WE'VE BEEN HEARING A LOT ABOUT socialism lately, particularly from the right.

If we believed for one moment anything we heard from Fox News or Rush Limbaugh or the average Republican politician, we would think that the country had ceased to be a democracy because health care reform was in danger of passing Congress by a majority vote.

I won't quibble about definitions—the word "socialism" has been used in such a wide variety of ways by such a wide variety of people that it's obvious fodder for the usual right-wing conflations.

But I do think that it's important to think about some of the basic assumptions behind the rhetoric—assumptions about what it means to be ordinary decent human beings.

We humans are a social species.

We are no more designed to live as islands unto ourselves than ants or bees.

We have always lived in communities.

In prehistoric times we were hunter gatherers; we lived together in groups, and we survived by protecting each other, by sharing food, and by sharing work.

We took care of each other.

We also guarded our freedom within the group.

While our fellow primates were developing hierarchical social structures—where one dominant ape, for example, would hog most of the mates and a lion's share of the resources—humans were developing structures that spread resources around the group, while preserving individual freedom.

When a group needed to make a community decision, it was made by the group as a whole.

Different groups managed this in different ways, but in general the big decisions were made by a process that involved everyone.

It was a nice balance—a society that provided a good amount of security, a good amount of liberty, and kept a few freeloaders from impoverishing everyone else.

And it's important to note what our ancestors knew: the potential freeloaders you have to worry about aren't the lazy hunter, or the shirking gatherer.

The damage they do is limited, they aren't all that common, and they eventually get their comeuppance in the normal course of human interactions.

They aren't respected, and they don't do all that well in the end.

No—the freeloader you need to worry about is the one who manages to consolidate his power, to create a situation where really unfair proportions of the society's resources land on his plate as a matter of course, and to convince everyone to simply take that for granted, as though it were his due.

The freeloader you need to worry about is the king ape—and human societies guarded against him with a special fervor.

This kind of society—the natural society of human beings—was a form of socialism and a form of democracy.

It was a way to guarantee political equality, a way to nurture prosperity, a way to guard individual freedom.

And it's an innate part of our make-up as human beings.

But around the time of the agricultural revolution something got out of balance.

But more about that next time...