Date: 	Sat, 1 Aug 1998 17:52:01 -0400
To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu
From: "Ronald  J. Deibert" <r.deibert@utoronto.ca>
Subject: Re: sociobiology and right-wing politics
List:

Of course sociobiology is "anti-progressive," if that scary slogan is
taken to be synonomous with anything that is not communism.  For the latter
hangs it hopes on the infinite malleability of human beings, pounded
into one-dimensionals at the end of history by the vanguards of the 
proletariat.  Luckily, and here I think sociobiology is correct, the human
character is too inherently complex, riven with natural impulses and desires,
and resistant to uniformity, to lend itself to such a horrifically absurd
notion.....

RD

At 04:58 PM 8/1/98 -0400, you wrote:
>List,
>
>Put aside the fact of all the open racialists who make up the hard core of
>sociobiology for a moment, and let's consider those sociobiologists who
>have been alleged to have progressive political backgrounds. What does
>that tell us? The intent here is to use the good intentions fallacy to
>counter the undesirable political-ideological institutional basis of
>sociobiology. But a person can stand before me telling me that s/he is a
>social democrat all the while advancing a deeply reactionary ideological
>position. There's no contradiction. (And since when has social democracy
>become automatically defined as real progressivism?) What is far more
>important than the personal political views of individual sociobiologists,
>and I already raised this issue, is the actual political-ideological
>character of sociobiology. This notion of a communist conspiracy behind
>sociobiology because some of its proponents are "left-of-center liberals"
>and "social democrats," besides the sheer level of absurdity of its
>content, suffers from the error of confusing personal political
>allegiances with an ideological structure. 
>
>Keeping in mind that ideological structures themselves have consequences
>relatively independent of any impoverished self-criticism of their
>advocates, we should know that it makes no more sense to say that
>sociobiology is not reactionary because some of its advocates are social
>democrats than it is sensible to say that anti-affirmative action is not
>racist because some of its advocates deny their hatred for blacks. 
>
>The propaganda technique being deployed is the lesser known method of ad
>hominem that involves appealing to the desirable characteristics of the
>proponents of a particular position. The argument goes like this: "Noam
>Chomsky is a left-wing progressive; he believes in sociobiology; therefore
>sociobiology cannot be a reactionary right-wing ideology." 
>
>First, I emphasize the distinction between this fallacious form of
>argument from the argument I have advanced that associates sociobiology,
>*as a political-ideological program*, with right-wing reactionary
>elements. My critique involves locating sociobiology in the institutional
>structures that fund it foster its development, and to do it is, in part,
>important to identify its proponents within those structures. (Nobody can
>credibly advance an argument that sociobiology is a left-wing political
>program.) Because sociobiology presents facts in the court of scientific
>discourse, its funding sources and political-ideological impetus is
>entirely relevant to the judgment of sociobiology as an intellectual
>endeavor. It is, personal political allegiances of the individual
>proponents to one side, a scientistic cover over a larger and long-time
>historical political program.
>
>Second, the understanding and controversy of Chomsky's position on this
>matter is more subtle than the sloganeering of the post I respond to
>permits. This is what happens when a speaker seeks to make a
>point-to-point reduction of somebody's political description and a larger
>political-ideological program. Chomsky's theory of the language
>acquisition device, as I have discussed previously on this listserv, is
>logically problematic, but in any case is the only compelling example of
>an intrinsic human nature. Chomsky's argument is not empirical, but rather
>structural, talking a realist position on linguistic capacity. However, it
>must be said that Chomsky extends his rationalism into many areas of human
>social life without any evidence whatsoever, and does so in my view
>irresponsibly. He has suggested that this genetic unfolding of innate
>rationality bears not only only aspects of intelligence, but also bears on
>moral and even aesthetic judgments. My take on Chomsky in this regard is
>that he developed the innate rationality of humans, along with their
>inherent creativity and need for free and creative work, and so on, and
>hooked this up with his value system as a matter of political expediency. 
>His hostility to historical materialism leaves Chomsky with no scientific
>theory of human interaction, and so the rough leap of faith he had to make
>to accomplish his political program is expected. Chomsky should be
>criticized for this; this is probably the single biggest error Chomsky has
>ever made in his social philosophizing. We should keep in mind Chomsky's
>shifting position on this. He started off his career saying he could find
>only "tenuous points of contact" between his political position
>(anarchism) and the science he was developing. By the 1970s and 1980s he
>was advancing a limited form of sociobiology, a sort of Cartesian
>rationalist position. Yet, as the political agenda of the New Right has
>emerged more clearly, Chomsky has reacted strongly to the sociobiological
>program, condemning, for example, Murray's work, which is representative
>of the body of sociobiological literature. I am not at all sure that
>Chomsky today could be characterized as a sociobiology.
>
>Andy
>
>