The Psychology of Communist Ideation

Author: Fadil Karim

22nd October 2021

In this piece we will introduce some neuroscience concepts, then we will briefly look at the story of money and capitalism. Finally, we will look at the proposed removal of financial hierarchies as proposed by Karl Marx and assess the problems of this by using neuroscientific principles of motivation. We will also discuss apparent flaws of capitalism. Bear in mind that socialism is a derivative of communism so the ideas in this piece may be used interchangeably for socialist systems.

Reward

Reward from a neuroscience context underpins motivation systems and refers to underlying systems and processes in the brain that create a positive emotional state with regards to satiation of an intrinsic desire. Episodic memory of that emotional reward is what allows one to associate future rewards to tasks, making the processes within the tasks rewarding. This reward process Focus on a task for example, is facilitated by this process, including tedious tasks.

Lack of capacity for task-based reward is also known as ADHD.

Primary and Secondary Rewards

Rewards can be further split into two groups, primary rewards being those that are associated to intrinsic desires that are directly linked to survival such as satiation of hunger and sexual desire. Secondary rewards facilitate the retrieval of a primary reward and other secondary rewards.

The satisfaction associated to attainment of new hunting weapons would be classed as a secondary reward as these weapons facilitate the hunting process while the consumption of the hunted carcass itself would be classed as a primary reward.

Hierarchy

Reward systems themselves force us to align into collective hierarchal structures. After identifying a goal, ascension up a hierarchal chain of any domain requires usage of reward systems, as self-perceived ascension up the chain provides positive feedback to a species through reward processes in the brain. If a hierarchy has a low perceived value, individual intrinsic desires do not align to this hierarchy and those same desires come out through participation of other hierarchies. Hierarchies govern the collective and the individual through utilisation of motivation systems in the brain.

Government

A government is an entity consisting of a group of people that have significant control over masses of a nation state for the establishment and sustenance of order.

What is Money?

Historically, males would engage in conflict with each other over rewards in the form of territory, food, and females. Conflict in those times came with great risk. Even the most dominant victories came with major injuries. For example, a small cut back then, a minor injury today, came with a high risk of infection which came with a high risk of death, or, at the very least, an extended period of forced inactivity within hostile territory. The risks of physical conflict would have been one of the major contributing factors to the creation of the concept of trade. We can illustrate this with a hypothetical example. Caveman Jordan, after a failed deer hunt heads to his cave without a means of satisfaction of primary desire of hunger satiation. Along the way he sees Caveman Peter who is carrying the corpse from his successful hunt. Caveman Jordan could engage in conflict with Caveman Peter however his knowledge of the risks associated to victory increase the likelihood of him attempting to think of an alternative method for taking this primary reward as his emotions acknowledge, in abstraction, the risks of conflict which encourages him to remember that he has an abundance of honey in his family cave so he decides to offer a trade, also known as a barter exchange, maybe one venison leg for multiple handfuls of honeycomb. Both items would have a subjectively abstract and unconscious value based on various factors such as future difficulty of attainment, satisfaction, energy and what we would today call shelf life. A successful trade would leave both parties happy as both parties avoided conflict to attain unique primary rewards. This example illustrates the idea that trade may have been the caveman’s first step toward a civilised society.

As time moved on, societies formed and subsequently grew in size and complexity, innovation also grew and assets such as tools, weapons and a wider variety of clothing items were developed. To facilitate this, trade would have become the norm and early societies would have implemented primitive forms of law and order to achieve this. Items of clothing could fit into either category as some items satiated the intrinsic desire for warmth making the item a primary reward item but early versions of camouflage would be classed as secondary reward items as they facilitate more efficient attainment of primary rewards. Societies would need to provide a system for individuals to attain primary rewards in return for time spent creating these tools rather than balancing time between hunting and inventing. This is why early forms of governance came into existence. Tribal societies would use a primitive form of policing to provide societal order, through tribal policy, and territorial defence to allow barter trades to thrive, maximising societal innovation. According to historians, barter trades were used until around 3000BC. The problem with bartering was that one must deduce the value of all products, and trading was inefficient as some items such as meat would perish within days but other items such as tools would provide more efficient hunting returns. How would one deduce the values of each? The solution to this problem was to implement a medium of exchange. This medium would need to have an inherent valuation system that needed to be unmanipulable and easy to sell as a concept. As difficulty of attainment and manufacture would have been a common factor in negotiation in all barter trades, a successful medium would also need to embody this as a measure of value. The measurable value would allow individuals to store equity through an agreed upon medium allowing for more sustainable long-term planning for individuals, leading to increased innovation. The value and abundance factors allowed the brain to use these mediums as a secondary reward as they represented access to primary rewards such as food as well as other secondary rewards. Furthermore, a high capacity for medium access also increased status due to increased access to a comfortable life which increased sexual selection. Rare items such as gold and precious gems require time and effort to attain. This difficulty would vary across lands but would induce a natural valuation process for large swathes of land. The abundance factor would provide an inherent governance of value making it unmanipulable and would allow innovation to grow as the individual and the collective could utilise long-term planning more efficiently. Eventually, printed notes replaced rare items allowing for increased access to a medium of exchange and making storage more easily securable. Today, bits of data on a server represent individual access to printed notes.

Abundance has continued to be effective in valuing currency to this day and we can reference this history when trying to explain why the subsequent inflation associated to the printing of new money is not an “evil ploy”, but a necessary governance. Imagine if a nation was to print more money for a specified reason, other nations would also do this in order to attain the same benefits, making money so abundant that it would become as valueless as a piece of paper. It is the factor of rarity that give it relative value and society values rarity. A removal of this social understanding forces humanity to descend into chaos. To further illustrate the stupidity of the “evil ploy” argument, I’ll end with a question, if we could easily print more money, what would prevent England from printing enough money to buy France?

Based on this history, we could argue that the core tenets of capitalism such as free markets and competition, and economic concepts such as supply and demand were created organically through mutual understanding that stemmed from common structures and functions in the brain. The capitalist systems exist within our neural circuitry and the processes that have been implemented by societies to utilise these systems are a slow and organic continuation of ancient processes that have been allowed to improve over time safely and progressively. These processes have not been engineered and have been successful because they still utilise motivation systems in the brain. They continue to stand the test of time as they have been developed and sustained by neural circuits that are mutual across generations, making the concepts immune to generationally localised social pressure. Socially engineered systems are those that tend to damage society as those ideas are based on theory which tends to stem from incomplete understandings of motivation, hence they tend to come into conflict with natural processes in the brain.

Ironically, according to the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx agreed with this history, even acknowledging the reasoning behind the appeals of capitalism. Although, he felt that the continuation of capitalism should be halted and a new, inorganically created system, communism, should be implemented in order to equalise equity.

Communism

Removal of the Financial Hierarchy

My interpretation of The Communist Manifesto leads me to believe that communism seeks to remove the organically created free trade system in favour of a new artificially induced system based on limited trade and heavy taxation that intends to create a more equitable society which the communists deem to be a “fair” system. Linguistically, “fair” outcomes may sound reasonable to some, but implementing a communist system would not benefit society. This is because “fairness” is subjective, and many would argue that the power shift from the mass populous to the government, an inherent requirement of communist policy, would be “unfair”.

Leaving the “fairness” squabble aside, we will focus on the inherent problems of the equitable aspect of the communist system. This system would quell any motivation to innovate since individuals cannot be rewarded for innovation via individual hierarchal gain in the domains of work, shutting off unconscious motivation systems in this domain, forcing them to be utilised in other hierarchies in life, reducing the motivation to attain status in work-based hierarchies. This results in reduced work satisfaction leading to reduced innovation quality for customers. Allow me to illustrate this with a question, how does one quell the desire to socialise in favour of staying at home alone and learning to code for the creation of a product that will benefit those that are currently socialising? A capitalist system effectively allows the socialisers, who are out attaining primary reward, to pay for products that the coder will spend time creating. The coder will sacrifice social activity for the long-term gain of financial freedom through secondary rewards which will allow more easy access to primary rewards in the long term. A communist system would make the same coder demotivate himself, leading him away from his career in favour of other hierarchal pursuits as he would be paid the same as the socialisers leading him to question why he should make the sacrifice of primary reward in the moment as there is no possibility of increased secondary reward in the future in return for his increased effort. This demotivation across populations leads to an unproductive populous with no real capacity for innovation as work in a communist system would remove the secondary reward motivations associated to work and careers reducing them to nothing more than forced labour.

Flaws of Capitalism

So-called “flaws of capitalism” only manifest themselves when individuals seek to remove one of its core tenets through socialist strategies such as governmental intervention, making these problems anti-capitalist in nature, so they should not be classed as capitalist flaws, rather, they should be classed as anti-competition campaigns. For example, one of the tenets of capitalism is free markets and competition. Clearly the best free markets include competition from all avenues including non-human-made products such as naturally occurring compounds. When corporations grow in size, their influence grows, and they begin to influence the government to make very good natural and non-patentable compounds illegal. This is a chronic problem for the UK and the USA through lobbying, also known as legalised corruption, and some could argue that this is a flaw of capitalism. I would argue to the contrary. Any appeal to the government to reduce access to alternative products thereby limiting competition is a socialist act regardless of the fact that only the most successful capitalists are able to do this. When corporations use lobbying to leverage the government in the name of profit, a capitalist tenet, they still seek to limit competition, another core tenet of capitalism, making them anti-capitalist as they are benefiting from capitalism while trying to implement socialism on the populous by limiting their freedoms of choice. Limiting freedoms of choice through governance is a communist policy as the removal of free markets and the limitations on wealth indicate that the communist system seeks to suppress individual choice under the guise of love for the poor. The solution to this problem is in the continuation of capitalism combined with the concept of limited government. The government should be limited to control of systems that maintain order such as legislative implementation and defence along with other services such as fire services and infrastructure management to name but a few.

Conclusions

Hierarchies dictate all human actions, even the asking of a question can be classed as a hierarchal chain, with asking the question, atop the chain, and not asking the question, beneath the chain. Therefore, a judgement of hierarchies being “good” or “bad” is irrelevant and inappropriate as they will always exist. Even the campaign to dismantle the structure in question will require an organised hierarchal structure of its own. Furthermore, with a new communist system in mind, the newly implemented hierarchal structure will constrain financial power to the government. With this in mind, let’s compare today’s existing capitalist systems to tomorrow’s proposed communist systems. If you are less well off today, you will still live the same life in tomorrow’s communist system, except, everyone else will also be living this life, leading me to believe that the communist ideation process is less about “fairness for all” or love for the poor, and more about hatred of the rich.

The communist ideation process begins when one unconsciously assesses themselves as low in the financial or other hierarchies in the existing capitalist system leading one to choose to refuse acceptance of the system by not embracing the shear amount of work associated to financial hierarchal gain. Failure to accept the capitalist system requires suppression of reward processes in the financial domain quelling the use of motivational drives in this domain. These drives must come out in other ways in order to prevent onset of major depressive disorder. A discovery of communist ideas by one creates communist ideation processes that provide new unconscious hierarchies that have their own reward outcomes atop their respective chains that blind one from the importance of financial hierarchies and new hierarchal pursuits manifest themselves into existence with one’s psyche. Some of these include social gain among others that think alike in similar subjects, also known as friendship, shows of solidarity for those who have less wealth, also known as nurturance-based status, and theoretical goals of forcefully removing wealth from those that are powerful, also known as dominance, to name but a few. The irony is that dominance existed in cavemen, continues to exist in the capitalist but now also exists most loudly in the communist, the one who claims to hate the entire concept of dominance.

To those confused communists and socialists that are irritated by this piece, rest assured, acceptance of the capitalist system, coupled with an embracing of personal responsibility is enough for an individual to succeed in the current system.