‘Antigone’ by Sophocles at the National Theatre (2012)

Theatre Review from the September 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Greek tragedy Antigone by Sophocles was recently staged at the National Theatre in London, starring Christopher Eccleston as Creon and Jodie Whitaker as Antigone, the character Hegel described as “the heavenly Antigone, the most magnificent figure”. This production opens with a tableaux modelled on the photograph of President Obama and aides watching the live video feed of the killing of Bin Laden in Pakistan in 2011.

Antigone, the woman of personal courage confronting state oppression has been a source of inspiration for dramatists. For Brecht she was the symbol of popular resistance to the horrors of Nazism. For ‘The Living Theatre’ founder, Judith Malina, Antigone “speaks with an ancient voice that is present wherever there is a willingness to speak against conventional strictures and punitive laws and to invoke the boundless human potential”.

Athenian audiences in the Hellenic Enlightenment would have adopted a more nuanced approach to Antigone, one that was based on the society they were living in.  Marx and Engels identified Ancient Greece as a society based on slavery, where agriculture was still developing, the ‘polis‘ (city state) and private property had appeared, and a ruling class was based on land and slave ownership.

In 5th century BC Athens, a form of ‘democracy’ had developed with a franchise that extended only to male citizens (with no say for slaves and other non-citizens). Athens was run by Boards of Jurors (who were salaried, chosen by lottery, and subject to scrutiny and de-selection), and the Council of 500 (chosen by lottery and examination with restricted tenure). Neither were organs of representative government. The source of direct democracy was in the People’s Assembly where any citizen could vote and speak. The Assembly met 40 days a year, had a quorum of 6,000 and drafted all major legislation.

Antigone, as an individual set against the tyranny of the state in the person of Creon, was appreciated by Athenian audiences because only 70 years before there had been authoritarianism. The play’s major themes can be seen as divine/natural law against man-made/state law or private/family life versus public life/citizenship.

JH Bradley in Hegel’s Theory of Tragedy saw the dialectical conflicts in the ethical views represented by Antigone and Creon.  Hegel in Phenomenology of Spirit sees sibling fidelity and the sister-brother relationship (“mutually self-affirming free individualities”) as the strongest possible relationship for a woman within circumscribed family life. In Athens women did not have the vote; they were legally dependent on men, and in the case of Antigone her male guardian is also Creon. Athenian audiences would appreciate the depth of her rebellion not only against the state but also against a man. Hegel identified gender politics, and that patriarchy creates “an enemy within its own gates”. Hegel adores Antigone and believes her to be nobler than Creon.

Sophocles does not have the gods save Antigone, and in Tiresias’s prophecy there is no praise for Antigone. Creon loses his wife, and his ward Antigone, but it is the loss of his son that is the patriarchal tragedy.  For Sophocles and Athenian audiences it is the hubris of Creon which causes this tragedy.

Steve Clayton

Old Gods, New Tricks (2013)

The Halo Halo! Column from the June 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

Since a court ruling in Athens in 2006, it is no longer illegal for Greeks to worship their ancient gods. Just what Dionysus, Apollo and co had done to get themselves declared illegal in the first place is unclear. But anyhow, they’re back, and they’re gaining popularity here and in the US too.

You’d think we’d got enough confusion with the ones we already have. But perhaps that’s it. After 2,000 years we still don’t know whether Jesus is a Protestant or a Catholic, and the Shia and Sunni versions of Allah don’t have much time for each other either. So, with UFO sightings, crop circles and the Loch Ness monster not as popular as they once were, maybe there’s a gap in the mumbo-jumbo market.

Any Christians thinking of converting should find few extra demands on their gullibility. Miraculous deeds and virgin births as a result of liaisons between Zeus and mortal women were ten a penny in the ancient world. They even had a flood myth every bit as good as Noah’s.

Zeus had decided, because of mankind’s wickedness, to destroy the world with a great flood, and Deucalion was advised to build a boat to save his family and animals. After drifting for nine days the flood subsided, and they came to rest on top of a mountain. He was then told by an oracle to repopulate the earth by throwing behind him the bones of his grandmother. Fortunately he interpreted this to mean the stones of mother earth, and these sprang to life as human beings as they fell to the ground.

Another story Christians will have little trouble with is about Heracles and his struggle with temptation.

Bible readers will recall how Jesus, after wandering in the wilderness for 40 days, was tempted by Satan to turn stones into bread. (A fairly sensible suggestion – he could, after all, feed multitudes with a few loaves and fishes). But he refused – for the rather puzzling reason that ‘man does not live by bread alone.’

Satan then took him up a high mountain where they could see ‘all the kingdoms of the world.’ If he bowed down before Satan, he was told, all this would be his. (Satan had apparently forgotten that Jesus was the son of God. His dad made it and already controlled the whole lot.) Not surprisingly, Jesus told him to get stuffed (or rather, to ‘get thee behind me’).

The temptation of Heracles, on the other hand, was a real test. In one of his numerous adventures he was out one day when he came to a fork in the road. One branch was a good, wide road but narrowed and got stony as it went on. By it stood a beautiful, gaudily dressed woman calling him. The other fork was narrow and thorny but got better in the distance. By this was a plain, modestly dressed woman. She also called him. These two, it turned out, were ‘Vice’ and ‘Virtue.’

Now most Greek heroes would have grabbed ‘Vice’ and made off her without even giving her time to fix her makeup. But holier-than-thou Heracles chose ‘Virtue’. That’s what you call willpower over temptation.

(His moral standards did sometimes slip, however. In another story we are told that when visiting the king of Thespis he managed to get all fifty daughters of the king pregnant. This amazing feat was carried out in a single night.)

For anyone determined to believe, then, but finding contemporary gods not bizarre enough, there are a number of Greek paganism websites to help, www.hellenismos.us, for example: ‘Any questions that you would otherwise feel embarrassed to ask, ask here,’ it offers. How embarrassed the average questioner is we can only guess, but one asks:

‘I am currently learning the skill of flint-knapping; that is, the skill of re-creating stone-age tools using stone-age methods. As I was practicing the other day I thought to myself, ‘To which God/Goddess would I make offerings to in this regard?’

The answer – obvious really – was ‘For craftsmen and other similar professions there would be a special devotion to the cult of Hephaistos-Vulcanus, and likewise that of Athene-Minerva Ergane, whose domain is especially that of manufacturing in its various forms.’

Jesus Christ! What happens if they find themselves worshipping the wrong bloody god?

NW

The Society of Tomorrow (1908)

From the September 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

The result of all the more or less ingenious plans of the future society is but to demonstrate the possibility of the Socialist System. All who have nothing to lose and everything to gain by the social transformation easily persuade themselves of the excellence of the future society. Even the petit bourgeois – the small capitalist – having the presentiment of his impending ruin, being tormented by the knowledge of his insecurity and filled with a feeling of vagueness, is quite ready to say “Yes, Socialism is an excellent thing, but, alas! it is Utopia!” And to show you the Utopian character of Socialism he invokes, first, human nature; secondly, the indestructible selfishness of humanity that results in the war of each against all; and thirdly, the opposition of those who possess, which he declares impossible to overcome.

How does the Marxian conception comport itself in order to reduce to nothing this triple impossibility?

Human nature! This has been invoked every time there has been any question of advancing a stage in history. The slave-holders called to witness this same human nature in order to clinch the absolute impossibility of the abolition of chattel slavery. In his “Politics”, Aristotle, “the giant of antique thought”, sought to demonstrate that the Greeks are by their very nature destined to dominate the rest of human kind as masters. Nature is eternal. And every dominant class desires – quite naturally – to eternally prolong the régime which secures its domination and enjoyment: it considers, therefore, its own system as natural. Its nature becomes Nature itself. It does not see beyond its own interests, and it confounds the laws of its own conservation with those of the universe. It suppresses history – which only exists by changes – and invents a physical theory of society, which theory seeks to persuade us that inequality between men socially is as eternal and necessary as that between the organs of the body. The laws of Nature are not slighted with impunity, therefore the system of the exploitation of man by man is, according to the exploiters, a law of Nature. Every revolt against it is consequently madness or a material impossibility.

To these interested sophisms the Marxian conception opposes the true history of humanity. It demonstrates the fact of the perpetual changes that occur and have occurred in forms of production and appropriation.

Human society is a particular case in universal evolution. Nothing is eternal and unchangeable. Everything is variable. By showing that the struggle of the classes is at the base of history, Marxism unveils the historical mechanism and shows that every given social form is entirely relative, entirely conditional.

Classes and systems succeed each other and differ from each other. Thus all objections drawn – by the hair – from that much invoked “human nature” are destroyed. Marxism does not recognise man in abstracto. It knows only the owner of the slave, the feudal lord, the capitalist, the proletarian, and other “historic categories”. It replaces the vague and confused by that which is concrete and clear, and abandons generalities to the psychologists, philosophers, and metaphysicians.

Better still – by analysing scientifically the capitalist system, the Marxian shows not only that Socialist society is possible, but also that it is necessary. Collective organisation of labour is possible because it exists. It is present in the factory, in the mines, in the great stores, in the great financial establishments. It circles the world by railway and ploughs the ocean in Dreadnoughts. Individual exploitation is in flagrant contradiction with this collective organisation. From this come crises – catastrophes which demonstrate more and more that the capitalist system is becoming impossible. Soon it will be no longer for us to show the possibility of Socialism. It will be the task of the partisans of the present tottering system to prove the possibility of its continuation by any normal and progressive development.

As to the selfishness of individuals and of classes, not only does Marxism not deny it, but it utilises it to organise the proletarians into a class party, preoccupied above all with its interests, which, happily, are in complete accord with those of the social organism and of true civilisation.

There remains the third objection – the third pretended impossibility of Socialism – the resistance of those who possess. The Marxian conception is easily victorious. Socialism becomes possible just in the same degree as great capital absorbs smaller capitals, and production on a great scale supersedes small-scale production. Socialists have not to expropriate the owners – they will only expropriate the expropriators. They will restore to society the property which has been stolen from society. They do not fight private ownership of objects of immediate consumption. They struggle against capitalist property, against the oligarchy of property – the monopoly of the means of production.

The possibility – nay, more, the inevitable historic necessity – of Socialism springs thus from the play of economic forces. The organisation of the working class and the conquest of political power by this class indicate the first stages on the route to be followed.

(Ch. Rappoport in Le Socialisme. Translated for the Socialist Standard.)

Religion and Mythology (2015)

The Halo Halo! column from the July 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

You know what it’s like when you have a job done but due to a design fault, shoddy workmanship or whatever, something goes wrong and you have to get it done all over again? Well imagine the hassle transgender Christians will be in for if the fears of one vicar are realised.

Newly baptised babies, it seems, may be in for a shock as they lay there gurgling away, naively expecting that the pantomime they’ve just been through – where the vicar has chanted some mumbo-jumbo and splashed them with holy water – has now been completed; and that they can go home, have a nap and get on with their lives. Little do these little innocents realise that if at some point, maybe thirty or forty years in the future, they decide to have a sex change, apart from all the other problems they may face, their baptism will now be buggered, no longer be fit for purpose, and will need re-doing. And while these church christening fonts are quite big enough for even the chubbiest, bonny bouncing baby, you try cramming a bewildered and possibly agitated adult into one.

According to a report in the Guardian (22 May) following a request by the vicar of Lancaster Priory, the Church of England is to consider plans for a new baptism ceremony for Christians who have undergone a sex change. One such upgrade was required by a member of his flock, he said, ‘where we could introduce him to God with his new name and his new identity’. Well, God may be all-knowing but he’s bound to be confused by this sort of thing isn’t he?

This is interesting though because baptism, in its various forms, is one of those rituals that can be traced back to its pagan origins in mythology, and there have been problems right from the start.

The Greek hero Achilles you may remember if you were paying attention at school, who was born to Thetis, an immortal sea-goddess, and Peleus a mortal, had to be dipped in the river Styx, whose water had magical powers, in order for him to acquire the immortality enjoyed by his mother’s side of the family. Unfortunately she dangled him by the ankle which, not being submerged remained susceptible to human death. (He was subsequently killed after being hit in the heel by an arrow).

Readers of the Bible will recognise this river dipping ritual as the same as the one performed by John the Baptist on Jesus (although Jesus probably wasn’t dangled by the ankle). When he was ducked in the river by John, we are told, God boomed from the heavens that ‘This is my beloved son’, etc.

The seemingly modern idea, too, of being ‘born again’, to ‘cleanse one of their sins’, is another variation of this. In the ancient Greek world if someone who had been mistakenly presumed dead, and handed over to the god of the underworld, later turned up alive and well (something that must have been fairly common where skirmishes with neighbouring tribes was a normal way of life) in order to keep the misfortunes of the underworld away, before being re-admitted into the community they had to go through an elaborate re-birth ritual to convince the gods of their revived mortal status.

Another ancient ritual, carried out for the same purpose, required the person being ‘born again’ to spend a night crouched in a large tub. Over this the rituals normally performed for pregnant women were carried out.

It’s good to see that there’s still a decent living to be made out of paganism and mythology isn’t it?

NW

The Materialist Conception of History (1934)

From the April 1934 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Further Letter on the Subject 

By Frederick Engels.

Translated for the “Proletarian" by Prof. J. I. Cheskis, of the University of Michigan.

A young student addressed to Engels the following questions:

1. How is it that, after the consanguineous family ceased to exist, marriage between brothers and sisters was still permitted by the Greeks, as Cornelius Nepos attests?
2. How was the fundamental principle of historical materialism understood by Marx and Engels themselves; are the production and reproduction of actual life alone the determining factors, or are they only the basis of all the other conditions acting by themselves?

Frederick Engels replied:

London, Sept. 21, 1890.

Dear Sir,

Your letter of the 3rd inst. was forwarded to me at Folkestone; but not having the book I needed I could not reply. Having returned on the 12th of the same month, I found such an amount of pressing work that only to-day am I able to write a few lines. Please excuse my delay.

To your first question:— First of all you can see on p. 19 of my “Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State," the Punalua family is represented as developing so slowly that even in this century in the royal family there have been marriages between brothers and sisters. In antiquity we find examples of marriages between brothers and sisters, for instance, the Ptolemies. We must make a distinction between brothers and sisters on the mothers' side and brothers and sisters on the fathers' side. The Greek Adelphos (brother) and Adelphon (sister) are both derived from Delphos (mother), indicating thus the origin of brother and sister on the mother’s side. And from the period of the Matriarchate there has been preserved for a long time the feeling that the children of one mother but of different fathers are more closely related than the children of one father but by different mothers. The Punalua form of the family excludes only marriages among the first, not among the second, since the latter, while the Matriarchate lasted, were not even considered relatives. Cases of matrimony between brothers and sisters in Ancient Greece are limited to those in which the contracting parties are descended from different mothers, or to those of whom the parental relationship was unknown, and hence the marriage was not forbidden. This, therefore, is not absolutely in contrast with the Punalua custom. You have noticed, then, that between the Punalua period and Greek monogamy there is a jump from the Matriarchate to the Patriarchate, which changes things considerably.

According to the “Greek Antiquities" of Wachsmuth, one finds in the heroic period of Greece “no trace of scruples due to a too close relationship of the contracting parties independently of the relationship between the parents and children." (P. 156.) “ Marriage with a carnal sister was not at all scandalous in Crete." (Ibid., p. 170.) This last affirmation is based on Strabone (X) but at the present moment I cannot find this passage because of faulty division of chapters. Under the expression “carnal sister" I understand, until proof to the contrary is furnished, a sister on the part of the father.

To the second question: — I have interpreted your first main phrase in the following way: According to the Materialist Conception of History, the factor which is in the last instance decisive in history is the production and reproduction of actual life. More than this neither Marx nor myself ever claimed. If now someone has distorted the meaning in such a way that the economic factor is the only decisive one, this man has changed the above proposition into an abstract, absurd phrase which says nothing. The economic situation is the base, but the different parts of the structure—the political forms of the class struggle and its results, the constitutions established by the victorious class after the battle is won, forms of law and even the reflections of all these real struggles in the brains of the participants, political theories, juridical, philosophical, religious opinions, and their further development into dogmatic systems—all this exercises also its influence on the development of the historical struggles and in cases determines their form. It is under the mutual influence of all these factors that, rejecting the infinitesimal number of accidental occurrences (that is, things and happenings whose intimate sense is so far removed and of so little probability that we can consider them non-existent, and can ignore them), that the economical movement is ultimately carried out. Otherwise the application of the theory to any period of history would be easier than the solution of any simple equation. We ourselves make our history, but, primarily, under pre-suppositions and conditions which are very well determined. But even the political tradition, nay, even the tradition that man creates in his head, plays an important part even if not the decisive one. The Prussian State has itself been born and developed because of certain historical reasons, and, in the last instance, economic reasons. But it is very difficult to determine without pedantry that, among the many small States of northern Germany, precisely Brandenburg has been destined by economic necessity and not also by other factors (above all its complications with Poland after the Prussian conquest and hence, also, with international politics —which, besides has also been decisive in the formation of the power of the Austrian ruling family), to become that great power in which are personified the economic, linguistic, and—after the Reformation—also the religious difference between the North and South. It would be mighty difficult for one who does not want to make himself ridiculous to explain from the economic point of view the existence of each small German State of the past and present, or even the phonetic differentiation of High German which extended the geographic division formed already by the Sudetti mountains as far as the Faunus.

In the second place history forms itself in such a way that the ultimate result springs always from the conflicts of many individual wills, each of which in its turn is produced by a quantity of special conditions of life; there are thus innumerable forces which cross each other, an infinite group of parallelograms of forces, from which is derived one resultant—the historical event —which in its turn again can be considered as the product of an active power, as a whole unconsciously and involuntarily, because that which each individual wishes is prevented by every other, and that which results from it is a thing which no one has wished. In this way history runs its course like a natural process, and has substantially the same laws of motion. But, because of the fact that the individual wills—each of which wishes that to which it is impelled by its own physical constitution or exterior circumstances, i.e., in the last analysis, all economic circumstances (either its own personal circumstances or the general conditions of society)—do not reach that which they seek but are fused in one general media in a common resultant, by this fact one cannot conclude that they are equal to zero. On the contrary, each contributes to produce the resultant, and is contained in it.

I would further ask you to study the theory from its original sources and not from secondhand works; it is really much easier. One can say that Marx has written nothing in which some part of the theory is not found. An excellent example of its application in a specific way is the “Eighteenth Brumaire of L. Bonaparte." Also in “Capital" (III) are many illustrations. And also permit me to recommend to you my writings, Herr E. Duehring’s “Umwalzung der Wissenchaft," and "Feuerbach und der Ausgang der Klassischen deutschen Philosophie," in which I have given the most ample illustrations of Historical Materialism which to my knowledge exists. That the young people give to the economic factor more importance than belongs to it is in part the fault of Marx and myself. Facing our adversaries we had to lay especial stress on the essential principle denied by them, and, besides, we had not always the time, place, or occasion to assign to the other factors which participate in producing the reciprocal effect, the part which belongs to them. But scarcely has one come to the representation of a particular historical period, that is, to a practical application of the theory, when things changed their aspect, and such an error was no longer permissible. It happens too often that one believes he has perfectly understood a new theory, and is able to manage it without any aid, when he has scarcely learned the first principles, and not even those correctly. This reproof I cannot spare to some of our new Marxists; and in truth it has been written by the wearer of the marvellous robe himself. [That is, by Marx.—Editor.]

To the first question:—Yesterday (I am writing these words on the 22nd of Sept.) I also found in Schomann, “Greek Antiquities," Berlin, 1855, Vol. I, p. 52, the following words, which confirm definitely the explanation given by me. “It is noteworthy that in later Greece marriages between brothers and sisters of different mothers were not considered incest."

I hope you will not be dismayed by the terrible parentheses which for the sake of brevity overflow from my pen. And I subscribe myself .

Your devoted,

F. Engels

Blogger's Note:

The second part of this letter - with a different translation - is already on the Marxist Internet Archive site. According to MIA, the letter was addressed to J. Bloch.

Are You a Slave? (1934)

From the December 1934 issue of the Socialist Standard

If the question at the head of this article be put to people to-day most of them will reply emphatically that they are not slaves; that apart from a few places abroad, slavery was abolished long years ago.

Book after book has been written denouncing or explaining the slavery of antiquity and of the Southern States of America during the last century, all with the implication that slavery has now practically disappeared.

Books are still being written and societies organised to abolish the chattel slavery that still exists in outlying parts on the ground that it is a shameful thing and a moral blot upon civilisation.

On the last point one or two preliminary remarks may perhaps be useful to illustrate a general and curious example of defective mental eyesight. The evils that exist thousands of miles away stir up the passionate indignation of people who daily pass the human wrecks of 'the modem industrial system without giving them a thought. People who contribute pounds to societies for the alleviation of the hardships of native peoples often would not dream of contributing a penny towards the alleviation of the poverty of the toilworn workers by means of whom they obtain their own incomes. It is easier to see the mote in a neighbour's eye than the beam in one’s own.

The chattel slave was unquestionably a slave: upon that everyone is agreed. These slaves were owned just in the same way that horses and cattle are owned. They were well looked after or worked to death according to which of the two methods was most profitable to their owners. The important thing that distinguished the slaves from the owners was the fact that the slaves depended for their living upon the will of another person or class, for slaves were owned sometimes by individuals, sometimes by groups and sometimes by the privileged class as a whole. For instance, the policemen in ancient Athens, owned by the State, were Scythian slaves.

One can therefore define a slave as one who depends for his living wholly or mainly on the will of another person or class.

The chattel slaves of times gone by were employed in a variety of occupations covering the whole field of the production and distribution of the means of life of the times both as overseers and as workmen. Some even occupied at times governmental posts on behalf of the privileged. It is well known that there were Emperors of Rome who were in origin slaves, and, as such, climbed to places of influence under the patronage of their masters or mistresses. In the Southern States of America during the Civil War, the slaves carried on all the work of the plantations while the planters were away fighting.

A well-known American economist, Professor Seligman, defines slavery as “an institution designed to secure the services of others by force.” While he says that this applies entirely to the chattel slave, and in a less degree to the bond worker, he looks upon all who form the citizens of modern states as outside the application of his definition.

Finally it may be pointed out that the people of chattel slaves States were split into two main groups. At the top was a relatively small, privileged class having control of Society and of the means of production. At the bottom was the mass of the people (the bulk of whom were chattel slaves) engaged in industry—whatever had to do directly with the work of getting a livelihood.

Let us now examine modern society in the light of the foregoing remarks.

Here we again find a privileged group at the top owning the means of production and possessed of the control of government. Underneath is the mass of the population, the working class, dependent on the owning class for their means of living.

In order to live the worker must find a buyer for his manual and mental energy. It does not matter what the nature of his working capacity may be, he must find employment for it in order to live. With few exceptions this is the lot of the worker from early years until old age.

To whom does the worker apply for a job? To the masters individually or collectively. It is true that it is not to the masters in person that the worker applies for a job as a rule, because nowadays the masters are usually hidden behind a company, a trust or a state concern. It is to a paid representative of these concerns that the worker must apply.

All the while the worker is at work he is haunted by the fear that he may lose his job and perhaps not get another one, or be thrown among the wreckage of the industrial system. Consequently he humbles himself in ways that sometimes make him squirm. He is respectful and subservient to those above him and to the wealthy class in general. He fears and jumps to the call of “the guv’nor.” Like the chattel slave he depends for his living on the will and the whim of another. Consequently he is a slave. It is true the worker is personally free, which the chattel slave is not, but this is cold comfort when the hooter goes, calling him to his daily toil.

The capitalists as a class own the means of production, and are therefore in a position to determine when, where and how the worker shall live. There is no escape from the shackles under present conditions apart from death. The worker depends on the wage he receives in order to get the necessaries of life, and he is rightly described as a wage slave to distinguish him from other kinds of slaves.

Hypocrisy is a leading characteristic of modern times, and one often reads remarks of satisfaction over the fact that slavery is long since dead and that freedom is the right of all people to-day. Unfortunately the victims of the system are themselves only too ready to accept this view, even though they occupy abominable slums, hurry in harassed and turgid streams over the bridges in the morning, haunted by the fear of being late on the job.

Within the ranks of the working class itself there are many who suffer from the illusion that they are in a class apart from and above the common worker; in fact that their interests are identical with those of the masters as against the rest of the workers. Amongst these are scientists, managers and salaried workers of various kinds.

These types of workers would be under no delusion if they would apply to their condition the test of a slave. On what do they depend for their living? Are they dependent wholly or mainly on selling their energies for wages or salaries in order to live? If this fits their economic condition then they are members of the working class, slaves, always in fear of losing their jobs and suffering accordingly.

The point always to be borne in mind is the frailty of the hold upon that on which the living depends, and the ease and swiftness of operation of the power of the job-controllers. Many in exalted positions have had this very cruelly impressed upon them, and although they scorn the suggestion that they are enslaved, yet they take good care to placate and dance to the tune of those responsible for the salaries.

There is no escape, therefore, from the conclusion that the fundamental interest of all who depend upon wages or salaries is identical, and is opposed to the interest of those who own the means of production and pay their slaves wages or salaries. It is a slave interest opposed to an ownership interest.

The slaves of old tried to release themselves from their bonds by bloody revolts, which, however, were always suppressed, because the masters controlled the political machinery, the instrument of power. The slaves of to-day have had passed over to them the means to obtain control of the political machinery. Thus they are able to mould society to suit their needs when they know what those needs are and how they can be satisfied.

Gilmac.

Materialism and Art. by George Plechanoff (Part 1) (1926)

From the September 1926 issue of the Socialist Standard

We shall frankly state at the beginning that we intend to view art from the standpoint of the materialist conception of history.

What is the materialist conception of history?

We shall first describe what the idealist conception of history is, and then show wherein the materialist conception of the same subject differs from it.

The idealist conception of history in its true aspect maintains that the development of thought and knowledge is the last and ultimate cause of the historic development of mankind. This view reigned supreme in the eighteenth century, and passed into the nineteenth. Even Saint Simon and Auguste Comte both strongly upheld it, though their views in certain instances were in direct opposition to those of the philosophers of the eighteenth century. Saint Simon, for instance, was interested in the origin of the social organisation of the Greeks. [1]    His conclusions are as follows : “The religious system served as a foundation for their political system.  . . The first has been taken as a model for the creation of the latter.” As proof of this, he quoted the fact that the Greek Olympus has been a republican gathering; no matter how much the constitutions of the different states in Greece had differed one from the other, they had one thing in common, they were ail republican. [2] And this is not all. The religious system, which was the foundation of the Greek political system, according to Saint Simon, was in itself the result of their scientific conception of the universe. Their scientific conceptions were the ultimate foundation of their social life, and the development of those conceptions was the principal cause of the historical development of their social life, the main cause of the changes in the historical forms of their life.

Likewise Auguste Comte thought that “the entire social mechanism rested in the last analysis on opinions. [3] This is plainly a repetition of the view of the encyclopaedists according to whom "c’est l’opinion qui gouverne le monde” (the universe is ruled by opinion).

Another variety of idealism found its expression in Hegel’s absolute idealism. How does Hegel explain the historical development of humanity? An example will suffice. Hegel asks: Why has Greece fallen? After pointing out many causes, he shows that the main cause, according to his philosophy, was that Greece had expressed only one stage in the development of the absolute idea, and had to fall when this stage had been accomplished.

Hegel, although knowing that “Lacedaemon had fallen because of inequality of property,” nevertheless maintains that social relations, as well as the historical development of mankind in general, are determined in the last instance by the laws of logic, by the development of thought.

The materialistic conception of history is diametrically opposed to the above view. If Saint Simon, considering history from the idealistic viewpoint, thought that the religious opinion of Greeks explained their social relations, then we from the materialistic point of view will say just the opposite. And if Saint Simon, when asked where the religious views of the Greeks come from would answer that they are the result of their scientific views of the universe, we should in turn reply that the social relations of the Greeks determined their religious conceptions, both of which were determined by the rise and decline of the productive forces which the Greeks had at their disposal.

This is our historical doctrine. It is our point of departure in our investigation about art. It is clear that the investigation of a particular problem, the problem of art, will be at the same time a proof of our general view of history. If this general view be wrong, then it will explain very little indeed of the evolution of art. But if we should find that this theory explains the evolution of art better than any other theory, then this in itself will be a new and strong proof of the accuracy of our theory. But here we foresee an objection; Darwin in his famous book, "The Descent of Man,” brought together many observations as evidence that the sense of beauty plays an important role in the lives of animals. Our attention will be drawn to these facts, and we shall be told that the origin of the sense of beauty must be explained by biology; it will also be remarked that it is unpermissible to narrowly explain the evolution of this sense in men only through the economic basis of their society. And as Darwin’s view upon the development of species is undoubtedly materialistic, it will be urged that biological materialism gives excellent material for criticism of the one-sided historical (economical) materialism.

This objection is a serious one, and we shall reply to it. We will do this more gladly because, while replying to this objection, we shall at the same time reply to a series of similar objections that have been drawn from the domain of the psychic lives of animals.

First of all, we will make clear the conclusions to which we must come according to the facts brought out by Darwin. Let us see what are his own conclusions.

In the second chapter of the first part of his book, “The Descent of Man,” we read :—

  Sense of Beauty: This sense has been declared to be peculiar to man. I refer here only to the pleasure given by certain colours, forms and sounds, and which may fairly be called a sense of the beautiful; with cultivated men such sensations are, however, intimately associated with complex ideas and trains of thought. When we behold a male bird elaborately displaying his graceful plumes or splendid colours before the female, while other birds not thus decorated make no such display, it is impossible to doubt that she admires the beauty of her male partner. As women everywhere deck themselves with these plumes, the beauty of such ornaments cannot be disputed. As we shall see later, the nests of humming birds and the playing passages of bower birds, are tastefully ornamented with gaily coloured objects, and this shows that they must receive some kind of pleasure from the sight of such things. With the great majority of animals, however, the taste for the beautiful is confined, as far as we can judge, to the attractions of the opposite sex. The sweet strains poured forth by many male birds during the season of love are certainly admired by the females, of which fact evidence will be hereafter given. If female birds had been incapable of appreciating the beautiful colours, the ornaments and voices of their male partners, all the labour and, anxiety exhibited by the latter in displaying thleir charms before the females would have been thrown away; and this it is impossible to admit. Why certain bright colours should excite pleasure cannot, I presume, be explained any more than why certain flavours and scents are agreeable; but habit has something to do with the result, for that which is at first unpleasant to our senses ultimately becomes pleasant, and habits are inherited. With respect to sounds, Helmholtz has explained to a certain extent on physiological principles why harmonies and certain cadences are agreeable. But besides this, sounds frequently recurring at irregular intervals are highly disagreeable, as everyone will admit who has listened at night to the irregular flapping of a rope on board ship. The same principle seems to come into play with vision, as the eye prefers symmetry or figures with some regular recurrence. Patterns of this kind are employed by even the lowest savages as ornaments, and they have been developed through sexual selection for the adornment of some male animals. Whether we can or not give any reason for the pleasure thus derived from vision and hearing, yet man and many of the lower animals are alike pleased by the same colours, graceful shading and forms, and the same sounds.

And so the facts given by Darwin show that lower animals experience aesthetic tastes that coincide closely with those of man. But this does not explain the origin of these tastes; if biology does not explain the origin of our anesthetic tastes, it can even less explain their historical development. But let Darwin speak for himself:

   The taste for the beautiful, at least as far as female beauty is concerned, is not of a special nature in the human mind, for it differs widely in the human mind; it differs widely in the different races of man, and is not quite the same even in the different nations of the same race. Judging from the hideous ornaments and the equally hideous music admired by most savages, it might be urged that their aesthetic faculty was not so highly developed as that of certain animals, for instance, as the birds. [4]

If the conceptions of the beautiful are different with different nations of the same race, it is clear that we cannot look for the causes of these differences in biology. Darwin himself tells us that we should carry our search in a different direction. In the second English translation of his book, “The Descent of Man,” we read the following:

  With cultivated men such (aesthetic) sensations are intimately associated with complex ideas and trains of thought.

This is very important. It leads us from biology to sociology, as it is obvious, according to Darwin that social causes determine a civilised man's conceptions of beauty and the association of the complex ideas connected with them. But is Darwin right in thinking that such associations take place only among civilised people? No, he is not. It is known that skins, claws and teeth play an important role in the ornaments of primitive man. How is it to be explained? With the combinations of the colours and lines in those objects? No. The savage attiring himself, for instance, in the skins, paws and teeth of a tiger, or skin and horns of a bison, exalts his own skill and strength. He who conquers the skilful is skilful himself, he who conquers the strong is himself strong. It is possible that there is some superstition intermingled with the idea. Skulcraft relates that the red-skinned tribes of North-western America love ornaments made from the claws of a grey bear, the most ferocious animal of that region. The red-skinned warrior thinks that the ferocity and bravery of the grey bear is transferred to the one who attires himself in that animal's claws. And these claws, remarks Skulcraft, are partially an ornament, partially an amulet. [5] In this instance it is impossible to think that the red-skinned men liked animals' skins, claws and teeth only because of the combinations of colour and line. [6] No, the opposite is much more probable, i.e., that these things first were worn merely as a sign of bravery, skill and strength, and only afterwards did they begin to call out aesthetic feelings and become used as ornaments. From this it follows that aesthetic feelings not only are associated with complex ideas among savages, but that they arise through the influence of such ideas.

Another instance: It is known that women of some African races wear iron rings on their hands and legs. The wives of the rich, for example, wear nearly forty pounds of those ornaments. [7] This, of course, is rather inconvenient, but this inconvenience does not prevent them from wearing with pleasure these chains of slavery, as Schweinfurth calls them. Why, then, is it so agreeable to a negress to wear such chains? Because it is through them that she seems prettier to herself and others. And why does she appear prettier? This is the result of a very complex association of ideas. Passion for such ornaments developed among the tribes which, according to Schweinfurth, now live in the iron age, and for which iron is a precious metal. That which is precious seems beautiful, for the idea of opulence is associated with it. A woman in one of those tribes appears more beautiful when she wears twenty pounds of those rings than when she wears only ten pounds; the difference, finally considered, is a matter of totality of wealth. It is clear that it is not the beauty of the iron ring that is the determinant, but the idea of wealth which is associated with it.

A third instance : In a certain tribe Batoka, in the upper part of the river Zambesi, a man whose upper incisive teeth are not pulled out is considered very ugly. Where did they get this strange conception of beauty? It, too, has been formed as the result of a complex association of ideas. With their incisive teeth withdrawn the men tend to imitate the ruminant animals, and Batoka is a shepherd tribe that worships its cows and bulls. [8] Here again the beautiful is that which is precious, and we see that aesthetic ideas rise on the foundation of ideas of quite a different order.

The best example, however, is to be taken from Livingston; it is also given by Darwin. In the tribe of Makalolo, the upper lip is pierced and a metallic or bamboo ring, called a pelele, is inserted. When one of their leaders was asked why the women wore these rings, he was very much surprised that such an absurd question should be asked. “For beauty. This is a woman's only ornament. Men have beards. What would she look like without a pelele?" It is hard to say with certainty where they got the custom, but it is clear that its origin is to be sought in some complex association of ideas and not in the laws of biology, to which evidently it has no relation.

In view of these examples we feel justified in declaring that appreciations and feelings, called out by certain colours and lines in objects, even among the primitive peoples, are associated with very complex ideas, and many of those forms and combinations seem to them so beautiful only because of these associations. But what gives rise to these associations, and where arise the complex ideas associated with these feelings which are evoked when we see these things? Evidently this question can be answered not by biology, but by sociology. And if the materialist conception of history helps more toward its solution than any other view, if we are convinced that the association of complex ideas mentioned above is determined and created in the last instance by the state of the productive forces and economic conditions of the given society then we must admit that Darwinism does not in the least contradict the materialist conception of history.

Although we cannot say much here about Darwin’s relations to our doctrine, we shall at least note it.

Let us turn our attention to the following lines :—

   It may be well first to premise that I do not wish to maintain that any strictly social animal, if its intellectual faculties were to become as active and as highly developed as those of man, would acquire exactly the same manner. As various animals have some sense of beauty, though they admire widely different objects, so they might have a sense of right and wrong, though led by it to follow widely different lines of conduct. If, for instance, to take an extreme case, men were reared under precisely the same conditions as hive bees, there can hardly be a doubt that our unmarried females would, like the worker bee, think it a sacred duty to kill their fertile daughters, and no one would think of interfering. Nevertheless, the bee, or any other social animal, would gain, as it appears to me, some feeling of right or wrong, or a conscience.

What follows from these words? That .in the moral conceptions of men there is nothing absolute; that moral concepts change with the conditions of the time.

But what creates these conditions? What causes their changes? Darwin says nothing about this, and if we say and prove that the productive forces create them and change them according to the development of those forces, then we shall not only not contradict Darwin, but shall even add to what he has said and explain what has remained unexplained by him. And we shall do it by applying to the study of social phenomena the same principles that served him so well in biology.

It may seem extremely strange to put Darwinism beside the historical conception of history. The domain of Darwin’s activity was entirely different. He viewed the descent of man as a zoological species. Those who are on the side of the named view wish to explain the historical destiny of this species. Their domain of investigation begins where the domain of the Darwinist investigations end.

Their works cannot replace that which the Darwinists have given us; likewise, the most splendid discoveries of Darwinists cannot replace their investigations, but can only prepare a ground for them, as the physicist prepares the ground for the chemist.

Darwin’s theory appeared in its time as a very big and necessary step in the development of biological science, and satisfied the most acute and searching questions that were put to it. Is it possible to say the same of the materialist conception of history? Is it possible to say that in its time it appeared as an inevitable step in the development of social science? And is it able now to satisfy all the demands put to it? To this we can reply with certainty. Yes, it is possible. Yes, it is able. And we hope to show that such a certainty is not deprived of foundations.

But let us turn to aesthetics. From the above quotations from Darwin it is clear that he views the development of aesthetic tastes in the same light as the development of moral feelings. Men, like many animals, have a sense of beauty—that is, they are able to feel a special kind of pleasure (aesthetic pleasure) due to certain objects and phenomena.

But what are the objects and phenomena which afford them so much pleasure? This depends upon the environment in which they are brought up, live and act. Human nature makes it possible for man to have aesthetic tastes and conceptions. His environment determines the transition from this possibility into reality. This environment explains how this given social man (i.e., society, nation or class) has certain aesthetic tastes and conceptions and not others.

This is the last conclusion of Darwinism, and this conclusion will not be opposed by any historical materialist. In fact, every one of them will see in it a new support of this view. The historic materialists have steadily maintained that if human nature is immutable, then it cannot explain this historical process, which presents a sum of constantly changing phenomena; but if human nature changes with the course of historical development, as we see it does, then it is evident that there must be some objective cause for these changes. And therefore in this, as well as in the other case, the duty of both historian and sociologist must be to go beyond the limit of discussions about human nature.

Let us take even such a quality as the proclivity to imitation. Mr. Tarde, who has made a quite interesting research into the laws of imitation, sees in them the soul of society. According to his definition, each social group is a complex of beings, partially imitating each other at the given time and partially having imitated before the same model. Imitation undoubtedly played a very important role in the history of all our ideas, tastes, styles and customs. The materialists of the eighteenth century have indicated its enormous importance; man consists wholly of imitations, said Helvétius. But there is little doubt that Tarde founded his theory of imitation on a false basis.

When the Restoration of the Stuarts in England temporarily restored the reign of ancient nobility, this nobility was not in the least inclined to imitate the extreme representatives of the revolutionary bourgeoisie— the Puritans—but displayed a strong inclination to habits and tastes directly contrary to the Puritan rules of life.

Puritan strictness of morals gave place to extreme licentiousness. To do and love that which the Puritans had prohibited became a good. The Puritans were very religious; the Restorationists were latitudinarian, even atheistic. The Puritan persecuted the theatre and literature; their fall gave a signal to a new and strong passion for those things. The Puritans wore short hair and condemned luxury in clothes; after the Restoration, long hair, fashionable dressing and card-playing became the passion. In short, we discover not imitation, but contradiction, which evidently also exists in human nature. But why did this sense of contradiction in the mutual relations of the nobility and bourgeoisie develop so strongly in England in the seventeenth century? Because this was an age of very bitter struggle between nobility and bourgeoisie, or rather say “the third estate.” We may conclude, then, that, though man undoubtedly has a strong tendency to imitate, this tendency develops only in certain social relations, as in the relations which existed in France during the seventeenth century, where the bourgeoisie willingly, though unsuccessfully, attempted to imitate the nobility : recall Moliere’s “The Bourgeois Among the Nobility.” In other social relations the tendency to imitate is replaced by the opposite tendency, which we shall call the tendency of contradiction. But we expressed this incorrectly. The tendency to imitate did not disappear among the English of the seventeenth century. First of all it was most certainly, with all of its previous strength, displayed in the mutual relations between the people of the same class. Beljame says about the English of the higher society : “These people were not even unbelievers; they denied a priori, so that no one could mistake them for the round-headed, and also so as not to give themselves the trouble to think.” [9] About these people we can say that they denied for the sake of imitating. But in imitating the infidels they, of course, contradicted the Puritans. Imitation proved to be, therefore, a source of contradiction. But we know that if among the English noblemen the weaker people imitated disbelief more vigorously, that this arose because disbelief was considered well-breeding, and it became such only in virtue of contradiction, only as a reaction against Puritanism—a reaction which, in its turn, came as a result of the above-mentioned class struggle. Therefore, in the foundation of all this complex dialectics of psychic phenomena lay facts of social order, and out of this it is clear to what extent and in what sense the conclusion made above from Darwin’s thesis is correct: that man’s nature makes it possible for him to have certain conceptions (or tastes or inclinations), and that upon his environment depends the transition of this possibility into a reality; the environment makes him have precisely these conceptions (or tastes or inclinations) and not others. If we are not mistaken, the same was admitted by one of the Russian historical materialists.

   If the stomach is provided with a certain amount of food it sets to work according to the general laws of digestion. But is it possible through this to explain why there is in your stomach every day tasty and nourishing food, and in my stomach such is a scarce guest? Do these laws explain why some eat too much and others die of hunger? It seems that this explanation is to be sought somewhere else, in entirely different laws. The same is true with a man’s mind. Once he is put in a certain condition, once the surroundings give him certain impressions, he combines them through certain general laws; and here also the results differ extremely, according to the diversity of the received impressions. But what puts it in this state? What determines the affluence in character of those impressions? This is a question which is not to be solved by any laws of thought.

(To be concluded in the next issue.)

Translated for "Modern Quarterly” by Bessie Peretz.

Notes:
[1] Greece had a special meaning for Saint Simon, because, according to his opinion, “c'est chez les grecs que l'esprit humain a commence a s’occupeur serieusement de l’organisation sociale. ”
[2]  See his Memoire sur la science de l’homme.

[3]  Cours de philosophic positive, Paris, 1869, vol. 1, pp. 40-41.
[4]  Descent of Man, p.50.

[5] Historical and statistical information respecting the history, conditions and prospects of the Indian tribes of the United States, vol. 3, p. 216.

[6] There is a case, however, where, objects of the same kind are liked only for their colour.

[7] Schweinfurth. Au Coeur d’Afrique, Paris, 1875, vol. 1, p. 148. Also Du Chaillu : Voyage et aventures dans l'Afrique equatoriale, Paris, 1863, p. 11.

[8]  Schweinfurth, vol. 1, p. 148.

[9] Alexandre Beljame, Le Public it les Hommes de lettres en Angleterre du dix-nuitieme Siecle, Paris, 1881, pages 1-10. Also Taine, Histoire de la Literature Anglaise, vol. 2, p. 443, and following.

Class struggle, ancient and modern (1988)

From the November 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

"The history of all hitherto existing society", wrote Marx and Engels at the beginning of the 1848 Communist Manifesto, "is the history of class struggle." To which Engels added the qualification, in the English edition of 1888. "all written history" to take account of the fact that humans had originally and for many hundreds of thousands of years lived in classless communistic conditions. So Marx and Engels were saying that the history of society since the break-up of primitive communism has been one of class struggles. 

But has it? Well, that depends what is meant by the term "class struggle". Certain historians, including some in the Marxist tradition, have understood this to mean struggles in which one or other of the contending groups recognises itself as a class and is consciously pursuing its interests. In other words, that class struggle has necessarily to involve an element of class consciousness. The drawback with this view is that class-conscious struggles have by no means been a permanent feature in all written history, thus negating the claim.

The Socialist Party, on the other hand, has always understood the class struggle to be a basic feature of any exploiting class society, whether or not those involved are aware of their historical role. The class struggle necessarily goes on whenever there is exploitation of one class by another; whenever, that is, part of what one section of society produces is appropriated by another section. It is the struggle between members of the two classes to maximise or minimise the amount appropriated.

The slaves who refuse to work hard and the slave owner who whips them are both engaged in the class struggle, even if neither consider they belong to one of two separate classes in society with antagonistic interests. So is the modern wage or salary earner who demands better working conditions, higher wages or shorter hours, or who resists having to work harder; or, indeed, who turns up late for work or takes days off. The class struggle — resistance to exploitation by the exploited class — is a daily, permanent feature in any class society.

One historian who has taken up this position is G.E.M de Ste Croix of New College. Oxford, in his 500-page book The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World (1981). This is how he puts it in chapter II;

  Class (essentially a relationship) is the collective social expression of the fact, of exploitation, the way in which exploitation is embodied in a social structure. By exploitation I mean the appropriation of part of the product of the labour of others: in a commodity-producing society this is the appropriation of what Marx called "surplus value". A class (a particular class) is a group of persons in a community identified by their position in the whole system of social production, defined above all according to their relationship (primarily in terms of degree of ownership or control); to the conditions of production (that is to say. the means and labour of production) and to other classes. . . The individuals constituting a given class may or may not be wholly or partly conscious of their own identity and common interests as a class, and they may or may not feel antagonism towards members of other classes as such.
  It is of the essence of a class society that one or more of the smaller classes in virtue of their control over the conditions of production (most commonly exercised through ownership of the means of production), will be able to exploit — that is. to appropriate a surplus at the expense of — the larger classes and thus constitute an economically and socially (and therefore probably also politically) superior class or classes.

This is essentially the position we take up too, and why we say that class struggle is a permanent feature of any class society—governments continually seek to extract as much profit as they can from the wage and salary working class and workers resist in any ways they can. individually as well as collectively.

Applied to Ancient Greek society, this struggle over the level of exploitation went on mainly between slaves and slaveholders, but not exclusively. Ancient Greek and Roman society, it is important to realise, was not composed just of slaves and slaveholders, most people were in fact free (in the sense of not being owned by someone else) peasants who owned no slaves and lived by working on the small pieces of land they occupied.

At no time was the bulk of the wealth in ancient society produced by slave-labour, although Ste Croix estimates that in the early part of the period studied — which spans some 1300 years from the 8th century BC to the mid-7th century AD — the bulk of the wealth appropriated by the exploiting, propertied class was probably produced by slaves. As time went on. however — and this is the basic theme of his book — the propertied classes, identified by Ste Croix as those who had a sufficient income from their land owning so as not to have to take part in production themselves, came to more and more exploit the non-slave working population as well. This was done not by appropriating the product of their labour by virtue of being owners, but through rents (in money or kind) and taxes and through debt-bondage. By the end of the period under study virtually the whole working population of the Roman Empire (of which ancient Greece had been a part since the 2nd century BC) had the status of serfs, tied to the land and obliged to produce a surplus for their landlords, this included slaves, most of whom had by this time been settled on the land in small farms rather than working big estates in chain- gangs.

Since Ste Croix covers a period of 1300 years and an area comprising not just Greece proper but also modern Turkey, Syria, Palestine and Egypt — then within the sphere of Greek culture — his book could not be a chronicle of events. It is rather a history of the relationships between the three classes of slaves, peasants and the land and slave-owning propertied class and of how these changes affected the general course of history.

He argues that the increasing exploitation of the non-slave working population arose because, at a certain point, slaves had to be bred rather than simply captured in wars and raids. As breeding was more costly, the propertied class sought to maintain their standard of living — that is, the amount of appropriated wealth on which they lived — by taking a greater surplus from non-slaves. Ste Croix speaks of

  the fall in the rate of exploitation of slave labour consequent upon the widespread extension of slave breeding, and also an increased exploitation of humble free men. as a material result of the fact that the propertied classes were determined to maintain their relatively high standard of life and had all the political control necessary to enable them to depress the condition of others.

Thus did the class struggle — the struggle over the level of exploitation — determine the general trend of events in ancient Greek and Roman society and eventually led to its decline and replacement by a society based on serfdom rather than chattel-slavery.

Ste Croix's attitude to Christianity is refreshingly hostile. The Roman Empire adopted Christianity as its state religion in 313 AD and Ste Croix refuses to see this as an advance in civilisation, as we are taught, but regards it. if anything, as a regression. He points out that it introduced another layer of parasites — the bishops and higher clergy — who had to be maintained out of the labour of the working population, as well as instigating religious persecution (of other Christians regarded as heretics, rather than of pagans) which had not existed previously. Readers might find some of Ste Croix's comments here more in the rationalist than the Marxist tradition, but it should not be forgotten that Marx was an atheist and Jesus therefore an impossible bedfellow, whatever some might think.

But then, so is Mao. Which is why it is disconcerting to have to note that Ste Croix was a Maoist of some sort when he wrote his book. Just how a person capable of writing this excellent application of the materialist conception of history should at the same time have fallen for the ravings of a mad dictator like Mao, is difficult to understand. For a start, why didn't he realise that his analysis of class and exploitation applied equally to Mao's China as to ancient Greece?

Adam Buick

50 Years Ago: The "Great Man" Fallacy (1959)

The 50 Years Ago column from the June 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

When I read the history of Greece I am not impressed by the oratory of Demosthenes or the statesmanship of Pericles. But I note that Corinth alone contained slaves by the thousand dozen, and I ask: what was the economic condition of this class? What did they know of science or art or literature. Dickens has spoken of men and women who all go in and out at the same hours, to do the same work; people to whom every day is the same as yesterday and tomorrow, and every year the counterpart of the last and the next. These are the people history should speak to us about, and not the depraved parvenus and braggart buffoons of royal descent. Then I say to every working man and woman: before you read the life of Cicero or Aristotle or Julius Caesar; before you become immersed in trivial biography, study well the conditions of life and labour of your social ancestors in Greece, in Rome, in the Middle ages. The proper study of a working man is working class conditions.

Socialist Standard, June 1909

Sorting it Out? (2017)

Book Review from the February 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

'Against Elections: The Case for Democracy', by David Van Reybrouck. (Bodley Head. 2016. £9.99)

Genuinely fascinating and thought-provoking new books seem hard to find, though Van Reybrouck seems to have produced one. In the current climate of political cynicism and apathy, the main title of ‘Against Elections’ could be interpreted as something beyond populism and even a call for fascism, but this is very far from being the case. His main argument is that it is not democracy itself that is the problem, but the way it is practised – almost exclusively through the form of competitive elections that produce self-reinforcing political elites.

Van Reybrouck diagnoses the malaise at the heart of the crisis engulfing representative democracies across many parts of the globe and voter dissatisfaction with elected politicians and parties. He points out that political parties in most Western democracies are now regarded as being the most corrupt organizations legally existing and that contempt for conventional party politicians appears to be at an all-time high too. He also discusses some of the alternatives mentioned to systems of representative democracy, such as direct democracy, which has influenced movements like Occupy and the Indignados. The Five Star movement in Italy, despite its populist flavour, has also grappled with these issues and argued strongly for other forms of democratic consultation and for limits on political terms served by elected representatives.

But few have questioned the usefulness of elections themselves as a ubiquitous part of the democratic process. One of the most fascinating parts of the book is where Van Reybrouck traces the way in which ‘democracy’ and ‘elections’ have now become synonymous. In reality, throughout the history of the last 3,000 years or so, elections have just been one way in which democratic will has been expressed. Another method has largely fallen by the wayside – democracy through sortition, or the drawing of lots. In most countries this is regarded as acceptable for choosing juries making decisions about legal cases, but isn’t typically used otherwise. Van Reybrouck discusses how this situation came about, as the democracy practiced in ancient city states like Athens, or even many of the Renaissance city states such as Venice and Aragon, included very pronounced elements of sortition alongside elements of elections.

Furthermore, it is clear that many of the philosophers of the Enlightenment were strong advocates of sortition too. Montesquieu, one of the most significant influences on modern constitutional theory and nation states claimed that ‘Voting by lot is in the nature of democracy; voting by choice is in the nature of aristocracy . . . the casting of lots is a way of election that distresses no one; it leaves to each citizen a reasonable expectation of serving his country’. Similar views were advanced by Rousseau in his Social Contract.

However, to ruling elites (both aristocratic and in the rising capitalist class) sortition was dangerous and random and could not guarantee that those entrusted with power and responsibility would be suitable for the role. Hence the emphasis on elections, initially with very limited electorates of those who could be ‘trusted’ – most typically men of property. But of course the granting and widening of democratic rights was a protracted process that was not merely something handed down by the ruling elites free and gratis – in most instances it had to be struggled for, eventually by the majority class of wage and salary earners, and it would be interesting research to see how and why sortition (as opposed to election) was relegated in importance by workers’ movements struggling for democracy.

Van Reybrouck contends that the reintroduction of sortition within Western democracies currently in poor health would be a way of reinvigorating the democratic process and, in doing so, also potentially undermine the anti-democratic movements currently coming out of the shadows. He may have a limited point here, but the hierarchical and competitive nature of capitalist society mitigates against this working in all but a few selected areas – recently sortition has been used as part of consultative processes on constitutional issues in Ireland, Iceland and the Netherlands, though with mixed success.

As in ancient Athens, sortition works best when combined with forms of elections that can produce a range of competent candidates for given roles, with sortition and fixed terms of office providing the genuinely wide representation (and randomness) that stifles the emergence of elites. The Socialist Party of Great Britain already uses sortition in a limited way as part of its internal democratic practice and it seems likely that socialist society would be the most obvious type of democratic social system that would enable sortition and elections to work hand-in-hand effectively. This is because socialism – as a system of common ownership and democratic control – would be a society without classes and elites, without leaders and the led. More work is no doubt needed on this element of socialist democracy, and that can be developed and refined by the wider socialist movement as it grows over time.

Van Reybrouck has produced an important work, but not one that will necessarily save capitalism’s rather limited and somewhat spurious democracy from itself. It is, however, of clear use and interest to socialists as principled believers in the most scrupulous of democratic practices as the cornerstone of a genuinely egalitarian society.

Dave Perrin

Long Time No Gods (2017)

Book Review from the November 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

'Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World'. By Tim Whitmarsh, (Faber & Faber £9.99)

The ancient Greeks and Romans believed not in god but in gods, and lots of them. There were gods of music, air, war, wine, love, the sea, and so on. But not everyone accepted the standard faith in gods, and there were advocates of atheism, discussed in this informative volume. There are many problems in interpreting the sources and coping with the chance nature of which texts have survived, but there clearly were people who not only questioned the existence of gods but indeed denied that they existed at all.

The gods of the Greeks had lots of human weaknesses, such as being sometimes stupid and certainly not omnipotent. They actually lived in this world, even if it was high up on a mountain, and those worshipped varied from place to place. There were no sacred texts, and priests just carried out sacrifices rather than making spiritual pronouncements. In the sixth century, Xenophanes pointed out that believers were just projecting human physical and behavioural characteristics onto the gods.

The classical period (fifth and fourth centuries BCE) saw many objections to blaming gods for human actions, and some saw human action as free from divine intervention. Protagoras (born in the early fifth century) said he could not be sure the gods existed at all, and Diagoras (who lived later in that century) may have been ‘the first person in history to self-identify in a positive way as an atheist’. This was the period when Athens rose to power, and heterodox religious beliefs came to be seen as a threat to the state’s foundations. The charges against Socrates may have included not recognising the city’s gods, though the sources are not clear on this.

In the Hellenistic era (fourth to first centuries BCE) there was religious worship of rulers such as Alexander. Then under the Roman Empire (from the first century BCE) there was claimed to be a divine mandate for Roman rule. A significant atheist ‘movement’ existed in the pre-christian Empire, and there were different gods worshipped in different locations. But in the fourth century CE Constantine provided financial support for christianity, and in 380 an imperial decree established it as the official imperial religion, which all subjects had to follow. Heresy now became treated as a crime against the state, and believing in a god other than the christian one was counted as atheism. Monotheism was far less tolerant than polytheism had been.

It is sometimes argued that atheism is a development of the last few centuries, but Whitmarsh shows that it is older than christianity or islam, and of a similar age to judaism. From a historical point of view, ‘what is anomalous is the global dominance of monotheistic religions and the resultant inability to acknowledge the existence of disbelievers.’

Paul Bennett

It Also Happened a Long Time Ago (1941)

From the June 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the year 415 B.C., at the height of the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, a young Athenian landed from the sea on the Peloponnesian peninsula and made his way to Sparta. There he addressed the assembly and declared that be had never really been in sympathy with the Athenian democracy, whose policy, he declared, was to conquer Sicily and then make herself mistress of of all Greece. He proposed measures to resist Athens, which were acted upon by the Spartans and resulted in the total annihilation of the two strongest fleets. Athens had ever sent out, and proved to be the turning point in the war. Athens never recovered from the blow.

The young man responsible for this disaster was of noble birth, handsome and wealthy. He was a clever political leader, a persuasive speaker and a successful general. He is referred to as having been “popular without being respected, and followed without being trusted.” 

The name of this young man was Alcibiades, and he was one of the three generals in command of the expedition sent by Athens in 415 B.C. (the finest ever organised in Greece) to conquer Sicily. He left the expedition at Sicily and sailed for Sparta.

It is true Rudolf Hess landed from the air and not from the sea, but it is curious how incidents in history of a sensational nature are repeated.

Alcibiades was the ablest general of his time, but he was ambitious and a member of a privileged aristocracy, and this latter fact was the determining factor in his conduct. He subsequently deserted Sparta and went over to the common enemy—Persia, urging the latter to let Athens and Sparta wear each other out.

The motive behind Hess’s aeronautical adventure is still shrouded in mystery, and in this fantastic world, where real information is so scarce, one guess is as good as another.

Gilmac.

Art and Civilization (1975)

From the March 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

Art Historians apply their knowledge of the lives of great men from the past; kings, artists, sculptors, writers and so on, and assess the worth of past ages on the basis of work done during the period. Socialists have a better approach. They apply the materialist conception of history. Only the social and economic environment explains how man acquires certain aesthetic tastes and conceptions. Above the level of barbarism, that environment is determined as much by the mechanics of the class struggle as by nature, while the majority of the population—slaves, serfs and the like— have remained passive for long periods. So we may say that the ruling ideas of any age, are the ideas of the ruling class of the time. The history of art is one continuous proof of this statement.

EGYPT. What’s left after an empire lasting 3000 years? Little more than the tombs and monuments of the pharaohs. The size of the pyramids makes them the epitome of slave-state architecture. Long since looted of their wealth, but inside there are the frescoes: the paintings on the walls—all with one subject. The dead pharaoh. The compositions are all about his life; how many slaves, wives, subjects he had. The battles he won with his armies. There are even illustrations of his favourite sports, hawking and fishing. Strikingly, the pharaoh is always portrayed larger than his subjects. Women smaller than men. Slaves a different colour altogether. All of this gives one a picture of the social hierarchy in Ancient Egypt. It was a neo-romantic civilization. The dead were worshipped.

More, the pharaoh was expected to rise from the dead. The pictures are, therefore, subordinated to the one end of informing him, when he woke up, of his past history, his greatness and the shape his body should reassume out of his embalmed tissue. This is the key to an understanding of Egyptian life-painting. All the figures are portrayed in one general pose, displaying the most typical views of their separate limbs. Heads in profile, to show the cranial curve, facial features, chin and neck. Torso and hips in a front view, showing the triangulation between the shoulders and waist and the shape of the pelvic bone. Both arms extended left and right, one palm outermost, the other innermost. The legs were both in profile, each foot pointing the same way, showing the inside and outside of foot, leg and knee. No painting survives from Egypt which did not assume this form. Therefore the ideas and needs of the ruling class, determined the artist’s and the public’s conception of beauty.

CLASSICAL GREECE. Athens was one of the first places in Europe where the old system of tribal councils gave way to government by the city-state. The social structure for them was: - patrician, plebian, slave. History for them ran from the battle of the Gods and the Titans, to the interlocking of heavenly spheres. From the Heraclitean fire to the eternal flux and slow change. The ruling class needed to promote this idea of harmony; their civilization was top-heavy with slaves. Twenty slaves for every free man! And great restrictions on employment for poor freemen. The art and architecture of the time was the ruling class’s propaganda against social unrest.

Have a look at the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum. Notice how geometrically harmonic are the bodies of these heroic men and women. The sculptor built up the proportion of his figures from one basic dimension: the distance between the elbow and the wrist. The perfect man or woman was one whose body, when stood with feet that much apart, formed a series of equilateral triangles. Most humans are not good enough to model for a Greek statue. Neither were the Greeks! It was just a false theory, a ruling idea imposed upon nature. This is how you account for the ridiculously small heads on the statues by Praxiteles; the continuous line between their foreheads and noses: there was a secondary system of triangulation for the face as well!

ROME. Much that is true of Greece applies to Rome also. This can be illustrated from one Roman building: the Pantheon. The temple of all the gods. The Roman empire had continuous trouble on its borders. The marauding tribes of well-organized barbarians had to be placated. One way of doing this was to find a place in your temple for a statue of the enemy’s god, then invite the enemy chief to Rome to worship it. The Greek temple plan wasn’t much good for this. The barbarian shrines were a circle of tree-trunks with a conical thatch, an altar in the centre and a hole in the roof to let out the smoke. So the Romans built their enormous Pantheon on just these lines.

From within it is a ring of pillars supporting a celestory, with blind niches holding statues of the minor gods; below and between the pillars, are the shrines of the major gods. In the centre was an altar, while, the roof was a spherical web of arches. An arch needs a keystone to hold it up. But the Romans calculated that if they cross-vaulted arches to build up a dome, they could take out the large centre-stone and the whole structure would stand confined by its own stress. The building would then be lit directly from above. It worked. The barbarians were duly impressed and the Roman civilization lasted for another 350 years. This form of Architecture was admired as much for its political usefulness to the ruling class, as for anything else. Beauty, once again, born out of expediency.

MEDIEVAL EUROPE. The Cathedral Church. Here the decorative artist, architect and sculptor had but one patron—the church. The basis of Catholicism is mystery. No revealed religion can stand up to open enquiry. So the huge gothic churches they built had to be full of mystery. The large congregation was shut off from the sacrament by a tall choir-screen. Daylight had to be the tinted light of a religious vision. The wall hardly exists in a gothic church; just holes between piers and arches—all filled with lead - framed painted glass. The statuary carved on these piers and arches shows how closely art is connected with the ruling class’s ideas. Despite the tradition of free-standing statues from Greece and Rome; these are completely tied to the structure of the church and reflect the artist’s dependence. They are slim vertical figures and are mirrored in the dress of the time; with its tall hats and slender costumes, perhaps for people who went through narrow pointed doorways. Architecture and fashion for the ruling class were connected for the first time.

CAPITALISM. The Industrial Revolution. Once the first stage of the movement towards enclosing the land was completed in the 18th century and great capital accumulation had enriched the aristocracy; they began to improve their lands, have their parks landscaped and country palaces built. In literature this period sees the beginning of the romantic revival. In art the sudden renewal of landscape painting, by Gainsborough, Constable, Turner and others. The popular conception of a good landscape painting still survives.

Among civilized people the technique of production more rarely shows direct influence upon art. This fact, to the superficial observer a contradiction to the materialist conception of history, in reality, when considered in the profound manner of a sociologist gives it brilliant support.

We can now develop upon this conclusion to Plechanov’s essay Materialism and Art. He wrote this at the end of the 19th century. Perhaps he was too close to the machine-made decorations of the time to see that they would be known as art. Some of the wrought-iron stair bannisters of the period were very beautiful. The Eiffel Tower and the early iron bridges were new ideas in three-dimensional form. The difficulty with even the best industrial products under capitalism, is that they are built for profit. Who has ever looked at one of the latest engineering “triumphs” and not felt that it could have been improved with a little more art and a little less profit? wasted sentiment, of course; capitalism will not work that way. But sometimes, by chance, it makes half-art.

The best example of techniques of production influencing art is that of the painter Seurat and “pointilism”. This style being a reflection of camera technology and research into the nature of light and colour, which produced the chemical pigments needed for the fast-dyeing of fibres. All the colours of the rainbow produce white light. Seurat found that by clustering a multitude of points of pure colour he could suggest lightness or darkness more after the manner of nature.

Since Plechanov’s time we have seen prefabricated “component art”, “chrome-plated art”, “collage”, and art formed from ready-made industrial products—all perfect examples of how the business of capitalism is beautified by art. Civilization remains the attempt on the part of the ruling class to impose order and permanence upon the wealth they possess.

What will be the conception of beauty under Socialism? Without a ruling class, will we have a unified art? It will be socialized, not civilized art. Human life shows infinite variety and for the first time, the people in an industrialized world will create an art which is a reflection of their own lives. We can’t use life under capitalism as a guide to Socialism. A few tribal peoples hold to conceptions of beauty which are attractive to people dissatisfied with capitalism, but that is not the answer.

Socialism will produce something other than the vicarious satisfactions of capitalism. Fewer people will want passively to look at works of art; many will want to create socially. One can imagine artists, artisans and craftsmen swarming over large-scale projects; but instead of being slaves toiling over pyramids, they will be free men and women creating their own kinds of beauty by their own conceiving.

B. K. McNeeney