“Humans are inherently Greedy”

The above statement says very little. It's implications depend on how the author defines “inherently” and the implications they claim come from this assertion. What is more interesting, and more telling, is how this statement is often used. It is commonly asserted in the context of thinking about a different (and possibly better society). For those who respond in this fashion, what they are implicitly saying (and often explicitly say later) is that human “nature” blocks us off from better alternatives then our current society. For those who make this four word statement though, all of that exposition is perfectly obvious.

In contrast, if I were to say “Humans are inherently loving”, it would take lots of exposition to get people to understand the ancillary ideas, let alone understand it as a defense of visions of alternative societies.Why is that? why is this particular propensity (passion in Adam Smith's framework) considered the dividing line between our society and any other better option? No one I know (Adam Smith doesn't count) has ever argued that a division of labor is unsustainable because Humans are inherently intelligent.

Greed doesn't justify or condemn any society. Neither does any other emotion or human propensity. Still, why do people think it does? Marx Gives us an interesting suggestion ( which i find compelling) in The German Ideology: "The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force". In this view, what the people who control society and regulate it's ability to reproduce itself, are able to shape the ideology of the entire society.

I find Marx's argument compelling, especially in light of the alphabet soup of corporate and wealthy funded "think tanks", corporate funded universities and programs. Not to mention Neoclassical economics itself.

Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. The German Ideology. Moscow: Progress, 1976. Print.