In a previous article on this blog site entitled MORE LEFT ANTHROPOCENTRIC CONFUSION, I pointed out how the left in general and the Anticapitalist left in particular, remain trapped in the dominant anthropocentric paradigm established during the long history of ancient hierarchical mass societies. Within that article, I gave a further contemporary example of this trend extracted from recent 2025 publications. In the opening paragraph I wrote;

“Every time the problems of life on earth are addressed from within an Anthropocentric biased form of ideology, the solutions proposed are almost certain to be way off the mark, full of needless abstractions and therefore categorically wrong.”

I did not have to wait for more than a few days before reading another glaring example confirming that fact which appeared in yet another left blog. This too illustrated the dangers that emanate from a left wing direction when that political spectrum finds itself unable to transcend the dominant anthropocentric paradigm of thinking when commenting upon current affairs. Sadly the example I will consider later, has come from someone I previously had a great deal of respect for after reading his views on many contemporary issues of inhumanity perpetrated against oppressed peoples.

However, this more recent example of his which will appear in the next section, illustrates that even the most radical sounding individuals can be harbouring reactionary and dangerous ideological positions. Therefore, once again I am not prepared to forgo confronting what I consider to be his betrayal of a more accurate depiction of the essential humanity of the vast majority of ordinary human beings. Before focusing on this particular example, I will recap a couple of the relevant points I made in that previous artcle, concerning the ancient history of hierarchical mass society thinking. In that first part I wrote the following;

“With only limited experiences and knowledge, ancient Anthropocentric reflective thinking, based upon magic and narcissism in both religion and secular guises, came up with an imaginary bodily symptom, to explain anti-social behaviours. An individual inner ‘evil’ (vampires or devils) was imagined to explain such ‘unnatural’ inhumane behaviours within hierarchical mass society structures. Yet it was not a biologically determined intellectual tendency which motivated such behavioural traits among these so-called ‘civilised’ individuals, but a matrix of sociological pressures, rationales and restraints that these individuals were contained within.”

The point I was making in that particular section of the article was to make a distinction between historic and contemporary anthropocentric thinking in its understanding of human behaviour and how elite ideology had long distorted the perception of how people in general categorise these hierarchical mass society behaviours. For many centuries, the elite opinion of choice was to blame the victims of these socio-economic forms for the many socially induced alienations, oppressions and distortions of humane forms of behaviour. I went on to point out that;

“These pressures to behave differently than all previous human groups, were created by a particular socio-economic system, which by an elite determined, socially developed process, had practically and socially bound certain sections of humanity to its socio-economic practices. But it needs to be remembered that this hierarchical entrapment and process of intellectual dehumanisation only occured in certain regions and at a certain stages of humanities biological and social existence. Outside of those regions and before the social authority enforcing adherence to those new forms could be implemented, that tendency had not the socio-biological foundation to sustain itself and so did not exist as a social trait. Other, non-hierarchical social forms of human communities continued to exist on every continent and practically every habitable Island on the entire planet, until the modern colonialist global expansion took place and destroyed them. They existed as they had for millions of years previously, and as a remaining few still do in the 21st century.”

The material evidence gleaned from the study of humanities socio-economic evolution overwhelmingly points to the fact that only certain forms of social living promotes and perpetuates certain negative inter and intra species behaviours and that these have no origin in the biological evolution of any species of life on earth – including the human species. However, it was also noted in that previous article that Anthtopocentric thinking, in both the religious and secular forms, had failed to fully recognise these social facts and had invented ‘inner’ tendencies of certain human individuals such as ‘evil, devils, and vampires’ or ‘mental illness‘ to account for such inhumane, destructive and self-destructive tendencies.

Indeed, in some religions, such as the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, this imagined ‘inner tendency’ was extended to all humans, in the form of an ‘original sin’ perpetrated by a mythical origin couple – Adam and Eve. It would seem that such ancient ignorant nonsense would by now have died out, at least among the more recently educated and socially aware of our citizens, but alas this is not the case. As will be further demonstrated, there is still a strong anthropocentric tendency of ‘blaming the victims’ of the current alienating and alienated social forms, due to some inner inhumane tendency and that a heightened symptom of blaming the victim, even exists within the radical and non-radical left.

Another recent example.

I came across this latest example of anthropocentric reactionary thinking from within a left political spectrum within an article on the atrocities and genocide carried out by the Israeli elite and their armed forces, against the people of Palestine. The Israeli elite are conducting a war against the whole Palestinian people in the name of a struggle against a form of Terrorism which emanates from members of the Islamic religion, primarily those associated with the organisation named Hamas. It is clear to anyone not blinded by loyalty to either the Islamic or Zionist elite narratives, that the genocide against the Palestinian people has far more to do with the original Zionist settler colonialisation of Palestine agenda, which intensified in 1948, than it has with subduing Hamas.

The Jewish Zionist political tendency, historically personified by Theodor Hertzl in his 1896 document ‘The Jewish State’ has always sought to obtain control of the whole of the Palestinian territories. The Zionist elite, like all astute elites know that to operate a viable hierarchical mass society aggregation, there sooner or later needs to be sufficient land and resources to feed, house, clothe and settle a large tax paying population along with supplying the additional luxury requirements of the elite and the means to fund and supply the required state apparatus. A community wishing to become a hierarchical mass society which lacks sufficient territory and resources must obtain them by one means or another, or fail to become one. In the same way as a vast army is said to march on its stomach, a hierarchical mass society also only produces and functions on the basis of producng sufficient food for each citizens stomach.

Consequently, seizing opportunities to expand territories or even creating such opportunities is in every settler playbook, as is evident from the European conquests of; a) the Americas, b) the far East, c) Africa and d) the Oceanic islands. Each colonial power engineered the gradual or rapid genocidal elimination of most locally or regionally resistant indigenous inhabitants. Israel is just belatedly finalising it’s own remaining land grab of Gaza and the West Bank, with the active or passive complicity of every other ex-settler colonial power. The historical record indicates that physically eliminating native inhabitants or enslaving them is as old as the ancient hierarchical mass societies of Sumer, Babylon, Egypt, Greece and Rome.

The later fuedal and bourgeois powers of Europe merely repeated, on a larger and more technically advanced scale, the logic of the growth of hierarchical mass societies (so-called ‘civilisations’), since they took hold throughout the middle east and Europe. However, in a recent article appearing on a left blog we find strong evidence that a propensity for blaming the victims of the exploitation and oppression within hierarchical mass societies is still circulating. In an article commenting upon the atrocities and complicity of many global elites, in the genocidal elimination of Palestinians, the author of the aforementioned article, draws the following conclusion.

“Campaigns of mass killing unleash the feral qualities that lie latent in all humans. The ordered society, with its laws, etiquette, police, prisons and regulations, all forms of coercion, keeps these latent qualities in check. Remove these impediments and humans become, as we see with the Israelis in Gaza, murderous, predatory animals, reveling in the intoxication of destruction, including of women and children. I wish this was conjecture. It is not. It is what I witnessed in every war I covered. Almost no one is immune.”

In essence this is a conjecture and also a distortion of reality and amounts to a regurgitation of right-wing and even fascistic levels of reasoning that also considers prisons, police, laws and coercion are necessary to suppress imaginary “feral qualities” that are supposed to lie “latent in all humans”. The right-wing authoritarians of all previous ages have consistently reasoned that if these authoritarian measures were removed that the result would be that all humans would become “murderous, predatory animals, revelling in the intoxication of destruction“. This type of reasoning is also in line with Thomas Hobbes in his 1651 book ‘Leviathan’ where he comments that unlike Bees and Ants, (which he agreed live ‘sociably’), humanity must be governed absolutely by totalitarian authority. But even Hobbes on the basis of 400 years ago knowledge, considered the human internecine predicament was a result of social forms of living not a result of some latent inner tendency.

The above 21st century quote  really represents a reversion to Abrahamic type anthropocentric dogmatic elite thinking, with it’s crude idea of a biologically transmitted, mythical,  original sin. Note that this left-leaning author makes no reference to the class nature of hierarchical mass societies or the restraints and compulsions of the armed bourgeois state or their ideological domination through institutional forms of education and religion of the citizen masses. Nor are the repeated citizen demonstrations against wars and colonial oppressions, in general and the campaigns for Palestinian rights in practically every country, mentioned.

This particular ‘left’ author even drags in Joseph Conrad, the 20th century author of ‘Heart of Darkness’, (which is a book of fiction) to buttress the religiously inspired, biologically determined inner human tendency he is suggesting exists in every human being. Conrad’s book was a brave attempt to shine a more realistic light on the colonial oppression and exploitation perpetrated in the ‘Scramble for Africa’, which was nothing to do with bringing civilisation to the ‘dark continent’s, and everything to do with ruthless resource extraction of slaves, ivory, gold, diamonds and other profitable organic and inorganic resources.

Incidentally, it was these pillaged resources, which gave a boost to the wealth accumulation of the European capitalist classes and their enabling elites. Of course, Conrad himself, was trapped within the same anthropocentric paradigm of thinking just like every other known Anglo-saxon commentator on the brutal progress of every hierarchical mass society – camouflaged by the term ‘civilisation’. This attitude becomes obvious from the following quote by Conrad, that our left author chose to include. Conrad, was included in order to add credibility to his assessment of a lack of humanity by the general public. Thus, indeed, Conrad wrote;

“But the contact with pure unmitigated savagery, with primitive nature and primitive man, brings sudden and profound trouble into the heart.” (Conrad. Heart of Darkness)

For Conrad unmitigated savagery within ‘primitive’ nature was also an imaginary condition of the early history of the human species, with no recognition of the pre-colonial social and humanitarian status of the human species globally and no recognition of the modern multiple means of silencing and restricting anti-establishment expressions of opposition to elite policies and actions. No mention either of the many alternative, more humane examples and perspectives on community living, that exist and have existed throughout history. That is not all. Yet another strong trait exhibited by those on the left who have not understood the essence of the hierarchical mass society form is the use of the collective ‘we’, ‘us’ and ‘our’ in attributing elite motivated crimes, deceit and inhumanity to everyone trapped within in a hierarchical mass society. Just note the use of the royal ‘we’ in the following extract.

“The genocide in Gaza has imploded the subterfuges we use to fool ourselves and attempt to fool others. It mocks every virtue we claim to uphold, including the right of freedom of expression. It is a testament to our hypocrisy, cruelty and racism. We cannot, having provided billions of dollars in weapons and persecuted those who decry the genocide, make moral claims anymore that will be taken seriously. Our language, from now on, will be the language of violence, the language of genocide, the monstrous howling of the new dark age, one where absolute power, unchecked greed and unmitigated savagery stalks the earth.”

By the use of ‘we’, ‘us’ and ‘our’, the ruling elites decisions to supply arms to Israel, their silencing, and sacking of protesters and their blatant hypocrisy, is falsely attributed by this left author to everyone within these societies. Yet this is a completely false and negative perspective, which undermines the understanding of the real and actual potential of humanity. Those who are influenced by these assertions from the left as well as the right can be falsely turned away from considering that another more humane way of living was not only once active for thousands of years of evolution, and is still being lived by some people! Moreover, more humane ways of living could be lived again once the current socio-economic structure is transformed. Let it be stated clearly and unequivocally;

“The behaviour of the political, military, economic and financial elites in becoming complicit in the past and present genocides of entire groups and communities is not a result of their unmitigated savagery, but a result of their willing (or even reluctant) obedience to the enforced logic of a social system designed and structured to function in exactly this way”. (R. Ratcliffe) 

The concept of the ‘banality of evil’ conceived by Hannah Arendt in her book ‘The Origins of Totalitarianism’ used to describe the essence of the involvement of ordinary German citizens in the Nazi directed holocaust, came close to revealing the socio-economic origins and motives of the Nazi inspired genocide of Jews, Slavs, Gypsy’s and the physically and mentally ill, but sadly not close enough. In actual fact it was the socially honed and controlled logic of the hierarchical mass society system in Germany which was fulfilling its elite class based needs and aspirations for extra land and resources – in order to Make Germany Great Again.

And this is why it was opposed and eventually defeated by an alternative, almost mirror-image brutal system, comprised of a fire and atom bombing alliance of socially honed rival hierarchical mass societies known as the Allies. The British elites who initiated the declaration of war were motivated to kill and maim other human beings, not simply for the sake of European  democracy and the victims of Nazism, and not because they had latent feral qualities, but because their socio-economic system had by then become fully dependent upon their previously expanded control of foreign middle east land and resources, which they had gained during the First World War. Moreover, as will be considered next, the same anthropocentric symptom of blaming the victims of the alienated and alienating hierarchical mass society system was (and is) clearly set to work in peacetime as well as wartime.

An earlier example of blaming the victims.

In the 21st century elite political struggle between the rival Republican and Democratic factions of the ruling elites in the USA, the population were led to believe that their best interests were to vote for one ruling elite faction represented by Donald Trump or for the other elite faction represented by Joe Biden. Most of the left in the USA on the banal basis of choosing the ‘lesser of two evils’ where hoping for the election of Biden. The actual result was an election victory for the Trump-led faction which was immedistely hailed as a disaster by those on the left who supported Biden. However, what became revealed in some left responses to the Trump victory was the reactionary anthropocentric emotional victim-blaming analysis made by some. The following revealing extract appeared within an article on a left blog.

“…..a large portion of the American people have brought this disaster upon themselves. The rest of us don’t deserve what we’re getting, but the people who voted for this disgusting grifter certainly do. And I hope to live long enough to see everyone who voted for him—imagining him to be a man of the people instead of the servant of the super-rich, imagining that he would save them from murderous immigrants and transgender activists, or restore order to the universe by putting white men back in charge and women back in their place—die in airplane crashes or wildfires or because they can no longer get decent care at VA hospitals or because they contract flu or have a heart attack or a cancer that could have been prevented if research had been allowed to continue….. I don’t and won’t feel sorry for the trials and tribulations that befall the cretins who put those people back in power. They richly deserve whatever misery befalls them, and I hope it falls on them like a ton of bricks. And the sooner the better.” (Limits of Sympathy. Appearing,in LA. Progressive. 7/3/25.)

This ‘left wing’ analysis demonstrates no familiarity with the rivalry between the ruling class factions in all nations, nor their competing control of information, misinformation and disinformation, or the paid production of distorted and deliberately fabricated narratives. The extract above also demonstrates no understanding or sympathy with the working class who in the 20th and 21st centuries have been systematically influenced by ruling elite propaganda to vote for one establishment party or another, and in 2024 were ‘influenced’ to vote differently from  the way the author of the above noted article thought they should. Instead of revolutionary-humanist  analysis, this extract demonstrates a savage intolerance and vindictive attitude to those not influenced by the authors preferred elite propaganda in the US class war against their own citizens. Not content with a ticking off or a dressing down, this ‘left’ author hope’s to witness that “everyone” of the millions who voted for Trump “die in airplane crashes or wildfires” .

Furthermore the editor of the left blog publishing the above one-sided, inhumane tirade saw no problem with allowing this violent distortion of reality and its ruthless hope for further pain and suffering to be inflicted upon those ‘victims’ of the system who did not see the future in exactly the same way as the author of the article, to be spread further. The idea of encouraging and working for the necessary working class solidarity or even the necessary general citizen solidarity in order to create a movement capable of organising for a radical socio-economic change in the US (and elsewhere) has either never resided in the neo-cortical regions of these individuals of so-called left persuasion or has been very easily displaced from there. With ‘left’ friends like these, the working classes of the world are facing more than just their traditional elite enemies. It brings to mind the need for an addenda to the call; “workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose…” we should add ” but your false friends and the socio-economic chains tying you to the hierarchical mass society aggregation you were born into”.

Roy Ratcliffe (May 2025)