Dr. Martin Hash Podcast

Intelligence brings with it self-awareness. It wouldn't have taken long for ancient man to determine that reducing envy & resentment in themselves and others was important to survival because perversity, actions intended to harm others which also harm yourself, a base human emotion which overrides logic, is what destroys civilizations: if too large of a percentage of the population just wants to watch the world burn, it will. Social leaders recognized that suppressing perversity was important, or maybe they were just envious & resentful themselves, but whatever the reason, the concept of: from those according to their ability, to those according to their need, is the foundation of several ideologies past and present, most notably Marxism today.

Marxist attitudes also find support in egalitarianism, which is a form of anxiety, those trying to assuage their guilt of having more than others. There are also the altruists, those who enjoy that particularly insidious form of masochism. A proof that Marxism is evolutionary, one need only to recognize how history repeats itself: individuals vary dramatically, one group forming an empire or accumulating great wealth, but statistically, social pressures eventually bring humans back to the mean, which is forced sharing. The current ideological trend of liberty, the focus on personal autonomy, started with The Enlightenment, but notice how modern politics are again returning to Marxist thought.