title: "15. The "Selfish Gene"?" book: "Reason in Revolt" author: "Alan Woods" chapter: 21 date_generated: 2026-07-17 type: wellred-chapter-digest source_epub: "reason-in-revolt.epub" source: wellred
15. The "Selfish Gene"?¶
Core Argument¶
This chapter mounts a thoroughgoing critique of biological determinism, exposing its ideological function in justifying social inequality under capitalism. The gene, identified as the unit of heredity following the discovery of DNA’s double helix by Crick and Watson in the 1950s, is not a fixed blueprint for behaviour. The relationship between genes and environment is dialectical: the genotype is relatively stable, but the phenotype is constantly modified through interaction with the environment. Acquired traits are not biologically inherited; culture is transmitted through teaching, not genetic replication. The environment selects which genes survive, making biological determinism—the claim that behaviour is fixed by genes—a reactionary ideology that naturalises class, race, and gender hierarchies.
The chapter devastates the pseudoscience of IQ testing. Alfred Binet’s original tests were designed to identify children needing remedial help, not to measure fixed intelligence. After his death, eugenicists redefined intelligence as innate and hereditary. Lewis Terman’s Stanford-Binet tests in the United States claimed that low intelligence among Mexican, Spanish-Indian, and Black families was racial and inherent, advocating segregation and opposing their reproduction. In Britain, Cyril Burt championed the tests, asserting male superiority over women, Christians over Jews, and the upper classes over workers. He helped establish the eleven-plus system, which segregated children by supposed capacity. Burt’s work was exposed as fraudulent in 1978 by D.D. Dorfman, who proved he had invented results from separated twin studies. Despite this, the establishment had used his research to support the heritability of IQ. Steven Rose, Leon Kamin, and Richard Lewontin argue that heritability of IQ cannot be meaningfully calculated and that heritability does not imply unchangeability.
Eugenics, coined by Francis Galton in 1883, led to compulsory sterilisation laws in over thirty US states by the 1930s, upheld in Buck v. Bell (1927). By 1935, around 20,000 forced sterilisations had occurred in the US and 375,000 in Nazi Germany. Modern versions include psychosurgery targeting ghetto leaders and proposals to identify inner-city children as biologically prone to violence. Biological determinists attribute crime and social problems to genetics or brain chemistry, ignoring that these arise from social conditions under capitalism. Sociobiologists like E.O. Wilson claim racism, nationalism, and gender roles have genetic origins, using animal behaviour to justify male dominance and class structure. The Bell Curve’s argument that genetics explains the IQ gap between American whites and blacks has been repeatedly demolished. The History and Geography of Human Genes by Cavalli-Sforza, Menozzi, and Piazza concludes that once genes for surface traits like skin colour are discounted, human ‘races’ are remarkably alike genetically, with variation between individuals far greater than variation between groups.
The resurgence of genetic determinism in the 1990s coincided with Western governments attacking the welfare state. A 1949 study found that eleven of twelve liberal or radical scientists favoured environmental over hereditary explanations, while eleven of twelve conservatives favoured heredity. Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene treats genes as conscious replicators and organisms as mere vehicles. He claims we are born selfish, that adoption is a genetic mistake, and that natural selection favours children who cheat and exploit. Critics like Steven Rose and Stephen Jay Gould argue that selection acts at multiple levels—on entire genotypes, phenotypes, and populations—not just on genes. Dawkins’ arguments reflect bourgeois egoism and market values, not human nature; for most of human history, cooperation was the basis of survival. The working class depends on unity, not selfishness, to defend its interests. Dawkins’ concept of “memes” is idealist and reductionist; human culture is transmitted through education and social history, not self-replicating units.
Recent advances in molecular genetics have transformed the gene from a mysterious, fate-like entity into something manipulable. For the first time, humans can potentially control their own evolution, bringing the genotype under the phenotype’s command. Natural selection ceases to be a blind force. The chapter argues it is futile to oppose these discoveries, which are vital for human freedom. The problem is their use under capitalism, where uncontrolled monopolies pose a threat. The solution is a democratically planned world economy,