Human nature is defined by the complex of social relations, not fixed essence

Evidence

That “human nature” is the “complex of social relations” 432 is the most satisfactory answer, because it includes the idea of becoming (man “becomes”, he changes continuously with the changing of social relations) and because it denies “man in general”. Indeed social relations are expressed by various groups of men which each presuppose the others and whose unity is dialectical, not formal. Man is aristocratic in so far as man is a serf, etc. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1270

Categorization

• DEFINE: This is Gramsci’s core redefinition of ‘human nature’ as the moving complex of social relations rather than a fixed attribute — a keystone concept for the toolkit.
• XREF: Connects to historical-materialist ‘becoming’ and anticipates how racialized/colonial selfhood in Islamophobia scholarship is treated as socially constructed rather than natural.