Purity & evolution
First I wish to congratulate you on the excellence of your publications as to the form.
In terms of doctrine, one senses an earnest striving to preserve a purity that cannot be without merit. Now, I have a couple of questions. Does not the unconditional rejection of all other parties and movements, while preserving a kind of virginity, also coincide with "lack of impact”? (The latter term is characteristically quantitative, but it is the whole of ambient mentality, modern mentality.)
Question 2 is: What is your attitude to non-materialists? My own position is that of metaphysics. I feel 1 can situate “historical materialism” as a kind of weapon-analysis but feel certain I would ever seek to escape from an exclusive materialism.
Have you an expert on economics and war that could come along to a meeting under the auspices of the World Federalist Association. A meeting will be held on war at the House of Commons by kind invitation of Joan Evans mp. Mr. K. F. G. Clarke, Sen. Assistant Manager, Economics Dept., Midland Bank, will speak on “Does the International Financial System promote World Peace?”
Finally, 1 totally disagree with your pamphlet on racism as to Darwin. I reject Evolution (except on a limited, circumscribed basis). I am certain that Social Darwinism has fostered a racialism of its own. It is false beyond a limited range. Even Marxist terms like "advanced” fosters practical racism. Of course it serves a purpose but it totally ignores ancient pre-historic civilizations of which the "backward" peoples today are the residue (of a falling away from Tradition in the metaphysical sense—not the sentimental sense of Conservatives).
A. C. Stock
London SE25
Reply:
1. You appear to consider “purity” as a good thing in itself. We don’t. Our view is a practical one: we oppose parties and movements which stand for capitalism, but parties in other countries which have Socialism as their objective are our companion organizations.
You suggest we should have more “impact” if we abandoned this attitude and, presumably, joined with a party or parties we do not agree with. Leaving aside the question of principle, it is an illusion to suppose that this would make us better known or more popular. Small organizations joining with larger ones are eaten by them. If the alliance was not numerically so one-sided—say, the SPGB with the World Federalist Association you mention—the position would still be that the latter organization is uninterested in Socialism and would only be seeking our support to get better “impact” for its own policies.
2. Historical materialism cannot be anything other than exclusive of metaphysical beliefs. Its standpoint is that all social phenomena, including ideas, arise from the way men organize to produce the necessities for their existence; in so doing they enter into relationships which determine not only their institutions but the forms their consciousness takes. Our attitude to non-materialists is, therefore, that they are mistaken.
3. Your letter was not received by us in time to consider going to a meeting. We have no “experts” on economics and war. Members of the SPGB understand the economics of capitalism, including the way it inevitably leads to war. Our attitude to the question asked is that the international financial system is part of the operation of capitalism, and as such cannot promote peace.
4. You jump from evolution to “Social Darwinism”, which was a 19th-century doctrine aiming to justify capitalism by showing that the ruling class were the fittest and strongest individuals in society. This is not the view expressed in our pamphlet, or by socialists in an context. Evolution explains the physical emergence of man. Once he lived in society (and he has no other existence) his evolution became social, and the driving principle in it has been the formation of and conflicts between classes.
"Advanced” has racist overtones only if you are thinking of races. It means a movement forward. Prehistoric societies are not “civilizations”. The Marxist case is that if a major change becomes open to people living in such a society, or a feudal one, it must take the form of a step in a certain direction; this is all "advance” means.
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