Cooperation, Nature, and the Forgotten Story of Human Belonging
Modern capitalism rests upon a remarkably powerful assumption: that human beings are naturally competitive, self-interested, acquisitive, and driven by the pursuit of material advantage. According to this view, markets merely provide a mechanism through which these innate tendencies can express themselves. Economic competition becomes an extension of biological competition, wealth accumulation becomes an expression of natural ambition, and capitalism itself appears less as a historical arrangement than as the inevitable outcome of human evolution.
The appeal of this narrative lies in its simplicity. If capitalism reflects human nature, then alternative economic arrangements are not merely impractical; they are fundamentally contrary to who we are. Competition becomes inevitable. Inequality becomes natural. Cooperation becomes secondary. The economic order acquires an aura of inevitability.
Yet this assumption becomes increasingly difficult to sustain when examined in light of history, anthropology, evolutionary biology, ecology, and even theology. Far from revealing an immutable human nature, modern capitalism may instead represent a particular cultural interpretation of humanity—one rooted in a deeper mythology of separation that has shaped Western civilization for centuries.
The roots of this mythology can be found, in part, within influential interpretations of the biblical story of Eden. The Book of Genesis describes humanity’s expulsion from the Garden after acquiring knowledge of good and evil. Over time, many Christian and secular thinkers came to understand this narrative as a story of separation: separation from God, separation from nature, and separation from an original state of harmony.¹ While theologians have long debated the meaning of the text, the broader cultural consequence was the gradual normalization of alienation as the human condition.
A second interpretive tradition emerged from Genesis 1:28, in which humanity is instructed to “have dominion” over the earth. Although many biblical scholars argue that the Hebrew concepts involved imply stewardship, guardianship, and responsibility rather than exploitation,² the language of dominion was frequently understood in the West as authorization for human mastery over nature. The natural world increasingly came to be viewed not as a community of which humanity was a part, but as an external realm of resources placed at humanity’s disposal.
These assumptions became especially influential during the Scientific Revolution and the rise of modern industrial society. The philosopher Francis Bacon, often regarded as one of the founders of modern scientific methodology, described knowledge as a means through which humanity could command and control nature.³ Nature increasingly became an object to be studied, manipulated, and exploited. By the time industrial capitalism emerged, the conceptual foundations for treating land, forests, rivers, animals, and even human labor as economic commodities had already been laid.
The economist Karl Polanyi argued that this transformation represented one of the most radical developments in human history. In The Great Transformation (1944), Polanyi observed that land, labor, and money had become what he called “fictitious commodities.“⁴ Unlike ordinary commodities, none of these were originally produced for sale. Land is nature itself. Labor is human life and activity. Money is a social institution. Yet market society increasingly treated all three as commodities subject to purchase and exchange. The result was not merely an economic transformation but a profound alteration in how human beings understood their relationship to one another and to the natural world.
Recent work by the Italian economist Clara Mattei extends Polanyi’s insight. Mattei argues that modern capitalism frequently presents itself as natural, inevitable, and scientifically necessary while obscuring the political choices that sustain it.⁵ Policies such as austerity are often justified as unavoidable responses to economic realities. Yet Mattei contends that these policies frequently serve to preserve existing social and economic arrangements by limiting democratic alternatives. The claim that capitalism reflects human nature thus performs an important ideological function: it discourages the imagination of other possibilities.
Ironically, contemporary evolutionary science increasingly undermines the very assumptions upon which this narrative depends. The popular image of evolution as a ruthless struggle among selfish competitors owes much to nineteenth-century interpretations of Charles Darwin, as well as to later social theories that projected market competition onto nature. However, modern evolutionary biology presents a more nuanced picture. Cooperation, reciprocity, and mutual aid have proven to be central features of evolutionary success.⁶
Human beings, in particular, appear to owe much of their success not to individual competition but to extraordinary capacities for collaboration. The evolutionary anthropologist Michael Tomasello has argued that the defining characteristic of our species is not intelligence alone but shared intentionality—the ability to cooperate toward common goals, transmit knowledge across generations, and create complex social institutions.⁷ Human civilization emerged not because isolated individuals outcompeted one another, but because communities learned to work together.
From this perspective, the image of humanity as fundamentally self-interested appears increasingly incomplete. Competition certainly exists. Human beings are capable of greed, domination, and violence. Yet they are equally capable of generosity, empathy, cooperation, and sacrifice. Human nature contains both possibilities. The question is not which tendency exists, but which tendencies our institutions encourage and reward.
Footnotes
- Augustine, The City of God, trans. Henry Bettenson (London: Penguin Books, 2003), Books XIII–XIV.
- Ellen F. Davis, Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading of the Bible (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 29–35.
- Francis Bacon, Novum Organum (1620).
- Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (Boston: Beacon Press, 2001 [1944]), 75–76.
- Clara Mattei, The Capital Order (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2022).
- Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (1902).
- Michael Tomasello, A Natural History of Human Thinking (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014).