Preface to special issue on cooperation in selfish systems

The problem of understanding the conditions under which cooperation or altruism can be sustained between interacting selfish entities is a fundamental issue in both biology and the social sciences

Is Socialism A Utopian Dream?

The idea that the establishment of a centrally planned system or the creation of a worker-controlled system amount to a socialist revolution is closely associated with the main contradictions that Marx highlighted in capitalism: the capital-labour conflict or the mismatch between planned production and anarchical distribution. Analysing these alternative forms of revolution, the author raises a number of questions: which of them fits human nature better? which of them is more closely associated with Darwinian evolutionism? is it correct to assume that democratic firm management tends to improve human nature

The Evolution of cooperation

L'aproximació a l'evolució centrada en el gen o del gen egoista aparentment entra en conflicte amb l'observació que la cooperació és freqüent en les interaccions socials humanes i també es pot reconèixer en animals no humans. Sense cooperació no haurien pogut sorgir les unitats evolutives de nivells superiors. Aquí resumim el pensament evolutiu actual sobre com poden evolucionar la cooperació i l'altruisme. A més, discutim els resultats dels experiments de la teoria de jocs per estudiar les interaccions socials que indiquen que els humans no s'ajusten a les prediccions de l'equilibri de Nash «racional». Aquests resultats són de gran interès per als biòlegs i científics socials, especialment si es desitja tenir un marc de referència comú per entendre com sorgeix la sociabilitat.The gene-centred or selfish-gene approach to evolution apparently conflicts with the observation that cooperation is commonplace in human social interactions, and can also be recognized in non-human animals. Without cooperation, higher-level units of evolution could not have emerged. Here we summarize current evolutionary thinking on how cooperation and altruism can evolve. We also discuss the results reached by game theoretic experiments for studying social interactions, which indicate that humans do not conform to Nash equilibrium (“rational”) predictions. These results are of wide interest to biologists and social scientists, particularly if we want to have a common framework to understand how sociality arises

Report of the ALCTS Midwest Collection Management and Development Institute, August 17-20, 1989

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