Nowadays, I run into the individualist idea that we should care first-and-foremost for ourselves, our friends, and our families—before we can extend that kindness to others. It’s a tribal thinking that most fascists, liberals, and even many anarchists subscribe to, but which I think is incompatible with the world that socialists and communists are trying to build.
This individualist, tribal way of thinking is rooted in an acceptance of the scarcity mindset promoted by the material deprivation of the working class under capitalism. In contrast, I think we can set our sights on building a world of abundance, with the north star of everything for everybody. Or more precisely: Working together to the best of our collective ability to fulfill as many and as much of people’s needs as possible. In this way, we become the most human humans we can be.
With this socialist humanist mindset, the mindset of “prioritizing the individual, family, friends, race, gender, tribe, nation” is defused of the fear that makes it so appealing to so many—we don’t feel as though everything important has to be a zero-sum game which requires us to prioritize ourselves over others. We recognize that by building a social infrastructure that robustly encourages us to work together as a community and provide for each other—then we can get our personal needs met, and also others’ needs met, better than if we came at the world with an individualist or tribal mindset.
But then what of my friends, comrades, and family? Even with an expansive humanist ethos, I cannot shake the gut feeling that makes me believe I care for my friends, comrades, and family to some considerable degree more than others.
Here’s what I think: social interaction, communal behavior, and care for our kin are deeply ingrained needs for humans. It just so happens that in practice, this requires a special care for our friends, comrades, and family. But this is not a difference in amount of care, it is a different kind of care than the care discussed in previous paragraphs.
Those previous paragraphs mostly focused on the distribution and flow of material resources that underlies material well-being. I see two other unique ways we tend to care for our immediate loved ones; our friends, comrades, and family:
First, our care for our immediate loved ones acts as a materially ingrained reminder of the love we have for all people. Inasmuch as I would like it to be easy for us to all take up the socialist, humanist mindset of expansive and undifferentiated care for all people’s well-being, I also recognize that this is a difficult practice to pick up. We often excuse ourselves from the lack of care we have for others—for example, the lack of care that is evident when we make a snarky remark of an acquaintance, coworker, or person we have a disagreement with. But we hold ourselves to a higher standard among our immediate loved ones.
We recognize that the way we treat our immediate loved ones concretely matters to our need for community and for them to live a good life. We quickly notice the negative effects of poor relations with our immediate loved ones. It is a more immediately concrete and naturally institutionalized reminder that the way we care for others has broader effects on the well-being of ourselves and all. Caring for all people’s needs, not merely our immediate loved ones has similar abstract effects on the quality of life for us and all people—albeit being less immediately or concretely noticeable.
The care we have for finding mutual understanding and respecting the needs of all people is a useful mindset to have, but it is difficult to remember. We are reminded to recommit to this practice when we run into conflict or misunderstandings with our friends, comrades, and family.
Second, we care for our friends, comrades, and loved ones in the sense that we would like to have our lives entwined with theirs going into the future. We not only want their needs met, and our needs met, in the way that we want everyone’s needs met—we also want to be present in their lives to see it when each other’s needs get met, to celebrate the achievements and mourn the losses of our friends, comrades, and loved ones. We want to see each other develop, and play an active role in developing each others’ lives.
Notably, this need for direct social and communal relations does not interfere with the fact that we want all people’s needs to be met to the best of our collective ability. My need for community does not come at the expense of others’ access to community; and the needs humans have for community does not have to come at the expense of other needs for food, water, shelter, health, etc. That is to say: we can have this special kind of care for our loved ones, without claiming that our needs are more or less important than the needs of others. Meeting all of our needs is a collaborative, communal project, and the communist project is to communicate and develop mechanisms to bring that humanist project to fruition.