“A Darwinian Left”, a Dysfunctional Idea

Doubtless, any topic of humanities had been affected by Darwinian evolutionary theory in past century. Since evolution by means of natural selection founded on a base of a political right-wing economic theory, there were some social materialists whom looked for a middle way between both evolutionary and left sides theories. Their hopes and efforts probably increased due to recognition of the role of cooperation in resent new Darwinian evolutionary approaches like multi-level selection theory. Singer’s idea, A Darwinian Left, could consider as such efforts. Although he tried to provide an intermediate compatible explanation of both evolutionary theories and leftism ideas but it looks that it is difficult to accept his explanation and reasoning even by redact some essential concept in left side; because not only still “priority of competition” is considered in any recent evolutionary theory by means of natural selection while the left idea is founded on “priority of cooperation” but also political right-wing and any evolutionary theory on base of priority of competition are conceptually both sides of a coin.

Keywords:

evolution , society , cooperation , altruism , leftism.