Colour Prejudice (2019)

The Material World column from the July 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

The description of the aristocracy as blue-bloods was very much based on class where fair skin highlighted a person’s blue veins which showed that they did not toil in the outdoors in the fields like the peasants. Today the problem is confused by the idea of race which human beings impose on themselves, an issue for the working class which we must overcome in our progress to a sane, humane society. Recently, the BBC reported that some children were lightening their dark skin to avoid bullying. Coincidentally, there was also a news story on the Miss India beauty pageant and its contestants’ fair-skinned complexions. For generations, Indian women have been raised with the belief that fairness is beauty and a sign of high birth. Advertisements featuring Bollywood stars suggest that lighter skin tones will help them improve their marriage prospects and get a better job. Cynthia Sims, of Southern Illinois University, found a gap in career opportunities between dark and light-skinned women in India. While a Seattle University study by Sonora Jha and Mara Adelman found that the chances for a dark-skinned Indian woman dating online were ‘nonexistent’. This has built a vast and ever-growing skin-whitening industry. The market for such products is expected to reach 50bn rupees (£566m) by 2023. The bias has even spilled over into religion. Just as depictions of Jesus show a very Western-looking white man, ad-maker Bharadwaj Sundar explains that similarly images of the popular gods and goddesses all show them to be light-skinned despite Hindu scripture describing many as dark-skinned. Nor is this desire for lighter skin restricted to India. Decades of cultural messaging to all people of colour present darker skin tones as unacceptable, and what they should be aspiring to is a ‘superior’ white skin. The World Health Organisation a few years ago found that 77 percent of Nigerian women use bleaching cosmetics, followed by Togo with 59 percent, South Africa with 35 percent and Mali at 25 percent. They are flooded with messages — and not even subliminal ones — that tell them that white is beautiful. The numbers of males bleaching is also rising rapidly.

The ‘why’ goes back centuries, and many determine the consequences upon colonisation. When the Europeans colonised Africa and Asia, they brought with them a belief that they were racially superior, and established a class structure that still exists today, years after countries gained their independence. In many countries, at the top of that class structure, sat white expats and Western diplomats. Next in the hierarchy were the mixed-race people when the European colonists mated with locals and produced offspring, who were then deemed to be superior class. South Africa’s apartheid system went so far as to legally enshrine mixed-race people as ‘coloureds.’

In many countries, the word ‘mulatto’ does not have a negative connotation. The view that the lighter your skin, the ‘better’ you are did not leave with the Europeans, and eventually, science caught up, as skin-lightening products became available throughout the continent. Many African women who use creams that affect the tone of their complexion routinely mention ‘chocolate’ as the shade they are aiming for. Many have seen that the ‘mulattos’ are given precedence.

Studies have consistently shown that in the competitive market for jobs and marriage, lighter skin has advantages. In 2015, another study found that white interviewers regarded light-skinned black and Hispanic job applicants as more intelligent than darker-skinned interviewees with the same qualifications. A US study in 2011 found that light-skinned black women receive shorter prison sentences than dark-skinned black women.

And nor are all the skin-lightening products safe to use. In 2011, a study by the World Health Organisation exposed the dangers of bleaching with these cosmetics, many of which contain mercury, a substance that can cause kidney damage, suppress immunity, induce anxiety and depression, and even permanently destroy the nerves in the limbs and skin. Cosmetologists are making a lot of money off the bleachers even though the risks of contracting skin cancer on the long run is high. Products contains hydroquinone, an ingredient that disrupts the synthesis and production of melanin that can protect skin in the intense sunshine, and corticosteroids, which in the UK are prescription-only products still to be found on the shelves. Experts say there could be a sharp uptick in skin cancer because these products attack the skin’s natural protective melanin. When you bleach, it takes off the outer layers of your skin and in this part of the world, the sun is always on. So there’s more skin cancer.

Humanity is one race, so claims of skin tones reflecting ‘superiority’ only reveal ignorance. Fair skin won’t solve your problems. Until we can begin to discuss the class-based realities of the racism of skin colour, we will continue to be subjected to fruitless and destructive ‘quick-fixes’ to inequality.

ALJO

Image And Identity (2018)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mike Foster

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

From the September 1926 issue of the Socialist Standard

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

What is the materialist conception of history?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let us turn our attention to the following lines :—

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(To be concluded in the next issue.)

Translated for "Modern Quarterly” by Bessie Peretz.

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

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

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

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

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

[8]  Schweinfurth, vol. 1, p. 148.

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

Marilyn Monroe: A Cultural Phenomena (1954)

From the November 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Beauty is only skin-deep," wrote the Self-Made Merchant to his son, "but that's deep enough to satisfy any reasonable man." That was sixty years ago, before it became customary to used the hands for describing beauty and when beuty, however deep, kept most of its skin under cover. The reasonable man's pleasure to-day is Marilyn Monroe, and the publishers and booksellers, with their empirical knowledge of his tastes cannot give him enough of her—at second hand, of course.

Reigning beauties of the past, for all that poets have made of them, reigned only in courts and castes. Miss Monroe's sovereignty is practically unlimited, geographically or socially. Not long back, manchester City Councillors averred her to be preferable to one of Henry Moore's sculptures, and a Work of Art: a national columnist went farther and said she was an Act of God. Even the Communists' censoriousness of her as a dollar princess has the scent of sour grapes. Marilyn Monroe, in fact, represents the acme of desirability in this day and age.

Times have changed, of course. This writer once heard an old lady describe how, mounting her bicycle in the eighteen-nineties, she was attacked by a woman who screamed: "You brazen thing! I can see your ankles!" It is not only that people in the 'nineties would have been shocked by Miss Monroe, undissembled in tight or negligible clothing: they would have thought her ugly, too. The beauties of the day—Lily Langtry, Olga Nethersole, La Belle Otero—were strapping girls with all the appearance of good living. Nobody talked of slimming, and the ladies' magazines advertised a treatment called Diano which, if it was all true, was nothing short of an inflationary measure.

The case for eternal beauty becomes as illogical as the argument that there is eternal morality, when one considers the variations in both according to time and place. Metropolitan man may pull faces over the Congo's idea of pulchritude; it is certain that the African native in turn would not think a lot of Marilyn Monroe. It is a question of what you esteem, and that itself is a question of what your world finds necessary. There is an old but appropriate story of a farmer and his guest together gazing across the countryside: the townsman rhapsodizes about the rolling vista, the farmer spits and says, "Thirty-bob-an-acre stuff." Most likely the African, as well as the Eskimo and some others, would say something of the sort about Miss Monroe.

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" is a fair enough statement of fact, but it leaves the important question unanswered. Man is the beholder: what puts, and transforms, beauty in his eye—his mind's eye? In primitive communities it is chiefly physical function, the apparent capacity for child-bearing and hard work. In class-divided societies, beauty has always been seen to a large extent in terms of conspicuous leisure; the sirens of all western civilization seem to have done little else through history but loll on divans (if you believe it, look in the art galleries). And, of course, every age creates its own motives and needs which help to shape its concept of beauty. According to the franker historians, mediaeval ladies often assailed the nostrils as well as the heart, but nobody minded much; nowadays, with a century's public health behind and the soap advertisements before us, a whiff of perspiration kills romance.

Marilyn Monroe is the personification of what popular consciousness in our time deems desirable. The rubato walk is a source of delight; in Victorian England, when no respectable woman thought sex pleasurable, it would have brought an indignant flush to a decent man's face. When the family was sacrosanct (because the economic ties which held it were still fairly strong) sexual provocation was shameful. Now the ties have sagged, the morality has sagged too, and beauty can present itself to arouse the instinctive polygamist in every man. And the conspicuous leisure is still there—in impractical dress as well as the sultriness and aura of wealth.

There is more to Marilyn Monroe than merely physique, however. She is "the sexiest girl in Hollywood," the girl who posed naked for a calendar and takes an interest in Freud. Almost every day there is a fresh tale and a fresh photograph; her skirts blow over her head, she distorts perspective with her callipygous charms. Her marriage to Joe DiMaggio was a feast for the papers and everybody's imagination. The husky, virile Joe, a masculine idol, and the supremely nubile Marilyn saying: "You can't take a career to bed and cuddle it," and: "I like honeymoons." Miss Monroe is, in fact, a dream. In Hollywood they make dreams; she is the most delectable dream of all.

The visual promise of pneumatic bliss is only the beginning. The real secret is the legend. Earlier film beauties, the vamps, the sweater girls and the rest, established conventions for exciting without intent to gratify; the Monroe legend is all of intent to gratify. Miss Monroe suggests not merely that she would please you but also that you would please her. From the humbleness-to-riches story, to the fabulous marriage and the scene where a plumber gropes for his pipe-wrench in her bath, the whole is a gorgeous fantasy into which every unsatisfied person of either sex can project every longing. It is Cinderella up-to-date, in glorious technicolour, and they live voluptuously as well as happily ever after.

None of this reflects any particular discredit on Miss Monroe or her employers, the film magnates. People who sell things, even dreams, are simply cashing-in on other people's needs—the only important criticism is of the world which creates such needs on so large a scale. The brevity of Marilyn Monroe's marriage indeed suggests that she herself is no more satisfied than a good many of her admirers. Certainly she knows no greater security—the careers of public entertainers are as precarious as those of any other people.

One of the paradoxes of our time is that, as fast as morality has slackened and so removed apparent obstacles to well-fulfilled sexual lives, the lack of satisfaction has grown. It is impossible to imagine a stable, sane community deifying a dream, but modern culture is largely made up of dreams. There is Miss Monroe; there are the revenge dreams of the brutal gangster stories, the escape dreams of popular romance, the vicarious thrills of speedways, space-fiction and the big fights. Our society, despising primitive people who incorporate sex practices in their cultures, has erected Marilyn Monroe as its tribal symbol—the symbol of frustration and unsatisfied desires.

Robert Barltrop

The beauty myth (1993)

From the July 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Stay young and beautiful/If you want to be loved" runs the old song. Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth is, among other things, a book about the way women and men are manipulated by a system based on property and profit. She covers in depth the various manifestations of an imposed and unpredictable beauty ideal for women—at work, in the media, in health and most importantly as a hugely inappropriate low self-esteem felt by, probably, a majority of women.

Women have traditionally been seen to be vain, that is, overly concerned with their appearance. What has not been recognized is the extent to which this "vanity" is in fact a manifestation of a feeling of personal inadequacy. Women feel inadequate to the task of matching the latest fashionable ideal of "beauty", the achievement of which, alone, can make them feel acceptable—to their lovers, the world at large and to themselves.

This ideal has varied from the voluptuous Rubenesque-type figure to the anorexic "Twiggy" of the '60s and '70s. Whatever it is at any one time it can never be achieved by most women, since all women vary in size, shape and appearance.

Naomi Wolf puts the problem down to two phenomena—one is the power relation between men and women and the other is the demand of commerce. Women's lack of self-esteem serves any desire men may have to control women's lives, since someone with low self-esteem is more manipulable than someone who is confident. It also serves the demands of commerce, since the sale of beauty products and plastic surgery is dependent upon women feeling they are nor beautiful enough as they are.

Property relationship

Any desire on the part of men to control women's lives needs to be regarded seriously as it is a threat to the possibility of democracy and equality between all people and hence represents a serious obstacle to the achievement of socialism. From a young age, males are taught that in order to be "masculine", that is, in order to feel adequate, they must dominate women, or at the very least, appear to.

Keeping someone's self-esteem low is the one way of maintaining dominance and the impossible demands of the beauty myth serve this purpose well. The wish to dominate women is very much tied up with property. It is likely that, with the emergence of property society, women came to be regarded as men's property alongside land, animals, slaves and so on. One of the main features of a piece of property is that it (she) is under the owner's (his) control.

The property basis of relations between men and women is constantly under threat, since women are on the whole strong and intelligent human beings whom men often feel inclined to genuinely love and respect. The lengths to which societies have gone to keep women under control, are quite extraordinary—clitoradectomy, foot-binding, malnutrition, enforced childbearing, institutionalized wife-beating, death by stoning . . . the list is endless. The demands of "beauty" represent just one, primarily psychological, means of control.

The other thread of the problem is peculiar to late 20th century capitalism; the requirement of business to make money has led to the development of highly advanced psychological manipulative techniques. The beauty ideal is being thoroughly exploited in this respect.

Naomi Wolf has this to say on the subject of ageing in women:

When grey and white reflect in her hair  . . . you could call it silver or moonlight  . . . she is darker, stronger, looser, tougher, sexier. The maturing of a woman who has continued to grow is a beautiful thing to behold.

The point of this passage is to show the extent to which we are usually manipulated into seeing the ageing process in a negative way. Men and women alike are conditioned to see "beauty" and hence "loveability" in a woman within the framework of an ideal which involves looking "young" and "slim". The extent to which women will go, and in some cases are expected to go, to try and fit this ideal, is frightening.

Commercial pressures

Cosmetic surgery in the USA is commonplace and is being commercially pushed in Europe. Cosmetic surgery involves a good deal of pain and actual damage to the human body. It has occasionally been fatal. It affects the physical health of the person undergoing it adversely. "If your ad revenue or your seven figure salary or your privileged sexual status depend on it, it [ageing in women] is an operable condition".

One of women's main enemies in this respect is ironically also one of women's best friends—the women's magazine. These days filled with articles and comment on interesting contemporary topics, the women's magazine unfortunately also reinforces that impossible, undermining expectation of beauty so thoroughly described by Naomi Wolf.

The main reason for this is 20th century capitalist commercial practice.

The magazines are dependent for revenue upon advertizing and the editorial content of the magazines must reflect this. A magazine which does not push "beauty" is threatened with loss of revenue from advertizing. Cosmetic surgery is the latest ghastly trend in this scenario.

This exemplifies capitalism's ultimate double bind—that, in order to meet people's needs, it must first be ruthless to them, since a business, or "going concern", must put money-making before all else in order to ensure its continued existence. And without its continued existence it cannot meet any human needs at all.

Naomi Wolf's proposed solution is another wave of feminism. Like the trades union movement, the feminist movements of this century have been useful in fighting for improved conditions within the framework of capitalism. However, as with trade unionism, feminism's successes are always under threat of sabotage or outright reversal. The real solution to women's oppression lies within a framework of a completely different economic system, one not based on property and the pursuit of profit.

Nicky Snell

The Beauty Trap (2004)

From the May 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

I was born facially disfigured with neurofibromatosis a spontaneous mutation in my case, the affliction usually being congenital and an affliction it is believed that seriously deformed John Merrick, the Elephant Man. Being thus afflicted it was more or less evident that my trek through life was never going to be smooth and that I would meet with a fair bit of subconscious, inbred prejudice.

I was thus delighted to read in the broadsheets of mid-March, that after 150 years of debate, a panel of judges had decided upon the sculpture that will grace the fourth and hitherto vacant, plinth in Londons Trafalgar Square. The successful artwork is Marc Quinn's marble statue of Alison Lapper, naked as the day she was born, eight months pregnant and disfigured with a condition known as phocomelia, the outward appearance of which gives armless Allison the form of a victim of the 1960s maternity drug thalidomide.

As could be imagined, the decision met with much criticism, largely from those campaigning for the plinth to be given to a statue of the late parasite of Buck House, the Queen Mum, the Daily Mail included. Others, including the Disability Rights Commission, welcomed the forthcoming statue as a blow against the culture of perfection. From what I have read of the criticism, the choice of Quinn's sculpture has been slated chiefly on the grounds that the work is all message but no art. Undoubtedly much of this disapproval is rooted in uneasiness with the subject matter, a popular held belief being that representations of disabled people should only be deemed satisfactory when the significance relates to charity.

Being interviewed in the Guardian (17th March), Alison was quite upbeat about her deformity, commenting that there was not a single thing about her body that she would change. "If you told me I could have any bit of plastic surgery that I wanted, I wouldn't take it because I'm just fine as I am, thank you very much. It is an exceptional and brave outlook to hold in todays world but there again Alison is an exceptional woman. She works as an artist and lives the life of a single mum, looking after her 4-year-old son Parys.

In a video that accompanied one of her exhibitions, in which her own disability takes centre stage, she commented:

Why do I use myself? That's a good point. My body isn't this ugly . . . I had always assumed it was because I'd been told it was . . . You are disabled so therefore you are ugly. So now, I think I almost throw myself at the public, if you like, for want of a better word, then say, well actually, look again . . . I don't feel ugly, and I forget that people become quite shocked by my nudity and by what I'm doing, but then great . . . if that's had an impact . . . good.

Though Alison has found significant success as an artist in her own right, consider when you last saw a disabled newsreader, a crippled Miss World hobbling onto the stage in an ill-fitting bikini, a facially disfigured Club 18-30 rep or a compere at the Oscars fumbling as he passes the golden academy award to best supporting actor with his misshaped hands. You could think all night and not recall any such moments because, quite honestly, the general public would find them unsettling, having been conditioned to see them as inappropriate. Instead, we expect the above to look about as perfect as it is possible to look.

Of course Alison, and certainly myself and others not cast in the generally accepted human mould, are not that unique. Indeed, normal people everywhere feel less than perfect and intimidated by societys notion of what is and what is not beautiful and feel their expectations and opportunities are limited because of their physical appearance.

Every day of our lives, everywhere we go whether reading a newspaper, watching TV, looking at bill hoardings or the elongated adverts on buses as they pass we are constantly inundated with idealistic images of how we should look. Our opinion of ourselves is under relentless attack from the advertising and media industries and our insecurities sharpened and thus easily exploited by those who seek to make a profit out of our fears, whether it be from dieticians and food and clothing manufacturers, the cosmetic industry or the plastic surgery fraternity.

We are conditioned to aspire towards quite impossible standards of beauty and are exposed daily to the myriad miracle products and procedures that exist to refashion us. We are weaned on the benefits of liposuction, tummy tucks, breast implants, manicures, Botox parties, face lifts, lip collagen injections for a fuller pout, vibration beauty therapy the list is endless. Our email is bombarded with penis enhancement spam. We buy products that remove hair from our legs, nostrils and crotches, restore it to our heads and change it to any colour of the rainbow. Just pick up any glossy-paged Sunday supplement and try looking for someone who resembles, in outward appearance, yourself.

Women in particular are bombarded with images of what the perfect woman ought to look like. She is a stunning blonde, a sensuous looking brunette or dark, mysterious and exotic looking, aged in her mid-twenties, tall and slender with two rows of gleaming white, film star teeth, devoid of any visible flaws and with her clothes hugging her body like a second skin.

I know women who have spent a small a fortune visiting beauticians, sometimes for complete makeovers all to enhance their own self-esteem and the fancied image of themselves in the eyes of others. Every external inch of our bodies are shown to be inadequate and in need of improving, from our eyelashes to our toe nails. If a woman has a rounded, shapely, Rubenesque body perfectly acceptable in the 1950s she has too much cellulite. If her breasts dont measure up they require liberal dollops of silicone and if her face shows the lines of maturity she is made to feel like a wizen-faced hag. Meanwhile, men enter the dressing room with trepidation, the member they once felt comfortable about now derisory.

Under constant attack from the media and advertising industry, women are left feeling happiness equates only with looking beautiful, whilst men can only find contentment in being affluent and powerful, there being no generic look to male success. In short, todays beauty culture creates needless anxiety for people, women in particular, maintaining that if you don't look perfect, or make some effort to improve your appearance, there must be something wrong with you, that you lack self-respect and have let yourself go.

All of this needless anxiety, stress and concern with, what is after all truly superficial, represents a terrible waste of human energy. How much good is lost to society for the want of a little confidence and self-esteem is anyones guess. Again, we can only speculate how far the working class have been steered away from their historic mission by the obsession with such false needs.

What a wonderful tool of suppression the master class have at their disposal our opinion of ourselves. What marvellous instruments of counter-revolution are the insecurities we have and which they know they can target. What better distraction from the really pressing issue in life how to establish a world free of waste and want and war and to displace from power our ruling elites than to deflect any outward thoughts the workers have inwards and on to themselves.

There are many ways we can help shape the socialist society of the future in the here and now. One is to recognise that there are powerful forces at work night and day (the media and advertising industries, cosmetic companies and food manufacturers, for instance) with only one objective in mind to profit by making us feel less than normal.

If Alison Lapper and many like her can feel good about themselves and challenge some of the most basic assumptions society holds head on, why cant we all? As the final battle with the master class is to be waged on the battlefield of ideas, what better way to limber up for that offensive than to gain confidence in ourselves as individuals by liberating our minds from false notions of what it is to be perfect? As a class, united by the same basic needs and desires, we stand as perfect as any revolutionary class before us, and as much in need of a philosophy of beauty dictated from on high, as a medieval peasant was of his oppressive religion.

John Bissett