Socialism and Christianity. (1923)

From the April 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard

The famous Doctor Samuel Johnson once said, “Two contradictory ideas may inhere in the same mind; they cannot both be correct.” And one is reminded of this obvious truth when reading the correspondence recently published in the "Daily Herald” on the subject of "Christianity and Labour.” Of the letters published the majority convey the view that there is a similarity between what the various writers call Socialism and Christianity. To the Socialist, however, those who hold this view betray an ignorance of both sets of ideas. For not only are Socialism and Christianity not identical; they are irreconcilably opposed. The antagonism between Socialism and Christianity is fundamental, as will be seen in the different methods employed to explain social conditions, and also in the totally different concepts of life. To find an explanation of present social conditions the Socialist analyses society and discovers therein two distinct social classes, separated from each other by clearly marked political and economic characteristics. One class, the capitalist class, own and control the means of wealth production, but take no part in the process of producing the wealth. The analysis of the Socialist shows that the capitalists, who own an enormous mass of wealth, are able to obtain this wealth by the robbery of the other class in society—the working class.

Having no property in the means of wealth production the members of the working class are compelled to sell their energy to those who own the various tools of production, in order to obtain the wherewithal to live. It is by means of the workers applying this energy to nature given material that the wealth necessary to human existence is produced. But the great bulk of this wealth is appropriated by the capitalists who have control of political power and consequently use that power to legalise their robbery of the working class.

There is little need to stress the fact that, contrary to the wealthy position of the capitalists, the position of the workers is one of poverty and insecurity of existence. In an earlier stage of social development man endured privation through his lack of knowledge of the forces of nature, but in modern society, with man having gained a greater control over natural forces, wealth can be produced in abundance. Starvation or a lack of the means of subsistence, although unavoidable in earlier times, is now quite avoidable. There are ample means at the disposal of modern society for all to live in economic security, free from the yoke of servitude and the exploitation and poverty it entails for the working class. The poverty and the general degradation within society we trace directly to the class ownership of the means of life.

Thus it is in the roots of society itself that the Socialist discovers the core of the "social problem”.

The Christian, however, if he is consistent with his creed, alleges that the explanation of all things, including social conditions, is to be found in that metaphysical abstraction "God”—an abstraction aptly described by Spinoza as the "asylum of ignorance.” To the Christian this world is ”God’s world." He created it, and everything in it, including man. The affairs of the world are supposed to be controlled by this supernatural power, whose activities it is blasphemy to question.

In contrast with the scientific determinism of the Socialist philosophy, which points out the overwhelming influence of material conditions in shaping human conduct, the Christian asserts that man is endowed with a free will, and he expects human conduct to take on any particular form regardless of whatever conditions are prevailing. Hence, while the Socialist relies upon a change of political and economic conditions for human improvement, the Christian calls for "a change of heart.’’ In contrast with the policy of the Socialist, who urges the workers to resist the tyranny of their exploiters, and to organise themselves for the overthrow of class domination, the Christian urges the policy of class conciliation. The poverty stricken worker is to shake the hand of his wealthy exploiter, and “Capital and Labour” are to live in harmony. Instead of the end of classes we are to have their continuance under the cloak of “Christian brotherhood.”

The method of the Socialist—i.e., the method of explanation through natural causes is therefore in striking contrast with the method of the Christian, who seeks the explanation through the mistiness of super-naturalism. It is claimed by many who attach little or no importance to the supernaturalism of Christianity that the ethics now associated with that religion are of the essence of Socialism, but only ignorance or deliberate misrepresentation can give rise to the claim.

Throughout the history of societies composed of classes the various ethical codes have been those best suited to the interest of the particular ruling class, and imposed upon the lower orders as a means of government. The ethics of Christianity form no exception to this rule; they are slavish ethics, and as such have been an assistance to government in the hands of rulers throughout Christendom.

It is fairly obvious that for any religion or ethical code to be adopted by the ruling class it must conform to its interest, and the fact that Christianity, with its slavish ethical code, has been a State religion for centuries, is in itself sufficient to merit the serious attention of the student of sociology. Christianity first became a State religion in the slave conditions of the decaying Roman Empire, in an age that is described by Professor Seeley as a religious age, "because it was an age of servitude.” Many historians concur in the view that it was the cardinal ethic of submission which influenced Constantine, the Roman Emperor, to embrace Christianity.

After its recognition by the head of the Roman Empire, the progress of Christianity proceeded apace throughout Western Europe, and its progress can be explained largely by its utility as an aid to government.

The student of history will find that Christianity, like all other religions, has been utilised against the lower orders whenever they have rebelled against the tyranny of their rulers The scriptural 'injunction of “Servants obey your masters,” has always been ready to hand to encourage submissiveness, and the “great” Martin Luther, who is held up by the Protestants as a light of liberty, demonstrated how this injunction serves against the subject class. When the peasants of Germany rose in revolt against their exploiters in 1525, Luther addressed the nobles and princes as follows :

  “Inasmuch as they are evil minded and brazenly refuse to obey, and furthermore, resist their masters, they have forfeited life and soul as do all faithless, perjured, mendacious, disobedient knaves and villains. Therefore it becomes the duty of all here to strangle and stab, secretly or publicly, all such, and remember that there is nothing so poisonous, injurious and fiendish as a rebellious person. Just as you would kill a mad dog; if you do not strike him he will strike you, and with you the whole country.” (Quoted, by Gustav Bang in his ‘‘Crises in European History.”)

It is useless for our Christian apologists to claim that Luther and his like acted in contravention of "true Christianity.” For in every case of the votaries of Christianity using their influence to crush rebellion they stood upon the "authority of the Holy Bible.” The doctrine of non-resistance to evil is one of the chief tenets of the Christian religion, and was taught by its titular founder and his chief apostle Paul. The latter, in his various epistles to the Romans, Corinthians, Ephesians, etc., at all times enjoined the slaves to be obedient to their masters "in fear and trembling,” and to give them the same submission as they gave to Christ. Thus it is clear that the ethics of Christianity with their slavish characteristics are utterly out of harmony with the revolutionary principles of Socialism. Even the much lauded "Golden rule," although no monopoly of Christianity, since it was preached centuries prior to the advent of that religion, and is to be found in most ancient religions and philosophies, is useless to the workers as a means of their social advancement. Those who dominate society cannot be removed from their social position by the preaching of ethics; they can only be removed as all other ruling classes have been removed, i.e., by the reins of government being taken from their control by another class gaining power.

With regard to the different concepts of life between the Socialist and the Christian. The latter can only regard the world as a “vale of tears,” and this life as a painful preparation for a life we are supposed to live hereafter. It is an essential part of Christian teaching that the affairs of this life are as nought compared with the promised life beyond the clouds, and consequently we are enjoined to despise earthly things, to reap our reward in heaven. Of course, the Christian in practice treats earthly things much in the same manner as do non-Christians, but we are concerned here not with his actions but with his teaching. To the Socialist, the affairs of this life, the only life we know of, are of the utmost importance, and our concern is to make it as pleasurable as possible. As indicated above, there are ample means at the disposal of mankind to-day for all to live, in economic security and in healthy social surroundings. But such a condition of affairs will not be accomplished by preaching ethics, whether religious or secular, it will only materialise by the waging of the class struggle in which the workers must be backed up by a sound knowledge of the forces that lead to their emancipation from wage slavery. The workers must realise the fact that, in the words of Marx, "Religion is the opium of the people”; it has been the chloroform in the hands of parasites, throughout the history of class domination, and inasmuch as it has any influence in modern society, it acts as it is its nature to act, as a conservative force, aiming to preserve the traditional illusions of the dead past, as obstacles to the needs of the living present, and the future. Christianity, like all religions, has been driven from every field of science, and since Socialism in philosophy is science applied to society, Christianity can find no logical place in the Socialist philosophy. We Socialists take our stand upon the firm basis of positive science explaining social conditions, and, in fact, all things within the scope of our knowledge, by purely natural causation. Thus, the materialistic movement of Socialism is seen to be utterly opposed to the false idealism and supernaturalism of Christianity. Socialism alone, with its recognition of the supreme importance of material things, can accomplish for the workers what Christianity and its slavish morality assists to retard. We know that economic evolution and the self- interest of the working class are inevitably preparing the path for that great social change, when the workers of the world will enjoy the fruits of their labour in a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means of wealth production and distribution by and in the interest of the whole community; a system of society known as Socialism.

Robert Reynolds.

Almeria’s Greenhouses: The Dark Side of Agri-Capitalism (2019)

From the January 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

Part One: Mar de Plastico

In Almeria province in Southern Spain there is to be found the largest greenhouse complex in the world, an area roughly the size of the Isle of Wight. Nothing quite prepares you for the sheer scale of it all – or the brutal ugliness. Driving through it can be a disorientating experience. As far as the eye can see, covering the coastal plain and lapping the mountain range behind, is a shimmering sea of plastic.

The first greenhouses were erected in the early 1960s. Prior to that Almeria province was considered the poorest region in Spain, a barren desolate place, Europe’s only desert and the backdrop of many Spaghetti Westerns and films like Lawrence of Arabia. However, it wasn’t always like that.

Historical Background

At one time, according to Robert Wolosin, the area had extensive pine and oak forests as well as abundant fauna (including bear, lynx and roe deer), despite its meagre rainfall (2006, El Milagro de Almeria, Espana: A Political Ecology of landscape change and Greenhouse Agriculture). Successive waves of human occupation incrementally transformed this landscape to what it has become today. Key to this was the overexploitation and export of local resources linked to the extraction of economic surpluses.

Anthropogenic influences on the environment can be traced back to Roman times and even earlier. After the collapse of the Roman Empire in the 5th century, the habitat largely reverted to its earlier state, only to undergo a further transformation under the Nasrid Moorish dynasty (711-1492). The Moors introduced elaborate irrigation technology and new crops like citrus and almonds. Under them, the city of Almeria itself grew to briefly become the second richest city in Europe after Constantinople, linking the hinterland to the wider world of Mediterranean trade.

The Christian ‘Reconquista’ (re-conquest) of Spain completed in 1492, signalled a new chapter in the region’s environmental history. Feudal lords leased out land for sheep farming to provide wool for the Italian textile industry. The decline of that market in the 1600s and the availability of abundant land, subsequently encouraged a shift towards low-yield, extensive ‘dry’ farming (mainly cereals) necessitating the removal of yet more vegetation cover. Pastures and woodland were recklessly put under the plough, rendering the soil vulnerable to erosion, in a manner reminiscent of Dustbowl years of the 1930s when ecologically inappropriate, commercially-driven, farming techniques were introduced on the vast prairies of North America.

The final, and most devastating, blow to Almeria’s once forested, if fragile, environment was delivered in the early 19th century when, as Wolosin notes, tens of thousands of acres of vegetation cover was lost and half a million evergreen oaks were felled to, among other things, serve the needs of the local mining industry, then experiencing a boom. The growth of the mining sector – Almeria province at that time accounted for 80 percent of Spain’s lead production – also encouraged inward migration and the resultant increase in population exerted additional pressure on the local environment. However, by the late 19th century the mining industry went into a sharp decline because of falling prices but also, ironically, because of a self-inflicted shortage of wood needed to fuel the foundries. With mining in decline and farming adversely affected by centuries of environmental abuse, the province succumbed to significant depopulation.

Such was the parlous state that Almeria found itself in the early 20th century before the advent of the greenhouses:

 ‘An area once known for forests, streams, and a wide array of plant and animal life is now parched, cracked, and shadeless’ (ibid).

The ‘Ecological transition’

Putting this in a wider context Wolosin, citing the environmentalist Heinrich Walter, remarks that the Mediterranean region, and Almeria in particular, are ‘the best and most tragic example of how mankind has removed the foundations for his existence through the overexploitation of natural resources’. How this came about can be usefully understood in terms of the concept of the ‘ecological transition’ pioneered by John Bennett in his book The Ecological Transition: Cultural Anthropology and Human Adaptation (1976).

According to Bennett, there is a spectrum of human adaptations – from a local community completely reliant upon, and adapted to, its own immediate resource base right through to the kind of globalised system of production that characterises modern capitalism. In this latter case, the local community no longer depends entirely on its own resources to meet all its needs but, increasingly, on the ability of other communities to supply some, or even most, of those needs. In other words, environmental adaptation to the immediate constraints of nature gives way to the cultural adaptation of communities to each other.

The classical economist, David Ricardo, advanced his theory of ‘comparative advantage’ in support of this development. It benefits a nation, he argued, to specialise in what it is best at producing while relying on other nations to supply it with goods it is not particularly adept at producing. This reduces the opportunity costs of producing goods across all nations, leaving everyone better off from the resultant increase in global trade.

Ricardo’s theory is based on a number of unrealistic assumptions but, here, we are concerned only with the particular counter argument bound up with the aforementioned concept of the ‘ecological transition’ – namely, that by reducing the local community’s reliance on its own natural resources, this tends to ‘desensitise’ it to the need to prudently operate within the limits of these resources. This does not mean those limits are necessarily fixed and unchangeable – human intervention can, for instance, sometimes significantly enhance the fertility and hence, ‘carrying capacity’, of the soil. Nor does it mean a community will inevitably set about despoiling its own environment if it can rely on others to supply what it needs – there are other factors involved besides this – but this does nevertheless create the conditions which can greatly amplify the environmental impact of those other factors.

The collapse of the Roman Empire is a classic example. In part, the expansion of that empire was driven by the need to secure an adequate food supply to meet the needs of Rome itself – at its height, a city of one million people – and its vast armies. Grain tributes were exacted from conquered territories all around the Mediterranean basin which profoundly altered the region’s ecology. Widespread deforestation occurred to permit intensive cereal farming leading to soil exhaustion and desertification. The resultant decline in output, in turn, prompted the empire to further expand its territory, eventually reaching the point at which its supply lines were so over-stretched that it became increasingly vulnerable to external threats.

In modern capitalism, it is not so much tribute as the quest for profit that drives economic activity. But with capitalism, we see also the same preoccupation with short term interests over long term sustainability. According to Friedrich Engels:

 ‘As individual capitalists are engaged in production and exchange for the sake of immediate profit, only the nearest, most immediate results must first be taken into account . . . What cared the Spanish planters in Cuba, who burned down the forests on the slopes of the mountains and obtained from the ashes sufficient fertiliser for one generation of highly profitable coffee trees – what cared they that heavy tropical rainfall afterwards washed away the unprotected upper stratum of soil, leaving behind only bare rock! In relation to nature, as to society, the present mode of production is predominantly concerned only about the immediate, most tangible result, and then surprise is expressed that the more remote effects of actions directed to this end turn out to be quite different, are mostly quite opposite in character’ (1876, The Part played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man).

These words have a particularly modern ring to them in the light of the multiple and escalating environmental crises facing humanity today. The underlying mechanism driving this development is plain to see. Business enterprises strive to ‘externalise’ their production costs as far as possible in order to maximise their commercial gains under a system of market competition – or face commercial ruin. However, just because those costs are made to disappear from the accountant’s ledger book, this does not mean they cease to exist. The burden of those costs is born not just by the wider community but the very physical environment itself upon which we ultimately depend.

In response, capitalism has tended to promote technological ‘solutions’ to these very problems it has itself engendered. But can such an approach ever truly succeed in ensuring we keep our heads above the water or will the rising tide of ‘externalities’ eventually engulf us all?

A Spanish ‘El Dorado’

This is a question we might well ask in turning to consider that particularly remarkable example of capitalist enterprise and innovation: the greenhouses of Almeria.

In the 1950s, under Franco, a model irrigation project was launched in that sparsely populated zone, now under plastic, with the aim of resettling landless peasants there. It was the peasants themselves who initially developed the basic technology of greenhouse production – including the use of polythene rather than glass, attached to a simple framework of wood or metal – capitalising on the region’s natural advantages such as its abundant sunshine and the virtual absence of frost, to give them a competitive edge in the market for early vegetables. At first, it was the local, then the wider national market they supplied but, with Spain joining the EU in 1986, production became truly transnational. Europe, as a whole, now relies for most of the year on Spain to provide almost a third of its demand for fresh fruit and salad crops – a figure rising to half during the cold winter months – much of this coming from Almeria’s greenhouses which generate an annual revenue of about €2 billion.

As the industry expanded so did the role of intermediaries in financing, marketing and basic R&D. Indeed, the institutional architecture that has been built up around the greenhouse industry itself is, today, extraordinarily complex and closely coordinated. Downward and Taylor quote Almeria’s Director of Agriculture as saying: ‘This is the most social level of agriculture in the world, not even the best communist system would have achieved what has been achieved in Almeria… and by people who maybe 50 years ago would have only had a herd of goats’ (Journal of Environmental Management, January 2007).

Remarkably, given the highly ‘socialised’ nature of the industry, the ownership of the greenhouses themselves remains firmly family-based with about 13,500 small scale producers operating in the greenhouse belt typically on plots of somewhat over 2 hectares. This helps to explain the popularity of the greenhouses among the locals who widely regard this development as an ‘economic miracle’ and have prospered as a result. However, it is a miracle bought at a considerable cost which calls into question the sustainability of this model of development – not least, as we shall see, in an era of growing concern about climate change.

(Part 2 follows next month)

Robin Cox

Christmas, past and present (1965)

From the December 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

The festival we know as Christmas is far older than Christianity. It is one of the institutions that the early Christians adopted from, their pagan rivals.

During its teething years it was touch and go whether Christianity survived or succumbed to its foremost rival, Mithraism. The Mithraists were sun worshippers and they combined a solemn fertility ritual with aspirations after moral purity and a hope of immortality. The main Mithraic festival was held at the winter solstice, that time from which, each year, the days began to lengthen and the sun to arouse from its winter rest with the promise of a fertile springtime. The focal point of the ritual was a portrayal of a virgin giving birth to a new sun.

The Christian gospels give no hint of the date of the birth of their Christ and, accordingly, the early Christian Church did not celebrate it. The Christian priests were severe men and woman who urged their followers to live equally severe lives of work, abstinence and charity. But they found that many of their adherents took part in the solemnities and festivities of the Mithraists and, if they wished to win and retain converts, they would have to pander to peoples’ hearty liking for festivity and pageantry. Accordingly, the Christians of Egypt came to regard January 6th (by the Julian calendar) as the date of the nativity of their Christ and the custom of commemorating his birth on that date spread until, by the beginning of the fourth century, it was widely adopted in the east.

The western Christian church, probably influenced by the Roman festival of Saturnalia and the northern Yule, was the first to adopt December 25th, the day of the winter solstice, for their Christmas celebrations. The idea spread until, at an assembly held at Antioch in the year 375 A.D., the eastern church accepted the same date and officially changed from January 6th to December 25th.

As well as taking over the date of the pagan festival the Christians absorbed many of the heathen rites and symbols, such as the virgin birth, the burning of candles and the use of seasonable greenery for decoration.

By the middle ages Christmas was firmly established as the foremost annual Christian festival. The period of ritual and celebration extended over the whole twelve days from December 25th to Epiphany. It was a time of feasting, music, dancing, mumming, boisterous fun, and horseplay with the religious significance prominent in, but not dominating, the festivities. The twelve days ended with a ceremonial return to work on what was then known as Plough Monday.

A number of religious symbols from different parts of the world had become grafted on to the Christmas ritual. The mistletoe, considered a sign of fertility in some areas, became part of the Christmas festivity. The yule log, originally cut from the oak tree on which mistletoe was supposed to grow prolifically, became the traditional fuel for the occasion. Saint Nicholas of Russia, who died in 350 A.D., was eventually adopted by the Greek church and legends illustrating his benevolence and good nature were handed down to create the image of the Santa Claus of later generations.

The sixteenth century saw a growth in early capitalist industry and the first pressures being applied to abridge the period of Christmas festivity. Early restrictions had little effect in agricultural areas but it was easier to keep the poverty-stricken wage workers of the towns with their noses to the grindstone. For them a long holiday meant unbearable privations.

In England, effective political action to subdue Christmas festivities came with the Puritan revolution of the seventeenth century. During the period of the so-called Commonwealth fun and frivolity was severely frowned upon and even the churches were closed on Christmas day.

The next two hundred years witnessed the complete commercialisation of the festival. Capitalism drew each aspect of the institution into its maw. The spontaneous games and recreations were gradually replaced by organised entertainment; the amateur religious players and mummers made way for paid entertainers; communal self-help dried up and a smug, dignity-destroying charity took its place.

Nineteenth century sentimental writers, like Dickens and Kingsley, focussed attention, on the pitiable plight of the working class after the Industrial Revolution. They were of the “change-of-heart” school of reformers, urging employers to be a little more charitable to their employees. Dickens best depicted the attitude in his A Christinas Carol wherein he portrays a mean and grasping employer,' scared by a bad dream into becoming a charitable man on Christmas day and a little less mean one in the days following, to the benefit of his happiness and at the expense of his bank account.

Practically all of the Holy days of the middle ages have been eliminated. May day, as a workers' holiday, has been moved to a Sunday in May where it does not interfere with the working week, but the tradition of Christmas, shorn of most of its religious significance, dies hard. It lives on because it offers an attractive expansion of the market for innumerable goods. Workers save up for much of the year to have a spending spree and some festivity over the Christmas period. New symbols are introduced from time to time to attract these hard earned savings into different pockets. Christmas trees were an innovation, developed in this country from a German custom, during the reign of Queen Victoria following her marriage to Albert of Saxe Coburg. Christmas cards are also a comparatively recent profit making introduction.

The attitude of capitalist politicians to the festive season is often amusingly contradictory. In 1939, with a war getting under way, the Chancellor of the Exchequer broadcast a plea to save money to keep prices down, a minister at the Board of Trade called for a little spending to keep trade on the move, a state Forestry official announced that plenty of Christmas trees would be available as usual, firms with gift goods to market advertised them up to the hilt, and writers in the press urged people not to bankrupt patriotic business men who were doing their best to pay the costs of the war.

Social institutions are measured by their adaptability to a commodity producing society and are fostered or discouraged according to their usefulness to a profit making system.

Noble sentiments are prostituted and even the charity advocated by Christians is harnessed to the capitalist cart and whipped up with the gift-giving pleas and advertisements at Christmas.

W. Waters

What is history? (1999)

Book Review from the October 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Marxism and History. By S. H. Rigby, Manchester University Press, 1998.

This is a revised second edition of a book, first published in 1987, which is widely used at undergraduate level teaching. The focus of Rigby’s analysis is G. A. Cohen’s influential book, Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defence, published in 1978. Cohen argued that Marx’s account of history is a form of “productive forces determinism” in which society’s productive forces (applied technology) bring into being specific class relations. As these productive forces develop throughout history, they periodically bring about new class relations of production. Thus the growth of the productive forces is said to be the dynamic which creates specific class relations and through them new forms of state and ideology.

Rigby admits that this is a legitimate reading of Marx, most notably found in Marx’s 1859 Preface to A Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy. Marx and Engels often asserted that the productive forces have an inherent tendency to develop throughout history but in practice, says Rigby, Marx was not consistent in applying such a thesis in his historical and contemporary analyses.

He argues that Cohen’s specific argument that society’s relations of production are functional for the productive forces is not an explanation of why the productive forces develop, nor is it consistently supported by historical evidence. Of course human history has seen a growth of productive power, but such developments have been specific to time and place. There have been periods of human history in which the productive forces stagnated or even regressed, other periods in which class relations have changed without any obvious development of the productive forces, and yet other periods where the growth of the productive forces bring no change in class relations. For Rigby, the growth of the productive forces does not explain the change from the Ancient world to feudalism and it was only after feudalism had ended and capitalist relations of property had been established that new productive forces were introduced.

Rigby asks how can the productive forces within capitalism bring about socialist relations of production without invoking some kind of determinist assertion? His contention is that productive forces do not determine class relations. Rather, that class relations determine the direction and rate of advance of the productive forces. Instead of determinism we have a conditional statement: “if the productive forces are to advance then certain relations of production must obtain”. According to him, “whether these relations of production do develop is historically contingent and can only be established through empirical research”; Marx’s theory of history is a guide in that research by supplying the framework for identifying societies and how they change.

A society is not identified merely by its class relations, it is rather a specific mode of appropriation of surplus labour. Feudalism was based on the appropriation of surplus labour as feudal tribute (whether in the form of money, produce or labour services) from the peasantry. Capitalism is a society where surplus labour takes the form of surplus value (ground rent, interest and profit) extracted from wage labour. However, class relations and the mode of appropriation of surplus labour do not always coincide. This can be seen in the Ancient world where the predominant relations of production were the master and slave of chattel slavery. Yet independent producers who were the forerunner of the medieval serf produced the surplus labour, appropriated as taxation. As the Roman Empire declined chattel slavery increased, but the increasing demands placed on the independent producers by an expanding and costly empire brought about (together with external invasion) internal collapse. There then followed four centuries of stagnation of the productive forces. A simple analysis of relations or forces of production would not reveal what was really going on.

Rigby argues that the development of the forces of production in feudalism had a tendency to stall and sometimes to recede, as in fourteenth-century England and seventeenth-century Poland; the process described by Marx as “the primitive accumulation of capital” was largely one of the establishment of capitalist relations of production prior to the “take off” with the productive forces in the industrial revolution. Hence his conclusion: “capitalism was not the result of the growth of the productive forces. On the contrary, capitalism was the cause of that growth.” From which it would follow that the case for socialism does not rest on the assertion that the productive forces have run up against the limits imposed by capitalist relations of production. Instead the argument would be how socialist relations of production will allow the forces of production to be used to meet human needs. If Rigby’s argument is correct, then this is not just a criticism of Cohen but also the theory of history in what is known as “classical Marxism”. You will need to read the book to decide.

Rigby also includes a useful account of state capitalism. At the same time he wrongly identifies Marx’s proposed first stage of communism as “socialism or the dictatorship of the proletariat”. Marx did not say that socialism was a first stage, nor did he equate it with working class political control of the state—which is what he meant by “dictatorship of the proletariat”.

Rigby follows academic convention (as does Cohen) by wanting to keep Marx’s theory of history free from what he regards as Marx’s irredeemably false theory of value. But he cannot have it both ways. Rigby’s main contribution in this book is to emphasise how a society must be identified by its historically specific mode of appropriation of surplus labour. Capitalism is therefore identified as the extraction of surplus value through wage labour, and this clearly requires a theory of value as part of the identification process. Marx’s theory of history and his theory of value are dependent on each other.

Lew Higgins

The Nature of the Universe (1961)

From the January 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

Lucretius (about 100BC - 50BC)

The Nature of the Universe 

Nothing can ever be created by divine power out of nothing. The reason why all mortals are so gripped by fear is that they see all sorts of things happening on the earth and in the sky with no discernible cause, and these they attribute to the will of a god. Accordingly, when we have seen that nothing can be created out of nothing, we shall then have a clearer picture of the path ahead, the problem of how things are created and occasioned without the aid of the gods.

Learn, therefore that the universe is not bounded in any direction. If it were, it would necessarily have a limit somewhere. But clearly a thing cannot have a limit unless there is something outside to limit it, so that the eye can follow it up to a certain point but not beyond. Since you must admit that there is nothing outside the universe, it can have no limit and is accordingly without end or measure. It makes no odds in which part of it you may take your stand: whatever spot anyone may occupy, the universe stretches away from him just the same in all directions without limit. Suppose for a moment that the whole of space were bounded and that someone made his way to its uttermost boundary and threw a flying dart. Do you choose to suppose that the missile. hurled with might and main, would speed along the course on which it was aimed? Or do you think something would block the way and stop it? You must assume one alternative or the other. But neither of them leaves you a loophole. Both force you to admit that the universe continues without end. Whether there is some obstacle lying on the boundary line that prevents the dart from going farther on its course or whether it flies on beyond, it cannot in fact have started from the boundary. With this argument I will pursue you. Wherever you may place the ultimate limit of things, I will ask you: "Well then, what does happen to the dart?" The upshot is that the boundary cannot stand firm anywhere, and final escape from this conclusion is precluded by the limitless possibility of running away from it.

Extracted from the edition published by Penguin Books (2s. 6d.)

Debate—Marx v. Christ (1984)

Illustration by George Meddemmen.

Letter to the Editors from the August 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors.

I feel you must be entirely misinformed as to what religion is if you dismiss it all as “primitive superstitions” for, though that may apply to some religions, and even to some Christian denominations, the basic message of Christ in relation to our fellow humans was “love your neighbour as yourself". You may say, “What about the Old Testament?”, but a lot of what is said there was “updated" by Christ and the whole Christian code in relation to others summed up in the above-mentioned quotation. The early Christians lived in a community where "they would sell their property and possessions and distribute the money among all, according to what each one needed” (Acts 2).

The meaningless ritual and the hierarchical structure which some churches indulge in is, I suppose, what you Editors object to and. as a Christian, I object to it myself; but those are merely the trappings of religion, the peripheral details. The basic message, the real living truth, is to forget oneself for the common good of all — obviously to love God with all one's might, but that is not the issue at stake here — and that is all that really matters. There is no place for selfishness, or greed, or indeed any desire for personal gain at the expense of others, in Christianity, and neither is there in socialism.

The early Christians formed a socialist society which worked perfectly when everyone cooperated, until it grew too large. The links between socialism and Christianity are too strong for you Editors to brush them aside — or are your theories so firmly entrenched that you will not back down? If that is the case, you are hypocritical and therefore no better than any other political party and I will not join you.

Yours in anticipation of a considered reply to a carefully considered comment.

Alison F. Hayes,

Leeds.

Reply:

The first point in your letter accuses us of being entirely misinformed regarding the origin and evolution of religious beliefs. But you surely cannot be unaware of the mass of anthropological and historical evidence which informs us quite unequivocally that all religions, including Christianity, evolved from and are founded on nothing more substantial than primitive superstitions. Whatever personal experiences or inner visions you and others may have had, however revered the words of the priests and prophets as handed down to us. when closely examined they never amount to very much.

"Gods” are literally inconceivable, literally indescribable, literally indefinable. There are no steps you could take or investigative action you could engage in to bring these fantasies into focus or into a semblance of reality other than by an irrational abandonment of all normal verification procedures. Hence you are left with merely a belief, a faith handed down to you by people less knowledgeable, less informed than yourself and whose motives and intentions are totally irrelevant to your life. And one must always bear in mind that those who claimed the authority to vouch for "Divine Revelations" are the very same people whose over-heated imaginations and demented devotions gave birth to the "revelations" in the first place. What an abject denial of the dignity of intellect and reason it is to respond, in the face of all this, with the cry ". . . leave me alone — I’m content in my ignorance and feel safer being told what to believe than thinking for myself".

"The basic message of Christ” to which you refer was an exhortation to believe in a meaningless (even though up-dated and humanised) God and not the commendable, well meant homilies you quote. The very core of Christianity lies in the former and you cannot escape the consequences of that by emphasising the latter. We cannot tell from your letter how much of Christianity, as traditionally understood, you have already discarded: does your unloading extend to the mysticism, the "miracles". the claims made by the founder and the so called supernatural events attending his birth, death and after? If so, then you’re in the dubious company of other retractors who, mindful of the absurdities of fundamentalists, attempt to renounce the 90 per cent they find unacceptable and take on board merely the 10 they find congenial. But as the whole edifice is of a piece and you are not in a position to pick and choose, you take the lot or you leave the lot; logically you have no other choice. You, it seems, wish to pick the nice but ineffectual ethics.

The links between socialists and some Christians, to which you refer, have always been tenuous although they were forged in the heat of common hopes, desires, and expectations of a better life and an end to inequality. hunger, suffering, fear and all the other avoidable afflictions and indignities both are subject to. But socialism is one thing and Christianity quite another. The early Christians could not have had any comprehension of socialism as understood in this and the last century; it serves no useful purpose and only confuses matters when attempts are made to dilute the one and up-grade the other.

Above all, socialists work to lift the burden of ignorance and in this endeavour we must be implacably opposed to all religions because all require ". . .  the blessed state of innocent, undoubting, unquestioning faith. . .”; whereas, in our view, social progress can only be achieved by the very opposite intellectual stance. Behind the many bastions defending capitalism and obstructing progress towards socialism lurk authoritarian theologians who peddle anti-democratic attitudes, who belittle the strengths and self-developed abilities of "mere mortals" and. in condemning us all as “weak vessels", seek to undermine workers’ confidence. Their doctrinal claptrap has always been an obstacle to progress and the advancement of science.

Regrettably, your concept of Christianity is a minority view. You say that it is ". . . to forget oneself for the common good of all . . . There is no place for selfishness or greed or . . . desire for personal gain at the expense of others . . .” You claim that this is the true Christianity, but throughout its history, from the first parables to the recent blessing by the Chief British Christian of troops on their way to kill (Christian) Argentinians, it has upheld the domination by a minority ruling class over the majority subject class; it has reinforced and defended the political and legal powers of that dominant class at the expense of the majority; it has always sought, through charity and by extolling the virtues of suffering, to excuse poverty and thus ensure its continuation; its holy writ calls on the poor and downtrodden to abjure protest and political action and to “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s". It has served and still serves as an apologist for every and any cruel autocrat, tyrannical despotic regime, every exploiter and ravager since the Romans realised it was tailor-made as the best unifying, pacifying and thus the best controlling agent they could hope to find.

The world would undoubtedly be better, pleasanter, more tolerable, less stressful. if everyone abided by the tenets you outline. But this wouldn't touch the basic problems or their causes. How could it be otherwise when the nature of world capitalism requires of us and inculcates entirely opposite attitudes and behaviour. This system, which we seek to replace, dominates all aspects of life including the toleration or active promotion of religions, so long as they serve a useful purpose. Modifications, twists and turn-abouts are fairly easy to engineer as and when required: in the hands of skilled manipulators employed by the ruling class and its agents in the bureaucracy and religious hierarchies, the believer is a pushover. Witness the case with which workers are hyped up on the heady cocktail of religion, patriotic jingoism, nationalism and monarchy (or its equivalent). The intention is patently obvious: to ensure that the populace identify their own needs and aspirations with those of their class enemies.

You want to see a change in people's behaviour and attitudes. Good, so do we. But behaviour and attitudes spring from social and economic structures not from the condition of the "soul": relationships and roles are geared to the particular way the production and distribution of goods and services in any given society arc organised — to the particular requirements of those who possess the means of production and, of course, the right to cease production if it suits, never mind about needs or moralities. Socialism, on the other hand, would be conducive to the kind of harmonious cooperation you envisage. Satisfaction of one’s own needs would not have to be at someone else's expense; and the results of common effort, ingenuity and inventiveness would be commonly owned and freely available, not privately owned and only available if profitable.

There cannot be any receivers, responses or answers “up there", only an infinite succession of question marks. You may ask. “. . . but in that case, what is it all for; how did it all start; where did it all come from; what is the (its) purpose; where is it all going; where will it all end; what are we all doing here?" To these and similar questions there is only one possible answer: of all the past and present explanations, answers and accounts proffered, the least tenable, the weakest case, the proposition which accords with the fewest known facts, the claim which is the hardest to swallow, the assertion which requires the highest suspension of all reason and rationality for the longest period, the theory riddled with the most holes, stitched together with the greatest number of non-sequiturs and perverse presumptive leaps, is the one which invokes an “Almighty Personage" or “Being'’

You need not remain wrapped in the suffocating, mouldering bunting and handouts left over from a 2,000 year old Billy Graham Crusade, however acceptable some of that philosophy of "social concern and personal responsibility" may still be. Christians do not have exclusive claims to such a philosophy. We also seek to change hearts and minds — not by force or convoluted mysticism but by the only practical method open to the human race: self-help.

Editors.

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

A Visit From The Past (1982)

From the May 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Having nothing but hostility to pomp, superstition and market-place morality, the Socialist Party of Great Britain views the welcoming celebrations for the visit of Pope John Paul II as nothing more or less than a reflection of the ignorance of the religiously stupefied. Everything that the Pope represents, socialists oppose; everything that socialists seek to change, the advocates of religion need to preserve. We stand for human action within the material world—they stand for the passivity of faith within a world controlled by a mythically omnipotent, super-human deity. Respect for the leaders of religion—be they popes, ayatollahs, gurus or rabbis—reflects a pathetic lack of appreciation of the potentialities of humanity.

Christianity developed in an age of mass ignorance of human and environmental evolution. In the second century the Church of Rome emerged, originally as a movement of ideological dissent against the imperial ruling class of its day. (See Karl Kautsky’s Foundations of Christianity, parts II and IV.) The new religion was adopted by the aspirant rulers of the fourth century, and it was they who ensured the power of the bishops and the unchallengable nature of the Christian dogma. In the year AD 378 Theodosius became Roman Emperor and enacted a Christian monopoly on state propaganda (previously there had been a religious battle going on between the Roman Church and the advocates of Mithraism—sun worship); later the Emperor Gratian appointed the Bishop of Rome and his successors as the official religious leaders of the Western Empire, that is, Western Europe and North Africa. The role of the Bishop of Rome (or Pope) was to direct the religious development of the Empire in line with the political interests of the new Roman ruling class, to appoint a network of agents to spread the message, and to punish members of the oppressed class who stepped out of line. In short, the role of the Popes in classical antiquity was not unlike that of the Director General of the BBC today.

Popes have done much to protect the interests of the ruling class. The cohesion of feudal Europe owed much to the power of the papacy, which gave the seal of sanctity to the dictatorship of the land-owning barons. It was only when some states began to consider the possibility of taking over the job of organising their own ideological propaganda that the political struggle known as the Reformation occurred. The Reformation did not kill off the Roman Church, although it was clearly weakened and had to adapt itself to the moral needs of the new capitalist property relationships. In the late nineteenth century it was Pope Leo XIII who issued the Encyclical Letters which aimed to provide theological justification for the policy of reforming capitalism. For example, in 1891 Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum (on the condition of the working class) stated that the Roman Church was opposed both to “godless communism” and to “the excesses of capitalism”. Instead, the letter urged a humanised form of profit system under which men are no longer viciously competitive because they have decided to become good.

The Vatican has played a crucial part in providing support for religiously-based, pro-capitalist reform parties in several European countries; far from being examples of capitalism with a godly expression on its face, they have been no different from any other squalid defender of capitalist exploitation. The Papacy has never been too bothered about the democratic credentials of those capitalist leaders whom it has supported. For example, the Catholic Church supported the Christian Corporate States presided over by Franco in Spain, Salazar in Portugal, Dolfuss and Schunigg in pre-war Austria, Peron in Argentina and Petain in France. The papal relationship with the fascist dictator, Mussolini, was strained, but this did not prevent Pope Pius XI from stating that “Mussolini was the man sent by Providence” (December 20, 1926). In modern times the Pope’s role has been to urge workers and peasants to be contented with their lot, to preserve the restrictive economic customs of past ages, to seek crumbs for the poor from the rich man’s loaf (charity) and to urge the workers to save our aspirations for another world beyond the clouds.

It is understandable that ignorant Roman slaves believed in the superstitions of religion as a way of explaining the world they lived in. Indeed, even many members of the ruling class of classical antiquity believed their own religious propaganda (just as many modern capitalists now believe theirs). It is even understandable that a few backward peasants in the twentieth century, who have yet to be influenced by scientific knowledge, might listen to the Pope and accept his explanations about the origins and evolution of the world. But here in Britain—an advanced industrial capitalist country with an experienced, relatively educated working class—the mediaeval re-enactment of a papal visit can be seen as a device to push workers backwards into the ideology of ages past. Workers who applaud and worship this affluent travelling trickster are divorcing themselves from the rationalism of modern history. In a bid to set back the ideas of workers, the Church is spending millions of pounds on an exercise designed to divert the majority class in society from looking after its own material here-and-now interests.

The believers may be blind, but the Pope and his mates have got at least one eye open: they know that when all of the religious nonsense has been uttered for public consumption, it is the material world which really matters to them. For example, when the present Pope was shot recently a Vatican medical bulletin reported that “his intestines were gradually resuming their functions and that his heart and blood circulation were good”. It is noticeable that the Pope’s expert doctors were concerning themselves with such mundane material organs as blood and heart and guts. What would the Pope have said if his doctors had told him that they were going to leave his intestines for another day and in the meantime would be carrying out emergency surgery on his invisible soul? It is also interesting that the Pope is so anxious to be close to his “creator” that on his visit to Britain he will be accompanied by Scotland Yard’s D11 unit—a team of top marksmen who will be standing by to ensure that nobody sends god’s representative on earth to visit “that wonderful land in the sky” until he has to go. The Pope leaves the nonsense of Christian practice to his deluded followers; he knows now to look after himself.

Workers of the world have no need of Popes or other parasites to speak for us or act for us or tell us how to behave. The gods which we invented in the infancy of our social existence are of no more use to modern society than totem poles or witch-doctors. It was Thomas Hobbes who wrote that “The Papacy is the ghost of the Roman Empire sitting on the grave thereof” (Leviathan). That was written in 1651; if papal authority was an anachronism then, it is a thousand times more so now that society has reached a point where humans are the gods, where the universe is ours for the taking, and where history is ours for the making.

Steve Coleman

"Black Record" (1941)

Pamphlet Review from the April 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sir Robert Vansittart’s pamphlet “Black Record” is a very curious production. As Mr. G. P. Gooch, a well known historian, remarks in a letter to the Manchester Guardian (March 12th, 1941): —

   It is an eloquent and impassioned speech for the prosecution of the same one-sided character as foreign writers have often hurled at “perfidious Albion.” He calls Germany a butcher-bird, just as Reventlow, during the last war, called England the vampire of the Continent. In such propagandist works there is always a considerable measure of truth, for no country can show an unblemished record, but they lack the judicial spirit. The writers are so obsessed by the wickedness of the enemy that they try to produce the impression that there never were such monsters of iniquity.

Sir Robert condemns Sir Neville Chamberlain and others for not facing the truth as far as the German character is concerned. The “truth” being, in his estimation, that the Germans are by nature cruel and have been across the centuries predatory and vicious. This he urges over and over again. On page 16 of his pamphlet he makes the following assertion: 

    Hitler is no accident. He is the natural and continuous product of a breed which from the dawn of history has been predatory and bellicose.

Whatever truth there is in that assertion applies just as strongly to every "breed” that can trace ancestry back to the “dawn of history,” and most emphatically to the Latin nations. What blood and tears stains the history of Italy, of France, of Spain—and may we include England, or does the Germanic strain rule it out?

An incident: is related on page 4 that the author witnessed as a youth in Germany:

    I was eighteen at the time, and it was a bitter winter. A starving German lad of my own age stole a cutlet from a butcher's shop and bolted. He was pursued, caught, and kicked into a mess—not by- toughs, but by apparently ordinary citizens. I tried to intervene, but was told that, if I didn't stand clear, I would be served the same way.

The incident is given as an example of the fundamental cruelty of the Germans, and is a fair sample of his one-sided method of arguing. It is quite true that the case in point is a horrible illustration of the brutality born of the property instinct, a violation of which is always liable to convert the meekest ordinary citizen of any nation into a temporary fiend—particularly if it is his “own” goods that are touched. But if we are to accept the incident at Sir Robert’s valuation, what is to be said of a nation that produced the factory lords of the middle of the last century in England, who had little children of six to twelve years of age driven into factory hells to waste their health and limbs working up to eighteen hours a day producing the means to allow their master to live in luxury? Many of them slept in beds that were never cool, and all of them lost youth’s birthright—joy and laughter. Or, again, what of the nations that produced the perpetrators of the atrocities of the Belgian Congo, where natives were mutilated and villages burned if rubber in sufficient quantities was not brought to fill the bottomless maw of the profit-hunting rubber companies? Again, it was Frenchmen who tortured and slaughtered their own fellow-countrymen in 1871 for daring to resist the attack of Germany and establishing a commune in Paris.

No, acts of violence and brutality do not damn a nation, it only damns the motive that inspires the brutality.

War is the culminating brutality, but peace under capitalism is also full of brutalities.

Nazism, Fascism and Russian Communism are modern examples of systematic brutality, but they are each the product of a civilisation whose basis is the subjection and exploitation of the wealth producers.

Democratic countries exhibit brutality in a less glaring form. The hungry man who steals a loaf is not beaten into a mess, he is sent to jail because he has infringed the laws of private property.

Sir Robert rails against the Germans for aiming at world domination. But are they alone in that? What of the Greeks, the Romans, the Tartars, the Arabs, the Turks, the Spaniards, the Dutch? And, also, brother, why is a large part of the earth painted red on our school maps? Sir Robert, standing on a dirty doorstep, hurls his venom at only one of the gentlemen who occupy the other dirty doorsteps.

He also points to the fortunes acquired by Hitler’s fellow-gangsters out of the miseries of millions. But are they alone in that? What of the war profiteers of 1914-1918, who acquired fortunes out of that war? Are they free of dirt?

On page 19 the author writes:

   Julius Caesar says that in Germany 2,000 years ago “Robbery has nothing infamous in it '' when committed upon a neighbour.

Now, surely, Caesar ought to know, he was the author of the famous despatch, “I came, I saw, I conquered,” with reference to the Gauls. And, by the way, what was he doing so far away from Rome, anyhow?

Farther on Sir Robert adds:

   The Romans knew what their savage neighbours were like as clearly as the French knew later; so the Romans, too, built a Maginot Line and tried to demilitarise the Rhineland.

What a strange illustration to bring forward. The Romans, by cajolery, treachery, cruelty and force crushed their neighbours in ever widening circles until the major part of the known world of their day was under their sway. Then, when weakened internally, largely owing to the fruit of conquests, they were unable to extend the empire further or resist the pressure of their furthest neighbours, so they attempted to stem the impending flood by fortifying their frontiers. Not because the Germans were ferocious, as large bodies of German peoples were fighting in the Roman armies and helping to defend the frontiers.

It is extraordinary that an empire should be chosen as an example, which threw Christians into the pits to be devoured by wild animals, and which brought home captives to Rome to slaughter each other in the gladiatorial arenas for the benefit of a populace that crowded there to see the fun, and whose capricious thumb, pointing up or down, determined whether or not the fallen gladiator should be slain! So well known is the ferocious nature of the old Roman crowd that two thousand years later it is still a common phrase, “butchered to make a Roman holiday.”

We haven't space to deal further with the over-statements and historical peculiarities that litter the pages of this pamphlet. The Nazi regime can be shown to be brutal enough without this type of approach to the question.

Hitler and his clique climbed to power with the assistance of the so-called “Right" and “Left" wings in Germany. The general dissatisfaction of the German workers with their poverty-stricken conditions gave him his chance and he got the backing of industrial magnates by promising to obtain access to sources of raw materials and markets for German products. He strengthened his position by eliminating his opponents piece-meal and by misleading the workers into the belief that they were poor because Germany was denied access to markets in which to sell the products that would make more work. It is an old and familiar story.

Once in power he has been able to keep it so far by a mixture of coercion and promises of a paradise to come when Germany has conquered its enemies.

The German workers fell for Hitler’s promises in the same way as workers all over the world have for years fallen for the promises of leaders.

One day, however, the German worker will become sick from hope deferred, and that day will mean the end of the Nazi regime, if it does not collapse from outside pressure beforehand.

Gilmac.

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

Who Wrote The Bible? (1994)

From the January 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Bible dates from 700 BC but many Genesis stories are based on ancient Mesopotamian myths. The Garden of Eden was Mesopotamia’s fertile flood plain, the "Edhen". This dried up when the Persian Gulf withdrew 200 miles southwest causing the people to believe that they had offended the gods. Hence the "Fall of Man” myth.

John G. Jackson in his work the Pagan Origins of the Christ Myth comments:

  "There are liberal Christian apologists who no longer subscribe to the literal belief in the Fall of Man. But if there is no Fall, there is no need of an atonement, and no Redeemer is required"

Amorite people from Mesopotamia — known as the Habiru or Hebrews — entered Northern Canaan about 1500 BC and some were possibly taken as hostages when the Egyptians reconquered Canaan in 1468 BC. In about 1400 BC. the monotheistic Cult of Aten first appeared in Egypt only to be destroyed soon after Tutankhamun’s death c. 1300 BC. Pears Cyclopedia states: "From the historical point of view an important influence on Judaism may have been the monotheism of Akhen-aten".

The Exodus refugees may have been expelled Aten cultists. Professor Richard Friedman, states in Who Wrote the Bible?:

    "Some have concluded that only a small proportion of the ancient Israelites were in Egypt. The names, Moses, Hopni and Phineas are all Egyptian, not Hebrew. The group that was in Egypt and then in Sinai worshipped with god Yahweh. In Israel they met Israelite tribes who worshipped the god El. The two groups accepted the belief that Yahweh and El were same god."

The people of south Canaan eventually became known as the "Yahudi" and the land "Yahuda" or Judah. The name is possibly derived from "Yahweh” or its variant "Yah" (as in "Halleluyah”). The people of north Canaan — including the Hebrews — worshipped the Canaanite god "El", which may explain the name "Ysrael" - Israel.

Some historians now believe that the kingdom of "all Israel” never existed and that Israel and Judah emerged separately. In 722 BC Israel was destroyed by the Assyrians and its sacred writings to El were subsequently combined with similar Judean scriptures to Yahweh. These were further combined in about 622 BC with Deuteronomy when this long lost Book of Moses was supposedly "rediscovered" in the Temple. The German scholar, De Wette, described the "rediscovery" as a "pious fraud".

In 586 BC Judah was conquered by the Babylonians who in turn fifty years later were conquered by the Persians who made Palestine a province in 458 BC. This, therefore, marks the real beginnings of Judaism a combination of the declining Yahweh cult and Persia’s official religion. Zoroastrianism.

Zoroastrianism introduced to the Jews the concept of a god of love whose good would triumph over the Devil’s evil. Heaven was for the righteous and Hell for the wicked. Zoroastrianism also introduced the concepts of angelology, the soul, a Messiah, Resurrection and a Judgement Day. "Paradise" is derived from the Persian for an "idyllic afterlife” - “Pairidaeza".

The archaeologist, John Romer, in his work Testament, writes:

    "The influence of ideas that once filled the mysterious faith of ancient Persia runs through the Old Testament and continues well into the pages of the New Testament; an influence that leaves a trace even in the words of Jesus. "

In 332 BC, Palestine was conquered by Alexander the Great and a Greek influenced Jewish priesthood eventually emerged, the Sadducees. In 152 BC the Jewish Maccabean uprising occurred, out of which emerged the Pharisees whose apocalyptic ideas stemmed from the Book of Daniel. E.E. Kellett in his History of Religion states that "it was, as is now fully acknowledged, from the Pharisees that Christianity drew much of its inspiration.”

Perverted temple

A third group also emerged — the Essenes — who introduced the concept of a holy community temporarily replacing the "perverted" Temple worship of the Sadducees.

Kellett describes the apocalyptic philosophy’s development:

  "The idea of a 'new heaven and a new Earth' had hitherto been materialistic. A gradual transformation of this view look place in the last century before Christ, and prepared the way for his ideas. Apocalyptic ideas asserted a catastrophic end of the world. It is needless to prove that this conception, also, was taken over by early Christianity."

The first Christians were probably Essenes living in Jerusalem called Naasenes or Nazarenes. The Essene Dead Sea Scrolls describe a schism between the followers of the Essene leader, the "Righteous One", who strictly adhered to the Law of Moses and a breakaway group led by the "Wicked Priest" who wanted faith to replace Jewish Law.

This parallels the New Testament schism between the Jewish Christians of James the Just and the Greek Gentile Christians of Paul. The New Testament refers to Jesus as the "Righteous One” and is the only non-Essenian literature to use their term for the Devil "Belial". Jesus, James the Just's brother, clearly says: "Do not suppose that I have come to abolish the Law. I did not come to abolish but to complete." (Matt. 5:17 20). But Paul claims: "Christ bought us freedom from the curse of the law"! (Gal. 3:8-18)!

Similarly, the conflicting genealogies of Jesus attempt to show that Jesus was virgin born and descended from the Jewish "House of David". Jesus confirmed his Judaistic cause in Matthew (15:24 26): "I was sent to the lost sheep of Israel and to them alone".

Christians claim that Jesus's so-called "Doctrine of Love" is unique, but Zoroastrianism's god was a god of love and the Old Testament Book of Leviticus says "Love they neighbour as thyself". (Levi. 19:18). Rabbi Hillel, the Liberal Pharisee who died in AD 9 preached "Love thine enemies". Jesus later hijacked the phrase, falsely claiming the Old Testament said "Love your neighbour, hate your enemy". This is curious given Jesus’s own statements: "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother, he cannot be a disciple of mine" (Matt. 5:43-44). In fact, some disciples of Jesus were Zealot insurrectionists. At Gethsemane, some disciples were armed with swords and one attacked the High Priest's servant.

The accounts of Jesus’s life are all riddled with numerous contradictions. For example, Matthew claims that Jesus was born before Herod’s death in 4 BC but Luke says the birth occurred when Cyrenius governed from AD 6.

Given the many contradictions it's no surprise that there is not one genuine contemporary account of Jesus's life. As Gibbon says in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire:

    "During the age of Christ the lame walked, the blind saw, the sick were healed, the dead were raised, demons were expelled but the sages of Greece and Rome appeared unconscious of any alteration in the moral or physical government of the world."

Christianity’s real founder was Paul. His writings which make up 44 percent of New Testament were written many years before the Gospels.

In AD70. the Romans destroyed Jerusalem, its Temple and dispersed the Jews. Four years later they overran the Fortress of Masada and 960 Zealots committed suicide.

This final destruction of the Jewish Messianic movement meant that their doctrines were totally reversed. The Gentile Christians made their Holy Community, as symbolized by Jesus, a permanent Temple replacement. Jesus promised salvation in the next world and Mosaic Law was replaced by faith in Jesus as the central doctrine.

Christianity survived by accommodating Rome’s influence on its teachings. Hence the whitewashing of Pilate’s role in Jesus’s death. In AD 325 the Council of Nicae fixed the Canon of the New Testament. The Emperor Constantine arbitrarily decided the location of Jesus’s birth, death and ascension, and built a church on each site.

Professors Eisenman and Wise in their work The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered state that some Essenes were known as "The Children of Salvation". The Hebrew for "salvation" is "yesha" - and the noun "yeshuato" means "his salvation" ("his" = “Righteous One") — and "Yeshua" is Hebrew for Jesus. Eisenman and Wise further state: "The personification of this concept in the Gospel can be considered a most revolutionary development and one that has not ceased exercising its influence on mankind even now."

The Dead Sea Scrolls referred to were suppressed for 40 years because, as Eisenman and Wise state, it is impossible to distinguish them from the doctrines of the Jewish Christians. Christianity’s origins in the violent xenophobic Jewish Messianic movement contrast vividly with the demure picture painted by today’s Christians. Today’s Christians may equate "Loving your neighbour" with the so-called socialism of the Labour Party, but as has been shown such sentiments did not even originate with Christianity. As Socialist and Materialists we reject the notion that our destiny is ultimately determined by something outside the material world. The ideas that the existence of a complex universe presupposes the existence of an even more complex creator/designer/god — whose own existence does not — answers nothing.

Richard Layton