Amun Bains Journalist

History is our greatest teacher. It tells us what happened in the past, so we can learn for the future.

For most of human history we were hunter gatherers, without civilisation.

The evidence suggests that, contrary to how we live now, humans were actually largely egalitarian. https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/freedom-learn/201105/how-hunter-gatherers-maintained-their-egalitarian-ways

To me, this suggests human nature is to be fundamentally good and not selfish.

In the modern world, we are selfish due to unchecked capitalism pushing society to reward the nastiest amongst us.

Once we created civilisation, we saw mass inequality for the first time.

We saw Pharaohs, Kings, Queens, Emperors collate wealth and power and subjugate the poor masses.

These feudal systems could not be any more disastrous;

Once feudalism passed and modern capitalism appeared, these inequalities did not change, only the methods did.

Karl Marx introduced humanity to the revolutionary idea of Marxism, which could only be invented as a result of the brutal capitalism he witnessed.

I fundamentally believe Marx was right to envision a society of equals and to recognise the problems of organised religion, class inequalities and the bourgeois but I do not identify as a Marxist.

Despite Marx’s ideas being pure, the communist regimes of the Soviet Union, Mao’s China, Castro’s Cuba were anything but.

Mass famines, purges, anti LGBT rights in Cuba and authoritarianism ruled.

On the other hand, the Nazi regime under Adolf Hitler plunged the world into the darkness of World War Two and the Holocaust.

Monarchism, fascism and communism — to me humanity has experimented with all three and all have failed, badly at that.

However, so has unregulated capitalism.

I broadly support: trade unions, equality of race, gender, sexuality etc., the least amount possible government involvement in daily life and for law to be based on the principle that people should be free to do how they please as long as they do not harm others.