ABSTRACT
There is a curious, distinctive note played by evolutionary psychologists when they discuss political matters: an avowal of what they take to be "political realism", along with a repudiation of progressive, Left, and especially Marxian theory. For Professor Pinker, the only credible explanation for our social behavior comes from evolutionary psychology. All other theories are, for him, disproven. The difference between the natural talents in different men is, in reality, much less than we are aware of; and the very different genius which appears to distinguish men of different professions, when grown up to maturity, is not on many occasions so much the cause as the effect of the division of labour. Writing before the French Revolution, and incapable of imagining any improvement upon the gross political and social inequalities of his day, Smith welcomed the growing material prosperity which he believed the division of labor produced.
