
But even if cultural learning cannot abolish human nature, Wade observes, human nature is flexible enough that it can be bent in certain directions by cultural learning. His two examples of this happening are the rise of monogamy and the fall of tribalism in human history.
Although monogamous pair-bonding is deeply rooted in human evolutionary history, there is also an evolutionary logic for men to compete with one another for sexual access to many women. Since women can bear only a few children in their lifetimes, but men can father many, a man who mates with many women increases his Darwinian fitness. But only men with power, status, and wealth can provide multiple women with the resources they need for bearing and rearing children. So it was only after the development of agriculture, which allowed a few men to accumulate great wealth and power, that high status men were able to have many wives. For example, Wade notes that the Moroccan ruler Moulay Ismail was reputed to have had over 500 concubines and to have fathered over 1,000 children by the time of his death in 1727. Since the emergence of agriculture, most societies have allowed polygamy. Actually, this means polygyny (multiple women mated with one man), because polyandry (multiple men mated with one woman) is extremely rare.
But then in ancient Greece and Rome, there arose a cultural rule forbidding anyone from marrying more than one person at a time. The Christian Church then strictly enforced this cultural rule of monogamy across the Roman Empire and then across the European states.
Rich men are worse off from this cultural rule because it limits their male desire to leave as many (legitimate) offspring as possible. But it benefits poor men in a way that benefits society at large.
In a polygamous society, the highest status men will have many wives. Some middle status men will have one wife each. Consequently, the lowest status men will have little chance of finding a wife. These young wifeless men will become resentful and violent and thus disruptive to the social order.
Monogamy evenly distributes the women as mates for the men, and then every man has a stake in the existing order, which strengthens social cohesion. For that reason, monogamous societies will tend to be more stable and enduring than polygamous societies.
This cultural evolution of monogamy illustrates how a cultural rule can bend but not break a natural human propensity. In a monogamous society, rich and powerful men (such as politicians) will enjoy sexual access to many women, but these adulterous affairs will not be socially or legally legitimized.
Another example of a cultural curbing of a natural propensity that was necessary for the emergence of modern state societies is the repression of tribalism. With the appearance of the first horticulturalists about 10,000 years ago--small-scale cultivators of plants--people lived in small villages organized into clans and tribes. A clan is a social group consisting of families who claim a common ancestor. The informal leadership of a clan is usually elders or a chief. A tribe is composed of multiple clans claiming common ancestry and shared culture, language, territory, and traditions. The tribe is governed by chiefs or councils, but they have nothing like a formal government or bureaucratic state. John Locke understood the American Indian tribes (particularly, the Huron tribes described by Gabriel Sagard) as living in the state of nature with informal governance but no formal political institutions.
For thousands of years, tribalism was the predominant social organization for most human beings around the world. History's largest land empire--the Mongol Empire--was tribally organized, and by 1279 AD it stretched from the Pacific Ocean to Eastern Europe.
In Europe, Wade observes, tribalism was undermined by the Catholic Church. Tribes depend on a network of marriages between people who are closely related to preserve male lineages and inheritance of property in the male line. Because of the short life spans in premodern times, families often had no male heir. To keep wealth within the family or tribe, men were required to marry their brother's widow, or a widowed man was required to marry his sister-in-law. Or a family could resort to adoption. The Church used its power over marriage rules to forbid these practices under the pretext of preventing incest. Then, when people on their deathbeds had no male descendants, they could be persuaded by a priest to give their property to the Church as a way of assuring their heavenly salvation. Consequently, so much of the wealth of the tribes was transferred to the Church that tribal structures were dissolved.
Wade argues that what we see here is the coevolution of genetic instincts and cultural traditions, so that cultural norms can curb genetic instincts like polygamy and tribalism, but those instincts can never be totally extinguished. Rich and powerful men will always be tempted by the polygamous instinct for extramarital sex. And people will always have a tribalistic instinct to favor their relatives.
THE EVOLUTION OF LIBERAL CONSERVATISM
The cultural suppression of polygamy and tribalism, allowed for the emergence of the monogamous nuclear family in Europe as the normative institution for organizing marriage and kinship. The monogamous nuclear family—a couple and their dependent children living together—has historically been linked to the rise of individualism in Western societies. This arises from its role in shaping personal identity, property rights, and social roles.
But people were still under the authoritarian religious and political authority of the ruling elites who controlled the church and the state. Securing the social, economic, and political freedoms enjoyed by people in a modern liberal democracy, Wade explains, required the cultural evolution of the liberal constitutionalism that first emerged fully in England in the Glorious Revolution of 1688.
The Stuart monarchs claimed to rule by divine right, and thus they could not be under the law, since the King was the Law--Lex Rex. Their opponents in Parliament argued that the king must be subject to the law. By the late 17th century, there were two political factions in this debate. The Tories defended the divine right authority of the King. The Whigs argued for parliamentary supremacy and the rule of law over the King. This debate was settled when the last of the Stuarts, James II, was forced into exile and replaced in 1689 by William III of the Dutch House of Orange. This established that the king was subject to the law and Parliament and that governments could rule only with the consent of the people. Most Tories then accepted constitutional monarchy and gave up the idea of divine-right monarchy.
Wade sees here the cultural evolution of the three components of the modern liberal democratic order.
First, the state was strong enough to defend itself and prevent unrest within its borders. Second, such conditions allowed the emergence of the rule of law and respect for property rights. Third, because of the existence and legitimacy of the law, Parliament was able to challenge the king's absolute power and make him subject to the will of elected government (94-95).
For Wade, this allowed for "institutions such as property rights, free markets, and an unbiased legal system . . . open and impersonal institutions, or 'inclusive institutions'" that "stand in contrast to 'extractive institutions' that are designed to sequester a society's resources for the benefit of a small elite" (98-99). This cultural evolution from "extractive institutions" to "inclusive institutions" corresponds to what Stephen Balch would call the move from a Takers regime to a Makers regime (Naturalizing History: A Biocultural Theory of Human Progress [Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2026). The Makers are those who produce wealth. The Takers are those who expropriate the wealth produced by others.
David Hume saw the conflict between the Tories as the party of authority and obedience to rulers and the Whigs as the party of liberty and resistance to tyranny as a political battle in which the partisans of each faction refused to see the partial truth in each side: good government requires a tense balance between authority and liberty, so that each side moderates the other. Extreme authoritarianism creates tyranny. Extreme libertarianism creates anarchy. Hume thought the task of a philosopher is not to become a partisan for one side over the other but to mediate between the two extremes and promote compromise and accommodation.
Although Wade is not completely clear on this point, he seems to agree with Hume in suggesting that the genetic and cultural evolution of political order requires a balance or accommodation between conservative political attitudes (expressed by the Tories) and liberal political attitudes (expressed by the Whigs), which I have called "liberal conservatism."
Wade agrees with those political scientists--John Hibbing, Peter Hatemi, and their colleagues--who argue that twin studies have shown that political attitudes are to a significant degree genetically influenced (see John R. Hibbing, Kevin B. Smith, and John R. Alford, The Left, The Right, and the Biology of Political Differences, second edition [New York: Routledge, 2024]. In some studies, questionnaires are given to identical twins, who have 100% of their genome in common, and to fraternal twins, who share on average 50% of their genes. When the responses from the identical twin pairs are more similar than those from the fraternal twin pairs, a genetic influence can be inferred. The twins can be asked to answer yes or no to a series of questions about political issues such as the death penalty, gay rights, immigration, and abortion. In one study, researchers constructed an index of conservatism based on typically conservative answers to the questions and then estimated the heritability of conservatism--the extent to which the variability in the population is influenced by genetics--as 43%. Studies of identical twins reared apart show that if you know that one of the twins is politically conservative, you can predict that the other twin is likely to be politically conservative. So it seems that there is some genetic influence on whether one is politically conservative or liberal.
In some previous posts, I have criticized this "genopolitics" research of Hibbing and his colleagues. One of my main criticisms has been that Hibbing's group gives us an implausibly simplistic model that cannot account for the complex diversity of evolved political ideology. Isn't it hard to see how the complexity of political thought and behavior could be reduced to two categories at opposite ends of one dimension--the political left or the political right--or perhaps three categories if we include the political center? At the very least, we need to recognize libertarianism or classical liberalism as a position that is neither purely liberal nor purely conservative, a position that is ignored by Hibbing's group.
The insistence of Hibbing's group that everyone is either liberal or conservative, left or right, requires that everyone be forced to make dichotomous choices about the "bedrock issues of social organization." They have done this by using a "Society Works Best Instrument" (Kevin Smith et al., "Linking Genetics and Political Attitudes: Reconceptualizing Political Ideology," Political Psychology 32 [2011]: 390-91). People are given a series of 14 binary choices about how "Society works best when . . ." Amazingly, they ask about how "society" works best, but they ask nothing about "government" or "the state"; and so they make it impossible to distinguish between the natural and voluntary associations in civil society and the coercive power of government.
Here are some examples. "Society works best when . . . 1. Those who break the rules are punished. 2. Those who break the rules are forgiven. 1. Every member contributes. 2. More fortunate members sacrifice to help others. 1. People are rewarded according to merit. 2. People are rewarded according to need. 1. People take primary responsibility for their welfare. 2. People join together to help others. 1. People are proud they belong to the best society there is. 2. People realize that no society is better than any other."
Every choice of a 1 was given a score of 1, and every choice of a 2 was given a score of -1. Those whose total score was close to 14 were extreme conservatives. Those whose total score was close to -14 were extreme liberals.
I assure you I am not making this up. This is what Hibbing and his group regard as real social science.
Wouldn't any reasonable person--any liberal or conservative--object that most of these dichotomous choices are ridiculous, because they are false dichotomies? Would the conservative say that those who break the rules should always be punished and never forgiven? Or would the liberal say that they should always be forgiven and never punished? Would the conservative say that people should always be rewarded according to merit and never according to need? Or would the liberal say that people should always be rewarded according to need and never according to merit? Would the conservative say that people should always take primary responsibility for their welfare and never help others? Or would the liberal say that people should always help others and never take primary responsibility for their own welfare? Surely, the answer to all these questions is no.
If you insist that political ideology consists of a choice between only two alternatives, these are the kind of silly choices that you have to give to people.
Perhaps we need a somewhat wider range of choices. Hibbing et al. are silent about the proposal by some political scientists--such as William Maddox and Stuart Lilie (in Beyond Liberal and Conservative: Reassessing the Political Spectrum [Cato Institute, 1984])--for using the two dimensions of freedom--economic freedom and personal freedom--to construct a matrix of four or five political ideologies. American public opinion survey data shows, they contend, that American citizens are not just divided into liberals and conservatives, but also into libertarians and populists. Some libertarian theorists (such as David Boaz), as well as the Libertarian Party, have adopted this analysis to construct a matrix of political ideologies based on two dimensions--personal liberty and economic liberty:
You can take a short quiz to see where you belong. If you score high on personal liberty but low on economic liberty, you're a liberal. If you score low on personal liberty but high on economic liberty, you're a conservative. If you score low on both personal liberty and economic liberty, you're a statist (or an authoritarian). (Maddox and Lilie would call you a populist.) If you score high on both personal liberty and economic liberty, you're a libertarian. If you score towards the middle on both scales, you're a centrist.
Since the libertarian (or classical liberal) agrees with the liberal about the importance of personal liberty and agrees with the conservative about the importance of economic liberty, the libertarian could also be called a liberal conservative.
Wade never explicitly affirms what I am calling "liberal conservatism," but it's implied in much of what he says. "Evolution has embedded four major structural elements of society in the human genome," Wade claims. "These are the family, the specialized roles of the two sexes, social institutions [such as religion, commerce, and politics], and the tribe with its successor institution the nation-state" (60, 205). Wade argues that while conservatives firmly support those evolutionary pillars of social order, liberals--or at least those belonging to the "ultra-left"--undermine those pillars. But then he insists: "The evolutionary perspective provides no basis for favoring conservative over liberal politics" (211). On the contrary, "a healthy society needs to maintain in its genetic patrimony the full range of political behavior," combining "its liberal-promoting alleles" and its "conservative alleles," because a healthy society needs to be conservative in preserving its traditional norms but also liberal in making changes in response to a changing environment (158).
Wade seems to be agreeing with Hume that a healthy social order requires a balancing of the Tory party of authority and the Whig party of liberty as expressing two sides of the human nature of social order. But as I have already suggested, a better position would be to affirm a Darwinian liberal conservatism that recognizes both liberty and authority as grounded in our evolved human nature.
I will say more about this in my next post.
