Human nature is the totality of historically determined social relations, not a fixed essence.

Evidence

The basic innovation introduced by the philosophy of praxis into the science of politics and of history is the demonstration that there is no abstract “human nature”, fixed and immutable (a concept which certainly derives from religious and transcendentalist thought), but that human nature is the totality of historically determined social relations, hence an historical fact which can, within certain limits, be ascertained with the methods of philology and criticism. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 617

Categorization

• DEFINE: Central anti-essentialist definition of human nature as historical social relations—feeds directly into all anti-essentialist critiques of the Other.
• XREF: Echoes Marx’s sixth thesis on Feuerbach and anticipates Foucault’s historicization of the subject; directly supports later critiques of essentialist constructions of ‘the Muslim’. — connects to: The rights declarations replaced historical rights with rights deduced from human nature.; Human nature is the ever-changing complex of social relations, not a fixed essence; Objectivity is historical and exists only in relation to man. (+16 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 617

Broader Connections

• Human essence is the ensemble of social relations, not an individual abstraction #corroborates (0.97)
• People’s supposed deficiencies are historical facts, not natural traits #expands (0.85)
• Social and cultural structures overdetermine our natural human constitution. #qualifies (0.75)