The Selfish Gene is not about selfishness!

In Our Inner Ape primatologist Frans de Waal writes:

At the same time that Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher preached that greed was good for society, good for the economy, and certainly good for those with anything to be greedy about, biologists published books in support of these views. Richard Dawkins's The Selfish Gene taught us that since evolution helps those who help themselves, selfishness should be looked at as a driving force for change rather than a flaw that drags us down. We may be nasty apes, but it makes sense that we are, and the world is a better place for it.

This is really a terrible misrepresentation of The Selfish Gene. The book is not about selfishness of the individual, but selfishness at the level of genes. It's simply a metaphor, and quite a powerful one as far as I'm concerned. Selfish genes do not necessarily make selfish organisms. In fact, Dawkins writes quite a bit about altruism and chapter 12 is even called nice guys finish first. Dawkins does not argue that seemingly altruistic behavioral patterns have ulterior motives. No, even though genes promoting altruistic behavior can only be evolutionarily successful if they lead to more copies of the altruistic behavior genes, the organism does not need to be, and typically will not be, aware of the genetically 'selfish' reasons for the behavior. The organism does not really know why it is helping others.

In the introduction to the 30th anniversary edition of The Selfish Gene Dawkins addresses the common misunderstandings of the book, which in part were caused by the title. His friend Desmond Morris suggested it would be better to call the book "the immortal gene" and now Dawkins is inclined to agree, if just to avoid misunderstandings by those who judge a book by the title:

The best way to explain the title is by locating the emphasis. Emphasize 'selfish' and you will think the book is about selfishness, whereas, if anything, it devotes more attention to altruism. The correct word to stress is 'gene' and let me explain why. A central debate within Darwinism concerns the unit that is actually selected: what kind of entity is it that survives, or does not survive, as a consequence of natural selection. That unit will become, more or less by definition, 'selfish'. Altruism might well be favoured at other levels. Does natural selection choose between species? If so, we might expect individual organisms to behave altruistically 'for the good of the species'. They might limit their birth rates to avoid overpopulation, or restrain their hunting behaviour to conserve the species' future stocks of prey. It was such widely disseminated misunderstandings of Darwinism that originally provoked me to write the book. Or does natural selection, as I urge instead here, choose between genes? In this case, we should not be surprised to find individual organisms behaving altruistically 'for the good of the genes'. Such kin altruism is only one way in which gene selfishness can translate into individual altruism.

Of course, the organism is not aware that it is doing what it does 'for the good of the genes'. It just has a natural tendency to do whatever the genes dictate. There are no cunning ulterior motives. The organism does not think "Hey, I'll help my kin, because they share my genes and that will increase the probability that those genes will be replicated by reproduction."

De Waal must really know that Dawkins is not talking about selfishness of the individual and he just seems to be creating a straw man against which he can posit his own view of a kind empathic ancestor of men and apes. This is all the more disappointing as he himself recognizes the 'selfish' origins of altruism and empathy in his book The Inner Ape:

From humble beginnings noble principles arise. It starts with resentment if you get less, then moves to concern about how others will react if you get more, and ends with declaring inequity a bad thing in general. Thus, the sense of fairness is born. I like these step-by-step progressions, because this is how evolution must have worked. Similarly, we can see how revenge may, via intermediate steps, lead to justice. The an-eye-for-an-eye mentality of primates serves "educational" purposes by attaching costs to an undesirable behavior.

and

The big question of human morality is how we moved from interpersonal relations to a system that focuses on the greater good. I'm sure it isn't because we have the good of the society foremost in mind. The first interest of every individual isn't the group, but itself and its immediate kin. But with increasing social integration, shared interests rose to the surface so that the community as a whole became a concern. We can see the beginnings of this when apes soothe relations between others. They broker reconciliations (bring parties together after a fight) and break up fights in an evenhanded manner in order to promote peace around them. This is because everybody has a stake in a cooperative atmosphere.

I really don't see much difference in the way De Waal and Dawkins write about selfishness and altruism, apart from the fact that De Waal, being a primatologist, focuses on ape behavior, and Dawkins, being an evolutionary biologist, focuses on genes.