On the Evolution of the Human Species Volume 10 - Issue 4

Hardy Hanappi*

• VIPER – Vienna Institute for Political Economy Research and Technical, University of Vienna, Austria

Received: April 12, 2025;   Published: April 16, 2025

Corresponding author:Hardy Hanappi, VIPER – Vienna Institute for Political Economy Research and Technical, University of Vienna, Austria

DOI: 10.32474/JAAS.2025.10.000345

Abstract PDF

The benefits of the last 500 years of capitalism stem from its ability to organise a division of labour, which increases the amount of output that a group of human individuals can produce [1]. In doing so, the enhancement of special capabilities of individuals and groups led to typical social characters, institutions and social classes. But in the course of following the one ultimate goal to maximise capital accumulation, the emerging omnipresent capitalist algorithm [2] quickly dehumanised capital. Though the production process of the human species itself always remains a transformation of the lifetime of human individuals into goods and services that they need for their primary metabolism [3], the mantra to maximise profit – the capitalist algorithm – became the dominating governing force for the organisation of the human species. With this evolution towards an alienate dictatorship from outside the human species, an abstract secular religion taking hold of the most powerful classes and individuals in societies, the historical benefits of capitalism experienced the co-evolution of their opposite: Generalized, global and local exploitation and war, both leading to a channelling of the benefits to an ever-smaller group of exploiters and warlords at the expense of the increasing mass of more or less exploited labourers.

In our finite world, this evolution of continuous capital accumulation once had to meet its natural limits. One limit, evidently, is the physical extension of the planet. All physical resources at one point are so scarce that they are getting so expensive that their use is not profitable any more. The other limit is the human individuals’ flexibility. In this case, the lethal threshold is not a very low flexibility, but on the contrary: An extremely high flexibility produces an unbound loss of orientation; blinded masses follow with their actions, arbitrary and self-destructing leaders. The coincidence of environmental collapse - which would need highly coordinated and executed rational actions to survive - and wrath-driven irrational warlords leading their confused followers into endless wars, this coincidence can rapidly lead to the end of the species. To accumulate by only taking away possible profits from another accumulation process leaves the total amount of profits of the global ruling class at zero. Add the difficulties of the environmental constraints, and you arrive at the doomsday of global capitalism.

The approaching physical constraints have already cast frightening shadows on the human species. The pandemic from 2020 to 2022 was a sudden shock; the surprisingly fast global temperature increase combined with increasing waves of quick temperature changes is a bit slower but will have tremendous consequences on agriculture and immigration. Global shocks are not necessarily insurmountable; the pandemic has shown that science can develop faster than expected and come up with a vaccination that prevents the worst. The lesson to be learned from such global crises is that they can be mastered if the world is governed by a world government, which (1) can take quick and coordinated action, and (2) is advised by a global centre of scientists, a mix of problem-related specialists and transdisciplinary scholars. The first property points at the need to make - in the case of such acute dangers - democratic mechanisms much faster and to develop a network of participation in decision-making, which weighs voting power according to knowledge in the field, being concerned by the respective crisis, and a rule that forbids overriding the set of minimal human rights of any single individual. The second condition calls for a coordinated evolution of global science, which escapes from the fetters of being financed only if some expected profits of an investor pop up. This implies a turn away from the capitalist algorithm in the field of science. It will change the directions of research, which then can be determined by the scientists themselves working together with the institutional apparatus of society. For both conditions, it is clear that a fair amount of central global power will be needed - not the power of a single hegemonic nation-state but a power representing the entire species. This necessity for a strict, even hierarchically policed decision-making must be restricted to cases of emergency and must have in-built mechanisms to be ended as soon as the acute crisis is mastered. Then governance has to return to a broader democratic modus to balance all strata of the global society again.

However, a world government does not exist yet. To consider the whole human species as one organism is, of course, the outspoken focus of all kinds of visions of humanism in human history. How can such a new, all-embracing organism of a whole species emerge? Which forces, which agents, can push it into existence? One indispensable ingredient of an organism evidently is its physical ability to develop a ‘central nervous system’ with which it can coordinate its parts. The latest evil form of absolute, global, authoritarian capitalism has already produced the hardware for such a coordinating device. Despite the perverted form in which it is used, namely menacing to extinct mankind in a World War 3, the information and communication technology available today is waiting to be inverted into the central nervous system of an entity called human species. With every small piece of humanity’s knowledge being instantaneously available for every individual - as far as it wants it - and the emergence of every manageable cluster of satisfactory culture being arranged across continents and other borders by global communication - as far as individuals want it - the precondition for the hardware of a better world in principle already exists.

With the discovery of the evolutionary dynamics that can describe the progress of life forms on earth, recent centuries showed two diametrically opposed visions of how progress proceeds: One vision, humanism, has been sketched in the previous paragraph. The other vision, racism, is building on the idea that individuals of a new and superior race are already among us and only have to eliminate - or domesticate - the rest of the inferior sub humans. In a disastrous coalition of the parts of the respective military-industrial complexes on earth, which go for globalised class rule, an updated form of 21st-century global fascist vision emerges.

Both visions - humanism and racism - replace what in earlier centuries were class struggles in national political entities, in states. But there now is an element that distinguishes the global exploitation regime from former national capitalist dynamics: Overall capital accumulation has become impossible - the abovementioned limits are now stringent - what one military-industrial complex can gain in economic terms is equal to what the other military-industrial complexes lose. Instead of overall accumulation, there now only exists a pulsation of military accumulation of power in different parts of the world. In other words, a continuum of wars driven by (and driving) war technologies destroy not only the natural environment of the planet but also larger parts of the human population. It is this hour of greatest despair on which the hope for a turning point towards the humanist vision of evolution has to be built. As at the long end of feudalism, it again is the hope for a global revolution.

The tremendous increase of knowledge, which the capitalist mode of production in its long evolution has brought about, now, in its last stage of absolute, global authoritarian capitalism [4] to a large part has been perverted to war and surveillance technology. These technological trajectories play mainly a role for some still existing military clusters. But scientific progress cannot be narrowed down to military applications. A decoupling of clusters of scientists subscribing to the humanist vision and its merging with those populations that are globally exploited might occur. And an implementation of the humanist vision will need a lot of science, of science that is radically different from the war-and-profit science that dominates contemporary capitalism. Humanity’s central nervous system will not fall from heaven - sorry, my religious friends - it will have to be constructed by humanism-oriented scientists. Whatever humans create always starts with its double existence: (1) with its vision and concrete plans in the brain, and parallel (2) with the revolutionary actions aiming to implement them.

The clearest way to develop the humanist vision is to start with spelling out what it contrasts. Like the background of a painting is a necessary ingredient of what is to be highlighted in the foreground, the description of the enemy of the humanist vision, the description of the racist vision underlying the neo-fascist movements, is a fertile ground for being clear in theoretical vision and profane action. The racist vision makes a strong distinction between superior human individuals - e. g. the Arian race, the white skin population, God’s chosen people, etc. - and the inferior human individuals - e. g. Jews, coloured people, foreigners, heathens. For a racist, the divide of the human population into two parts is not only a static judgment concerning present human attributes. It is the result of the trajectory of a natural process, a kind of unavoidable natural selection of winners over losers [5]. As long as the superior race has not reached its ultimate goal of total dominance - as foreseen and determined by nature itself - its task is to eliminate, or at least to exploit, the inferior human individuals. On his way towards eternal supremacy, a racist typically feels to be a victim of the still existing inferior sub humans. Therefore, modern fascist movements see their battles as a correction of the trajectory of the predetermined path of natural evolution - whatever that is. As a consequence of this void of scientific and empirically rooted foundations, the racist vision typically has to take refuge in obscure mysticisms and ageold predictions. This explains why the mass of followers of neofascist movements come from deprived social strata (victims), which typically lack higher education (obscure mysticism). With the horrors of classical fascism in the first half of the 20th century, the European population should have learned its lesson to avoid a new takeover by fascist movements. It should be able, should even be predestined to take a step towards the humanist vision.

1. Hanappi H (2003) Evolutionary Economic Programs, invited paper at the 'Committee for Evolutionary Economics' of the 'Association for Social Policy', Erfurt, July 2003. Published in Studies on Evolutionary Economics IX.: Fundamental Issues of Evolutionary Economics, Macroeconomics and Institutions., edited by Kerber Wolfgang, by Hanappi Gerhard, Beckenbach Frank, Dunn Malcolm H., Eckardt Martina, Meyer Bernd, Rahmeyer Fritz, Schreiter Carsten, Voßkamp Rainer, Weise Peter, and Von Weizsäcker C. Christian, pp. 69-84. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot GmbH, 2004. (download).
2. Hanappi H (2013) Money, Credit, Capital, and the State, On the evolution of money and institutions, in: Buenstorf G. et al. (eds), 'The Two Sides of Innovation. Economic Complexity and Evolution', Springer, pp. 255-282. Enhanced version of an invited paper at the Association for Social Policy (Committee for Evolutionary Economics)) July 2009 in Jena. Working paper published as (MPRA Paper No. 47166).
3. Hanappi H (2018) Humanism or Racism. Pilot Project Europe at the Crossroads, Real World Economics Review, (93): 1-17.
4. Hanappi H (2025) Absolute, global, authoritarian Capitalism. Approaching the last stop of the Capitalist Algorithm, Real-World Economics Review (110): 1-22.
5. Spencer H (1860) A System of Synthetic Philosophy - First Principles, Obscure Press (4th of November 2008), London.