Edvard Munch at the Tate Modern (2012)

Exhibition Review from the September 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Edvard Munch’s art portrays alienation, angst and madness in bourgeois capitalist society at the beginning of the 20th century. Munch grew up in a world turned upside down by Darwin, Nietzsche, and Karl Marx. Norway witnessed the development of feminism, and the changing role of women is seen in plays by Ibsen. Munch portrays his ambivalence about this sexual revolution in works like ‘Ashes‘ which evokes a sense of sexual guilt, and ‘Madonna‘ which is a hybrid of Ophelia and Salome, although his ‘Sister Inger‘ portrays a strong, independent woman.

Munch lived in the bohemian milieu in Christiania which was infused with socialism, and opposed the complacency, hypocrisy and reactionary nature of bourgeois middle-class society. He was friends with Bakuninist anarchist writer Hans Jaeger. His ‘Evening on Karl Johan‘ shows an oppressive crowd of bourgeois middle-class people with uncommunicative faces constrained by their norms and values.

Munch’s most famous work ‘The Scream‘ can represent human alienation in bourgeois capitalist society. Marx identified that humans are alienated from their work, their fellow humanity, and from nature itself; in fact, the proletarian is ‘annihilated‘ which can be seen in the horror of the figure in ‘The Scream‘. ‘The Scream‘ can also represent a person experiencing synaesthesia – the union of the senses – a feature experienced by some artists, those in the stages of madness or under the influence of LSD.  Munch wrote that he had been “trembling with anxiety and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature,” which also has echoes of Kierkegaard’s Christian existentialism. Munch’s ‘The Sun‘ is also startling in its synaesthesia, and evokes William Blake’s visionary pictures. Psychological ‘heaven and hell’ were all too familiar to Munch. ‘The Scream‘ evokes the plight of the sane man in an insane society which Erich Fromm identified. He also pointed out that the solution lay in a sane socialist society.

‘Friedrich Nietzsche‘ (1906)

Shortly before his mental breakdown, Munch completed ‘Friedrich Nietzsche‘, a posthumous portrait of the philosopher whose ideas about existential authenticity and eternal recurrence can be elicited from a study of ‘The Scream‘.  Nietzsche posited the theory of eternal recurrence as “the greatest weight” which could be with ‘amor fati,’ the ultimate affirmation of life, and guarantee an existential authenticity or lead to a terrifying nihilism.

Nietzsche was admired by anarchist Emma Goldman who wrote of him as the champion of the self-creating individual advocating spiritual renewal, and she combined this with the anarchist communism of Kropotkin. Nietzsche himself loathed the state, capitalism, ‘herd morality’, and Christianity as all exhibiting a lack of the “nobility of spirit”. The alienated working class in bourgeois society has no self-esteem; it does not have a high estimate of itself, being in the grip of false consciousness. In Nietzschean terms, the working class “is the dwarf of himself… a god in ruins”, and what is needed is a “transvaluation of values”: a class consciousness to create a new man and woman in a socialist society.

Steve Clayton

Mental Health: In a Mad, Mad World (2019)

From the September 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

Most of us are likely to experience mental ill-health at some point or another in our lives. For some it might be a short episode of low mood, or feeling a bit fed up and will usually pass within a few days or weeks at most. While for others it may include prolonged periods of intense depression and possible suicidal thoughts. And in the most extreme cases, the ending of one’s own life.

So, what are the reasons that cause so many people to feel so hopeless and helpless as to feel that they have no choice but to take such a desperate measure as suicide?

The answer to this is of course a very complex one that cannot possibly be attributed to any one single factor affecting any one person’s life. For most people who feel there is no longer any point to their existence, the chances are that their problems and challenges feel insurmountable and impossible to deal with, and as such they cannot face another day of the relentless torture associated with their thoughts and feelings of perpetual misery.

Sometimes these feelings can be caused by biological factors that affect thought patterns within the brain, while for many these feelings are entirely as a result of environmental factors.

Chemical imbalances

The brain is an extremely complex and intricate part of the functioning of the human (and other mammals) body. Comprising some 86 billion cells known as neurons, it is the command centre of the nervous system that in turn controls the body’s sensory organs and outputs information to the muscles, which in turn control movement.

The brain is responsible for producing a number of hormones associated with pleasure including dopamine, oxytocin and serotonin. They each in their own unique way and when in balance are supposed to maintain a healthy and happy state of mind and mood. But what happens when things go wrong?

For some people they will no doubt take matters into their own hands. That is to say, they will quite often try to alleviate their symptoms by self-medicating in order to induce some kind of relief from the stress and/or misery that they are experiencing. This might take the form of a quick puff on a fag or maybe something stronger like a spliff – which some medical professionals say may actually worsen the situation. Some may hit the booze, while for others a coffee and a cream cake might offer a quick fix.

Should things not improve it may well become necessary to book an appointment with the local GP. No doubt having waited for several weeks for your appointment to finally arrive, it may be that having discussed the matter with your hard-pressed doctor you will be presented with a prescription for any one of the myriad antidepressant drugs available in order to try and lift your mood by restoring the natural chemicals that are missing. A further appointment will probably be made and following on from that, if the meds have worked and some relief has been found then you will probably be advised to keep taking the pills, given a pat on the back and told to come back if the symptoms worsen. On your way out you will probably pass another long line of people with identical problems waiting for their 10 minutes with the Doc and another repeat prescription for their preferred choice of antidepressant drugs. While somewhere in the background, the big pharmaceutical companies who produce these drugs are laughing all the way to the bank.

Rising Problem

In Scotland alone there has been a significant rise in the rates of suicide between 2017 and 2018. Recent figures show that in 2018, 784 people took their own life, an increase from 680 the year before, with the increase in suicide rate among young people age under 25 in Scotland, the highest annual rate since 2007. While over the last 5 years, 3,560 people took their own life. Making the average suicide rate in Scotland for that particular period 13.4 deaths per 100,000.

James Jopling, Executive Director of Samaritans Scotland, said: ‘Suicide is preventable. And that means not just looking at access to mental health services, but also at how money worries, job insecurity, experiences of loneliness and disconnectedness can impact young people’s wellbeing … People of all ages reach out to the Samaritans for a wide range of reasons – some of the most common include worries about their mental and physical health, family and relationship breakdown and feelings of loneliness and isolation. Just under a third of people who contact Samaritans express suicidal thoughts and feelings’.

While these figures are but a snapshot of the picture in Scotland, the issues are the same the world over. And while each and every government or NGO attempts to solve these issues in their own way, there will never be enough resources available to deal with the epidemic that is such a blight on what the professional politicians and leaders like to describe and convince us is a civilised society, and the only one available to us. No matter how hard they try to dress things up with their many brainwashing initiatives such as ‘resilience building’, ‘managed expectations’ and ‘dealing with disappointment’, there can be no escape from the harsh reality and brutality that is the fall-out from the present global (dis)order, and root cause known as capitalism.

What can be done?

Regular readers of this magazine will be all too aware of the issues raised within this article, most will readily relate to its content and will need little advice or information about the underlying cause and affects that capitalism has on predominantly the working class (I would not be so foolhardy as to suggest that members of the capitalist class are somehow exempt from feelings of clinical depression). However there can be little or no doubt that the challenges faced by the working class are far greater than those at the top of the tree looking down.

So, what can and must be done to find a cure for this imbalance and exploitation?

Far be it from us to sound like preachers or motivational speakers – we’re sure you get enough of that bullshit when attending works seminars and such like. You know the kind of thing, everyone in a room for team building exercises, being forced to pair off with someone you don’t really like, or worse still, if you’ve drawn a particularly short straw, the ‘team leader’ – the company man (or woman) for whom the company is the be-all-and-end-all in their life.

Mental Health within socialism

Given that socialism – properly understood – has never had the chance to be tested anywhere in the world before it is almost impossible to know precisely how this new system of society will unfold. That said, we can be sure of one thing, it couldn’t possibly be any worse than it is for most of us under capitalism.

No more wars or terrorism, no more greed, hunger and thirst, no more decision-making based on budgets or cost effectiveness, no more social isolation or loneliness, seclusion or discrimination, no more choosing between heating or eating, and the list goes on and on and on.

With people throughout the world living their lives according to their own self-defined needs and in harmony with each other for the benefit of each other, there can be no doubt that slowly but surely as we all work together in order to reverse the damage caused by around 300 years’ worth of the destructive fallout from capitalism, people’s health, both mental and physical will improve dramatically as we all give and take our share of working together towards a truly civilised society, where no one will be left behind to fend for themselves. The elderly, the disabled, anyone born with a genetic condition and who may be predisposed to mental health issues, will all receive the best treatment and care without having to consider costs.

In truth, and for the sake of the continuation of our species, we simply cannot afford to do otherwise. 

Paul Edwards

Let’s look at work (1964)

From the April 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

When we speak of work in the social or economic sense, we mean the expending of physical and mental energies upon means of production—either directly, in the creation of wealth, or indirectly in the distribution and administration which arise from production.

Because under capitalism the means of production belong to a minority, the capitalist class, work is earned out under the antagonistic relationship of employer to employee. Therefore, when the Socialist refers to members of the working-class as wage-slaves, he is sticking strictly to what is socially and economically accurate. Workers are compelled to seek out a member of the owning class, or someone who acts on his behalf, like a foreman, manager or state official, in order to offer for sale his physical and mental powers to work. These powers are part of his person and cannot be sold apart from him. The price, be it relatively high or low, which the worker obtains, is commonly referred to as wages. There are, unfortunately, many workers who find the acceptance of their class position distasteful and prefer to call their wages a salary. Such attitudes are skilfully pandered to by the capitalist class and by the politicians who shape their vote-catching accordingly. But they do not affect the facts of the situation one iota.

In order to wrest from nature the wherewithal to live, men have always had to work. Regardless of the claims made for electronics and automation, they will always have to do so. Nor is a situation wherein men did not have to work the least bit desirable. The great crime of capitalism is that it reduces the class that works to simply chasing pay-packets, so that money becomes the object of all social productive activities, and the work itself regarded as an evil necessity.

The idea of doing something useful and taking pleasure in doing it well, is something which survives only faintly, and against tremendous pressure. Capitalism, with its profit motive, so distorts and debases everything that people, for example, whose job it is to tell lies on television commercials are held in higher regard than road-sweepers.

We are taught that it is important to be successful. But here again, capitalism measures success in money terms. If one is an architect, one is successful. If one is a bricklayer, despite the mutual dependency of the two, success is somehow not thought to be a relevant term. To be a good carpenter has nothing to the social esteem that being a pop-singer has. Carpentry can be immensely interesting creative work, but here another aspect of capitalism comes in—the lack of fulfilment. It is the repetition and frustration in most people's lives under capitalism that gives pop-singers and such their exaggerated importance. They represent outlets—avenues of escape from a world which would otherwise drive more people mad than it already does. Even the carpenter has to use cheap materials and speed up his work because capitalism says, “time is money." What pleasure can he get from making hundreds of front doors out of battens and hardboard and filling the hollow with chippings?

It is a remarkable thing that workers in many industries, such as clothing, food and building, spend their lives producing the sham and the shoddy for themselves, and the expensive and luxurious for the wealthy. But despite the absurdity, few seem to notice it.

The answer is to be found in what passes for the “ideology’’ of capitalism. The worker is taught from the earliest age to keep his place and to regard himself as one of the lower orders whose good fortune it is to be allowed to work for an employer. The pulpit, the press, the schools and the state combine to persuade the worker that “all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.” The employer is presented as a noble fellow, a veritable pillar of society whom we would all be lost without. He has got where he is through drive and enterprising zeal and if we work hard enough, and long enough, we too can rise to be captains of industry.

The capitalist class themselves find it necessary to devise a variety of means to make wage-slavery more acceptable. Having removed the pleasure from work and spread the notion that the only possible incentive is money, they have made work a drudge. Instead of workers willingly and happily doing something which they find interesting and can see to be useful, they largely resent the daily grind. It is common opinion that nobody really wants to work. Yet what is really objectionable is the oppressive conditions under which work is carried on. The time-clock, the army of foremen, music while you work, and the constant attempts to speed up, all testify to the antagonism between capitalist and worker. Although the existence of the class struggle is strenuously denied by the apologists of the system, we still find workers organised in trade unions, and employers in various associations, to wrangle interminably about the degree and conditions of exploitation.

The antagonistic relations of production will be abolished with the establishment of Socialism. The merchandising of human energies will end when the separation of the producers from the means of production is finished. The poverty and insecurity of the working-class is inseparable from the wages-system. Workers can be hired and fired according to the state of trade. When a slump comes along, the mass of unsaleable wealth coexists with the increased privation of the producers. Socialism means making the productive resources the common property of society. When people are socially equal there will be a real incentive to work. The only end in view will be the satisfaction of human needs. Money will no longer dominate our thoughts and actions. With the removal of capitalism from the world, all the dirty work of armaments, armies, navies and air-forces and the useless monotony of banking, insurance, and commercial advertising will disappear.

Harry Baldwin

Against the market (1992)

From the November 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialism will uproot every vestige of the market economy. As socialists, we do not accept the need for some “invisible hand” beyond the control of human beings, to govern human affairs and give them coherence.

We deny emphatically that a complex modern society that can leave its footprints on the face of the moon as surely as it can detect the sex of an unborn baby, is only possible because individuals submit themselves to the discipline of the marketplace. We reject the ahistorical belief that human history, which only recently gave rise to one class that prostitutes itself to another for a wage or salary, has come to an end in the experience of contemporary capitalism.

In this battle of ideas what is being contested is what it means to be a human being.

Poverty and plenty
Capitalism is a system riven by contradiction. At the most basic level there is, in Marxist terminology, a contradiction between its “forces of production”, the technological potential that capitalism has built up. and its “relations of production” that work to limit or constrain the manifestation of this potential. Economic scarcity is artificially maintained for the sake of perpetuating an outdated social system.

To perpetuate a system which has “objectively” outlived its use it is imperative that it be subjectively entrenched. For it cannot continue without the acquiescence of the majority upon whom the burden of its shortcomings fall. It thus needs to account for these in ways that deflect criticism from itself.

Take poverty for example. As in the Victorian era, so today there is a tendency to see this as something which is, unwittingly or otherwise, self-inflicted. This personalisation of blame is the mirror image of the myth of the “self-made man"; in each case the explanation for an individual’s fate is held to lie within the individual concerned. By the same token, society congratulates the millionaire on his millions and washes its hands of the pauper’s poverty. The interconnection between them is lost, broken and mystified in this fragmented and individualistic world-view.

That the roots of poverty are fundamentally structural cannot be doubted. Consider the facts. Why, for example, does homelessness exist when, in Britain alone, literally hundreds of thousands of homes stand empty and large numbers of building workers cannot find work? Why is food allowed to be dumped and farmers paid not to produce when there are millions of people grossly underfed?

Clearly, something gets in the way of satisfying human needs that could be so easily met. That something is the overriding priority of the profit motive. The market economy does satisfy some human needs but only incidentally and on condition that they are backed up by purchasing power. Yet the very means whereby working people express their purchasing power—their wages and salaries—constitute costs that have constantly to be curtailed to ensure profitability in a competitive market.

Empty houses and unploughed fields represent only the visible tip of an iceberg of structural waste. Arguably, of much greater significance are those activities which, though integral to the operation of a capitalist economy, do not meaningfully contribute to the satisfaction of human needs.

Such activities, directly or indirectly, account for roughly half the total workforce in the formal sector today and absorb huge quantities of resources. They embrace a vast range of occupations—from ticket collectors to tax consultants, from pay clerks to pension-fund managers. They vividly illustrate the potential of production that is trapped under capitalism, a potential that can only truly be glimpsed from a perspective that is fundamentally anti-capitalist.

In a socialist society such activities would cease to have any purpose; they would simply stop. The labour and resources tied up in them will be redirected into socially useful production. With productive effort much more effectively targeted, far more could be produced to satisfy human needs even without a commensurate increase in total effort.

This growing burden of structural waste is the most potent manifestation of what is capitalism's major contradiction. But what is the practical significance of this contradiction for the process of changing society?

We should not put a too mechanistic construction on this process. For a growing contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production to translate into an intensification of class struggle would seem to imply something else must happen. Otherwise there is no reason to suppose that the contradiction could not grow indefinitely without having any discernible effect on social attitudes.

One possibility is that working people would need to undergo a marked deterioration in their living standards in order to adopt a more militant class conscious outlook. However, there is again no reason to suppose that the development of capitalism and the exacerbation of its inner contradiction will bring about absolute impoverishment. In fact. Marx foresaw the possibility of the development of capitalism being accompanied by an absolute rise in the living standards of the working class (albeit a relative fall by comparison with the wealth of the capitalists). Moreover, far from absolute impoverishment being a necessary precondition of class militancy, the opposite was more likely to be the case: his analysis of the “lumpenproletariat” in 19th century France suggests that it was precisely this most downtrodden and impoverished section of the working class which was most easily co-opted into the most reactionary of causes.

By and large the living standards of the working class have risen significantly since Marx's day. While we should not judge progress by the yardstick of what our grandparents lacked but, rather, according to what we are capable of realising today, it is clear that the absolute impoverishment of the working class in the developed world (and over the long term) has not happened. And barring some unforeseen ecological collapse of our life-support systems, precipitated by capitalism's rapacious short-sighted appetite for economic-growth, it is unlikely to happen.

We should not overstate the extent of this material success. We would do well to remind ourselves that even in the most developed parts of the developed world there are still millions of people in a chronic condition of wretched hunger. In the United States, some 9 percent of the population— 12 million children and 8 million adults— do not receive a sufficient nutrient intake for growth and good health (Scientific American, February 1987). Nevertheless 9 percent of the population do not constitute a majority and. indeed, according to most nutritionists a much larger percentage of the American population are overfed.

Turning to the underdeveloped world, however, we find a very different situation. Since the war, the income-gap between them and the developed world has steadily widened as has the distribution of wealth within many of these countries. In some of them—notably in sub-Saharan Africa—living standards have fallen as a consequence of the encroachment of market forces on the subsistence economy.

It is sometimes argued that the success of capitalism—and by implication, the continuing justification for it—may be judged by the fact that it is able to support a larger, and still growing, population than ever before. This, of course, glosses over the fact that a significant proportion of the food produced—in parts of Africa, up to 80 percent—does not enter the market economy at all. Without the safety net of the subsistence economy, famine on a catastrophic level would surely ensue. More to the point, is the fact that we have the technological knowledge and resources today to make hunger everywhere a scourge of the past; it is because it has failed to utilise this potential that capitalism stands indicted.

Paradoxically, the more capitalism erodes the absolute foundations of material poverty, the more “spiritually” impoverished and alienated do our lives become. Like the mythical snake doomed constantly to devour its own tail, we can never find satisfaction or peace. Urged on by the advertisers’ hype to consume without limit, we pursue what must forever elude us.

“We are”, observed Erich Fromm, “a society of notoriously unhappy people: lonely, anxious, depressed, destructive, dependent—people who are glad when we have killed the time we are trying so hard to save” (To Have or to Be?, 1976). In the face of this organised meaninglessness of the marketplace we retreat into a protective shell. Rather than engage with the world we seek to escape it. As Robert Cooperstein perceptively points out. it is not that “commodities do not provide the illusion of real satisfaction so much as they satisfy the real need for illusion" (The Crisis of the Gross National Spectacle).

Life, in short, has become a kind of spectator sport. We move through it, each in his or her own little fragile bubble of existence, buffeted by forces too diffuse to comprehend and too powerful to overcome.

Yet, in the end, human beings cannot be reduced to so many electrons along an electric current. We are not mere units to be pushed around by a world market and pressed into hired labour at the whim of capital. We need to validate our own identity as social and human beings by meaningfully participating in the life of others. We need to express ourselves in ways that contribute to the common good, to be valued and wanted for what we can give to society in return for the benefits of being a member of it.

Capitalism is a system of wage slavery notwithstanding the spurious freedom of the wage contract. It cannot be otherwise where the means of production are monopolised by a small minority. It imposes upon us conditions that conflict with our deepest needs.

This theme is one that socialists need to address as the old images of cloth-capped poverty fade from the social landscape.The realisation that human beings do not live by bread alone compels us to expand our definition of basic needs to embrace also our emotional needs as an integral part of human existence.

Mary Midgley argues brilliantly in her stinging attack on the existentialists for whom “hell is other people":

  The notion that we “have a nature", far from threatening the concept of freedom, is absolutely essential to it. If we were genuinely plastic and indeterminate at birth, there could be no reason why society should not stamp us into any shape that might suit it.

Even Marx

  though he officially dropped the notion of human nature and often attacked the term, relied on the idea as much as anybody else for his crucial notion of dehumanisation. (Beast and Man).

To attempt to incorporate a “moral dimension" into the cut-throat world of capitalist competition—as exemplified by such organisations as the Institute of Business Ethics—must remain a futile gesture. Capitalism cannot be humanised. The segregation of morals and money is as entrenched today as when the limited company was first legislated for, relieving investors of any liability beyond the sum they invested.

If human values are to prevail over money values this will surely come about in spite of capitalism and not because of it It will come about as a result of a growing and resolute movement working in opposition to capitalism. And it will find its ultimate expression in a new type of society that will not place morality on a public pedestal as an impractical yardstick by which to judge its transgressors but will integrate it into every aspect of social life. Society will come to be a seamless whole, an experience which our "primitive*’ forebears once lived through and a prospect which our modern technology, at last unfettered, will greatly enrich.

Robin Cox

Obsessed With Disorder (2013)

The Greasy Pole column from the October 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his keen sense of anticipation for my interesting speech . . . I know that for the hon. Gentleman’s party it is always somebody else’s fault . . . the hon. Gentleman is confused . . . the hon. Gentleman knows that I respect him . . . my hon. Friend is absolutely right . . . (Jim Murphy, Labour MP for East Renfrewshire, House of Commons 16 February 2011).

Debate

As the 2015 election draws nearer, we shall find ourselves under ever fiercer pressure to express our relieved gratitude for the courage and sanity of all the decisions taken by our Members of Parliament. As an early example of this, in summer last June there was a debate in the Commons about mental ill-health and the fact that sufferers of it are restricted in the opportunities open to them in employment and other fields. A surprisingly large clutch of MPs told of their experience of the illness in its various forms. Among them were Labour’s former Defence Minister, the renowned bruiser Kevan Jones and the Conservative ex-general practitioner Sarah Wollaston. In particular, one who seems likely to make it his recurring theme was Charles Walker, MP for the Green Belt (although Sainsbury and Marks and Spencer occupied) Borough of Broxbourne in Hertfordshire. Walker’s condition is not of a kind to make him uncontrollably violent or perilously demented; it is Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) which holds him in a grip of needing to carry out everyday actions-washing his hands, turning lights off – in sets of four. Symptoms can be effectively numberless – and debilitating: Walker relates ‘I say “My grandmother’s hat is green” four times, and then just to be sure I say it another four times, and then in my head I think, better say it 16 times, just in case’. Other sufferers may be compelled to open a door repeatedly to see if there is anyone outside, or to sit with their legs crossed in a particular, even if uncomfortable, way.

OCD

Walker was first aware of having the disease when he was 13 years old. It was worse at university, again when he worked at ‘marketing’ and then when he became an MP – after failing in the 2001 election against the immovable Steve Pound in Ealing North. He is inclined to ‘catastrophise’ – always prepare for the worst. (Although we might ask whether this may be connected with the requirements of ‘marketing’ and all that it implies in the need for unremitting drive to promote the processing of some commodities in the face of competition). And there was the House of Commons, inhabited with those inflated personalities who defend their self-constructed reputation for decisive and effective action against all questioners and faint-hearts, even although they fail to control this essentially anarchic social system. Informed by an interviewer that he is ‘incredibly honest for a politician’, Walker responds: ‘Well I can barely lie’ – which if it were true would in fact isolate him to a degree undreamed of by any victim of OCD.

Symptoms

Some of the speakers in the mental health debate described their symptoms in frighteningly colourful terms but Walker was not among them, preferring to flavour his account with a lighter touch, telling of his family likening him to an extra in Riverdance as he bounces in and out of the room. And he used some relaxed language: ‘Look, it’s not a problem, it really is not: let’s get over it guys and move on’. And then winding up: ‘Hon. Gentlemen, Hon. Ladies and friends, rock and roll, as they say’. But he is capable of a different type of colourful contribution. On 9 November 2005, when he was a new Member, the Blair government were defeated by 322 to 291 votes on their proposal to extend to 90 days the period of detention of terrorist suspects without trial. Walker got himself into the news by shouting ‘Police state’ at Blair, who left the chamber shaking his head in anger and later bitterly denounced his opponents. Walker is not always disrespectful to his leaders. On Margaret Thatcher he ‘… admired her from afar… a great woman, a great Prime Minister and she had love of this country emblazoned on her heart’. But he is not so bedazzled by the present leadership for on the matter of their opposition to the proposed rise in MPs pay he raged that Cameron and Clegg are ‘crass’ and ‘trying to make capital off their MPs’. Even further – and perhaps dangerously, he thinks that ‘there are many, many better people in parliament as humble backbenchers than those at the head of our parties ‘. He does not fit in completely with the Daily Mail stereotype of the predictable right-wing MP from a South England shire for while he thinks that immigration has been too free and rates himself as a Eurosceptic he supports same-sex marriage.

Failure

Mental illness does not take root and proliferate in isolation. There are many examples of it being a defence against the stress of survival in poverty – which validates those psychiatrists who might regard it as comparatively healthy, preferable to surrendering to those pressures. In another field there is a thicket of evidence about the psychiatric damage to soldiers who have survived one type of combat – Iraq, Afghanistan – only to find themselves laid low when they are invalided out and have to face the devastating disciplines of employment and shortage of money. On this basis it might be argued that politicians can endure the frustrations of struggling to reshape the savagery of capitalism only by diagnosing themselves as mental invalids. The history of politics is littered with examples of policies which governments have persisted with when, judged even by their own appalling standards, they were driving themselves into exposed failure. For example Iraq and Afghanistan were preceded by bloody episodes such as the Suez invasion in 1956, Kenya, Palestine… It is the same story in domestic politics, when ministers and their ‘experts’ apply their power over us by insisting on measures which were clearly doomed to failure – the Poll Tax, the Child Support Agency, Norman Lamont’s ERM. Charles Walker may speak about his OCD, apparently unconscious of the fact that trying to govern – to control – capitalism must demand a disorder which is obsessional and compulsive because this is intrinsic to a government’s priority to disguise the awful reality of their sick impotence.

Ivan

What about Marx? (2014)

Book Review from the October 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘What About Me? The Struggle for Identity in a Market–Based Society’, By Paul Verhaeghe. Scribe.

This book, written by a Belgian academic and translated from the Dutch, is fundamentally an attack on ‘neo-liberalism’. He sees it as psychologically extremely destructive and socialists would concur with his withering critique. The great problem is that without any political understanding (which Marx would have provided) he sees this ideology as something new rather than merely the latest propaganda that seeks to justify the continuation of capitalism. One is tempted to think that his scorn is generated (as he indicates) by the penetration of the ideology into his own realm of teaching and psychotherapy ; industrial workers might say, with some justification: ‘welcome to our world’.

With its attempt to measure everything and so turn quality into quantity capitalism famously knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Another flaw in Verhaeghe’s analysis is the contention that human identity is wholly dependent on the relationship with parents who represent moral and ethical values. Socialists would contend that man’s relationship with nature through his desire to constructively change it (his or her work) is fundamental to all human identity and its absence in capitalism is the real genesis of alienation. Verhaeghe has not understood that working to make profits for the parasite class is fundamental to capitalism and as such can never offer mankind the kind of meaningful fulfilling work that he advocates. And so he joins the countless other critics who want to reform the system without really understanding it. His dismisses socialism which conflates with the leftist regimes of the past.

Verhaeghe’s knowledge of Freud is extensive (as one would expect) but it does serve as a warning that a purely psychological approach to mankind’s travails can be very misguided. The work of Erich Fromm and Herbert Marcuse is infinitely superior to this short book because, although dealing with the same subject, the political knowledge expressed is on a par with their psychological understanding. With the exception of one passing reference to Theodore Adorno the author would seem oblivious to the work of the Frankfurt School. This is very odd since they were focused on the very same subject of the book.

Unfortunately the author of this book has no political weaponry with which to destroy  the system that he so clearly despises.

Wez.

Socialism or Zombyism? (2000)

Front cover for the 2001 revised edition.

Book Review from the January 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Two Hundred Pharaohs, Five Billion Slaves . . . Manifesto. Available from Box 100, 178 Whitechapel Road, London. E1 1BJ.

“In short the conditions already exist for us to build a world better than utopia.” This is an inspiring statement for any contribution to revolutionary thought to kick off with, and this manifesto continues in similar style; analysing capitalism’s current trends and the prospects for working class revolution and the achievement of the classless society we call world socialism. This is a thought-provoking publication, and one of scope and detail that a review of this length can’t deal with satisfactorily.

The title refers to the situation we are now faced with: that of the subjection of humanity’s billions to the class interests of a couple of hundred billionaires: the real bourgeoisie. The vast wealth and power of such a numerically tiny class has been accumulated through the process of turning the world population into an exploitable working class, eradicating the peasantry and locking us into the global factory of world capitalism. This class, as this manifesto points out, has waged war to proletarianise the world, making capitalist relations universal. In doing so though it has created its own gravediggers. That’s us: the five billion plus, united by class position and interest, capable of abolishing class society and beginning the beautiful adventure that will be the future human society.

Though we in the Socialist Party would wish some debate on the means by which the working class majority can achieve a transformation of society, there is much here we can agree with. The need, for instance, for revolutionaries to organise openly and democratically, and in complete opposition to the “vanguards” of the Left, who are always on hand to protect and serve the capitalist system. Also, socialists will disagree with the view of “socialism” as some sort of utopian capitalist business strategy rather than a description of a classless society. Nevertheless this is a publication that socialists will find very interesting.

Of great insight, for example, is the analysis of capitalism’s efforts to colonise every second of our lives, fully subsuming our “leisure” time as it has our working time:

  “A situation in which every waking moment of a worker’s life is an uninterrupted experience of either factory labour (the regimented labour of the office, factory, retail unit or commercial hotel etc.) or intensified shopping.”

Epitomising this process is the march of the Mega-Malls, which began with Canada’s West Edmonton Mall in 1984, and now includes developments such as the MetroCentre, Bluewater etc. in Britain. The Mega-Mall, an “awesome neon cathedral” of retail and “leisure” is the environment in which we are meant to wander, controlled and spellbound. This it seems is capitalism’s vision of the future in its “advanced” nations: a docile, profit producing working class who will revert to being Consumer Zombies when we are let out to play.

Which is all very reminiscent of George Romero’s film Day of the Dead, where the Living Dead converge on The Mall, as it is the only thing they remember from their human existence. But we are not zombies; we are human beings and we need better than this. We can choose life. We can choose revolution.

Ben Malcolm

Rear View: Rage against the machine (2016)

The Rear View Column from the June 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

Rage against the machine

‘Decelles, a scientist at Princeton, has just published some very telling research that illustrates the broader social costs of unequal treatment by focusing on a very specific instance. She looked at what happens when those travelling in economy class on a plane pass through the first-class section on the way to their seat, and found that this encouraged bad behaviour . . .  Much less predictable was the discovery that when economy-class travellers have shuffled past the luxurious first-class seats on their way to the back of the plane, first-class travellers become more badly behaved too. In fact . . . it’s possible the first-class traveller is just as prone to raging at the cabin crew as the one in economy, when – and this is the bit that matters – they both are made unavoidably aware of the difference in their status’ (theguardian.com, 4 May). These remarks would come as no surprise to Marx. He made a similar observation: ‘a house may be large or small; as long as the neighboring houses are likewise small, it satisfies all social requirement for a residence. But let there arise next to the little house a palace, and the little house shrinks to a hut. The little house now makes it clear that its inmate has no social position at all to maintain’.

Work, work, work

Socialism will not see the end of all boring work, but many occupations considered so will simply not exist as a result of automation or historical redundancy. A world of production for use not profit will have no use for banks, bookmakers, cashiers, economists, estate agents, loan sharks, security staff, stock brokers, etc. This should be of interest to wage slaves everywhere, including 44-year-old Parisian Frédéric Desnard, who ‘. . .  is demanding more than $400,000 from his former employer, a perfume enterprise, as compensation for the boredom it allegedly caused. According to the Frenchman, the company should be held responsible for mental and other health damages’ (washingtonpost.com, 5 May). Frederic also states that he was ‘ashamed to be paid to do nothing’. Usually being paid to do nothing, or nothing useful, is the preserve of the capitalist. Bored members of the 1 percent are welcome to apply for membership of the Socialist Party and do something more meaningful instead. Capitalism stinks: vive la révolution!

Money first, medicine second

Who needs gods when we can make the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk and bring back the dead? We can perform many other miracles, but capitalism rather than lack of ardent prayer gets in the way. We can cure many diseases once considered fatal. ‘Hepatitis C-related deaths reached an all-time high in 2014, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Wednesday, surpassing total combined deaths from 60 other infectious diseases including HIV, pneumococcal disease and tuberculosis. The increase occurred despite recent advances in medications that can cure most infections within three months’ (cnn.com, 4 May). Treatments are developed with profit not people in mind. Can’t pay, can’t have. This is the situation throughout the world. In central and west Africa as many as five million AIDS sufferers have no access to anti-retroviral drugs. Former South African President Thabo Mbeki promoted alternative remedies such as vinegar rather than ARVs, which saved the state’s funds at cost of at least 300,000 lives.

Abortion

‘There are 49 countries in the world today where abortion is still completely illegal. In many more, it is legal only under the narrow pretext of saving a woman’s life, and many other countries have strict regulations relating to abortion that ultimately take away a women’s control over their own bodies even in cases of rape or incest’ (indy100.independent.co.uk, 1 May). Celibate men dressed in frocks, often with more interest in young boys than women, expect their pronouncements on sex to be taken seriously. Lack of sex education and access to contraception as well as the pervasive poison of long dead generations are driving pregnancies among girls and women throughout the world. Lack of pre- and postnatal care for millions results in unnecessary deaths. You know the solution.

Marxism: Inclusive or Reductive? (2016)

From the November 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

Upon reading Karl Marx’s Capital for the first time many are surprised by its inclusive nature. Instead of the anticipated focus on economics the reader finds themselves immersed in philosophy, history and literature together with many other references. This is not only a reflection of the author’s well-known reputation as a polymath but it also reminds us that all disciplines are dependent, to a lesser or greater degree, on each other. But how can we reconcile this with the received notion of Marxism as a reductive political theory; that in the final analysis all social relations are dependent on the mode of production?

This may well be one of the reasons that Karl himself was sure that he was not a Marxist. But if a philosopher or historian was to exhaustively give you an account of a social phenomenon without reference to the relevant contemporary economic structure (as some still attempt to do) many of us would feel it to be incomplete at best and misleading at worst. This is primarily what socialists mean when we say we’re Marxists or that we’re using a Marxist analysis; the attempt to see through prevailing ideology and expose the underlying economic relationships that create such intellectual superstructures. This seemingly reductive technique has alienated many intellectuals who like to defend their own sectarian esoteric disciplines by reference to the intellectual division of labour. They reject any attempt to suggest that the multiplicity of theories and philosophies can have a common origin. So is there a contradiction inherent within Marxism between inclusiveness and reductionism?  

When a Marxist speaks of ideology they mean something much more extensive than merely a set of explicit ideas. We refer to the ‘normalisation’ of political and moral values. For instance most people accept the principal of production for profit as a ‘normal’ relationship between people engaged in industry. Socialists point to the ‘abnormality’ of a relationship based on the exploitation of one human by another. Because it has become an unquestioned relationship most economists fail to see its underlying exploitative nature. Without the benefit of a Marxist perspective they can never fully understand economics. Some propagandists are aware of this and for them the infamous phrase of Dr Goebbels that: ‘If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it’ seems as true as it ever was. This is not to say that all studies in economics since Marx have been pointless but they are incomplete without his contributions.

Another feature of the relationship of exploitation within capitalism is called alienation. This occurs because of the lack of control the individual feels during their productive life. The great joy of creative production is replaced by a monotonous set of increasing targets and goals presided over by a ‘boss’ who makes the decisions in the name of profit. The resulting depression and emotional exhaustion will be presented to a doctor who will fail to see or fail to act on the basic underlying inhuman relationships that create such alienation. So again, in the absence of a Marxist analysis psychology and medicine must inevitably fail the individual in terms of their mental and physical health.

We can see that in the absence of a penetrating political analysis both the disciplines of economics and psychology are impotent. We can make a similar case for history, philosophy, sociology etc. (probably all of the ‘humanities’ within which, this author at least, includes the ‘social sciences’). Having made the case that many disciplines are incomplete without the insights available via the Marxist perspective, can we also say that Marxism itself would be weakened without the inclusion of at least some of the discoveries made by these other disciplines?

Could it be that rather than providing alternative explanations for social development they are, in fact, complementary parts of the same whole – at least potentially, once they’re stripped of ideological prejudice. The intellectual division of labour has served to disguise the real focus of study. This division, in its turn, serves the ideological purpose of preventing access to the truth. It is not that Marxism is reductive but that philosophy, economics, psychology, history, anthropology etc. are unaware that their goal is the same as Marxism – the understanding of, and the liberation from, the causes of human suffering. Many of humanity’s intellectual pursuits have this political nature and Marxism represents the first structural understanding of this simple fact. Seen in this light the intellectual sectarianism and inter-discipline competition we perceive today is utterly absurd.

This may seem to most people to be an unduly idealistic view of the motivation for intellectual endeavour but Marxists reject the idea that the belief in human potential is rooted in delusional ideals. We are well aware that many are motivated by greed, status and sometimes by pure curiosity alone but this is rarely the whole story of those who make the significant discoveries. To look at it another way, as said earlier, it is apparent that all disciplines are dependent on each other. How could it be otherwise since global human culture represents an integrated whole? Any attempt to compartmentalise knowledge entirely must inevitably end with error and confusion.

Marx may well have rejected the label ‘Marxism’ for the reasons outlined above. It seemed absurd to him that the interdisciplinary study of human development should be compartmentalised into a sectarian ideology bearing his name. We only use the phrase today to emphasise the contrast it represents to contemporary approaches in the study of politics. It is one of the great ironies of history that through the political ignorance of many of those who have proclaimed his name during moments of political turmoil it has become identified with absolutism and dogmatic reductionism. 

Wez

The Market System – Bull, Bear and Black Dog (2017)

The Pathfinders Column from the May 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

One thing guaranteed to bring out the worst in socialists is rich people banging on about their problems, but one would have to have a heart of stone not to feel some sympathy in the recent stories of princes Harry and William speaking out about their mental health problems after the death of their mother Diana 20 years ago. The revelations were quickly joined by others from Lady Gaga and the CEO of Virgin Money until, ok we get the idea . . . money doesn’t necessarily buy you happiness. But as some wit once remarked, if you think that, try poverty.

And one thing the poor are not poor in is mental health problems. The US Centers for Disease Control 2017 survey reports that 8 million adult Americans, or 3.4 percent, have such problems (New Scientist, 17 April) however this is likely to be an order-of-magnitude underestimation, as under-reporting in this area is rife. According to a 2016 report by the charity MIND, in the UK almost half of adults (43.4 percent) think they have had a ‘diagnosable mental health condition’ during their lives, and while around 20 percent of men and 34 percent of women have had this suspicion confirmed by medical professionals (mentalhealth.org.uk), a further 30 percent said they had never consulted a doctor. This is consistent with a lack of self-reporting across all areas of mental health, possibly because people try to tough it out, or else do not understand that they are suffering from an illness which might be treated but instead believe that they are personally inadequate in some way, for which no cure exists. Women suffer more in all categories. 1 in 4 young women self-harm, an alarming statistic given that self-harm is the most reliable risk factor in subsequent suicide – 1 in 25 hospitalised self-harmers will kill themselves within 5 years. Among UK residents aged 10 or over there is currently around one suicide every two hours (2014 figures). Ironically, given that such people typically have a low or zero sense of self-worth, MIND informs us that the average cost of a suicide, in terms not just of police, hospital and funeral costs, but also of loss of total lifetime ‘output’, is £1.7 million.

Globally, according to the World Health Organisation, mental health problems that are left untreated form 13 percent of the total disease burden, and will by 2030 be the biggest cause of death. The WHO estimates that nearly half the world’s population suffer from some form of mental illness. That’s more than from cancer, heart disease or diabetes. Costs are literally incalculable, as many factors are involved. Costs to the UK economy alone are estimated at between £70–100 billion. Global costs are projected to reach $6 trillion by 2030.

What can capitalism do about any of this? It can’t abolish poverty, a well-documented cause of mental illness. To do that, it would also have to abolish the privilege and luxury of the elite. It can’t abolish its own hierarchy, another well-known cause. It can’t get rid of war, or crime. It can’t take the stress, fear and anxiety out of being a wage-slave except by abolishing wage slavery. It can’t do anything about the entire matrix of oppressions which begins with the CEO yelling at the executive and ends with the black girl kicking the cat. Capitalism is the embodiment of mental illness, a destructive society pathologically bent on chasing its own end. If it was a person, it would be hospitalised as dangerously insane. That half of the population suffer mental illness is not surprising. What is surprising is that the other half don’t, or say they don’t. But then, perhaps nobody really knows, in capitalism, what good mental health even looks like. In a society full of broken people, just managing to get through the day may be deemed ‘healthy’.

Socialism, in doing away with property society’s rules, would do away with most if not all of the environmental factors in mental illness. It’s not a magic cure-all. It can’t address chemical or genetic factors, at least not without more research. It can’t do anything about bereavement. But what it could do is give people a decent life without fear, without low status and a consequent sense of low self-worth. It could give people the support of a strong community, a sense of open possibilities and the freedom to explore them, a chance to determine their own identity and desires and to have these acknowledged and respected by others. There’s nothing magic about it. Socialism would simply stop torturing people. And if that sounds like a hopeless daydream, it’s only because you’re so used to living in a nightmare.

Paddy Shannon

I’m Putting on my Black Hat . . . (2017)

The Pathfinders Column from the June 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

It’s probably not the first question you need to ask about the practical workings of socialism, but given the recent panic about NHS trusts suffering ‘ransomware’ cyber-attacks you might be tempted to wonder what a future socialist society would do about a potential cyber-induced system shutdown. Leaving aside the fact that hopefully socialists wouldn’t be as daft as some of these trusts are alleged to have been in ignoring repeated warnings and not upgrading their obsolete operating systems, there is the question of why anyone in a free and cooperative non-market society would launch such an attack in the first place. In socialism there would be no money to extort from victims, and it seems difficult to envisage anyone being so zealously anti-social as to try to take out a hospital for the sheer hell of it.

But still we can’t be sure. On the face of it, socialism once established would be highly inclined to apply the same principle to its cyber systems as to any other of its systems, which is to say open and accessible, without locks, passwords, public or private keys, codes or captchas. Would this be asking for trouble? Maybe. Socialism in its infancy would be wise to take precautions against petty reactionary vandalism. But the way that mature socialism would work would tend to militate against vulnerability.

First, one of the reasons the Windows operating system is so hard to defend against attack is that its source code is kept secret, for business reasons, and therefore friendly ‘white hat’ hackers are kept out of the loop and unable to help spot flaws. Contrary to what Apple acolytes so often claim, the reason Apple rarely gets hit is not because it is superior but because it locks out all non-Apple software while Windows is an open platform, and because relatively few people use its desktop operating system so ‘black hatters’ are not so tempted to tinker with it.

Second, in socialism there would be no financial or other incentive to refuse or forget to update obsolete systems. If anti-virus software was deemed necessary, it would be state-of-the-art and automatically installed and updated. One of capitalism’s more minor stupidities is putting the financial onus on individuals to protect themselves and thereby society against digital or biological infections, where common sense would dictate making such protection free and universal.

Third, though it would make sense to standardise hardware to maximise repair and reuse, socialism could choose to adopt a diversity policy over software similar to agriculture, the idea being that monocrops spread plague whereas diversity diminishes their effectiveness. There isn’t just one way to write a program, there are potentially hundreds or even thousands, but capitalist competition tends to destroy all variants until only one is left. Socialism, to immunise itself, could in theory do the exact opposite and encourage as much cyber-diversity as possible, though such redundant complexity would not be without its own problems.

Lastly, there is the matter of widespread anonymity in the capitalist web, surely an affront to the socialist ethic of transparency. Hackers hide behind elaborate mazes of their own making, which socialism would have every reason to demolish. Such openness might make people nicer online too. An interesting study has shown that trolling behaviour is generated where two conditions are met: first, the online environment is hostile so that users feel antagonised, and second, the users are anonymous. Where there was no anonymity, the hostile environment still triggered some trolling but not as much, and where anonymity and hostility were both absent, a ‘virtuous circle’ resulted, where well-behaved peers encouraged good behaviour in turn (New Scientist, 13 May). There’s no reason to think that socialism wouldn’t do something similar.

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It’s alive, it’s ALIVE!

Sex dolls that make small talk, recognise your face and get jealous of your Facebook friends? Yup, they’re now on sale at around $10,000 (BBC Online, 15 May). That’s great news for agalmatophiliacs everywhere. Pygmalion eat your heart out. Of course, the dolls don’t have much of an emotional range or even very sophisticated vocabulary, but then that probably suits the buyers very well. Many of them view their acquisition in terms of a ‘relationship’. One says ‘I can go out shopping for her and look for clothes – it is like having somebody in my life without having to deal with making mistakes. If I like a hat on her, she doesn’t say that she doesn’t like it.’ No indeed, because of course you can program their moods for them, even choosing to allow them to be moody, angry and jealous. Oh, and of course you can customise their bodies too, according to taste. But social acceptability is another matter and it may be a while before the happy hat-buyer is willing to go out shopping with his doll instead of for it.

Ethically it would be less accurate to say that the jury is out than that the jury has not been sworn in yet. Last time we mentioned this horizon tech (October 2015) things were still very much at the prototype stage, but already some academics were crying foul and calling for an outright ban. Now one of them has changed her mind, deciding that dolls aren’t really the problem, we humans are, in particular our ugly habit (that is to say capitalism’s ugly habit) of turning us into objectified and disposable machine tools. Meanwhile other academics guardedly suggest such developments might be a good thing if they help lonely and unhappy people with little chance of a real relationship. Maybe so, but the plot thickens when you start talking about child sex robots. If none are currently in secret development, one wonders how long it will take capitalism to pounce on the possibility.

Here’s a happier thought – what if they start designing politician sex robots? We could program them to be honest, truthful, incorruptible, selfless and competent. Silly idea, we know. But at least then we’d be screwing them instead of them always screwing us.

Paddy Shannon

The Real Project Fear (2017)

From the September 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

Supporters of Brexit use the expression ‘Project Fear’ to describe the views of those who wanted, and perhaps still want, Britain to remain in the European Union. The Remainers, it is suggested, used scaremongering to claim that leaving the EU would be a step into the unknown, where nobody knew what awaited. Putting fear into people’s minds was supposedly not a valid political or economic argument.

But in fact a much wider situation involving fear can be identified. For capitalism makes great use of fear among the vast majority of people: fear of unemployment, losing one’s home, insecurity, and so on. In some cases the word ‘fear’ may be an overstatement, so in what follows we will mostly speak of worry or anxiety, but all too often there truly will be fear in workers’ minds.

Firstly, people may worry about not finding a job at all, or not finding one that pays enough for them to live on or that makes appropriate use of their abilities and qualifications. If they have a job, they may be anxious about keeping it or being put on short time or, alternatively, having their hours extended without extra pay. If they are on a zero-hours contract or working elsewhere in the gig economy, they may worry about having enough work or being treated reasonably by their employer. Standing up for their interests at work may lead to victimisation. Even those in relatively prestigious occupations such as university lecturers are increasingly being faced with the threat of redundancy or being placed in an ‘at-risk pool’.

With the housing situation becoming more and more problematic, many people do fear being unable to find somewhere adequate and affordable and within suitable travelling distance of their place of work. They may worry about being unable to keep up with their mortgage or paying their rent. They know they may be evicted if they complain to the landlord about damp in their flat, say, or be concerned about what will happen if they have another child. Losing a job or suffering long-term illness may make keeping a roof over your head difficult, and these and other considerations all add to the fear of being homeless.

For many people their wages are barely enough to live on, resulting in constant concern about paying for food and heating. Being unable to afford a holiday or Christmas presents for the kids can be extremely stressful, and anxiety about surviving on a pension is also commonplace. Concern about being unable to repay a student loan can be worrying, too.

Those who are struggling to make ends meet may well have recourse to pay-day lenders or buying household goods from shops that charge sky-high interest rates. Even borrowing on a credit card can create difficulties. Being unable to repay the right amount at the right time can lead to enormous problems as debts mount up and what is owed comes to have little connection to the sum originally borrowed. Fear of being in this kind of situation can really take over a person’s life, and even lead to them committing suicide.

Living on state benefits of one kind or another can also be extremely worrying. Quite apart from the fact that the money received in this way is rarely truly adequate, and the continual pressure to demonstrate that you genuinely are looking for a job, there is the constant fear of having the benefit taken away, of being declared fit to work as a result of some arbitrary medical test or losing housing benefit through having ‘too many rooms’.

We do not want to exaggerate and say that all workers live in constant fear of losing their job or their home, but the possibility is always there, and people are often reminded of it by what happens to a relative, neighbour, colleague or friend. Nor are we saying that this is some kind of deliberate plot to frighten and harass workers, just that it is a genuine situation. Real Fear has nothing to do with the EU but is an intrinsic part of working-class life under capitalism. 

Paul Bennett

Image And Identity (2018)

The Proper Gander column from the June 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

BBC 3’s recent season of documentaries about body image raised plenty of questions about the importance we place on looks, and the effect this has on how we see ourselves. Each of the programmes feature people who don’t fit in with mainstream conceptions of what body image ‘should’ be. Shows such as Fat, Glam And Don’t Give A Damn and Too Fat For Love? focus on the lives of larger people, while the Misfits Like Us series brings together people with debilitating skin problems to learn about each other’s experiences. Two of these programmes follow people who live with scarring from burns and the skin condition vitiligo. This is a disorder which affects pigmentation cells, leaving pale patches on the skin. Little is known about its causes, and although there are some treatments available, there is currently no cure. Around 600,000 people in the UK have the condition.

Obesity, vitiligo and scarring often have as much of an effect on someone’s mental health as they do on their physical wellbeing. A lifetime of being stared at, bullied, and hearing abusive comments can ruin someone’s confidence. Social media provides an easy platform for trolls to hurl insults at people, although Misfits Like Us emphasises the positive aspects of social media, through using it to find others in similar circumstances or in receiving supportive messages.

Our self-image, and particularly how attractive we consider ourselves and others to be, is strongly influenced by the mainstream media. Emma, a blogger from Preston, draws attention to the judgemental language used to describe large people in news reports. Words like ‘bulging’ and ‘fattest’ are loaded with disapproving connotations, while obesity is reported as a ‘plague’ or ‘epidemic’. According to activist Scottee, fat people in fiction are ‘the funny sidekick or the broken one you feel sorry for – never the romantic hero everyone fancies’. Popular examples from film and TV include ‘Fat Monica’ from the now-unfashionable sitcom Friends, ‘Fat Bastard’ from the Austin Powers films and Mr Creosote from Monty Python. And advertising not only tries to flog us products, but also often sells us the view that success and happiness mean having chiselled, smooth features rather than any other body shape. Attitudes are changing, though, and some adverts now feature a wider range of people, even if this is really just to draw in a wider range of potential punters.

Part of the backlash against negative views about larger people is the ‘body positive movement’, which aims to ditch society’s expectations and appreciate all body types. In Fat, Glam And Don’t Give A Damn, pole dancer Alabama Whirley says that ‘you can be sexy at any size’. For her, pole dancing gives her confidence and appreciation. Some want to reclaim the word ‘fat’ away from its ‘ugly slob’ connotations. According to Scottee, ‘saying the word ‘fat’ removes the stigma around it. The more we use it, the less of a big deal it becomes to be called fat. It’s good for fat people, but it also takes away power from the multi-billion pound diet industry, which feeds off and profits from people’s insecurities’. The labels we apply to ourselves are often an important part of our self-image. Many find that the term ‘burns survivor’ is more empowering than ‘burns victim’, while others dislike labels altogether, not wanting to be defined by their condition.

Each of the people featured in the shows have found their own ways of accepting and living with their situation. Generally, those who aren’t too bothered about prevailing ideals or what other people think seem happier within themselves. Others find it more of a struggle to manage with their conditions, and it certainly helps those with scarring or vitiligo to get support from others with the same problem. People living with vitiligo often use concealer make-up, not only so they can appear more conventional, but also to give them self-assurance. Some find a new confidence in going outside without wearing make-up.

Unfortunately, not everyone copes well, and some people’s concerns about their body image lead to eating disorders. Anorexia and bulimia aren’t just unhealthy ways of trying to lose weight, they also represent an attempt to maintain a kind of self-control in a society where we often feel overwhelmed by outside pressures. A particularly difficult condition is described in the documentary Diabulimia: The World’s Most Dangerous Eating Disorder.

Diabulimia affects people with type one diabetes who fear that taking insulin causes weight gain. Consequently, they avoid taking the medication, which risks dangerously high blood sugar levels and other complications. But, as one person with the condition has believed, ‘it’s much more important to be skinny’ than to take insulin. According to studies made in 2010 and 2015, it is estimated that at least a third of adolescents and young adults with type one diabetes omit or reduce insulin in order to lose weight, and by the age of 25, 60 percent of women with type one diabetes will have experienced an eating disorder. One of the people interviewed says that diabetes itself is isolating and stressful, so it’s easy to go downhill mentally.

Despite its prevalence, tailored support and medical treatment for diabulimia is very scarce. The NHS’s separation of mental and physical healthcare means that sufferers of diabulimia fall between services. Psychiatric hospitals aren’t set up to deal with the physical aspects of the condition, and mainstream hospitals lack sufficient mental health expertise. Similarly, the emotional and psychological needs of people with obesity, scarring, vitiligo and countless other conditions aren’t adequately catered for.

Capitalist society creates or contributes to many health problems, but can never find enough resources to treat them. Adequate medical care and counselling is expensive, without an obvious enough financial return, whereas there’s money to be made from media which promotes an idealised body image. Advertising, films and TV have sold us the idea that popularity and achievement come with a particular set of looks. And our divisive, competitive society encourages us to judge ourselves and anyone outside these standards, making many people feel marginalised and depressed. Those featured in the BBC 3 programmes have shown strength and determination to fight back against society’s pressures.

Mike Foster

Personal Growth or Social Revolution? (1989)

From the August 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Open a few Sunday colour supplements and you’re likely to see a mention of some variety of “Personal Growth”. Look at the notices on the wall in most health food shops, or look in the back of city’s listing magazines and you’ll see adverts for this or that new approach. This term has come to refer to a whole variety of psychotherapies, holistic health methods, mystical approaches and self-improvement techniques. You may also see it referred to as “humanistic psychology”, “the human potential movement”, or “the growth movement”. If we were to make a rough and ready list of the sorts of things that might be included under these banners, we could start with encounter groups, meditation, natural health food approaches, Gestalt therapy, massage, and rebirthing. We also get approaches mixing religion and therapy such as “Zencounter” or “Zenanalysis”. Many of these approaches have become very popular, and are big money-spinners in the United States.

Changing the individual

So what are the common themes behind all these various ways to personal growth? At the risk of lumping together a lot of approaches whose practitioners hate each other, we could say that all of them aim to increase the individual’s ability to live life to the full and experience the world. They’re often concerned with emotions rather than our intellect. As Fritz Perls said, “Don’t think, feel. Lose your mind and come to your senses”.

Most writers in this area concentrate on the need for individuals to become more at ease with themselves. All of them argue that the so-called “normal” way that we live our lives today is frustrating and unsatisfying; and that we only fulfil a small part of our potential. Some writers blame this on the social system. For example:

    We are aggressive, compulsive and individualistic because these traits make us easily exploitable as workers and citizens (C. Steiner Scripts People Live).
   We have created a system that divides society and produces institutions to frustrate individual needs. At the same time, ideologies are created to justify this arrangement and to ensure that it will continue (A. Janov Prisoners of Pain).

To this extent, socialists would share their view that the world as it is now doesn’t offer most people the chance to grow and develop and agree with a more flexible approach to human nature than the “Original Sin” notions of Thatcher and her cronies. Where we differ from those involved in personal growth is how to radically improve the world.

For example, it can’t be stressed enough how personal growth writers see changing the individual as the main way forward. For example, here’s Carl Rogers talking about how the world will change:

  I see the revolution as coming not in some great organized movement, not in gun carrying armies with banners, not in manifestoes and declarations but through the emergence of a new kind of person, thrusting upwards through the dying, yellow, putrefying leaves and talks of our fading institutions (Carl Rogers on Personal Power).

Even more bold is Marilyn Ferguson:

   The great shuddering irrevocable shift overtaking us is not a new political or philosophical system. It is a new mind (The Aquarian Conspiracy)

Over and over again you see the same themes. The new society will come about through people undergoing change individually. Once enough people have changed radically enough, a new society will spontaneously evolve which will reflect the healthy characteristics of these new persons.

Changing Society

Well, what’s wrong with that? Don’t socialists want people to change before we can hope to bring socialism into existence.

Well yes, but we see changing present-day society as rather different. To get socialism you need a majority of workers in the world who are clear beforehand of how they see a new society working. But personal growth writers are prepared to accept that big improvements can be brought about in the way people relate without radically changing society first. For example, Carl Rogers describes how person-centred approaches to management radically improved the experience of individuals in firms. A “happy” by-product of this was increased productivity and profits! Even worse, here’s Ferguson again: “The military, with its guaranteed financial base, has more opportunity to fund innovation than any other institution”.

The innovation that the military funds has more to do with deadly nerve gases and neutron bombs than peaceful development of individuals. Of course, the military might use its resources for the common good to relieve starvation and destroy its weapons, in the same way that President Bush might join the Socialist Party tomorrow. Neither is at all likely, though.

The problem with a lot of writing about personal growth and how it’s supposed to bring about social transformation is that changing the person often becomes a lot more important than changing society. Once you’ve been through some sort of personal growth you may well feel that you’re living in a different world. Unfortunately it’s only your perception of the world that’s changed. Capitalism works pretty much the same whatever psychic self-improvement we may undergo.

Capitalism is a world economic system, it isn’t just a scatter of individuals with hang-ups. You can’t explain the way it works by looking at the individual characters of its component members. For example, social class exists. Rupert Murdoch and a Mexican peasant will still live in a different world even if they punch pillows or play trust games together in the same men’s group. Billionaires will live in the midst of the destitute as long as our social priorities are determined by profit and private property. Attempting to get rid of human misery by giving people psychotherapy is like trying to cure cholera by treating each individual case. It may help a few people, but in the long run it’s far better to clean up the water supply, or in the case of society, end capitalism.

Unless we change the whole obscene system, there will always be serious limits to what “enlightened” individuals can achieve when they try to humanize its consequences. Socialists argue that unless you change the way that things are produced and distributed, social problems will always come up however mature, feeling or laid-back we all are.

As long as things are produced to make a profit, the poor will stay poor, work will be boring and arduous, states will go to war to win economic influence, and valuable resources will be used up persuading us to buy things we don’t want or need. It is a system which gives rise to these problems, not our personal inadequacies. Any system based on private property and money is too inflexible to ever meet fully people’s needs.

Nice but naive

Now supporters of personal growth would get very angry at this point if they weren’t so laid-back. They’d say, “it’s all very well talking about some pie-in-the-sky socialism, but what about now? Let’s change ourselves and those around us, and that’ll change society in a much more solid way. If you fix the shape of the new society too strictly then you won’t be flexible enough to new possibilities”. The trouble is though, unless you’re clear on the sort of society you want, you can end up being pulled in a variety of ways.

Clare and Thompson sum up this dilemma for those going through personal growth:

  Which direction should I take? Should I try to imitate Jesus or Henry Ford or Lenin? Should I try to make money or retreat from the market place? Should I go back to sleep? (Let’s Talk About Me).

It would be nice (but naive) to believe that we were all on the same side, and that people who went through personal growth all came to want to work towards the same exciting and liberating society that we do. However, approaches like Sensitivity Training and Transaction Analysis have been used in the military and large corporations such as IBM and Honeywell (now called Bull). Some growth practitioners have seen the way forward as small businesses. Others have disappeared into communes and co-operatives. The sheer diversity of approaches shows that there’s no hard and fast rule. President Bush might not work towards bringing about a moneyless society even after he’s had personal growth!

None of this is to deny the value of personal growth; it certainly helps some people feel better. What it can’t do is change the society in which it is embedded unless it starts to talk about a revolution in social relations. At the moment, it seems more likely that its ideas will be used for harassed executives looking for greater “personal effectiveness”, and more importantly, better profits for their paymasters.

Unless you challenge the basis of capitalism your ideas will be incorporated into the very society that you set out to revolutionize. The term “personal growth” has become flexible enough to mean pretty well anything, and it is a truly helpless approach when confronted with a world of starvation and war. As one bank executive quoted by Marilyn Ferguson is reported to have said after the awakening of his staff through personal growth seminars: “For my money, these soul searchers are our future”.

Keith Aubrey