Life of Marx (2000)

Book Review from the April 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Karl Marx by Francis Wheen. Fourth Estate, London.

Journalist Wheen has performed a staggering feat. In just over 400 pages, he has traced the action-packed life of Karl Marx from childhood in Triers in the Moselle valley to university life in Bonn and Berlin and political exile in France, Belgium and finally London.

In the hands of Wheen the story is one of almost cinematic action. The heady student days of feverish philosophical debate fuelled by too much wine and beer are vividly portrayed. His foray into political journalism, his jousts with state censors and his eventual political banishment, leading to the life of a stateless person trekking through the capitals of Europe in poverty and constant harassment by state authorities and police spies are dealt with in a lively and readable fashion.

The real strength of this book, however, does not rest on the colourful biographical detail, but on its depiction of Marx as a human being, rather than (as has been too often the case in the past) as a god or a devil. Interestingly enough Wheen mentions in his introduction a book, written by an American evangelical preacher, entitled "Was Karl Marx a Satanist?" The other side of the coin, of course, are the books that are nothing less than hagiographies. As the jacket cover says, "Karl Marx emerges as a flamboyantly unmistakable individual, not the stony head of a monolithic, faceless organisation."

Socialists might have wished for more emphasis on Marx's ideas, but when Wheen does this he does an excellent job. Considering that his intention was to deal with Marx more as an individual rather than as an economist, historian, philosopher or revolutionary, the author's discussion of the works of Marx is generally speaking difficult to quarrel with and easy to admire. He distances the writings and actions of Marx from his so-called supporters like Lenin, Stalin and Mao. He has a pop at Karl Popper's criticism and absolutely devastates the attacks on Marx by the likes of Paul Samuelson. The role of Marx in the International Working Men's Association is particularly well documented and his jousts with Michael Bakunin and the anarchists are vividly drawn.

A lot of people are going to hate this book. Left-wingers who see every industrial dispute or petty social unrest as the harbinger of a transformation of society will be reminded (if they ever knew) that Marx's view was that a long period of education and organisation was necessary before the working class could establish socialism. Anarchists with their 19th-century romanticism about conspiracy and direct action will be less than pleased at the reporting of the antics of their anarchist heroes in the International. The academics who have dismissed Marx's views as outdated are not going to like Wheen's view that Marx's criticisms of capitalism are still valid today.

Even if a lot of people are going to hate this book, this socialist loved it and advises readers to get down to their local library immediately. If you are going to buy only one book this year, then this is it.

Richard Donnelly

Education serving capitalism (2000)

From the April 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

At every level of formal learning we are taught to conform—without mass indoctrination the profit system could not exist.

Tony Blair knows the value of education—it was the only word he used when listing his three priorities for running the profit system. Education is an integral part of any social system. In one that is dominated by commodity relationships and values, education both reflects and contributes to those relationships and values. Those who wish and work to replace capitalism with socialism need first to understand how education sustains the one and how it can help to bring about the other.

There is a conventional mythology surrounding the noble ideals of education. Schools are said to be places where young minds are nurtured, where boys and girls are prepared to become responsible citizens. Sir Sydney Caine writes that universities at their best are "the 'soul' of the country and when they have been independent of government and inspired by some vital and independent philosophy." The reality is, of course, much different. Schools, colleges and universities are not independent of society—they are an essential feature of it.

Feudal society required little of the peasants by way of education. The Industrial Revolution demanded more—workers who could make, tend and repair machines, and some who could keep records and books. The schools taught the virtue of attendance, the children were to know their place and sit still in it—a suitable preparation for working life in the factory or office. In the 20th century the process was continued—mass education was fashioned into an increasingly refined training and selection mechanism for the labour force.

For the employer class the education of workers is a cost that must be borne as economically as possible. In a book called The Education Dilemma, edited by a member of the World Bank, we are treated to the following remarkably frank admission (boast?):

"It is true that schools have 'inputs' and 'outputs' and that one of their nominal purposes is to take human 'raw material' (i.e. children) and convert it into something more valuable (i.e. employable adults)."

The cost of education is a particular problem for governments of Third World countries, most of whom are saddled with huge debt repayments to international banks and with the costs of choosing to put domestic guns before butter. One answer they have come up with is to use what is called non-formal basic education as an inexpensive alternative to universal primary education. This is a rural-based, vocationally oriented form of education relying heavily on instructional technology (useful if you can't afford to pay teachers). One contributor to The Education Dilemma offers the advice that, since television seems to work no better than radio and is much more expensive, it should almost never be used for instruction in low income countries.

This leads us to the question of whether the increasing use of more costly forms of instructional technology in the economically advanced countries is a good thing or not. From the point of view of school and university administrators and the governments and corporations who are their paymasters, instructional technology is a good investment. The recent worldwide growth in distance education is an example. Apparently, national and multinational corporations like distance education because it can link employees via electronic means for training, and they can save on the costs of transporting employees across the country.

The rhetoric about the university is that it is a community of scholars. While some of the medieval universities were no doubt founded on this ideal, today the label "academic capitalism" seems more apposite. Academic capitalism denotes market behaviour on the part of universities and faculties. There has been a shift from state block grants to grants and contracts targeted on commercially useable results. Centres within universities that form government-industry-university partnerships are encouraged. Faculties are obliged to look for commercial research funding—projects that are applied rather than basic, that are tied to the needs of national or multinational corporations.

A few years ago George Ritzer wrote a thought-provoking book on The McDonaldization of Society. The basic principles of the ubiquitous McDonald chain of fast-food restaurants are efficiency, quantified and calculated product, predictability, and the substitution (as far as possible) of non-human for human technology. Ritzer shows how these principles are exemplified in education. Schools and universities are required to be cost-effective; league tables give evidence of which institutions get the best exam results. Exams themselves are increasingly boiled down to multiple-choice questions, the answers to which are machine graded. The best-selling textbooks are "customised" and contain easily-digested McNuggets of information.

The subjects taught are prone to the same commercial pressures. Economics—aptly named the dismal science—focuses its theories, concepts and examples on the world of buying, selling and exchanging property, including intellectual property. If alternatives to the status quo are considered (which they rarely are) they equate socialism with nationalisation and communism with state capitalism. In a University of the Third Age economics group the speaker expounded on multinational corporations: their names, the industries and countries involved, the technologies they used, and so on. In view of their failure to meet basic human needs, I raised the question of whether they should be replaced by a system of common ownership and free access. My question was ruled out of order.

Other subjects are also heavily influenced by monetary calculation and property relationships. The comparatively new field of conflict resolution is monopolised by texts and teaching on "deterrence" to war, leadership policies, business strategies—not a word on the conflict between capitalism and what could be its practical alternative if enough people were given the opportunity to know and understand it. Leisure studies gives undue weight to the provision of leisure by commercial companies and government bodies—the idea that we can make our own leisure, individually or collectively, is largely discounted.

The inherent inequality between teacher and pupil has led some critics of capitalism—and indeed some socialists—to question the value of "schooling". In New from Nowhere William Morris expresses his objection to the way children are taught in capitalism by predicting that in socialism there will be no schools offering "a niggardly dole of not very accurate information; something to be swallowed by the beginner in the art of living whether he liked it or not, and was hungry for it or not". No blanket rejection of education was implied, but the critique of authoritarian schooling as simply preparation for employment led to a movement for "deschooling". The concern has been that hierarchical and autocratic teacher-pupil relationships concentrate power in the hands of teachers and lead children to acquire attitudes of docility and submission to authority.

What can we say about education in socialist society? It is easier to foresee what will no longer take place than what will positively develop. With no employment, schooling will lose its function as preparation for employment. No more McDonaldisation of education, no more economics (though economy history, as part of history, may well survive). The knowledge and skills needed to run a society which inherits the best from the past and rejects the worst will be circulated and developed among adults, and the ability to think creatively and critically transmitted from generation to generation. There will surely be different approaches to—even controversies about—what task.

Stan Parker

Flawed fairy tales (2000)

Theatre Review from the April 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Honk, The Ugly Duckling. National Theatre.

I was about fourteen when I first went to the theatre. It was 1945 and we went to see Aladdin at the Palace Theatre in Manchester. I remember the occasion vividly. After the dark, dank dullness of war, the theatre was ablaze with light and colour, and from the moment the band started to play I was enthralled. Of course it helped that periodically half a dozen high-stepping chorus girls would appear, with legs clad in shimmering silk that seemed to go on forever, and invite my intense, admiring gaze. The heroine was wistfully beautiful, the adults simply differentiated by dress, facial expression and body language as either good, bad or comic, and I was quickly lost in the excitement, the glamour, the giddy pleasure of it all, all these people on stage, real people not film stars, performing for us. I wanted it to go on forever.

Two years ago, when our eldest grandson was four, we took him to the theatre. It was not a success. He was too young (and probably too impressionable). The first appearance of Stinky Poo was enough. With rolling eyes and malevolent chuckle, Stinky Poo quickly had Tom hiding under his seat and after the interval he refused to return. Last year was much successful. Tom had seen a video of The Snowman and knew what to expect, but we were a long way from the stage and the impact of the live show was much reduced. Then last week we took him to the National Theatre to Hans Andersen's fairy story about the ugly duckling who turns into a swan, sat him near to the stage and watched and waited. Tom sat in rapt attention, eyes aglow, lost in . . . who knows what? And yesterday, in traditional theatrical fashion, he wanted to reprise the occasion. So my partner and Tom went through the plot and linked it to the twenty-odd scenes that are mentioned in the programme, and their associated songs. He says he wants to go again.

When I was a child there was little theatre for children, but now that children are significant consumers the market has responded accordingly. There are stories especially written for children to which "adults maybe admitted if accompanied by a child", small touring companies specialising in children's theatre, and lots of shows which, like films released under a "universal" certificate, are presumed to be suitable for both adults and children.

Honk is such a show. The National claim that it is suitable for anyone over six, but I'm not so sure. Certainly anyone over six would have no difficulty following the story, but on the other hand they certainly couldn't follow a script which contains many lines with clear adults-only significance. Most films, TV shows, books and theatre are of this kind. The demands of selling the product to a large audience mean that minority interests have to be sacrificed. The script for Honk is arguably less convincing than it might have been, because in trying to ensure wide appeal the writers have come up with something that satisfies neither children nor adults. But then this is how capitalism works. It's not the needs of people that matter, but the profits of the manufacturer.

It's easy to empathise with the ugly duckling. The emotions surrounding the duckling's experience—the insults, the abuse, the threat of physical assault—are not difficult to identify with. The duckling is despised because he is different. Hans Christian Andersen suffered a similar fate. "Gawky, dreamy, pale, weak, disliking the company and games of other boys, Andersen was relentlessly humiliated and bullied for much of his childhood." (Tim Goodwin, 1999.) Others are similarly despised and disparaged because of their colour, or sexual orientation, or beliefs, or accent, or whatever.

On another level, the duckling's world—the place where he is hatched and the farm where he hides—are metaphors for the hierarchical, bourgeois society with which Andersen was only too familiar; not least because he was at the bottom of the pile. As such Andersen's fairy story is based on a substantial social critique. The pity is that it is flawed.

The ugly duckling is eventually transformed into a swan, the implication being that it is to nature that we must look to if we are to know our destiny, and "that inborn qualities are more important than upbringing". However, The Ugly Duckling was written in 1842, long before the importance of environment on human growth and development had been empirically demonstrated. It must be doubtful whether Andersen would have written a similar tale today. After all it's one thing to write a fairy story which sees the lives of farmyard animals in human terms, and quite another to go on believing in the 21st century that nature is the significant determinant of human behaviour. Now that is a fairy story. An unhelpful, anti-working class fairy story, because it denies the possibility of change. No wonder the capitalist establishment is happy to feed Honk to children of all ages.

Michael Gill

Is There Anybody Out There? (2000)

TV Review from the April 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

The question of whether we are entirely alone in the universe is one that has perplexed philosophers, scientists and daytime talk-show hosts across the aeons of time. BBC2's Horizon addressed itself to that very issue last month enquiring whether somewhere out in the vast expanses of the universe there is a planet (or planets) just like Earth. If there is, do they know about our existence and have they monitored our activities in any way? Are they aware of all our social and cultural developments? And if so, did they understand 3-2-1?

To be fair, Horizon restricted itself to discussing the strictly scientific advances surrounding the various recent attempts to discover the existence of hitherto unknown planets, particularly the efforts of the successful team based in Scotland. This was entirely worthy from the point of view of a respected science programme like Horizon, but it did unfortunately entail prolonged discussions about seemingly randomly-spaced dots on endless pieces of graph paper. All in all, it was quite possibly not what a lot of viewers had in mind when they switched on.

It did, however, beg questions which will no doubt be returned to time after time. Foremost among these of course is if—as seems to be the case—other planets exist elsewhere in the universe, how likely is it that some of them can support life? Is it the case, as some scientists have recently maintained, that Earth coalesces such an entirely unique combination of properties to sustain life that it is highly unlikely that life will exist on any other planet?

Socialists are naturally in no better a position to judge this than anyone else, though it is worth mentioning that the view that We Are Alone has always seemed a particularly unscientific one given the vastness of the universe and the multiplicity of its star systems—moreover, it smacks somewhat of a search for a scientific justification for the creationist sympathies of some scientists, sympathies that are often lurking at a deeper ideological level.

To go boldly

If intelligent life does exist elsewhere then it is quite possible that some of this life will be aware of our existence, and if so, then they will surely look at us with a little pity. How could it be otherwise with a planet populated by an intelligent and technologically-developing group of mammals who are to all intents and purposes a slave species, under the parasitic domination and control of a tiny group from their own number? As Gene Rodenberry, the founder of Star Trek, tried to tell the waiting world before William Shatner got in the way, sophisticated and technologically advanced life-forms are unlikely to be living in conditions of self-imposed artificial scarcity elsewhere, in societies based on slavery and exploitation like we have on Earth.

It is interesting to socialists how often science fiction writers—those most typically granted licence in such matters in modern society—return to this theme despite the ideological hegemony of the ruling capitalist class and the mindset associated with it, dominated by everything consequent on private property and competition. Some scientists have shown an ability to explore this theme too. These have included an American called Fred Steckling, who wrote a seemingly kooky book some years ago which was among a number at the time attempting to argue from official NASA sources and photographs that alien life-forms of some kind had a base on the moon. The fixed constructions and vehicles Steckling claimed to identify in the photographs included in his book were of such a colossal magnitude that he contended that:

". . . whoever they are, living on the Moon, or using it as a base, must have solved the economic aspects in the construction of such vehicles long ago. This in turn suggests great co-operation and consolidation of people, talents and experts into one genuinely co-operating labor force . . . This no doubt suggests that whoever they are up there, they are more advanced than us. One could speculate further, that with such great co-operation, there would result a common language and economy with perhaps the elimination of the monetary system entirely. It is logical to assert, pursuing this same line of thought, that this seems to be the reason why the officials [NASA and US Intelligence] have chosen to ignore these inexorable truths" (Alien Bases On the Moon, p.28).

If Steckling was arguing logically from an unfortunately flawed premiss in writing this, he was at least more advanced in his application of the materialist conception of history than the bizarre Leninist outfit the Revolutionary Workers Party, whose periodical can still be found occasionally in the darkest recesses of Housman's bookshop. For those who don't remember, this was the Trotskyist sect which claimed that if socialism is impossible in one country (true enough) then it must be impossible on one planet as well (“that is illogical, captain”).

Of course, the underlying point about all this speculation over the existence of other life forms (and it is, at the moment, only that) is that it should not get in the way of attempts to solve the very real problems of humanity down here on planet Earth. For that is a large part of the problem with searches for extra-terrestrial intelligence and all the rest of it—whether done throughHorizon's conventional scientific methods or not. If all the well-meaning individuals out there who have spent their time looking for some sort of salvation or rescue by extra-terrestrials had concentrated on the real and concrete task of struggling to free humankind from our self-imposed chains, then we may well have dispensed with the need for alien assistance quite some time ago—whether any was forthcoming or not.

DAP

Passing the time (2000)

From the April 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

I was standing in a queue at a supermarket, the kind of queue that makes you regret that you didn't go somewhere else for your loo roll and a tin of cat food, when I caught the eye of a woman behind me and smiled. There followed a discussion on the lines of how frustrating supermarket queues are, what a waste of time and how we could be getting on with something more interesting. My new-found acquaintance cited a couple of examples like cleaning out the cupboard under the stairs or taking the dog for a walk. I refrained from giving any examples of my own for fear they might sound a trifle odd.

Then she asked if I had seen the Queen Mum on the telly the night before. (Why do people insist on calling her the Queen "Mum" as though she had spent a lifetime scrubbing floors and administering to the kids. As if we would fall for that stuff.) My heart sank. A good part of my life has involved dodging conversations of this sort because I always know, instinctively, where they are going to lead. I become irritated and as a result sarcastic and withering and thus put out of humour for the rest of the day. Anyway, I admitted, impartially, that I had not seen the Queen Mother on the box the previous night and hoped it would be left at that.

A short pause and then the woman said "She is such a gracious lady, don't you think?". I confess my reaction was a cowardly one. I turned my heard to look out of the window commenting at the same time that so far we had escaped the rain promised to us by the met office. But my friend of the queue persisted. "Don't you think she is a gracious lady?" I told her that the word "gracious" as applied to the Queen Mother was used by the media with such sickening regularity that it was hardly surprising if a large number of people came to believe it, adding that it mattered not a dog's turd to me whether she was gracious or not.

There was a shocked silence—it shocked even me. To show little respect for the Queen Mother's graciousness was one thing but to have mentioned her in the same breath as a dog's turd was sacrilege. The woman struggled for words. I fervently hoped she would be unable to find any until I had reached the till, paid for my purchases and made a quick exit. And that's how it turned out, but not before she had dumped her shopping crossly on the counter, declaring "I don't know where we would all be without the Royal Family." Such is the power of indoctrination.

We can come inextricably close to those people we meet in a doctor's waiting room, on a train, at the bus stop, and it seems to me that, unfailingly, an assumption is made that our opinion will be identical to their own. Under such circumstances I have listened to people who wish to bring back the death penalty, believe immigrants should be forced to return to their country of origin, and desire benefits to be withdrawn from the shiftless unemployed. Any dissent on my part has often been met with a flinch, indignation, even downright anger and nobody has ever said, "How interesting. I would never have thought of that before."

Meanwhile, to console me, I have devised my own little scenario and I am still waiting for it to happen. It is this. I am sitting on a train and the man sitting opposite me is engrossed in his newspaper. Suddenly he lowers the paper, leans towards me and asks "Tell me, has it ever occurred to you that the wages system could be abolished?"

"You mean to be replaced with socialism?" I enquire in a daze of happiness. The stranger nods, "Precisely." And we continue our journey in absolute accord, talking, talking about the new possibilities for human existence. No, I don't hear any orchestras striking up or choirs singing. I wouldn't take it that far. Even I recognise the need to be realistic.

Heather Ball