Saturday, June 27, 2026

3691. Cuba's President: “Trump seeks to suffocate Cuba so that there will be a social explosion and he will have a pretext to intervene”

By Miguel Díaz-Canel,  El Diario.es (translation printed in Socialist Action), June 6, 2026. 


June 5, 2026

Translation: Walter Lippmann. 

Miguel Díaz-Canel [Photo above] is the president of Cuba. He leads a country of just under ten million inhabitants, located 90 miles from Florida. Since the 1959 Revolution, Cuba has been a target of every US administration. But now the situation is particularly extreme and tense, to the point that some compare it to the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962), following the tightening of the US embargo with energy cuts and secondary sanctions against companies that do business with Cuban state entities. This latest tightening of the screws, on May 1st, has meant that, as of this week, Visa and Mastercard payments can no longer be made in Cuba , as Spanish hotel companies like Iberostar and Meliá have decided to abandon their hotels on the island after several decades in the country.

The blockade imposed on Cuba is felt in the country’s daily life, in the power and water outages that disrupt communication, streets without traffic lights, uncollected garbage, roads without traffic, and hospitals unable to operate normally. And with each passing day, the situation becomes more critical: it is another day of the blockade; uncertainty weighs heavily; and the suffering intensifies for a population that sees the hottest months approaching without fans to help them through the night and is forced to cook with charcoal.

In that context, the President of Cuba receives elDiario.es in a room of the Presidency of the Republic transformed into a garden evocative of the times of the struggle in the jungle, with plants and rocks brought from Sierra Maestra, designed by Celia Sánchez, a combatant of the Revolution commanded by Fidel Castro.

“Invading Cuba would cost Cuban lives, it would cost hundreds of thousands of Cuban lives, but it would also cost the invader great human losses in all kinds of cases,” the Cuban president stated regarding the hypothesis of a US attack that US President Donald Trump has threatened in recent weeks.

The interview with Díaz-Canel below takes place on Wednesday afternoon, June 3, just hours before the Trump Administration ramped up pressure on Havana with sanctions against the Cuban president, his family, the Armed Forces, the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, relatives of Raúl Castro, and other people and entities in the country.

During our time in Cuba, we’ve been able to visit schools, hospitals, and rice fields, and we’ve seen firsthand how the blockade affects people, especially the most vulnerable. Given this situation, what can the government and you, as president, do to improve people’s lives?

The blockade today is brutal, criminal; it’s something the Cuban people don’t deserve. The most cruel aspect of the blockade is its duration—more than 60 years—and the greatest cynicism is how this blockade is accompanied by a narrative that tries to make the true culprit invisible and attempts to transform reality by blaming what they call the failed state. What we are experiencing is the accumulation of the blockade’s effects; we had other options for survival, progress, and work.

But after 2019, the blockade took on a different quality when the Trump Administration imposed 240 new measures: financial and oil persecution was intensified, and we were included on a list of countries that supposedly support terrorism, which cuts off all possibilities of accessing credit, and makes relations with financial agencies at the international level very difficult.

In the midst of all that, COVID-19 hit, and the Biden administration maintained the same tightened blockade. And now, this second Trump term has been extremely aggressive toward Cuba, especially in recent months.

Once the blockade against Venezuela was being implemented, when the military presence in the Caribbean was increasing to levels unprecedented in the last ten years, and Venezuela was blockaded, fuel shipments stopped. We’re talking about December of last year. Then came the entire media campaign to attack Venezuela, the kidnapping and extradition of the president and his wife to illegally try him in a US court.

And the first executive order arrives.

On January 29, Trump declared the energy blockade against Cuba, and on May 1, he signed another executive order that internationalized the blockade with the concept of secondary sanctions, where sanctions can be imposed on those who are going to have a relationship with Cuba and those who already have it: it is no longer only against American citizens or against American companies, it is against companies or citizens from anywhere in the world.

This accumulated escalation has also led to a policy that tends to seek suffocation in order to create a rupture within Cuban society, to provoke a social explosion, and a pretext for intervention with a narrative that makes the true culprits invisible.

Let’s talk about food production: there are no fertilizers, no pesticides, no agricultural inputs, no fuel for farm machinery, no medicine for animals. We are using science and innovation, employing agro-ecological techniques, and we have to rely more on animal traction. And today we have planted a larger area of farmland than in the last 15 years.

But there’s less yield, production is more difficult, and transportation is also affecting us. For example, today we have a ship in port with more than 15,000 tons of rice; that’s enough to distribute three pounds of rice per capita to the entire population of Cuba this month. But now we have no way to immediately transport what’s due to each province because of logistical problems.

Today, it is more difficult to find someone willing to sell us wheat for our daily bread and to buy powdered milk for children on the international market.

Healthcare, one of the country's pillars, is also being hit hard.

We have a robust healthcare system that has proven its effectiveness for years. We can share medical services with other countries and provide free medical training to students from around the world. Even American medical students have graduated in Cuba. And yet today, our hospitals lack the energy they need due to power outages.

Therefore, there is a waiting list for surgery of over 100,000 patients, including more than 12,000 children. Just look at the devastating impact of the blockade. Our doctors and nurses arrive in the mornings to fulfill their humanitarian duty to their patients, perhaps having had a very poor night’s sleep due to the power outages, or because, if they had electricity at home in the early hours, it was the only time they had to take advantage of the situation to get through all the chores they’ve been putting off. They also struggle to get around by public transport, as it’s limited due to the fuel shortage. But they arrive and attend to their patients.

All of this is affecting certain health indicators.

We have always had an infant mortality rate comparable to that of the most developed countries. That infant mortality rate, which at other times was around four, even reaching 3.6 [per thousand live births], has now doubled, standing at just tenths above nine. And it remains a competitive rate internationally, but it is not the one we are used to.

We have programs for the care of children with cancer that are very effective but are limited by a lack of medicines or supplies, and therefore, the survival rate of those children suffering from cancer decreases.

In recent months, through enormous effort and by exporting medical services and biotechnology from our pharmaceutical industry, we have managed to produce a certain quantity of medications. Currently, we have approximately 50% of what we have produced in recent months that we have been unable to distribute to the most remote areas of the country, where these medications are intended, precisely because of logistical challenges caused by the fuel shortage.

Despite having medicines produced by us, they do not reach the population, which is affected by more than 67% in the basic list of medicines.

All of this is also reflected in the economy, logistics, transportation, production processes, and service processes.

Tourism has declined because the government has targeted and pressured travel agencies. Many agencies are withdrawing from the country against their will due to this pressure. Fuel shortages are preventing airlines from flying to Cuba and refueling their aircraft for the return flight. All of this has severely limited tourism, which was one of our main sources of income.

All of this leads to a contraction in the supply of goods and services available to the population, and inflation reduces the ability of our people to meet their needs. Wages lose purchasing power, and the relationship between wages and prices becomes severely unbalanced. This generates feelings of frustration and weariness among the population.

And how do you deal with that?

A key element is the shift in the energy mix. We are in the midst of an energy transition. Last year, we increased the share of renewable energy from 3% to 10%, with over 1,000 megawatts of installed photovoltaic capacity generating more than 48% of daytime electricity, sometimes reaching 50%.

On the other hand, we have been recovering power that was not available from thermoelectric plants with distributed generation [small installations], with more than 1,000 megawatts that could be generating electricity and reducing blackout levels, but they do not work because there is not enough fuel.

We have to rely on our domestic energy source, crude oil, and it powers our thermoelectric plants. This crude is heavy, and we’ve applied science and innovation to refine it. If we now increase domestic crude oil production, we can also generate surpluses for thermal power generation and other economic processes.

Furthermore, we are implementing biomass and biogas. And we do not relinquish our right to acquire fuel on the market, which is severely restricted due to enormous pressure. The enforcers of the U.S. government apparatus exert pressure every time they learn that a ship is coming with the intention of reaching Cuba.

Only one Russian ship has arrived in over five months, and for 15 days, it changed the energy situation, proving that we are not a failed state. A failed state could not survive in this situation, nor could it demonstrate that when it has resources, it can do things differently.

We have also introduced changes to our marketing methods. We have opened up fuel imports to the private sector. But the Cuban private sector has only been able, in recent months, to import around 27,000 tons of fuel, of which 6,000 tons are gasoline and 21,000 tons are diesel. The 6,000 tons of gasoline represent less than half of the country’s monthly consumption, and the 21,000 tons of diesel are enough for a week of electricity generation.

The blockade is so brutal that the fuel we need isn’t getting through, but we’re not going to give up.

He was talking about the latest round of sanctions, the one on May 1st. It happened to me this morning at the hotel; I went to pay for a drink in the cafeteria, and my credit card wouldn’t go through.

Today it was announced that the entity that handled credit cards is withdrawing from the country.

And this week we also learned that Iberostar and Meliá are withdrawing from the country. What do you expect from the Spanish government and the European Union regarding the departure of two leading Spanish tourism companies from Cuba as a result of US sanctions?

They have been investing in Cuba for a long time, they have worked tirelessly with our tourism entities, they are businessmen whom we greatly respect, and they are leaving against their will.

Just as they have been able to develop their businesses in Cuba, they have also brought knowledge to the Cuban tourism sector. And that is why we have a hotel infrastructure built on the country's investments, which can be used today, for example, as assets to offset debt or generate business.

But on the other hand, there is learning, professional training for our people.

There will be hotels that we will have to operate, and we are considering different business models with Cubans who want to invest in and manage hotels. We are open to that, including people from other countries or entities that don’t have accounts in the US or any US ties, and who are willing to work with Cuba. We have offered this business opportunity to Cubans residing abroad. I am sure that many will return to Cuba to continue their businesses, but it won’t be easy given the stubbornness with which the US administration has tried to hinder the development of tourism in Cuba, which it knows is a source of income.

“[Iberostar and Meliá] have been investing in Cuba for a long time, they have worked tirelessly with our tourism entities, they are businessmen whom we greatly respect for the support they have always provided, and they are leaving against their will.”

Spain and Cuba are among the most important countries in our trade relations. We are united by traditions, history, and family ties. The Spanish government has been very respectful of Cuba, and the European Union, for the most part, has always supported the Cuban resolution at the United Nations against the blockade. I believe that now the European Union and Spain must also understand that the blockade not only affects Cuba, but that it is also affecting Spanish citizens, European citizens, and European and Spanish businesses and entities.

Spanish and European banks cannot have relations with Cuba; today it is more difficult for a Spanish tourist to get to Cuba, and European or Spanish investors have to face coercive obstacles and pressures.

No country in the world has the right to act as the global policeman or dictate the fate of other nations. Therefore, the European Union and Spain itself must address this issue and protect their businesses and citizens. They cannot allow extraterritorial laws to be imposed on them from another country, laws that contradict the very principles enshrined in European constitutions and the Spanish Constitution.

“The EU and Spain have to face this and they have to protect their businesses, their citizens. They cannot allow extraterritorial laws to be imposed on them from another country, laws that contradict the very principles enshrined in European constitutions and the Spanish Constitution.”

There was a declaration last April, at the IV Summit of Democracy in Barcelona, against the military intervention in Cuba , in which Spain and other Latin American countries participated.

It was a moment of support from Spain, which has made some humanitarian aid donations at this time.

You were just talking about that first Trump administration, which introduced the ESTA restrictions and represented a radical shift from the Obama administration, which was among the most open to Cuba in recent times. In fact, one of the consequences of those Trump sanctions was that the US did not supply ventilators to Cuba during the pandemic.

Trump intensified the blockade in the second half of 2019, and in January 2020 he included us on the list of countries that supposedly support terrorism. And Biden maintained it.

We received our first COVID case in March 2020, and we had already sent Cuban medical brigades to areas that were the epicenter of the pandemic. At the time, these were regions of Italy. The brigades supported local authorities, worked with the population, and earned tremendous respect and affection, and they learned how to manage the disease. In the first year of the pandemic, we maintained control, and by the end of 2020, we reopened the border.

Many Cubans who had been abroad for a long time wanted to return and see their families at the end of the year. And with the arrival of that avalanche, cases began to multiply, and we fell into a very strong pandemic peak in 2021. By mid-2021, we realized that Cuba had no options with the vaccine distribution mechanisms that existed in the world, and, on the other hand, we had to increase the number of intensive care units so that they wouldn’t collapse, as they had in other parts of the world, including the United States.

This allowed us to see a decrease in infection rates by the end of 2021, when over 60% of the population was vaccinated, and subsequently maintain control of the disease. We were the first country to vaccinate children over the age of two. We were among the top ten or twelve countries with the highest number of vaccine doses administered per capita.

In the midst of this intensified blockade, with blackouts, lack of supplies and lack of medicines, when we go to look for ventilators for the intensive care units, the United States Government prevents American companies from marketing this type of technology with Cuba.

We had to design ventilators that enabled us to produce what we needed, and today we have the capacity to export them.

Once again, science and innovation, among the legacies of the Revolution bequeathed by Fidel, enabled us to achieve these results.

And there is a third fact that also demonstrates the brutality and perversity of the blockade. In the midst of this situation, with a high number of hospitalized patients, our medical oxygen production plant broke down, and we had to send the replacement part to a European country. The United States government prevented entities in Latin America and the Caribbean that produced medical oxygen from selling it to Cuba. Other countries, including Russia, supported us; we were also able to receive ventilators and medical oxygen from China and other countries.

That shows you that they were condemning a group of patients to die from lack of oxygen. And that’s how the country faced the pandemic, and we were able to manage the disease better than other wealthy countries that weren’t under blockade. And that has a lot to do with our inclusive and free healthcare model. Given this whole situation, the wealthy were able to receive better care than the poor, but in the end, the pandemic didn’t respect or differentiate between rich and poor; it claimed many lives globally. And I believe that’s an experience from which humanity must also learn lessons.

In the United States, there’s a lot of talk about the possibility of an attack on Cuba. Various hypotheses are being discussed, from an operation like the kidnapping of Maduro, using Raúl Castro’s indictment as a pretext, to other types of operations. In fact, Democrats in Congress have introduced several war powers resolutions to try to prevent this scenario. Do you think it’s possible?

Cuba is a country that wants peace; we are a country of peace. It is a lie what representatives of the US government say about Cuba being a threat to US national security.

Ten million inhabitants on a blockaded and besieged island cannot be considered an extraordinary and unusual threat to national security, as they have claimed, for the most powerful nation in the world. This is a pretext fabricated to inflame world public opinion and justify the possibility of military aggression against Cuba.

Aggression is increasingly prevalent in the rhetoric of U.S. government spokespeople. This rhetoric is intensifying, and every day, there are reports of plans to attack Cuba; every day, U.S. media outlets describe how such an attack could take place. They compare it to Venezuela, but we don’t want war; we want dialogue.

But we are not afraid of war, and we are preparing to face military aggression. We are preparing according to the concept of our military doctrine, which is the war of the entire people, a doctrine of defense with the participation of the entire population to defend ourselves.

That is also a deterrent, because invading Cuba would cost Cuban lives—hundreds of thousands of Cuban lives—but it would also cost the invader heavy human losses in any scenario. It would be a complex outcome for the United States and our country, but it would also threaten the stability and security of Latin America and the Caribbean.

“Invading Cuba would cost Cuban lives, it would cost hundreds of thousands of Cuban lives, but it would also cost the invader great human losses in all kinds of cases.”

I believe the United States is pursuing three scenarios: the first is economic strangulation, provoking social unrest, and then using that social unrest as a pretext for intervention in the country under the guise of humanitarian aid. We see examples of this in Haiti, where Haiti is becoming increasingly impoverished, and the Haitian people are facing an ever more complex situation.

A second scenario is to pursue a coercive dialogue with Cuba, using maximum pressure to seize control of the Cuban economy in order to economically occupy the country, which would then allow them to bring about a change in the political system. This is the United States’ ultimate goal.

And a third scenario is that of military aggression.

But we didn’t create those scenarios; they’re the scenarios present in their rhetoric. Therefore, we have the right to defend ourselves, to prepare to defend ourselves, so that there are no surprises and no defeat.

And we always try to avoid comparisons with other nations. Because to compare us with another nation would be to ignore the strength of our institutions, the unity of our heroic people, and the determination of the majority of our people to defend the Revolution to its ultimate consequences.

Our history and our traditions of struggle, our attachment to sovereignty, independence and self-determination, which cost us so much work to achieve.

We will continue to defend peace, seeking dialogue and ensuring that dialogue allows us to resolve the contradictions in our bilateral relations and moves us away from confrontation. But for that to happen, there must also be a willingness on the part of the United States government.

And there’s an example in Venezuela: 32 Cubans heroically gave their lives defending their principles, defending their convictions. What wouldn’t millions of Cubans do who are willing to defend the Revolution, sovereignty, independence, and who want to maintain the self-determination we have in this country?

You’re mentioning the U.S. government’s public statements about Cuba, but you’re talking to them. The CIA director was here, and, on the other hand, you also recently met with U.S. Southern Command near Guantanamo Bay. In other words, there are ongoing discussions. So, what are you willing to compromise on? What are you unwilling to compromise on? Where are the red lines?

We can have a civilized dialogue like the one the United States has with other countries, it also considers adversaries, regardless of ideological differences. But, in addition, we could have trade relations, cultural, academic, sporting, and scientific exchanges… There could be unrestricted tourism from both sides.

Throughout history, there have been talks or attempts at talks, though not always through official channels. One of the most significant dialogues took place during the Obama administration, when we even re-established relations between the United States and Cuba. There was a complete opening in relations that benefited both countries.

We have always advocated dialogue, and for this reason, our officials have held talks in which we sought to resolve our bilateral contradictions in order to find areas of cooperation where we can move forward with projects that benefit both peoples and guarantee the security of both peoples, of Latin America and the Caribbean, of the region in which we live.

These are conversations that must be approached with great responsibility, discretion, and sensitivity, because they deeply concern the relations between our countries and between our peoples, and they will allow us to build spaces for dialogue that facilitate progress in that relationship and move us away from confrontation.

But it must be a dialogue without pressure, on equal terms, without conditions regarding changes to our political and social system, without considerations concerning our independence, our sovereignty, and our self-determination; a dialogue that observes a principle of reciprocity and respects international law. Therefore, we are drawing red lines there.

There can be no imposition of a change in the political system. The internal affairs of our country are not at stake. This dialogue cannot be based on a position of strength or pressure exerted on the country. And it must be approached with responsibility and discretion.

When distorted accounts of this dialogue process emerge, one wonders: why do they resort to such a shameful practice of claiming things weren’t actually discussed? Why do they feel the need to portray themselves as the ones steering the conversation to a point where we have no way out, or putting us under immense pressure, or conditioning us?

We would never accept that. And when anything touches on those issues, there will always be a firm position from the Cuban side and a refusal to continue a dialogue under those conditions.

Now, we believe that dialogue is necessary. There are many things we are open to, such as American investments in Cuba and American businesses operating there. But we are not the ones limiting them; they are limited by the laws of the embargo itself and by the embargo policy.

If the United States wants to have that kind of relationship with Cuba, it has to lift some of the limitations imposed by the blockade and the executive orders.

There has always been one country playing the role of aggressor and another the role of victim. The United States has always been the aggressor, and Cuba has always been the victim. There is also an asymmetrical relationship: the one that has pursued an aggressive policy, a policy of blockade, a policy of offense toward the other party, has been the United States toward Cuba.

We have also had conversations on topics such as terrorism and transnational crime, migration issues, covert operations against Cuba, terrorist acts orchestrated in the United States against Cuba, aspects of law enforcement, and the dialogues at Guantanamo Naval Base.

For years we have maintained a monthly dialogue with representatives of the U.S. Armed Forces. One month it takes place on the base and the next month it takes place on Cuban territory. And that was suspended by the United States government.

But the truth is that during this second Trump administration, the blockade has intensified, and the threats have grown. What do you foresee between now and the end-of-year holidays, which are so, so important for everyone? What do you think might happen between now and the end of the year?

As a revolutionary, one always maintains an optimistic view of life. And while acknowledging that we are living through a very complex, very difficult situation…

And uncertainty weighs heavily as well.

We are part of a people who have set a global example of resilience and heroism. And one cannot betray that history. Furthermore, we trust in international support; there is widespread support for normalizing relations and establishing a constructive dialogue.

There is also the possibility that dialogue can help overcome this situation. And, on the other hand, I believe in humanity. There are many in the world who want a better world, who want a different international economic order that is fairer, more inclusive, and that provides opportunities for everyone. There are many in the world who disagree with having a supremacist, hegemonic country that dictates the rules.

“There are many people in the world who want a better world, who want a different international economic order that is fairer, more inclusive, and that provides opportunities for everyone. There are many people in the world who do not agree with having a supremacist, hegemonic country that dictates the rules.”

There are more and more people, more governments, more States that, supported by their people, defend multilateralism and more inclusion, more equality and more opportunities; that do not look down on the peoples and countries of the global south.

And that idea has to reach the world; it has to be faced with dignity. Because what’s happening in Cuba isn’t just happening in Cuba. It happened in Venezuela, it’s been happening in that cruel genocide being committed every day against the Palestinian people in Gaza, it’s happening in Lebanon, with the aggression against Iran.

The world needs to realize that we are all facing a multidimensional aggression from the United States government that manifests itself in a global war that is ideological, cultural, and media-driven.

It is ideological because the United States is trying to impose its hegemony on the world; it is cultural because, to impose its hegemony and make everyone think like the United States, it has to erase the cultural identity of all our peoples and our countries, our histories and our cultural roots; and it is media-driven because, to achieve this, it develops a huge media strategy based on slander, reputation assassination, and repeated lies, as they are doing with Cuba.

What did they do to Venezuela? They created the narrative that it was a narco-state, that Maduro was a dictator, that there was no democracy in Venezuela, and the infamous connection between Maduro and the Cartel of the Suns. And when they launched that entire media campaign, they attacked the country, even while they were in talks with it. That’s where they demonstrate their treachery, how treacherous they are. They illegally kidnapped a president and took him out of his country to try him illegally in the United States. And two days later, the Cartel of the Suns was gone. All the evidence disappeared.

Let’s remember the war in Iraq, when they claimed there was a biological weapons program, and the biological weapons never materialized. Or the war with Iran under the pretext of a nuclear weapon, and there has been no nuclear activity on the part of Iran.

Will a dignified world allow this to be the way things work, this perversity? Or is the world unable to learn from the lessons of history? This is the same as fascism, this is the same as what Hitler did in Europe. Will the world return to that barbarity? Because the issue isn’t just Cuba; what’s happening to Cuba could happen to any country.

“Is a dignified world going to allow this to be the way things work, this perversity? Or is the world unable to learn from the lessons of history? This is the same as fascism, this is the same as what Hitler did in Europe. Is the world going to return to that barbarism? Because the issue isn’t just Cuba; what’s happening to Cuba could happen to any country.”

If I could change anything about the last five or six years—something you sometimes hear in certain circles here in Havana—instead of investing so much in the hotel and real estate sector, could more have been invested in energy and food sovereignty, and in education and healthcare, which are the symbols of the Revolution and are now being severely impacted? Or perhaps some economic reform that wasn’t implemented or was postponed, which would have put us in a better position to face this critical moment?

We’ve always focused on our shortcomings and mistakes, but they’ve also shaped us. And we talk about many things, some more accurately than others, because many of the reforms we’ve proposed have been virtually impossible to implement.

Because to invest you need foreign currency, you need to operate within certain international financial and economic relationships. It’s not just about wanting to change, but also about having the ability to change.

We have made mistakes, there are mistakes, and we must also see under what conditions those mistakes are made, in the experience of a besieged city, and there is also the fact that the amount of reforms that have been made throughout the times of the Revolution is not recognized.

Today, for example, the U.S. government doesn’t recognize the openness that has existed regarding the private sector and the incentives for foreign investment. It’s not that Cuba is changing; it’s that they want us to change the way they want, with total privatization and the adoption of a neoliberal model. That’s not our model.

We don’t tell the United States what changes it should make; those are their problems. I believe history will tell how wrong we were, and even if we hadn’t been wrong, the blockade has been the fundamental cause of our current situation: take away the blockade, and we’ll see how  things work out . If you take away the blockade and we’re still unable to move the country forward, to continue transforming and improving our society, then the conclusion could be that we were incompetent and didn’t do what we were supposed to do.

But this country, under a tightened blockade, manufactured COVID vaccines and has health and education indicators that, while not satisfactory to us, are better than those of most countries in the world. The equality in Cuba, the security in Cuba, the respect for human dignity, the non-discrimination, the solidarity with other parts of the world…

The US government says we received unpaid fuel from Venezuela, and that’s another lie. We provided medical services, and those services were compensated with fuel. The problem is that this way of being, of acting, of conceiving life differently, doesn’t fit into the mindset of a supremacist, of someone who thinks they are above others, of someone who treats Latin America and the people of Latin America as their backyard. And now, with the Monroe Doctrine updated with a Trump corollary, our people are being despised.

If we’re so incompetent, why are they blocking me? Why don’t they just let me collapse on my own? Because they have no interest in Cuba improving. That’s a lie. They want to seize control of Cuba, just as they’ve tried to seize control of other places in the world, to extract its resources, to control them, not to improve people’s lives.

And what we always dream about is how we can overcome adversity with everyone’s participation.

You said that the United States was seeking, among other things, a social explosion. Now July and August are coming, a very hot season with power outages. And it’s the fifth anniversary of July 11th. Do you think the circumstances could be right for an explosion? How do you plan to deal with dissent?

We have our programs for each of those scenarios to address them. But right now we have a grassroots mobilization program with neighborhood-level projects, led by young people, focused on how, at the community level, we can improve food production, support vulnerable populations, and address issues related to energy, recreation, culture, sports, and spirituality.

There is a culture of resistance, a culture of creative resistance.

Thursday, June 11, 2026

3690. Human Nature and Socialism: Part 4. Socialism as the Process of De-alienation

By Kamran Nayeri, June 11, 2026


For readers familiar with my thinking, it would be reasonable to expect me to conclude this multipart essay with a review of the concept of human nature among the world's indigenous peoples. However, indigenous cultures, for the most part, lacked a notion of human nature because they viewed humanity as part of nature rather than separate from it.  The very concept of human nature presumes a certain separation between humanity and nature, which at least warrants explanation.

Indeed, there has been such a separation between humanity and the rest of nature in all civilizations. Thus, the philosophers and social and natural scientists I sampled in this essay have all noticed this separation and attempted to bridge it, at least through an understanding of “human nature.”

The problem of alienation

According to David Leopold (2022), the term “alienation” emerged in modern Europe. In English, the term had emerged by the early fifteenth century, already possessing an interesting cluster of associations. It was to refer to an individual’s estrangement from God and to mental derangement by psychiatric doctors. G.W.F. Hegel (1770–1831) introduced the term in German, which included the sense of property transfer.  Leopold suggests that the first philosophical discussion of alienation was in French, in Jean-Jacques Rousseau's (1712–1778) Second Discourse.  The concept of alienation is central to Karl Marx’s theory of socialism from the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 to his later work, including Das Kapital. Thus, in Marx’s theory, alienation is implied in human nature as an assemblage of social relations created by the dominant mode of production. The central task of socialism is to do away with capitalist alienation centered in the capitalist mode of production.

Thus, it is no surprise that indigenous peoples lack a concept of “human nature,” as they have considered themselves part of nature rather than estranged (alienated) from it. As I have explained elsewhere (Nayeri, 2013), alienation from nature arose with the emergence of the first agrarian cultures some 12,000 years ago because farmers needed to domesticate plants and animals to develop farms, the first artificial ecosystems, and to protect them from wild nature.  The transition implied an estrangement from nature, thereby conferring moral superiority on the farmer (humans). Social alienation arose when the early farmers produced an ongoing economic surplus, leading to social differentiation, domination, and exploitation. Thus, to rid society of social and ecological alienation requires a transition from ecocentrism to anthropocentrism at the same time as a socialist revolution, hence Ecocentric Socialism.  

The indigenous peoples often have not yet made the transition from hunter-gatherers to farmers and civilization, or are in the process of doing so, and hence still carry with them essential aspects of their ancestors’ ecocentrism. 

Let me outline how some indigenous peoples view themselves and their relationship to the rest of nature.

Robin Wall Kimmerer

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants is a 2015 book by Potawatomi professor of botany Robin Wall Kimmerer that explores the role of Indigenous knowledge as an alternative or complementary approach to mainstream Western scientific methodologies.

The book consists of interconnected essays rather than a single linear argument. Kimmerer uses Sweetgrass, an aromatic herb, as a symbol of reciprocity and cultural renewal. The "Three Sisters" (corn, beans, and squash) serve as a model of cooperation in nature. Maple syrup harvesting exemplifies the ethical use of natural gifts. She emphasized the importance of language in shaping relationships with the natural world.

Kimmerer underscores the core of the Indigenous culture as follows:

1. Nature is a community of relations. She argues that plants, animals, rivers, and landscapes are not merely resources but part of a larger ecological community. Drawing on Potawatomi traditions, she emphasizes reciprocity rather than domination. A recurring idea is that the world is full of gifts—sunlight, water, food, fertile soil—and that receiving these gifts entails responsibilities.

2. Indigenous knowledge and Western science. As a trained botanist and a Potawatomi woman, Kimmerer explores how scientific knowledge and Indigenous knowledge can complement one another. She argues that science often tells us how ecological systems work, while Indigenous traditions can help answer questions about how humans ought to live within them.

3. The Honorable Harvest. One of the book's most influential concepts is the "Honorable Harvest," an ethical code for taking from nature: Take only what you need. Never take the first or the last. Use what you take. Give thanks. Give something back. Kimmerer presents this as a practical ecological ethic that promotes sustainability and respect.

4. Gratitude as an ecological practice.  The book contrasts a culture of consumption with a culture of gratitude. Kimmerer suggests that gratitude changes our relationship with the world, making exploitation less likely and stewardship more natural.

5. Critique of capitalism and resource extraction. Without developing a systematic political theory, Kimmerer criticizes economic systems that treat land and living beings as commodities. She argues that ecological crises stem partly from relationships based on ownership, extraction, and profit rather than reciprocity and care.

Kimmerer's central message is that ecological sustainability requires more than scientific knowledge or technological solutions. It requires transforming our relationships with the living world.  She put it this way: “The ecosystem is not a machine, but a community of beings, subjects rather than objects. What if those beings were the drivers?” (Kimmerer, 2023, p. 331). Humans flourish when they see themselves as members of an ecological community bound by reciprocity, gratitude, and responsibility. Kimmerer presents a worldview in which agency is not confined to humans alone; plants, animals, and ecosystems participate in shaping life, while humans are called to enter respectful relationships with them rather than stand outside nature as its rulers.

Vine Deloria Jr.

Vine Deloria Jr. (1933–2005) was a Standing Rock Sioux scholar, author, theologian, and activist whose writings transformed the study of Native American history, religion, and law. Through his scholarship and leadership, he became one of the 20th century’s most influential Indigenous intellectuals, advocating for tribal sovereignty and reexamining Western conceptions of science and spirituality. In his book, God Is Red (1973), he explores Native American religious traditions and critiques the dominance of Western Christianity in shaping U.S. society. The book is regarded as a foundational text in Native American studies and Indigenous theology. Deloria expresses the same themes as Kimmerer.

Arturo Escobar

Arturo Escobar, a Colombian anthropologist and activist-scholar, has been recognized for pioneering post-development and political ecology thought. His work challenges Western notions of progress, focusing on ecological design, territorial autonomy, and “pluriversal” worldviews that embrace multiple ways of living and knowing.

Escobar’s Encountering Development (2011) framed the concept of post-development, arguing that traditional development models perpetuate colonial power structures. He advocates for locally grounded alternatives rooted in environmental care, cultural pluralism, and autonomy rather than economic growth alone.

Escobar’s later books—Designs for the Pluriverse (2018), Pluriversal Politics (2020), and La relacionalidad (2024)—extend his ideas toward “ontological design” and eco-social transitions. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2021, in recognition of his influence on global debates about sustainability and decolonial futures.

Eduardo Viveiros de Castro

Viveiros de Castro is perhaps the most influential interpreter of Amazonian thought. He was born in Brazil in 1951 and trained as an anthropologist. He is a professor at the National Museum of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. His theory of "Amerindian perspectivism" proposes that many beings are people, that morality is not an exclusive property of humanity, and that different species inhabit different perspectives on the same world. His work is theoretical rather than political, but it offers powerful conceptual resources for animistic materialism to which I subscribe. Viveiros de Castro has written a number of books, including Cosmological Perspectivism in Amazonia and Elsewhere, Hau Masterclass Series (vol. 1) (2012). In this book, he develops the concept of “perspectivism which is one of the most influential ideas in contemporary anthropology. It emerged from his study of Amazonian Indigenous.

Perspectivism is the philosophical position that one's access to the world through perception, experience, and reason is possible only through one's own perspective and interpretation. It rejects both the idea of a perspective-free or an interpretation-free objective reality.

Western thought generally assumes: One nature (the same physical world for everyone)

Many cultures (different human interpretations of that world). Viveiros de Castro argues that many Amazonian peoples hold something close to the reverse: One culture (all beings share personhood, intentionality, social life); many natures (different bodies generate different worlds). He calls this multi-naturalism, contrasting it with Western multiculturalism. In Amazonian perspectivism, animals, spirits, and other beings are not regarded as mere objects. Many are considered people.

Concluding remarks

Let me summarize the contributions I considered on human nature and the human mind from different intellectual traditions—historical materialism, dialectical biology, cybernetics and systems theory, neuroscience, and Indigenous cosmologies—that all challenge the liberal image of the autonomous individual.

Karl Marx viewed humans as a social, productive, self-creating species. He recognized that humans are part of nature, transforming nature through collective and historical praxis. Human nature develops historically as an assemblage of social relations.

There are two fundamental weaknesses in Marx’s theory. He intentionally leaves out nature in his consideration of human nature, society, and history, although he admits humans are embedded in nature, and his anthropocentric theory is limited to the history of class societies, which constitute a mere 5,000 years out of 300,000 years of the existence of Homo Sapiens and 2.5 million years of our ancestors in the Homo genus. Throughout this “prehistory,” our ancestors were hunter-gatherers, a way of human existence that precedes the emergence of modes of production, central to Marx’s theories.

Richard Levins and Richard Lewontin view the organism and environment as co-creating each other in a |dialectical interaction. They reject genetic and environmental determinism. The weakness in their view is that they do not clearly admit the primacy of nature over culture, as is clearly admitted in the theory of evolution to which they subscribe. Consequently, they remain within the bounds of Marx’s nineteenth-century socialism.

Gregory Bateson, relying on cybernetics and systems theory, views the human mind as part of a larger ecological mind. He correctly insists that the human mind exists in networks and relationships that operate according to the laws of systems and not according to individuals or groups of individuals. While Bateson was not interested in the theory of socialism, his theory of ecology of mind is indispensable to thinking about socialism and how to transition to it.

For Robert Sapolsky, human behavior emerges from biology, natural and social history. Humans are biological organisms embedded in their environment. He offers a multi-level analysis that supports questioning of free will. Notably, while Sapolsky offers biological evidence for human behavior, he is not a genetic determinist, as he places equal emphasis on biology, culture, and society; in fact, he argues that the nature/culture debate is obsolete. Indeed, his argument against the existence of free will, for greater consideration in judging fellow human beings, and for the importance of building institutions that support the development of virtues and inhibit vices must become the cornerstone of a democratic and libertarian socialism that has been missing in the history of socialism so far.

For Robin Wall Kimmerer, humans are members of a community of living beings. She calls for reciprocity with plants, animals, and ecosystems. For Vine Deloria Jr. humans belong to sacred places and relationships.  Nature is alive and communicative. He offers a critique Western anthropocentrism. Arturo Escobar believed humans live in relational and in radical interdependence with nonhuman worlds. He calls for a collective ecological and relational ontology. For Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, humanity is a condition of personhood, not species | Humans and nonhumans are all persons from their own perspective. He advocates Amerindian perspectivism and multinaturalism.

A note on ontology

It is necessary to conclude with a note on ontology. Nineteenth-century materialism was a philosophical and cultural shift that rejected religious and spiritual explanations, asserting instead that matter is the fundamental reality of the universe. Driven by rapid scientific advancements and the Industrial Revolution, it fundamentally transformed how humans understood nature, society, and themselves. Marx shared this ontology. In historical materialism, Marx and Engels developed a framework to critique capitalism and explain societal conflicts through class struggles and the means of production.

In modern times, Materialism has been refined to include the idea that all of reality is composed of physical objects, including both material objects and energy. Thus, nineteenth-century materialism has been redefined to explain quantum physics and the uncertainty principle.  The uncertainty principle, also known as Heisenberg's indeterminacy principle, is a fundamental concept in quantum mechanics. It states that there is a limit to the precision with which certain pairs of physical properties, such as position and momentum, can be simultaneously known. In other words, the more accurately one property is measured, the less accurately the other property can be known.

This poses fundamental Limitations on philosophical materialism about what can be known about particles, challenging the materialist view of complete knowledge of the physical world. First, there is the observer effect: It highlights the role of the observer in measurement, complicating the materialist perspective that reality exists independently of observation. Second, it introduced non-determinism: The principle introduces non-deterministic elements in quantum mechanics, conflicting with materialism's often deterministic framework. Third, it raises questions about the nature of reality itself, suggesting that at a fundamental level, reality may not be as straightforwardly material as philosophical materialism posits. The limitations on knowledge imply that materialism may not fully account for the complexities of existence and consciousness. Quantum entanglement is the phenomenon in which the quantum state of each particle in a group cannot be described independently of the state of the others, even when the particles are separated by a large distance. The topic of quantum entanglement is at the heart of the disparity between classical physics and quantum physics: entanglement is a primary feature of quantum mechanics not present in classical mechanics. These challenge the materialist view of objects' separateness and individuality, suggesting interconnectedness that materialism struggles to explain.

These have been reintroduced in panpsychism, the view that mind or conscious experience, of some type or other, is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of reality, including for all physical reality.  Panpsychism is also described as a theory that the mind is a fundamental feature that exists throughout the universe. It is one of the oldest theories in the philosophy of mind, possibly overlapping in some interpretations with animism, the spiritual or religious worldview of many indigenous societies, though panpsychism is usually regarded as a philosophical (metaphysical) stance. Physicists and cosmologists increasingly believe that the universe itself must be viewed in a relational sense.

The idea that existence is fundamentally relational – that nothing exists in complete isolation – is not new to philosophy. But today, the sciences are independently arriving at the same conclusion through their own rigorous methods. Across disciplines as different as physics and meteorology, the emerging picture is consistent: the universe’s deep structure is one of interconnection, mutual influence, and dynamic interdependence. To understand this, we need to look carefully at three major scientific frameworks: the theory of relativity, quantum field theory, and chaos theory (Philosophy Institute, no date).”

It must be evident that the nineteenth-century materialism of Marx, just like his theories of human nature, society, and history as embedded in historical materialism, must be revised in light of what we know and the problems we face in the twenty-first century. I trust this multipart essay lends additional support to my theory of Ecocentric Socialism, founded on ecological animistic materialism Nayeri, 2023, Chapter 19; Nayeri, 2021). 

 

References:

Escobar, Arturo. Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds. 2018.

Leopold, David.Alienation.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2022.

Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. 2015.

Kopenawa, Davi. The Falling Sky. 2013.

Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo.  Cosmological Perspectivism in Amazonia and Elsewhere. 1998

Nayeri, Kamran.Economics, Socialism and Ecology: A Critical Outline, Part 2,” Our Place in the World: A Journal of Ecosocialism. October 29, 2013.

_____________." The Case for Ecocentric Socialism.” Our Place in the World: A Journal of Ecosocialism. July 4, 2021.

_____________." Whose Planet? Essays on Ecocentric Socialism. 2023. 

Philosophy Institute. Unveiling the Fabric of the Universe: Insight from Contemporary Science.No date. 

Sunday, June 7, 2026

3689. Human Nature and Socialism, Part 3. Robert Sapolsky on Human Behavior

By Kamran Nayeri, June 7, 2026

Robert Sapolsky

Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1957, Robert Morris Sapolsky is an American neuroscientist and primatologist. As John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Professor at Stanford University, he is a professor of biology, neurology, and neurosurgery. Sapolsky's research has focused on neuroendocrinology, particularly relating to stress. He is also a research associate with the National Museums of Kenya.

In what follows, I will outline Sapolsky’s grand synthesis of neuroscience, endocrinology, evolutionary biology, anthropology, and primatology as presented in his books Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst (2018) and Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will (2023). His central argument is that no human behavior can be understood by looking at a single cause. Instead, every action is the outcome of a long causal chain extending from seconds before the act to millions of years of evolution.

Behave: Why humans do what they do

This 790-page book extensively discusses neurobiological foundations of human behavior, explaining how brain activity, particularly in the limbic and frontal cortex systems, dictates responses moments before an action is taken. It highlights the role of the triune brain model in processing everything from basic survival instincts to complex decision-making.

Sapolsky’s methodology is distinctive because it is neither purely neuroscientific nor purely sociological. Instead, Sapolsky develops what might be called a multi-level, historical-causal analysis of behavior.

His central methodological question is: What caused a particular behavior to occur at a particular moment?

To answer this, he works backward in time, examining layers of causation that extend from seconds before an action to millions of years before it.

The "Backward-in-Time" Method

Sapolsky begins with a specific behavior--for example, an act of aggression, altruism, cooperation, or prejudice—and asks what caused it. He then analyzes successively larger temporal scales:

First stage. One second before the behavior

What was happening in the brain?

  • Neural circuits
  • Amygdala activity
  • Prefrontal cortex regulation
  • Neurotransmitters

This is the immediate neurobiological explanation.

Second stage. Seconds to minutes before

What stimuli triggered the brain?

  • Visual signals
  • Sounds
  • Social cues
  • Threats or rewards

Behavior is seen as a response to environmental information processed by the nervous system.

Third stage. Hours to days before

What hormonal conditions existed?

  • Cortisol
  • Testosterone
  • Oxytocin
  • Dopamine

Hormones alter how the brain responds to stimuli.

Fourth stage. Months to years before

What developmental experiences shaped the individual?

  • Childhood experiences
  • Trauma
  • Attachment
  • Learning
  • Socialization

The nervous system itself has been molded by prior experience.

Fifth stage. Genetic and epigenetic influences

What predispositions exist?

  • Genes affecting temperament
  • Gene-environment interactions
  • Epigenetic modifications

Importantly, Sapolsky rejects genetic determinism. Genes influence probabilities, not fixed outcomes.

Sixth stage. Cultural influences

What social world shaped the person?

  • Norms
  • Institutions
  • Religion
  • Economic systems
  • Political structures

Culture becomes a causal force in behavior.

Seventh stage. Evolutionary history

Why does our species possess these capacities at all?

  • Evolution of cooperation
  • Group identity
  • Dominance hierarchies
  • Empathy
  • Aggression

Here Sapolsky draws on primatology, evolutionary biology, and anthropology.

Some conclusions

The following are some of the conclusions Sapolsky draws in Behave.

A. The nature-versus-nurture debate is largely obsolete

Sapolsky concludes that genes and environment are inseparable. Genes influence how organisms respond to environments, while environments influence how genes are expressed through developmental and epigenetic processes.

Thus, human behavior is always the product of gene-environment interaction.

B. The brain is highly plastic

Another major conclusion is that human brains are not fixed. Experience alters neural connections, emotional responses, cognitive capacities, stress systems, and even gene expression.

This means that neither virtue nor violence is permanently built into human beings.

C. Humans possess capacities for both extraordinary cruelty and extraordinary cooperation

Sapolsky rejects theories that portray humans as either naturally selfish or naturally good.

Humans have evolved capacities for aggression, domination, tribalism, and xenophobia,  but also, for empathy, cooperation, altruism, and reconciliation.

Both tendencies are deeply rooted in our biology.

D. Context matters enormously

A recurring conclusion throughout Behave is that behavior changes dramatically depending on circumstances.

People who behave compassionately in one context may behave cruelly in another.

Situational factors can often outweigh stable personality traits.

This insight draws partly from classic social psychology experiments and partly from neuroscience.

E. Tribalism is natural but not fixed

Sapolsky concludes that humans have evolved tendencies to divide the world into “us” and “them.” However, he emphasizes that group boundaries are remarkably flexible. People can rapidly redefine who belongs to "us." For Sapolsky, this flexibility provides grounds for optimism.

The same biological mechanisms that produce prejudice can also support broader forms of solidarity.

F. Social inequality has biological consequences

One of Sapolsky's longstanding research interests concerns stress and hierarchy. He concludes that chronic inequality, subordination, and insecurity produce measurable biological effects on health and behavior.

The social environment literally becomes embodied.This links social structures to biological outcomes.

G. Moral behavior depends heavily on social conditions

Sapolsky repeatedly argues that if societies wish to encourage cooperation, tolerance, and empathy it should create institutions and environments that support those behaviors. He is skeptical of explanations that focus solely on individual moral character. Instead, he emphasizes the importance of social arrangements.

H. Traditional notions of free will are deeply problematic

This conclusion becomes even more explicit in his later book, Determined, but its foundations are already present in Behave.

Sapolsky argues that every action arises from prior causes: genes, fetal development, childhood, culture, brain states, immediate circumstances.

As a result, he questions whether people could ever have acted independently of those causes. This does not mean behavior is random; rather, it is caused by factors beyond conscious control.

I. Understanding causation should increase compassion

This is perhaps the ethical conclusion that runs through the entire book. Sapolsky believes that understanding the causes of behavior should make us less self-righteous, less punitive, more empathetic. If behavior arises from biological and social histories that individuals did not choose, then moral judgment should be tempered by such understanding.

Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will

In this 511-page book, Robert Sapolsky takes the argument implicit in Behave to its logical conclusion: human beings do not possess free will in the traditional sense.

However, the book is not merely a philosophical argument. Sapolsky attempts to synthesize findings from neuroscience, genetics, endocrinology, psychology, developmental biology, and social science to show that every human action arises from causes that precede conscious choice.

His central thesis can be summarized as follows: A person could not have acted differently from how they acted, because every factor that produced the action was itself caused by prior factors over which the person had no control.

Sapolsky asks what caused a decision at a particular moment. As in Behave, he works backward to find the causal chain for the decision. He argues that at no point do we encounter an independent "chooser" standing outside this causal chain. Instead, we find only more causes.

The core claim

Sapolsky rejects what philosophers often call libertarian free will—the idea that a person could have genuinely chosen otherwise under exactly the same conditions.

He argues that every thought emerges from brain activity. Brain activity arises from prior physical and biological causes. Those causes arise from earlier biological, environmental, social and historical causes. Therefore, no action is ultimately self-created.

The traditional image of autonomous self-making uncaused choices is, in his view, an illusion.

What about conscious choice? Sapolsky does not deny that people deliberate. We weigh alternatives, reflect, and make plans. However, he argues that the mechanisms that generate preferences, desires, values, motivations, and reasoning styles, were themselves produced by prior causes. Thus, while conscious deliberation is real, it is not evidence for free will. The deliberative process is itself part of the causal chain.

Sapolsky draws on several sources of evidence.

Neuroscience: Experiments often show measurable brain activity precedes conscious awareness of decisions. The brain appears to begin preparing actions before people report deciding.

Genetics and Development: Temperament, impulse control, risk-taking, and emotional regulation are influenced by genes, prenatal conditions, and childhood experiences.  Individuals do not choose these starting points.

Social Environment: Economic conditions, education, trauma, discrimination, and profoundly shape behavior. People inherit social circumstances rather than choosing them.

Some people argue that quantum indeterminacy or randomness creates freedom. Sapolsky rejects this. A random event is not a free choice. Randomness may undermine strict determinism, but it does not create an autonomous will.

Implications for morality

This is where Sapolsky becomes most controversial. He argues that if free will does not exist, then traditional notions of moral blameworthiness become difficult to defend. No one chooses their genes, their prenatal environment, or their childhood circumstances. If behavior emerges from factors beyond personal control, then punishment justified by retribution becomes questionable.

Sapolsky does not argue for abolishing laws, courts, or prisons. Instead, he proposes a more pragmatic approach. Society may need to restrain dangerous individuals, protect the public, and rehabilitate offenders, but should do so without the belief that offenders freely choose their character.

He often compares this to dealing with a dangerous disease. Society protects itself but without hatred or moral condemnation.

A major ethical conclusion of the book is that abandoning free will should increase compassion.

When we understand how behavior is shaped by biology, history, culture, and social conditions, we become less inclined toward self-righteousness and vengeance.

For Sapolsky, understanding causation should foster empathy.

Major Criticisms

The book has attracted much praise but also some criticism from philosophers and some scientists. Common objections include:

Philosophical view of free will: many philosophers do not believe free will requires an uncaused soul or independent self. Instead, they defend compatibilism, the belief that free will and determinism are mutually compatible and that it is possible to believe in both without being logically inconsistent even in a causally determined world.

Sapolsky largely rejects this position.


References:

Sapolsky, Robert. Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst. 2018. 

____________.  Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will. 2023.