Letters: Ice Age Art (2013)

Letters to the Editors from the October 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ice Age Art

Dear Editors

Thank you very much for forwarding the copy of the review (Mixed Media, September). It is great to read a piece in which the Marxist arguments are remembered and there are certainly excellent discussions to be had on these themes. More information on the topics mentioned can be found in the book that accompanied the exhibition. In both I tried to get away from the notion that these societies were ‘primitive’ or ‘savage’ as this is the language of the nineteenth century used to place modern western Europeans at the top of the evolutionary tree. The language of Marx and Engels that pursues evolution from savagery to barbarism and then civilization also need to be brought up to date with modern knowledge. It also sought to avoid the concept of Rousseau’s noble savage that is also inherent in the Marxist approach.

Ice Age art shows the developing skills in language and communication that enable modern humans to form larger, successful communities with many forms of organisation. Hunter gatherer communities have to be collaborative to survive and as I say in the book, these people probably did have gender specific activities but without concepts of male/female superiority or measures of value for activities. Men and women served one world through different tasks. The breakdown of this comes with agriculture and the measured values for activities. The concept of Mutterrecht as fully expressed by Jung’s disciple Erich Neumann also needs to be used with care.

The elaborate ornaments in the exhibition also express ideas about personal and social identities, wealth and status that may have been politically, socially or spiritually hierarchical but as always it is difficult to be conclusive about the implications from the archaeological record.

There is as ever much to debate.

Jill Cook, 

Curator Ice Age Art: arrival of the modern mind, British Museum

Kenya school scam

Dear Editors,

I worked as a school manager at Bridge International Academies from  2010 to mid this year. The company’s business is educating the less fortunate in society at an affordable cost. Most of the company’s schools are constructed using iron sheets. And they are located in the slums.

Workers (teachers, school managers) in these schools are poorly paid, work for long hours and are not represented in any trade union. The proprietor of these schools is a top American capitalist. Profit is his main theme, though from time to time high quality education is dangled to parents and in prospectuses to attract them to the schools.

Workers are paid per the pupils who pay that month. Those who pay later on don’t count for this and the money remains the profit of the company (worker’s sweat). Any worker who makes an attempt to complain or show displeasure is shown the door.

Morale has been low and prospects of employees scaling the corporate ladder are slim as there is no upward mobility in the firm. The company pays US nationals handsomely while Kenyans are left to feed on crumbs.

Out of the 210 schools, 75 percent are profitable but this profit doesn’t get to those who make this a reality (teachers and school managers).

If that’s the way capitalism operates, then damn the system. It’s ugly and repugnant. Companies ought to realise that without their workers the wheels of their operations would grind to a halt.

Patrick W. Ndege, 

Nairobi, Kenya.

Funny Money?

Dear Editors

Kaz’s interesting article ‘Propaganda Power… in your pocket’ in September’s Socialist Standard sparked a mischievous thought: How ironic it would be to find bank notes defaced with the briefest of messages: ‘Abolish money – see SPGB’.  I’m not suggesting a thing, mind.

Andy Cox (by email)

Maybe that’s why they’re thinking of changing  to plastic notes? – Editors.

Obituary: Andy Cox (2014)

Obituary from the September 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is with great sadness that I announce the death of my twin brother, Andy, my lifelong and closest buddy, who succumbed to a massive and totally unexpected heart attack on 8 June. He was at the very prime of his life and, after a long period of huge personal distress, when things finally seemed to be looking up for him and his new partner, Kim, he was taken from us. All who knew him will recognise in him one of the nicest and warmest of human beings one could meet whose generosity of spirit, genuine humanity and concern for others could not be doubted.

Andy was a revolutionary socialist before I was and, in fact, was instrumental in me encountering the SPGB, He lived in Clapham in London for a short while in the early 1970s, not far from the SPGB Head Office. It was in his little bedsit that I saw my first copy of the Socialist Standard. Our early years together, first at a catholic boarding school in Pretoria and then serving in the South African army as conscripts (we both narrowly escaped being sent to Angola at that time, to fight the MPLA and the Cubans by dint of joining the regimental bugle band in Walvis Bay, Namibia) provided fertile soil in which our subsequent radicalisation took root. Apartheid South Africa in 1972 was a seething hotbed of liberal student protest . That was when Andy was first arrested and questioned by the police for distributing subversive literature; I was a little more fortunate in escaping the long arm of the law. Our long hair and bell bottoms were probably grounds enough for suspicion.

When the family emigrated to the UK that year, our political evolution continued – in my case from Heathite Tory, to green activist, to left wing zealot and, finally, revolutionary socialist. Andy beat me to that final place of ideological repose even if I joined the SPGB before him. He was less of an activist than I was but in no way was he less a revolutionary socialist. People sometimes conflate Party activism with commitment to the socialist cause. That is a mistake, I think. Andy was not much of a Party activist though in recent years, after I emigrated to Spain, he joined the South West regional branch and started attending branch meetings. However, his commitment to the cause was never in doubt. There is a long tradition of a kind of DIY approach to promoting socialism, both inside and outside the Party, and Andy was no exception in that respect.

This is no better exemplified than in the case of the website he set up called “A Point of View (http://andycox1953.webs.com/) which contains a number of his articles. These reveal his fine flair as a wordsmith and his ability to marshal empirical facts and ruthless logic, much as a gifted military strategist would deploy detachments of military units to confound the enemy. Andy had been helping me with a long term (and long overdue) project – writing a hefty tome on the subject of “socialist values” – and I shall sorely miss his wise counsel and sure-footed insights.

But, above all, I shall miss him and the person he was, as will so many who had the pleasure and the privilege of having known him. He was a truly remarkable man and a wonderful human being.

Robin Cox