Previously, I published a post on the positive role of the law of self-interest in a market economy.
In this post, I want to highlight another, much broader sphere of the social process in which, in my view, the aforementioned law plays an extremely significant positive role. This is the process of civilization’s development.
In primitive society, a person was concerned first and foremost with survival.
To survive, they had to provide themselves above all with food, clothing, shelter, and safety.
At first, people obtained food by gathering and by catching or hunting small and weak animals.
Clothing was either nonexistent or consisted of primitive coverings made from animal skins.
Shelter meant caves.
Safety meant avoiding predators and fleeing from them.
Gradually, using reason and guided by the same striving to live — by personal interest — human beings began to make tools for themselves.
For work, they made stone scrapers, knives, and axes.
For protection against wild animals, as well as for hunting, they made spears with stone or bone tips and sometimes used fire.
For clothing, they made needles from fish bones in order to sew skins together.
This was already the beginning of progress.
Then people gradually realized that it was often better to hunt, defend themselves against predators, and generally survive by uniting with others.
Within such associations — families, clans, tribes — social relations and social interests arose.
But at their foundation lay not merely some idealistic desire to live together because it was more pleasant.
At first, to a much greater extent, there was the personal interest already mentioned above — the survival of each individual member of the group or tribe.
This was probably also supported by the natural maternal instinct to protect one’s children, which I, incidentally, also regard as a personal parental — or maternal — interest.
Within the emerging social relations inside the tribe, the obligation to observe the common interests of the tribe was likewise not devoid of personal interest.
Violation of those common interests could lead to punishment, and often even death.
When wars began between tribes, threatening people’s lives and freedom — that is, the personal interests of the members of those tribes — weapons were improved.
Bows, arrows, spears, and shields appeared.
Leaving caves and seeking a more comfortable life, people began to build artificial dwellings: dugouts, covered shelters, huts.
The necessary tools were also improved.
Later, with the emergence of crafts, the craftsman was motivated not simply by the desire to increase the quantity of goods produced, but by the desire to earn more from selling them.
The essence remained the same — benefit.
For this purpose, the craftsman invented and improved tools and began creating various devices and the simplest machines.
Similar processes took place in agriculture, with the same goal: to provide oneself and one’s family with enough food and, in addition, to earn money by selling agricultural products.
This stimulated the appearance of shovels, primitive plows, plows, carts, wagons, and so on.
This was a continuation of the development of civilization.
And the original driving force behind that development was precisely personal interest and personal benefit.
The conquest of foreign lands, countries, territories, and peoples was driven by the personal interests of the conquerors — leaders, military commanders, kings, tsars, ruling elites, and warriors — in enriching themselves and increasing their wealth and territories.
At the same time, weapons were invented and improved, fortresses were built, and throwing and battering devices were developed.
Later came cannons, cannonballs, gunpowder, and so on.
Military organization was improved.
Military science emerged.
Science also emerged in industry.
In turn, the appearance of industrial workshops and enterprises was driven by the desire of their owners to obtain ever greater benefit from expanding production and introducing new machines, equipment, and technologies.
All of this was the development of civilization.
And it was driven first and foremost by personal interest and, above all, by people’s personal material benefit.
The social relations and common interests that arose in the process were, in essence, combined homogeneous personal interests:
separately, the interests of employers;
and separately, the interests of their workers.
This gave rise to confrontation and struggle between these interests.
Classes emerged.
And this struggle, like many other forms of struggle, also moved progress forward.
Among other things, it developed social, political, and state structures.
The ideas of creating republics, parliaments, parties, and trade unions represented the desire to unite similar personal interests of broad masses of people in order to protect themselves and their interests from the violence of those in power — kings, nobles, capitalists, and other powerful people.
This was the development of political and state systems, and therefore another part of the development and movement of civilization.
In the modern world, the overwhelming number of new inventions and discoveries in science, technology, and production are often initially driven by the personal creative interest of their authors and, in parallel, by their personal material benefit.
Even such spheres as the arts and culture, besides purely aesthetic and spiritual goals, often — and increasingly — also involve a considerable material interest: the desire of authors to sell their creations and skills.
This includes beautiful and refined dishes, furniture, paintings, sculptures, architecture, music, songs, performances, books, films, and so on.
All of this is part of the development of civilization.
And here too, to a very large extent, the basis is, if not purely personal benefit, then in any case personal interest.
How many more examples are needed to become convinced that the development of civilization rests upon the personal interest and personal benefit of each person striving to improve their living conditions?
And this is true among all peoples, in all countries and continents, and at all times.
It must also be said, however, that while moving civilization forward, the struggle of personal interests is simultaneously a source of suffering and misfortune caused by that struggle:
conflicts, clashes, uprisings, battles, wars, as well as theft and robbery by the poor from the wealthy and by the wealthy from the poor.
But that is a separate subject.
In this chapter, the author has in fact had to sketch, very briefly, almost the entire history of the development of civilization.
Of course, an enormous amount has been written on this subject, and in far better and more accomplished form.
But I had to repeat this, even if imperfectly, in order to use the history of civilization as an example to show that the Law of Personal Interest and Personal Gain played a very significant, if not decisive, role in its development, the formula for which has already been cited and substantiated repeatedly in previous chapters:
“Most people, in most situations, are guided by personal interest , personal gain.”
