The Dark Triad Can’t Kill Karl

“The most violent, mean, and malignant passions of the human breast…” are the emotions that protectors and defenders of capitalism focus on those who seek to end the profit system and replace it with a more egalitarian system. This is what Karl Marx wrote in his introduction to the first edition of Capital in 1867.

Most of written history is the history of the few dominating and exploiting the many. Marx, while searching for a more just society, clearly pointed out that humans are emotional animals, some of whom will do anything to maintain their power, wealth, and dominance. Unfortunately, he did not develop this thought, but concentrated on the economic laws of modern society.

The most violent, mean, and malignant are the punishers and enforcers of the system of private ownership of the means of production. These are emotions attached to selfish individualistic interests, not the interests of the common good, and social needs.

Marx approximates the description of the Dark Triad, a cluster of personality disorders: narcissism, psychopathology, and Machiavellian behavior. This includes the following personality traits: Self-centered, manipulative, lack of empathy, dominating, self-superiority, disregard for the rights of others and lack of remorse.

These traits describe tyrants, dictators, kings, and dominators throughout recorded history. Social hierarchy, “open the door for a plethora of injustices and cruelties that come with warfare, slavery, and other types of exploitation by unchecked power wielders” (The Human Potential for Peace, Douglas P. Fry, 2006)

Marx did not discuss the need to prevent the rise of the Dark Triad in the struggle to free society from exploitation. This is a neglected, important reason for the failure to achieve and maintain an egalitarian society. Egalitarian social/political movements that do not combat the danger of top-down decision-making social hierarchy both within political organizations and society at large are always open to subversion by those of the Dark Triad.

Even though Marx documented that hunter-gather societies lived in more communal societies, motivated by altruism and collectivity, he made no mention of how these principles were maintained. Recent anthropologists have answered this question.

Anthropologist Christopher Boehm studied this issue and concluded the following: the ideology of “reverse hierarchy” is the core principle that maintains equality of all members. Boehm documented that in egalitarian societies members exert “intentional behavior that decisively suppressed hierarchical relations among adults as political actors.”

“Differences between individuals are only permitted…, insofar as they work for the common good.” Such equality can only persist “as long as followers remain vigilantly egalitarian because they understand the nature of domination,”; the “innate tendencies of individuals to dominate their peers.”

“If an egalitarian ethos is present, abusive leadership is by definition, deviant,” “It is a war of the great majority who are willing to settle for equality against the occasional dominator who is not… Upstarts who think they can get away with it.”(Boehm, Christopher, “Egalitarian Behavior and Reverse Dominance Hierarchy”, Current Anthropology , Vol. 34, No.3, June 1993)

Maintaining equality requires eternal vigilance to ensure that all political decisions remain in the hands of the great majority, the rank and file. Recorded history repeatedly demonstrates that when the Dark Triad and their supporters are allowed to rise, the development of social hierarchy and top-down decision-making is inevitable, resulting in domination, oppression, and exploitation. For those seeking a more egalitarian world, incorporating this understanding into their core principles is essential.

A multitude of lights extinguish the darkness.

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