50 Years Ago: Population and Poverty (1986)

The 50 Years Ago column from the February 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have long been familiar with the argument that poverty is due to over-population, and that if the workers would only decrease the size of their families they would all be better off. Now we are introduced to the opposite argument, from a catholic, Father Woodlock. In a statement to the Evening Standard (January 15th) he pointed out that a falling population means fewer soldiers to defend the Empire, and that in addition it means greater poverty for the workers.

 Only short-sighted economists fail to notice that fall in the birth rate will not help the condition of the working classes, but accompanied by the noticeably increased longevity of our people, will put a much heavier burden on the workers.
 They will be fewer, but in the future they will have to support a much increased number of aged and unemployable dependants. Propagandists of the spread of the birth-control movement never seem to aver this.

We can agree with Father Woodlock that those who preach birth control as a cure for poverty and unemployment are completely in the wrong, but in rejecting that fallacy Father Woodlock embraces another. It is true that a population containing a large proportion of people unable to work may be at a disadvantage compared with one containing a higher proportion of able-bodied men and women in the prime of life, but we are not living in a system of society in which the problem of wealth production is as simple as that. Under capitalism large numbers of people — the propertied class — are not engaged in wealth production and have no desire or necessity to be so engaged. Consequently the burden resting on the shoulders of the workers is not that of keeping only themselves and their own dependants, but, in addition, of keeping the propertied class in luxury and idleness or non-productive activity. and of keeping all the military and civil hangers-on of the capitalist system. The wealth producers are not engaged in producing for themselves, but of producing wealth for the capitalist class alone to own and control.

(From an editorial Quins, Quads and Poverty, Socialist Standard, February 1936.)

Population and Poverty (1952)

Editorial from the March 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

We are told by a correspondent (J. Caldwell, Glasgow), that the article "Housing and Festivals" in our December, 1951, issue "overlooks the need for the poorer classes to restrict or curtail their procreative activities. Study Malthus, abolish all religious superstition and get down to birth control. India, China, etc., etc., should be a lesson to all.”

Our correspondent tells us that India and China "should be a lesson to all” but does not tell us what the lesson is. If we are to assume that our correspondent means that where the population increases the workers are poor and that in countries where the population does not increase but declines the workers are not poor the answer is simple: the working class are poor in all countries. The population in Ireland has declined enormously during the past 100 years and is still falling. It fell from 2,971,992 in 1926 to 2,955,107 in 1946. By contrast the population in Great Britain, America, Canada, Australia, and in the world generally increased greatly during the same periods. Are we then to believe that in Ireland the workers are no longer poor, or are less poor than the workers in other countries named? If our correspondent really believes this he should supply evidence.

France is another country in which population has declined (from 41,835,000 in 1931 to 40,503,000 in 1946). Are the French workers no longer poor?

One interesting point about our correspondent's case is that he does not offer the benefits of birth control to the capitalists but only to "the poorer classes." In other words, though he apparently thinks that birth control will make the poor rich he does not think that the lack of it will make the rich poor.

What we need to be told by those who hold our correspondent’s view is how their alleged cure for poverty is supposed to operate. They argue that there are too many workers and that a reduction of their number would enable the smaller number to push up wages.

This argument overlooks the fact that under capitalism the number of workers who can get work is not a fixed number, it depends on whether capitalist production is expanding or contracting. At present there are some 22 million workers in employment and not only is unemployment relatively low but, according to the Ministry of Labour (Labour Gazette, Jan. 1952). the number of registered unemployed 302,956 is actually less than the number of unfilled vacancies 335,686. (The explanation is of course that the vacancies may be in areas where there are no unemployed workers suitable for the kind of work). Our correspondent wants the number of workers to be decreased. Let us suppose therefore that his propaganda succeeded in reducing the number from 22 million to say 21 million. But in 1931 according to the Ministry of Labour (21st Abstract of Labour Statistics, page 14), the total number of persons available for work was 21,000,000. Were the workers then in the happy position of being less poor, or not poor at all? By no means, for at that time capitalism was in one of its depressions and there were 2½ millions out of work!

While capitalism continues the working class, whether more or less numerous than what our correspondent regards as the proper number, will continue to be exploited. Not birth control but Socialism is required to abolish poverty.

50 Years Ago: The Catholic Church and the Pill (2019)

The 50 Years Ago column from the March 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mussolini’s massacre of the Abyssinians, Hitler’s systematic murder of the European Jews, the American slaughter of Vietnamese—none of these atrocities, or others like them, caused more than mild rumblings in the Roman Catholic Church—and yet Catholics were deeply involved in all three. But the use of ‘the pill’ has caused a series of explosions which threaten to blow it apart at its rotten seams. The contrast would be laughable if it were not so tragic. The Pope’s ruling on oral contraceptives has caused more Catholics to question the authority of their church than any other event this century. It has called forth more jokes than the Profumo affair. And the jokes and arguments have arisen because people are struggling to understand and digest a seemingly absurd situation. For thousands of Catholics it was a shock situation, because the pill seemed to offer the answer to all the objections that the church had raised to mechanical or chemical contraceptives. Many of them were already using the pill in expectation that the Pope would bless it, and there was a powerful lobby of bishops and influential lay Catholics urging the Vatican to take this decision. When finally, after long delay, and against the majority advice of his own Commission, Pope Paul’s encyclical forbade its use by Catholics, the reaction by Catholics and non-Catholics alike was close to incredulity.

That was seven months ago. Many non-Catholics have already forgotten it—or at least they would have done if it had not been for the way Catholics are still reacting. For many, particularly in countries like Holland, France and Britain, the resentment and disappointment have led to a continuing series of minor rebellions on other issues such as the celibacy of priests, the virginity of Mary, and the dominance of Rome. It is plain now that the Vatican must prepare for many years of dissent and controversy.

(Socialist Standard, March 1969)

The Catholic Church and the Pill (1969)

From the March 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mussolini’s massacre of the Abbysinians, Hitler's systematic murder of the European Jews, the American slaughter of Vietnamese—none of these atrocities, or others like them, caused more than mild rumblings in the Roman Catholic Church—and yet Catholics were deeply involved in all three. But the use of "the pill” has caused a series of explosions which threaten to blow it apart at its rotten seams. The contrast would be laughable if it were not so tragic. The Pope’s ruling on oral contraceptives has caused more Catholics to question the authority of their church than any other event this century. It has called forth more jokes than the Profumo affair. And the jokes and arguments have arisen because people are struggling to understand and digest a seemingly absurd situation. For thousands of Catholics it was a shock situation, because the pill seemed to offer the answer to all the objections that the church had raised to mechanical or chemical contraceptives. Many of them were already using the pill in expectation that the Pope would bless it, and there was a powerful lobby of bishops and influential lay Catholics urging the Vatican to take this decision. When finally, after long delay, and against the majority advice of his own Commission, Pope Paul’s encyclical forbade its use by Catholics, the reaction by Catholics and non-Catholics alike was close to incredulity.

That was seven months ago. Many non-Catholics have already forgotten it—or at least they would have done if it had not been for the way Catholics are still reacting. For many, particularly in countries like Holland, France and Britain, the resentment and disappointment have led to a continuing series of minor rebellions on other issues such as the celibacy of priests, the virginity of Mary, and the dominance of Rome. It is plain now that the Vatican must prepare for many years of dissent and controversy.

To Protestants who (loudly or quietly) detest the Vatican, it has been a matter for a certain amount of temperate glee. For non-christians and atheists it has given a satisfying sign that religion is losing its vice-like grip upon people's minds. Socialists, however, have found the whole pathetic comedy interesting and in a more complex way than it has been treated in the press and in casual conversation. Socialists oppose religion, including Christianity, not chiefly because it is wrong in its beliefs—this does not matter very much— but because religion is used as a powerful propaganda medium for persuading the working class all over the world to accept and even actively support the capitalist system which cons them out of all the wealth they produce, and uses it often in waste and violent destruction. The Roman Catholic Church, however, has always had a two-faced attitude towards capitalism because the Church’s period of greatest power and influence, over individuals and states, occurred in the feudal era, before the succession of capitalist revolutions swept through Europe. In its organisation and beliefs Catholicism is still largely feudal, but as capitalism triumphed, so the Vatican jettisoned those of its principles and practices which would have interfered with its wealth and political power. By withdrawing its condemnation of usury as a sin, the Vatican has become the world’s largest single shareholder—well over the £2,000,000,000 mark, and it remains the wealthiest owner of land and art treasures. But it fought tenaciously against the liberal elements in rising capitalism which would have cut its revenues, prevented its control of education, or interfered with its grip on the reading, the family life or the political allegiance of millions of Catholics. It is a fact that in all countries where the Vatican has retained major control capitalism has advanced least, living standards have remained low, and government repression has been ruthless.

This does not alter the fact that in Protestant countries the freedom of the individual which capitalism brought, and which the Protestant religions justified with their newer interpretations of Christianity, was chiefly the freedom for capital to exploit labour to the limit. Hard work became one of the greatest virtues (for the working class), and the freedom of the individual in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries included the freedom to starve. In other words, freedom is very valuable for those who have the wealth to enjoy it, but for most members of the working class, even today, talk of freedom is largely academic when it is set against their over-riding unfreedom—the iron necessity of selling themselves to a boss for the best part of their lives. In fact the long list of ’’freedoms” that capitalism has been responsible for all become double-edged when they operate within a capitalist society, because in so far as they make workers more free they also make them more available for exploitation. This applies to birth control just as much as all the other scientific and social developments of capitalism. The freedom to have children or not is an ironical gift when it means that a couple are free to have no children at all because they can never afford to stop or work or settle in one place. In Socialism, on the other hand, where there will be no classes, no exploitation, and no states, an invention like the contraceptive pill will really add to people’s freedom by giving them more control over nature and their own future.

On the surface some of the Catholic attacks on the use of the pill sound like socialist criticisms. For example Socialists can detect a measure of truth in the warning of the African R.C. bishop who asserted that the pill was being used as a weapon against the underdeveloped nations by the large industrial nations. But these are red herrings. Even if there were no such dangers the Catholic Church would still be opposed to anything which led to greater individual freedom and opposed to the pill in particular because it threatens to undermine the Church’s control over its members and its influence over governments. This was the real dilemma which made the Pope hesitate for so long. The pill, as the best contraceptive invented so far, has brought the Church into direct conflict with the march of modern capitalism. And, either way, the Church must lose. The bishops rail against the possibility that control of people’s sex lives may pass into the hands of the State, but this is because, for Catholics up to now, it has been in the hands of the Church. By prohibiting contraception as well as divorce the Church has ensured large families of Catholics—particularly important in the growing countries of South America; it has kept women tied to child bearing and rearing, and so economically dependent upon men and subordinate to them; it keeps fathers hard at work providing for such families or else in and out of the confessional box atoning for a succession of infidelities; and it keeps the sense of sin oppressive and ever-present. This not only reinforces the importances of priests but convinces the priest themselves that in living celibate lives they are not sacrificing a great deal. All of this would be substantially weakened if the Church allowed the dissociation of sex and childbirth by sanctioning the use of contraceptives. In fact the process of weakening has already begun, and it looks as though, by giving an adverse verdict after waiting so long, the Pope has set in motion a more rapid break-up of the Church than if he had approved. But sooner or later it was inevitable. Opposed to the pill, the Catholic Church is likely to be broken by schism; if it accepts it eventually, it will become a changed institution. Any institution which becomes an obstacle to the wages system will suffer in the same way. Catholicism backed the family and capitalism is changing the family. It may even dissolve it altogether. It needs women out at work, free and mobile like men—free to be wage-slaves. And the pill has hastened the process considerably.

Ron Cook

World Poverty and Birth Control: Malthus Was Wrong (1970)

From the August 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

A majority of those who comment on the future prospects for mankind stress the problems associated with rapid population growth. With unrelieved gloom book follows book upon the prospects of a starving world as a consequence of the rising birth rate and the only solution usually offered is birth control.

The theory that the restriction of population is the only cure to present-day hunger and future outright starvation goes back to a book by Thomas Malthus first published in 1789. His theory can be stated fairly simply; there are too many people on the earth and they are increasing too fast. Enough is not provided by nature for them all, therefore, poverty, vices, misery, the splitting of society into haves and have-nots leading to violence and wars. Most of these calamities could be avoided by stopping the growth of population. Malthus recommended the workers to practise birth control in order to remedy the social evils which they faced.

What was new in his theories was that he explained social problems like unemployment and poverty not from economics as was the case with Ricardo, Adam Smith and many of their followers, but from biology — from sexual life. The basic idea convinced many when it was first put before the public and it seems to be convincing to a substantial number of people today.

Malthus claimed that population grows faster than the production of food (not to mention clothing and shelter). According to him population grows in geometric progression (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 . . .), while the production of food increases only in arithmetic series (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 . . .). He was convinced that the only way to restore the balance between population growth and the production of food was through moral restraint (sexual abstinence i.e. copulation control through postponement or cancellation of marriage), limitation of births, pestilence and war. Because the world is always overpopulated there is inevitable poverty and misery. From this Malthus drew the conclusion that practical steps have to be taken to decrease the surplus population.

During the second half of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century Malthus’s theories were not widely accepted but what is seen as the menace of overpopulation in the so-called underdeveloped parts of the world has given birth to a whole new generation of neo-Malthusians who are determined to save the world through producing infertility in bedrooms rather than fertility in fields.

In most of the books and articles produced by the modern neo-Malthusians the basic ideas of Malthus remain unchanged. Biological solutions are suggested for social problems, biological laws explain social facts and biological causes replace economic, social and political ones. People starve because they breed too rapidly not because the world’s wealth is monopolised and used by a minority to increase this wealth still further in response to uncontrolled economic forces. People will stop starving when they stop breeding and not when they reorganise the world’s resources in the interest of the world’s population.

The fact is that Malthus and his followers are not concerned with explaining poverty and misery, they are concerned with justifying it. They see scarcity as something natural and eternal to which we must adjust. In the face of their critique technology must retreat from the fields and the factories and into the bedroom.

But the point they seem to miss is that surplus population is not something natural and absolute. It is at all times relative to production, distribution and social organisation. There are definite socio-economic reasons why there was a “surplus” population in the Rhondda in 1931 and in Delhi in 1961. They were only relatively surplus and superfluous because they have been made so by the way the world’s population is organised (or disorganised) in relation to the means of production and world markets. Workers do not suffer the pangs of hunger and destitution because there are too many of them but because they cannot gain access to the things which would enable them to produce what they need. Poverty is not the result of overpopulation, on the contrary, overpopulation is the result of poverty. This is true in two senses: (i) poverty in the sense of propertylessness which afflicts all workers generally and which can lead to relative overpopulation when this propertylessness leads to workers being cut off from the means of production during periods of unemployment and (ii) poverty in the sense of destitution which can lead to apathy over questions of family limitation, which, in turn, can lead to an increasing birth-rate. This is partly the reason for the lack of success of birth control in areas like India. Modern methods of birth control require a degree of self discipline which is often absent in populations with predominantly pre-industrial ideas and values, especially when they are thrown together in squalid primitive shanty towns with little hope for the future. Contraception is difficult enough on an individual level in such conditions but when it is attempted on a mass scale, as in some areas of India, it becomes ludicrous.

When we look at the problem on a world scale it becomes apparent that it is not merely a question of people failing to gain access to what is produced but also what is produced cannot find its way to those that need them. Because the world is organised along national and class lines the means of subsistence are sometimes withheld from those who most urgently need them.

The cornerstone of the Malthusian argument is that the produce of the soil can never keep up with the increase in population. It is based on an extremely simple model of soil and population. It disregards entirely a third factor—the human ability to use rational means to attain certain ends i.e. science and technology. The history of Western Europe and America over the last 150 years has contradicted Malthus on every point. Despite the fact that wealth was and is owned by a minority the standard of living of Europeans has improved even though the population increased from around 180,000,000 in 1800 to around 676,000,000 in 1965. It could be argued, of course, that this was achieved at the expense of the rest of the world. But this cannot be the case since the per/capita income of the entire world has been growing over this period and not only that of the advanced industrial countries. At the present time the indications are that, viewing the world as a whole, food production is more than keeping pace with population. [1]

The trouble with Malthus and especially neo-Malthusians is that they take the social system as something given and unalterable. The only thing that can be changed to solve problems of poverty is individual sexual behaviour. We must regard the fact that the world spends more on armaments than the entire national incomes of Southeast Asia (including India and Pakistan), the Middle East and Latin America [2] as something given and somehow ‘natural’. But we must regard an Indian couple with six or seven children as something unnatural and horrible. Heavily armed with sheaths, coils and pills they set out to change the latter condition but the former condition must be left well alone.

Lewis Hopkin

[1] Our Developing World by Dudley Stamp, page 80. See also Population and Land Use by Colin Clark.

[2] The Cost of World Armaments Scientific American, October 1969, p. 21.

Not Too Many People (1970)

From the August 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

The overpopulation myth threatens to overtake the human nature myth as the chief explanation for the evils of the modern world. A recent Observer feature confidently attributed the following problems to an excess of human beings: hunger, disease, the retarded development of backward countries, social unrest, political instability, urban sprawl, radio-active waste, destruction of wildlife, city squalor, crowded mental hospitals, violence, all kinds of pollution and ecological upset, the shortage of housing in London and the desecration of the English countryside. The writer of this piece did not think it necessary to supply any evidence for his assertions. They are, after all, common gossip.

People’s readiness to accept the “overpopulation” argument arises from their lack of understanding of the way capitalism works. If millions are hungry, it is felt that this can only be because there isn’t enough food in the world. If millions live in overcrowded squalor, this must be because there is a shortage of living space. If people are homeless, there is a “housing shortage” and that is that.

Occasionally we hear a few snippets of information which might be expected to disturb those who take this fashionable view. The growing problem of huge surplus food stocks in many parts of the world, for example. Or the recent recommendation to the French government to take measures to increase the French birth-rate, in the interest of France’s long-term economic and political strength.

It has become a cliché in Britain to speak of “this overcrowded island”. In fact, although the British Isles are far from being among the world’s more lightly-populated regions

  The whole population of the United Kingdom could be rehoused in the single county of Devon with a density of ten houses per acre (quite a generous piece of land for each family) and there would still be land to spare.” (J. P. Cole Geography of World Affairs, p 319)

Indeed, the fear of overpopulation does sometimes appear in its most naive form: the fantasy of human beings so thick on the ground that there wild be “standing room only”. Such a state of affairs would certainly be frightening, but even if the world’s population continued to grow at its present rate, it would be a long way off. If, for example, the entire world’s population were now placed in the United States, the population density in that country would still be no more than that of Holland today. Overcrowding is not due to overpopulation, but exists principally because of the private property system which ensures that the majority of people, being poor, cannot afford to buy or rent sufficient accommodation, of sufficient quality, for their own health, privacy and peace of mind. It hardly needs pointing out that for the rich minority, there is no housing shortage and no problem of overcrowding.

Also, though capitalism does increasingly necessitate attempts at planning the layout of communities, this takes place within a context, and with a scale of priorities, fixed by the market and by the warring of mighty vested interests. Small wonder that, under capitalism, the anarchic arrangement of our physical environment adds its weight to the other forces which oppress and depress us. It therefore plays a part in generating the frustration and disharmony which lead to mental illness and some forms of violence. It is a total evasion of these problems to put them down to “too many people.” In fact the readiness to “solve” human problems by wishing away the human beings who are suffering from them, is itself a horrible symptom of something profoundly wrong.

It is true that the human population cannot grow without affecting the natural environment, sometimes with the risk of dangerous ecological chain-reactions. But the vast majority of pollution, from pesticides, herbicides, industrial waste and so forth, is quite unnecessary, and could easily be avoided upon the abolition of capitalism with its reckless race for profits. “If large parts of our country are polluted, it is not because we are too numerous, but because we pollute. The way to stop that disgrace is not to stop having children, but to start cleaning up.” (Henry Wallich, in an otherwise abysmal column, Newsweek, 29 June 1970.)

Recently even the crackpot notion that overpopulation is the cause of war has been creeping back into circulation. When the spotlight was on the danger of war between Russia and America, two very sparsely populated countries, this theory could hardly be paraded with any seriousness. But now, though the main danger of world war remains in that region, the press and other media are paying more attention to China, which is depicted as being both over-populated and especially bellicose — both falsities. Mention is rarely made of China without the magic phrase “teeming millions”, and often there is an attempt to conjure up the picture of a country bursting at the seams with hordes of people wishing to pour over its borders in search of room. This is ludicrous. If there were anything in it, China would be the one to fear invasion from its much more densely populated neighbours, India and Japan. (But as we have seen, it can more realistically expect attacks from “underpopulated” Russia.) Of course, it would be in the interest of China’s capitalist class to expand its economic and political domination over other nations — not, however, to unload surplus people, but for the classic purposes of capitalist international squabbling: to control trade routes, markets, sources of raw materials and strategic positions.

Increasingly too, there is fashionable chatter about an impending war between the “haves” and the “have nots”. Every so often we are ominously warned that the “have nots” are out-breeding the “haves”, and casting jealous eyes on their possessions. By the “have-nots” we are to understand the poorer nations (including the millionaire maharajah, the African state bureaucrat with his Mercedes, the Brazilian capitalist), whilst the “haves” include ourselves, the wage-workers of the advanced countries.

This is highly misleading because, apart from subordinating class divisions to national ones, it gives the impression that the so-called “have-not” countries or “Third World” have identical problems and prospects for development. What interests us here however, is that birth control is frequently advocated as a solution to the problem of uneven capitalist development (the problem of “backwardness”) and it is sometimes claimed that these countries could industrialise faster but for their rapid rate of population growth. This may be so in some cases, but many of the arguments used to support it are weak, for example the use of statistics to show that a certain increase in production has been “eaten up” by an increase in population. Obviously, from some points of view it might be more important for a new capitalist nation to increase its total production than to increase its production per head. In some conditions a rapid rise in population is favourable to rapid capitalist development.

Essentially, the Socialist case against the population scare is that what manifests itself as an “overpopulation problem” is really a misuse of resources problem. Capitalism, as a system of rationing via the market, is justified in people’s minds by a belief in scarcity. “There isn’t enough to go round”, so we must be restricted in what we are allowed to consume, by the amount of money we can get. “Overpopulation” is used to make those of us who possess a few elementary comforts, feel that we are on the brink of a vast pit of scarcity, and we ought to be thankful for what we have. Yet if we examine the potential for satisfying human needs which has been released by modern technology, we see that the opposite is the case. In order to survive, the capitalist system must continue to develop its potential for plenty, even plethora, but in order to preserve the poverty and scarcity which are its life-blood, capitalism must restrict, waste and destroy on a colossal scale.

Socialists are not, of course, opposed to birth control. On the contrary, we say that everyone should have free access to the most effective contraceptives which science can devise. The modern Malthusians have profited greatly from the fact that their best-known opposition has come from the superstitious teachings of the Catholic Church. What we do say is that talk of overpopulation misdirects attention from the real cause of the problems in question, and that birth control will not solve them.

Yet there is a positive outcome of the overpopulation scare, in that it has prompted many individuals and institutions to begin making an accurate inventory of the world’s resources, and to chart out the possibilities for their use. The knowledge thus provided will cause many to query the efficiency of the capitalist system from the standpoint of human needs — and is also laying a possible basis for the world production plan to be instituted by the Socialist revolution.

Steele

Much Ado About Monogamy— The Kinsey Report (1953)

From the October 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

Who has not heard of Dr. Kinsey? The question brings to mind one of those Bateman cartoons in which the unfortunate ignoramus or faux-passant trembles before a collection of gazes incredulous, horrified, contemptuous and pitying. Of course, everyone has heard of Dr. Kinsey. He is the Indiana professor who has heard 5,940 true confessions; the man with a load of light, the saviour of the Sunday press in a wet summer.

"Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female" has not yet been published in Britain, but the papers have run riot over its American publication, taking attitudes of unctuous righteousness or playing the thing for all it is worth in order, as Dr. Comfort would say, to startle the Citizens. Either way, the Kinsey Report has had more publicity than any other book in a generation. Kinsey himself is said to be making nothing financially from it; the profits will go to the Research Committee with which he is concerned. Some commentators have given this as exclusive evidence to free Kinsey from the charge of "cashing-in on sex." It is not so certain. The first American printing has been a quarter of a million copies—a figure to make the bestselling novelists envious and to suggest that the sponsors are well aware of the market value of their work. Whoever the beneficiaries may be, the Report obviously is providing—and was meant to provide—an outsize jackpot prize.

Enough has been related, quoted and discussed (mostly under huge, spicy headlines) to make some evaluation of Kinsey's findings possible. The information in the Report relates principally to the incidence of departures from the orthodox monogamous pattern. Dr. Marie Stopes is, of course, quite right when she says: “All the different types of sex behaviour and abnormality were fully described, with numerous long detailed cases, by Dr. Havelock Ellis in his six-volumed work forty years ago." That is not Kinsey's point; the aim of his Report is to establish, on a statistical basis, what are the sexual behaviour-patterns of women in present-day society. The information was gathered from thousands of interviews with members of women's societies who volunteered, and the statistics take in 5,940 case-histories. The danger of drawing conclusions from sample investigations is obvious, but it must be said that their technique has been highly developed in America, where sample polls are taken about anything and everything. In this case, however, there are factors which cast additional doubts on the value of the sample.

The greater number of the women interviewed were of better-than-average education and income, Presumably, therefore, they could express themselves more fluently and were more likely to have come in contact with the possibilities of sexual variation than most working-class women. And they were volunteers—in other words, they were willing to recount their sexual experience. One does not have to agree with the Sunday Express that such volunteers must be “a collection of oddities and exhibitionists” to make reservations about them. It is clear enough that the women with respectable histories of chaste courtship and faithful marriage are the least likely to offer their reminiscences. They wouldn’t have much to tell, for one thing.

Kinsey’s 5,940 cannot be considered as a cross-section or anything like one, and certainly not as a basis for conclusions about the "human female.” But if that were not so, the major issues would be unaffected. What makes such a survey necessary and gives it so compelling an interest? The Kinsey Report is an attempt to establish the communality of habits and attitudes which in urban society are “private,” i.e., highly individualized. In healthier, less complex social groups the pattern of sexual behaviour is part of the general social pattern. The accounts by Malinowski and Margaret Mead of sexual life among the Melanesians and Polynesians are not based on card-indexed interviews with anonymous “guinea-pigs,” but describe the observed behaviour-patterns of communities. In Kinsey’s world (which is our world) sexual life is observed by peeping into bedrooms. That is why so many people are so avidly interested in the Kinsey Report; it offers a peephole and gives a basis for comparison, which is the foundation of approval (or otherwise). And it is probably true that the Report will help sexual unorthodoxy to spread, or “make immorality rife,” as they say. The assurance that “everybody's doing it” is usually enough encouragement for the others.

The monogamous family system has always needed the support of complex legal and moral codes. Kinsey’s most shocking “revelation” is that a great many people do not adhere to those. He says that America’s sex laws are “unrealistic, unenforceable and incapable of providing the protection needed.” He finds—if it needed finding—that for a lot of women the white wedding dress is only conventional and not representative of the true state of affairs. He hears that American wives do not always fall in with the requirements of the Hays Office. Plenty of other investigators have confirmed that chastity and fidelity are not prized as they used to be. (It is doubtful, though, if they were ever prized as much as that. One is reminded of the classic conversation between villagers: “Old George bain’t the man 'e used to be.”—“ No. and never was.”)

The truth is that morally and legally compulsive monogamy has never really worked. It would be rather surprising if it had, considering its demands; for example, that a woman can discipline herself to be restrained and chaste before marriage and automatically become yielding and responsive after it. Whether or not monogamy is natural is beside the point, which is that the property-based (and therefore compulsive) monogamy of our society imposes conditions which have never been fully accepted and are less and less accepted to-day. Nevertheless, the property basis is there, and almost the whole vocabulary and imagery of sex and marriage carries the property implication. Outside medical text-books, a man never enters a sex relationship with a woman: he “takes her” or “possesses her,” she “becomes his” or "gives herself” to him. (If anyone doubts, by the way, that society still regards women as inferior chattels, listen to “Housewives’ Choice” in the mornings, the announcers address their audience in the tone which most of us would use to speak to an imbecile child.)

Kinsey claims, in effect, to find that the principle of exclusive possessiveness does not always apply in modem sexual behaviour, and that is what has made his book “shocking.” He advances several propositions to account for what he finds, but—as reported, at any rate—they all are deduced from assumed physiological and psychological incompatibilities between men and women: for example, his claim that their highest sexual capacities occur at irreconcilably different stages in adult life. Women, he says, do not reach their sexual zenith until the thirties and then retain it until quite late in life; men attain it in adolescence and thereafter decline (though most sexologists have recorded noteworthy cases of good tunes on old fiddles). Kinsey appears not to take into account, however, the influences of industrial and urban environment. Britain's Royal Commission on Population suggested in 1949 that these have a considerable effect on sexual function

  It is indeed arguable that modern urban life— whether because of the greater worry and nervous strain it brings with it, or merely because of the greatly increased number of alternative outlets for free time and energy—tends to cause a reduction in sexual activity from the level associated with the predominantly rural life of earlier times. There have, in fact, been investigations which showed a lower frequency of intercourse among men engaged in urban than among those in rural occupations.

A satisfactory sexual life is not a case of merely making the most of maximum desire; more than anything, it is dependent on privacy, understanding, and freedom from tiredness and worry.

There remains the question of why departures from the orthodox monogamous pattern have become more and more frequent in the past thirty years or so; the family is breaking up, say the bishops—and so it is. The life of a family in this country seldom exceeds two generations, and its members tend to break away as soon as they reach maturity. The stability of the family was part of pre-industrial, pre-urban society, in which each group was bound by tenure or dependence to its land or its small community. To-day, in the teeming agglomeration of town life, there is no chain of secure subsistence, and the experience of one generation has little significance for the next. The economic ties which gave the family its durability and coherence have largely gone; in consequence, there has been a sharp change in the traditional attitude to sexual morality.

Probably the strongest, and the most relevant to Kinsey’s theme, of the broken moral traditions was that sex was something for men to enjoy and women to endure. The endurance was real enough and related to the consequences rather than to the sex act itself, and the developed techniques of birth control have been the decisive factor in doing away with this astonishingly unwholesome attitude: they have also made extramarital sex possible for women. Society has never really thought it half so bad—a joke for seaside postcards, in fact—for men to have sexual adventures, chiefly because men don’t have babies. Now women needn't have babies either, and that fact alone has provided a good deal of Dr. Kinsey’s material.

To sum up, then. The Kinsey Report may be an accurate analysis and it may be hokum; this writer is disposed to think that it was prepared with an eye on its market potentialities and that its statistics are misleading. It has nothing new to tell, except possibly— and this cannot be substantiated—that the incidence of sexual misbehaviour in the human female is higher than was suspected. The general propositions (many of which were made in Kinsey’s earlier work on the human male) about sex are based on assumptions of physical and mental make-up, and leave out of consideration the effects of environment on capacities and inclinations.

Nevertheless, the publication of—and the necessity for—a study which claims to find a high incidence of frailty in the female flesh points to the current instability of the property-based monogamous marriage system. The family as it is traditionally imagined is disintegrating in capitalism, and the morality which upheld it is relaxing consequently. Some people are shocked by Kinsey’s findings because they think women ought to be men’s property; others, because they fear that imperfect people will make an imperfect world. Never fear; the world got like it first.

Robert Barltrop

Birth Control and Unemployment (1942)

From the September 1942 issue of the Socialist Standard

“New Generation,” a journal which exists to popularise “the voluntary control of population in all countries,” prints in its July issue criticisms of articles in the June Socialist Standard. The gist of the criticisms is that unemployment is caused by density of population. “New Generation” writes as follows:—

  Let us next remark that unemployment would have been much rifer than it is now if it had not been for birth control. Since 1876 the birth rate has fallen from 36 to 14 per thousand. If unemployment is rife even with a birth rate of 14. what would it have been if the birth rate had remain at 36?

The theory behind this argument is that if the annual increase of population were larger than it is at present, the excess population could not find employment, or alternatively if they did find employment wages would be depressed. The first point of notice is that whereas the population in 1876 was under 36 millions it is now about 48 millions. From which we might deduce, according to the reasoning of the “New Generation,” that the additional 13 million would all be unemployed, or alternatively the wage level would be much lower than it was in 1876. But “New Generation” is not prepared to maintain either of these propositions, as will be seen from their two further statements:—

  There is no reason to believe that unemployment has increased within historical times.

and

 Birth control has not abolished unemployment, but it has enabled both the employed and the unemployed workers to have a far higher standard of life than they could have had if the birth rate had remained where it stood 65 years ago.

The fallacy of the theory of the birth controllers is in supposing that unemployment is a direct result of the size of population in a given area of land, thus ignoring the form of social organisation, capitalism. If their theory were correct how could the big fluctuations' of unemployment be explained, that take place without a material change of population? In June, 1924, registered unemployed numbered about one million. In June, 1932, the figure was not far short of three millions. In June, 1939, it was 1,350,000. It will take more than birth control to explain such fluctuations.

Unemployment actually grows because the capitalist, for the time, cannot sell his products at a profit, and this in turn accompanies a huge glut of products on the market. If, like the “New Generation,” we ignored capitalism and treated unemployment as if it resulted directly from population we could re-write the paragraph quoted at the beginning of this article, as follows:—
 
“Since 1876 the birthrate has fallen from 36 to 14 per thousand. There are therefore far fewer young children who do not compete for jobs themselves and are all the time consuming goods and thus making work for the unemployed. If only we could get back to a birthrate of 36 per thousand how much more work there would be to absorb the unemployed.”

It will be seen that this statement is nearly as absurd as the reverse statement made by the “New Generation.” It is not quite as absurd, however, because in fact capitalism flourishes on waste, as can be seen during this war. The amount of wealth produced for destruction in the form of war material is enormous. Millions have been withdrawn from industry yet simultaneously the production of home grown food has been increased so that now two-thirds of the food is home grown. At the same time there is no longer any unemployment to speak of. Capitalism cannot do this under peace conditions when the amount of employment is determined by the ability of the capitalists to make profits, but given Socialism the energies now devoted to war and waste could be added to the existing production of food, clothing, etc., so that all could live in comfort.

Is it only necessary to add that “New Generation” also ignores the failure of their theory to fit the facts of different countries. They quote Professor Kimble that “more land has usually meant better conditions of life,” and illustrate this by asking “Why is the standard of life so much higher in the U.S.A. than in Germany or Japan ?”

Now it happens to be true that density of population is greater in Germany and Japan than in U.S.A., but it happens that population per square mile is greater in England and Wales than it is in either Germany or Japan. Is then the standard of life lower?

Also they quote Russia as a country where the wage level is low, yet on their theory it ought to be almost the highest of all countries because the population per square mile is only 55 in European Russia and only 8 per square mile in Asiatic Russia; compared with 703 per square mile in England and Wales and 43 per square mile in U.S.A.

It looks as if there is something radically wrong with birth control as a cure for unemployment and poverty.

Edgar Hardcastle

Socialism and Birth Control. (1930)

From the August 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

Has France Abolished Unemployment?
Recently the claim has been made that poverty and unemployment have been abolished in France, and one of the explanations given for this achievement—a surprising one if true—is the popularisation of Birth Control. Before we examine this to see what there is in it which might be copied in this country, it will be necessary to glance at the causes of unemployment.

It is really not at all a difficult problem. We do not need to look for a solution at the uttermost ends of the earth, because it is here, right before our eyes.

Being workers, we know that most of us get just about enough pay at the end of the week or the month to enable us and our families to live. We spend what we get as soon as we get it, a case of hard come and easy go. Most workers do not save anything worth mentioning because they cannot afford it. The rich are in precisely the opposite situation; they save money because they cannot help it. Many of them get much more than they can possibly spend in spite of their big houses, their servants, their expensive cars, expensive foods, and luxurious ways of living generally.

The surplus they re-invest. The effect of this is that instead of the incomes of the wealthy being used to buy the goods which the factories can produce in such vast quantities, their money is used to build more factories and instal still more efficient labour-displacing machinery, thus adding to the army of the unemployed. This is a permanent feature of the capitalist system, and it is an illusion to think that this or that capitalist country has somehow escaped the common fate.

How Unemployment is Disguised.
But although the politicians who seek to perpetuate capitalism cannot get at the root causes of unemployment, they have discovered many devices for mitigating the effects of those causes. In general, the devices are of two kinds. One kind consists in withdrawing workers from the labour market and keeping them unoccupied (or occupied on non-productive work); the other kind depends for its effect on the ability to make the wealthy spend their money by appealing to their sympathy, their patriotism, or their fears.

Thus we see Liberals, Tories, and the Labour Party busily engaged in popularising rival schemes for raising the school age, or for further old-age pensions, with the object of withdrawing old and young from the labour market. Large numbers of workers are subtracted from the army of unemployed, dressed in uniforms, and called soldiers and sailors. The capitalist class will tolerate the expenditure of their money on keeping hundreds of thousands of soldiers strenuously engaged in producing nothing, much more readily than they will tolerate spending smaller sums of their money on the other unemployed army, those without uniforms who line up at the Labour Exchanges. Expenditure on armaments, on charities, on wars, on missions, and on war service pensions, are all instances of devices which help to obscure the full extent of capitalism’s great problem, the problem of the wealthy with so much money that they cannot spend it, and the poor with too little money to buy the goods they produce.

The "Marvels" of Birth Control.
The argument of the advocates of Birth Control as a cure for poverty is two-fold. First, it is argued that if the birth-rate is reduced the expenditure of each family will be less and the family will be better off. If father had not got Maggie and Willy to consider, his £3 a week would extend to jam for tea for Thomas and Mary Jane. The second argument is that if the population were smaller there would be no unemployed. Before considering the matter in detail, it is as well to notice that the second effect, if it takes place at all, cannot do so until 15 or more years have passed. Father is not replaced at his job by his son Thomas, aged 1, but may be replaced by him when he reaches the age of 15 or thereabouts.

But are either of the arguments correct? These advocates of Birth Control entirely overlook the way in which wages are fixed and the way in which unemployment is created. They forget that if the cost of living of working class families is decreased, no matter how, wages tend to fall correspondingly, so that a general reduction in the size of families would be wholly counteracted by a decline in the level of wages. If this is doubted it is only necessary to consider the way in which money wages rose between 1914 and 1920, and the speed with which they fell when prices declined. Civil Servants, railway men, local Government employees, and many others have had their wages directly related to the cost of living, but whether the reduction in wages takes place automatically or not, it invariably does take place for workers as a whole. They are unable to resist successfully the pressure which the employers can bring to bear.

If the average working class family becomes smaller, father and all the other fathers will find that their £3 has shrunk with the shrinking of their cost of living.

Birth Control and the Unemployed.

We are told that if the population were smaller and there were no unemployed, the workers could keep their wages up in spite of their lowered cost of living. But unemployment is not the result merely of there being a large population. The organisation of industry and its private ownership are the important factors. The constant introduction of more efficient machinery and methods displaces workers from employment. It is much more direct, more important, and more speedy than anything which could be done by Birth Control.

The restriction of the population is of no practical use for the purpose of lessening unemployment. An illustration of this exists in the United States. After the War the U.S.A. Government introduced a policy of restricting immigration. But in spite of the limiting of the numbers of immigrants, the introduction of labour-saving machinery has produced its millions of unemployed. Any attempt to raise wages immediately gives the employers an additional inducement to introduce such machinery. We see, therefore, that the standard of living of the workers is kept down by the joint effect of unemployed workers competing for jobs and of employers introducing labour-saving machinery. The restriction of the population, whether by birth control or any other means, is quite ineffective to safeguard the workers against this pressure.

The Position in France.

France, with a smaller population than this country, has a much larger number of workers withdrawn from production in some of the ways mentioned earlier in this article. Her army, navy, and gendarmerie number nearly 600,000. There were 1,500,000 Frenchmen killed in the war, and there are nearly another million disabled ex-service men capable of little in the way of productive work. In 1926 (the latest figures available) public assistance was given to more than 700,000 destitute persons. The number of aged poor registered for relief on 31st December, 1926, was 526,000. (See Statesman’s Year Book, 1930.) The French Government’s employees number about a million, which is much more than the number in the British Civil Service and local Government Service. A very large percentage of Civil Servants are, of course, engaged on non-productive work.

Actually, in spite of birth control, the total population of France is more than it was in 1911. In that year the population was 39,604,992; in 1928 it was estimated to be 41,020,000. (Statesman’s Year Book, 1930. Pages 849/851). This is due partly to a lower death rate, partly to the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine from Germany, and partly to the influx of workers from abroad. If we exclude Alsace-Lorraine (population about 1,800,000) the population of France is now some 600,000 less than it was in 1911. On the other hand, it has been pointed out by the French economist, Francis Delaisi (Daily Herald, 17th January, 1930), that the number of workers in France has been added to by 1,300,000 men and women who, before the war, were small property owners, but are now compelled to work for their living. They have been squeezed out of the ranks of the small capitalists.

Is There Unemployment in France?

It is true that at the present time the published figures of unemployment in France show only a few thousand, but it has to be remembered that the French Government does not keep records of unemployment for the whole of France. The published figures refer to Paris only. And it is a mistake to suppose that widespread unemployment is unknown in France. In March, 1921, there were 44,000 unemployed in Paris alone, while a year before the figure was 70,000. (See "Unemployment as an International Problem,” by J. Morgan Rees, M.A., 1926, Page 83.)

Another factor is the employment of foreigners. Hundreds of thousands of the low paid workers in French agriculture and industry are by nationality Poles, Italians, or Belgians. As soon as unemployment threatens to become serious, these people are sent back to their respective countries. It may be said that during periods of industrial depression the French unemployed will be found lining up at Mussolini’s Labour Exchanges.

Are French Workers Well Off?

One important fact is often forgotten. It is that unemployment is not the only or even the chief cause of poverty. In every country in the capitalist world we find that the larger part of the workers are poor in comparison with the employing class, and a very large percentage of them are permanently unable to secure more than the bare necessities of life.

There are, of course, differences between the rates of pay in different occupations and differences between the levels of pay in different countries, but it is nevertheless true that inside each country there is this contrast between the position of the workers and the position of their employers.

The absence from France of millions of unemployed workers competing for jobs has not enabled those in work to secure any appreciable improvement in their low standard of living; the competition of the machine is more than sufficient for the employer’s purpose. According to the International Labour Office the purchasing power of the French workers is about three-quarters of that of the German workers, and is only 58% of the purchasing power of the English workers. The comparisons made by the International Labour Office are not claimed to be absolutely complete, but they do suffice to indicate what is approximately the relationship between the workers' position in the two countries. So low is the standard of living that only a couple of months ago the Postal, Telegraph, and Telephone staffs in Paris came out on strike in order to try to force their employer to raise their wages to the pre-war level. (For the benefit of those who advocate Nationalisation, it may be remarked that the employer in this case is the French Government.)

An Industrial Revolution.

France since the war has been going through what amounts to an industrial revolution. Before the war France was predominantly agricultural, and the land was to a large extent worked by peasant proprietors, producing for their own use and for the home market. Owing to the acquisition of coal and iron and industrial areas from Germany, and owing to various changes in world trade and industry, France has rapidly developed as an industrial nation. This has been accomplished by a chronic decline of agriculture. The French correspondent of the “Economist” said in January, 1929, that the agricultural depression was rapidly approaching a critical stage. It is estimated that the cost of producing wheat in France can be met with a yield of 8 quintals per acre, but the actual average yield is only 6 quintals per acre. The area under wheat in 1913 was 16,250,000 acres. In 1927 it had fallen to 12,750,000 acres, or more than 20%, and it is still falling. France is faced with a steady decline of agriculture, and the abandonment of once profitable farms. (Economist, January 12th, 1929.)

But while many farms have been abandoned, the full effect of the slump is not shown.

If the production of coal or boots becomes unprofitable, the factory owner closes down and the workers become unemployed. But when a small farmer finds himself getting poorer, the final process of squeezing out may be deferred for years. He, and his family, work harder and longer, live on a lower scale, and postpone the final calamity while it is humanly possible.

“An Immense Economic Crisis."

A special factor has operated since, and as a consequence of the war. Reparations payments received from the German Government have been used to make good the enormous destruction wrought during the war, and to re-equip French industry. This has made work for French and foreign workers in France, and has meant a big sale for goods produced in various groups of French industries.

Now, however, that reconstruction work is finished, there is less demand for workers and less home demand for the products of French industries.

At the same time, the demand from abroad is also falling off.

In 1928 the French Government stabilised the currency on a gold basis. The way in which it was done had the result that for the time being the franc had a higher purchasing power inside France than outside. English or other foreign buyers could purchase more goods in France with 124 francs than they could buy abroad with although £1 could be changed into 124 francs. In other words, French prices were below world prices. The consequence was that until French prices rose, or foreign prices fell, French manufacturers were able to sell abroad more cheaply than their foreign competitors. Factories were working full-time and unemployment was reduced to a low figure.

But now that condition is passing. At the end of 1927 the price level of French products (compared with 1914) was below the price level of products imported into France. By April of this year the price level of foreign imports had fallen well below the level of French products. French manufacturers are losing their temporary advantage. Exports from France during the first 6 months of the year were appreciably below the value and quantity of exports during the first 6 months of 1929.

French industries cannot in the long run escape from the conditions which apply to industries elsewhere. English textiles are depressed; so are textiles in France. British coal exporters complain of foreign competition. French coal interests protest against the increasing imports. of cheap coal from Russia. Wine growers are being drowned financially in the enormous stocks of wine which they cannot sell. They are appealing to the Government to rescue them by increasing the soldier’s free daily ration of wine.

The newly appointed Minister for Finance states (Economist, July 5th) that “the country is faced with an immense economic crisis.”

 

Sooner or later it will be evident that Birth Control in France is just as ineffective as a cure for unemployment as are all the other schemes for saving capitalism from the evils which it produces.

Anti-Working Class Busybodies.

In conclusion, some comment appears to be called for on the impertinence of the busybodies who advocate such remedies for economic ills.

There are human problems for which birth control may provide the solution, just as there 'are good reasons why some people should avoid alcohol, why others should spend more time in the open air, and why most of us should have more leisure and use it profitably. What, in fact, happens under capitalism is that many workers cannot afford to marry or to have children; they are driven to alcohol or some other stimulant owing to the fatiguing and depressing conditions of their work and their lives; they are worked too long and too hard and have not the money or the time to cultivate, properly the occupations of people with more leisure.

We want the working class to resent this utterly unnecessary denial of opportunities for enjoyment and for making the most of their lives. The world is rich enough if the workers would but rid it of the out-of-date capitalist system. But we find our work for Socialism impeded by the muddle-headed enthusiasts who preach salvation through prohibition, birth control, industrial psychology, and what not. Nominally, they are actuated by pure sympathy for the workers, but invariably their remedies consist of ingenious methods of indirectly helping the employing class. The only reason they admit for doing anything or changing anything is to lower the employers’ costs of production. Our natural desire for sexual intercourse and for children is to be limited so that the employers may get cheaper labour; we must not “waste” our money on alcohol because without it we should be more efficient workers; we must keep out of cinemas and spend our week-ends in the parks and playing fields, which our kindly employers or the state provide for us; if we do we shall be fine and fresh on Monday morning. We must work reduced hours; but only if the industrial psychologists can show that it will pay the boss, and only reduced just to that precise point at which it pays most.

We are to be born, educated, married, rationed in children and alcohol, our whole lives carefully supervised, and finally we may expect to be killed in war, all for the sake of the employing class, and all conducted under a smoke-screen of propaganda carried on by the birth controllers, the family endowment advocates, the prohibitionists, and all the other mischievous people who do not grasp or who deliberately obscure the simple outlines of the one great social problem.

Edgar Hardcastle

Love, Marriage and Divorce In Russia (1948)

From the May 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the radical movement of the last hundred years or so the “woman question” has loomed large. In fact, amongst the self-styled “intellectuals” the enthusiasm for the emancipation of love from property fetters appeared to rival the enthusiasm for the emancipation of labour. Consequently, after the revolution in Russia had been accomplished and groups of “advanced” people abroad had swallowed the delusion that Socialism had been achieved in one country, it was accepted that woman in Russia had been freed from the shackles property had fastened upon her, and free relations between the sexes had at last become the social custom. Early reports gave some colour to this view. The Soviet Union was held up to admiring gaze as a model of sanity in sex relationship and we were regaled with stories of the love life of bright young women, married and unmarried, who had enjoyed the felicity of numerous husbands to the satisfaction and happiness of all concerned. Knowledge of birth control methods was widespread, abortion was permitted and, at the worst, the State cared for children, so that women were relieved of their worst burdens. It may be noted in passing that the benevolence of the State sprang from motives that had nothing to do with helping women to engage in untrammelled love affairs. Labour was urgently needed for industrial operations and women who were free from the burden of children provided a part of this labour.

Inspired by the false dawn in Russia an American biologist decided that the appropriate time had come to give the world at large views that he had long restricted to a privileged few, which contained his vision of humanity freed from evolutionary influences that were leading the human race to disaster. The book he wrote on the subject was entitled “Out of the Night” (published by Gollancz in 1936) and the biologist was H. J. Muller. He was professor of Zoology, University of Texas; Member, National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A.; and, finally, Foreign Member, Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R. In his preface to the book Professor Muller writes, in connection with the views on eugenics he is putting forward:—

   “In the meantime, our airy imaginings concerning the future possibilities of co-operative activity on a grand scale are brought down to earth and given substance when we turn to the great and solid actualities of collective achievement which are becoming increasingly evident in that one section of the world—the Soviet Union—in which the fundamental changes in the economic basis have already been established. More intimate familiarity with these developments at the time of writing would have rendered available a mass of material pertinent to our subject. There the march of progress proceeds apace, while elsewhere discouragement and decadence admittedly deepen. This central fact of the present-day social world at once substantiates, and belittles our theorising. (P. 8.)

As we shall see, it is a pity that the learned professor did not leave his visions for a while and familiarise himself with the real foundations of Soviet Russia. However, let us first of all summarise the nature of his visions.

The professor advocates a form of eugenic procedure which, he claims, will ensure the improvement of the human race to such an extent that the next few centuries will concentrate within them biological improvement and terrestrial control equivalent to the progress achieved in the thousands of years between the amoeba and modern man. For example, he envisages a time when, on the basis of recent progress in biological investigation and experiment, the human egg-cell will be impregnated and germinate into the embryo and the child outside the human body; thus banishing from love relations the biological function of procreation. He looks forward to the time, now within the realms of possibility, when male cultures and female egg-cells will be stored and labelled, to be mixed later on principles that will ensure the procreation of only the best physical and mental types. This final fruition of biological genius he leaves, however, to the distant future. In the meantime he alleges that there are some things that can be done and he looks to Russia, the Mecca of his hopes, to initiate the first steps because, as he puts it, they can only be satisfactorily begun in a community from which private property has been banished. He argues that female insemination by artificial methods has now been advanced to a stage where woman can choose the father of her children without needing the intervention of sex relations. He argues that it is only a short biological step forward to be able to ensure the storage of male cultures for an indefinite period. The advantage of this would be that while it is impossible to determine during the lifetime of a prominent man whether or not he was of a superior type the lapse of, say, twenty-five years after his death should be sufficient to settle this problem and his culture would be available for insemination. Lest the reader has a vision of enormous storage spaces it is only fair to give the professor's estimate of what it might amount to. He assures us that if all the heritable characteristics (all that grows into legs, bodies, heart, lungs, eyes, brains, and so forth) of the whole of the next generation of mankind were gathered into a heap it would be about the size of an aspirin tablet. So that solves that worry! In a wild burst of ecstacy he asks:

   “How fortunate we should be had such a method been in existence in time to have enabled us to secure living cultures of some of our departed great! How many women, in an enlightened community devoid of superstitions, taboos and sex slavery, would be eager and proud to bear and rear a child of Lenin or Darwin! Is it not obvious that restraint, rather than compulsion, would be called for? " (P. 152.)

Well! the writer can imagine a lot of women that would not be enamoured with the project. After all it is they, and not the professor, who would have to undergo the pains of childbirth after insemination.

Still, we are not at the moment concerned with a discussion of the professor’s visions of the future. What we are concerned with is the false estimate that he, in common with others of his type, has made of the present shape of things in Russia.

Since Professor Muller’s book appeared a drastic change has been apparent in the attitude of Russia’s rulers to sex relations. This change has been bound up with the growth of Russia into a first-class industrial and military power based upon the following of methods previously adopted by Western powers to secure dominance. The wealth of Russian privileged groups has reached such a pitch that an English communist has had to write a pamphlet in defence of Russian millionaires. In this pamphlet (“Soviet Millionaires” by R. Bishop) mention is made of the change in the Soviet law of inheritance in 1945 aimed at securing priority to the children of the testator in the distribution of his property (page 11). The inference from this is obvious and partly explains the recent tightening up of divorce regulations. But there are other reasons as well, and of equal importance.

In the general tightening up of regulations concerning marriage and divorce the use of birth control methods has been restricted, abortion has become a crime, and divorce has been so hedged around by restrictions that it is almost impossible for any but the wealthy to obtain release from the marriage tie. In 1944 decorations were offered to women for the bearing of large families, but the limitations on divorce and the other methods aimed at increasing the birth-rate suggest that the answer of women to this empty flattery has not produced the desired result. Why does Russia so urgently need an increase in the birth-rate? To increase the measure of happiness of the people? No! The reasons are as sordid as those that inpired the Nazi regime and all modern states.. Russia needs children as exploitable material for her industries and as cannon fodder in future wars. Hence the sex relations are controlled and directed for these purposes and to secure the inheritance of property within a certain circle. Thus, in this sphere of human relationships the Russian regime is back behind its starting point. The accumulation of wealth in the hands of individuals has necessitated decrees securing the right of inheritance and this., in turn, demands that the parentage of children shall be put beyond the bounds of reasonable doubt. In other words, the property development that brought into existence the monogamic family is exerting its influence with increasing force in Russia to-day.

Thus the delusion that Russia was the Mecca of freedom in sex relations has vanished along with the immediate hopes of Professor Muller. But the imposition of restrictions has not yet finished.

The Manchester Guardian for April 9th contains the report of a lecture to a large audience in Russia on “Love, Marriage and the Family in Socialist Society ” by Professor Kolbanovsky. The lecture shows how drastically the Russian attitude has changed. The report is from Moscow and is by Alexander Werth. The following extracts need little comment:—

   “A special reason for this great interest in the lecture was that some drastic new marriage and family legislation is now being considered by a special Government committee . . .  The Soviet divorce laws were greatly stiffened in 1944, but he indicated that they would be stiffened still further. Without ‘prophecying' what the new laws would be, he spoke very harshly of the disastrous effect on a child's mind of his parent’s divorce, adding that 'for living parents to create semi-orphans is an act of criminal baseness.' "

     "In Soviet society to-day there were still many deplorable survivals of the capitalist way of thinking and acting. Also, some vulgar and unworthy ideas on 'free-love’ which flourished in the early days of the revolution—and which Lenin wholeheartedly condemned—had not yet been quite eradicated. Such revolting practices were unworthy of Soviet society.”

 .  .  .

“It was true, he said, that some marriages broke up owing to monotony and boredom. ‘Variety’ should, therefore, be provided by the wife herself. It was important, for instance, that the wife should develop and grow intellectually, that man and wife should have new interests, that these interests should be closely linked with those of the country and community; that they should also take a common interest in the upbringing of their children. . . .  As for the 'free-love' theories, the lecturer recalled that there were indeed some 'Marxist' theorists in the past who claimed that the family was a bourgeois institution, and that the State should take charge of the children. No! said the lecturer. Socialism rejected this 'stud farm' principle; nor was the family a 'property unit,' as in bourgeois society, but it was a vital 'social unit,' and, under Socialism, the monogamous family had a better chance than under any other system. Woman would be more and more freed of all drudgery and petty worries, her mental interest in her husband would increase, and that was a guarantee for a lasting association."

 .  .  .

   "Another peculiarity of Soviet society was, he said, that all conditions were being, and would continue to be, created for having an unlimited number of children ; the economic reasons for birth control would be eliminated.”

It will be noticed that it is the women who are to have the pains and the responsibilities and the subjection. They are to keep their husbands interested and to have large families. In other words, they are to be the slaves of the monogamic family. One is tempted to echo the phrase of the dustman in one of Shaw’s plays: "Bourgeois morality. Pah!"

Gilmac

The Review Column: American Conventions (1968)

The Review Column from the September 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

American Conventions

The gaudy ballyhoo of the Democratic and Republican Conventions in America, coming live onto British television screens, gave many people over here the impression that American politicians do not take their business seriously.

This is an amusing notion, considering the record of the men who got the nominations, of the outgoing President and of all their predecessors. All are or were tough, ambitious men, testifying to the fact that the political fight for power over American capitalism is a savage and ruthless affair.

Nobody should think that this does not also apply elsewhere, as a study of the career of Harold Wilson will show. In other countries, too, the political knives are wielded under a cloak of ballyhoo. This is what happens every time a Labour leader makes a speech at a miners’ gala, every time a Tory leader stands up for Land of Hope and Glory.

It is happening when a foreign head of state is paraded through London with the Royal Family, and at almost every public appearance of almost every leader of capitalism.

The alternative to this ballyhoo would be for them to tell the truth. There have been many satirical pieces written, on what would happen if ever a politician publicly dropped the mask. Even when one or other of them has involuntarily come near to doing this — for example George Brown—nobody takes them seriously.

Perhaps, then, the working class not only accept the ballyhoo—perhaps they actually need it. Capitalism is a system of class power, in which conflicting interests and ruling groups struggle for a dominant place.

This struggle is considered important enough to justify almost anything, of which ballyhoo is perhaps among the least offensive. Its existence simply proves something which workers should ponder, as they watch it all happen on the screens in their homes—that capitalism is such a society that it cannot bring its affairs into the light of day but must needs hide them under a cloak of false enthusiasm and optimism.

Why fuss about Scientology?

Is Scientology a fraud? It is difficult to understand anyone being taken in by this religion—for that it what it is— unless they were beyond the boundaries of hope, were ready to grasp the last tuft of grass as they felt themselves going over the cliff edge.

Some people like that are attracted by the cult, as they are by ail sorts of peculiar theories outside the orthodox medical profession (who have had some pretty queer theories themselves). But none of the other unorthodox ideas has come under such a weight of official suppression as Scientology has recently.

Home Secretary Callaghan has refused entry to Britain of the cult’s leader. Minister of Health Robinson has described Scientology as “socially harmful”.

But the leader in this has been the Australian state of Victoria, which has a total ban on the movement. The practice of Scientology there carries a fine of up to £100 for a first, and imprisonment for a later, offence.

This ban followed a report which condemned Scientology as “perverted . . . debased . . . fantastic . . . impossible . . .  evil . . .” which is a pretty exhaustive vocabulary of abuse.

However justified these descriptions may be—and the scientologists have several libel actions on the go—the obvious question they provoke is why all these august politicians and institutions should suddenly want to protect us against socially harmful theories.

If they are anxious to expose and prevent fraud, why not start with their own parties, which consistently appeal for votes on fraudulent election promises? Why not denounce the social system which legally robs millions of people of the results of their work?

We do not need men like Callaghan and Robinson to protect us from social harm, but if they are worried about it there is plenty of scope for them. They might make a speech about the distorting effect which capitalism has upon peoples’ lives, which so often goads those people into the despair which makes them easy prey for the medical (as distinct from the political) quack.

The Pope and the Pill

The unsurprising Papal edict on birth control brought the deepest anguish only to working class Catholics. The rich ones—like the Kennedys—can raise large families without any economic problems.

One thing the Encyclical has not done is to end the long dispute about Catholicism and contraceptives. Thus we have recently been entertained with some arguments whose sophistry makes the old one about the number of angels dancing on the needle point look positively clumsy.

For example: did not God give man the ability to make artificial contraceptives in the same way as he gave him the rhythm method which the Pope approves?

For example: if it is sinful to destroy life in human spermatazoa is it not also sinful to destroy it with pesticides, or with anti-biotics, or with the weapons of war?

Through all this the Catholics did not pursue an undeviating course. The Encyclical kept open an escape route by implying an approval of contraception by means of an artificially induced menstrual regularity—which might be taken to include the Pill. And there was Cardinal Heenan’s double act of approving the Pope’s decision while saying that Catholics who practised birth control could also accept the sacrament.

These sophistries are typical of those needed to bolster religious dogma, especially when it is under pressure from the material facts of life.

Intellectual dishonesty and hair-splitting is an unsettling business, much as the Church must be accustomed to it. For the rest of us, the simple way out of the difficulty is to recognise the overwhelming evidence against religion and to look at life in terms not of bigotry but of human interest.

Sin on the Underground (1961)

From the February 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

What's your pet worry? The Congo? H-Bombs? The Cold War? Anybody who is preoccupied with these pleasantries may have missed the petty censorship which was recently imposed upon London's Tube stations and which passed, in fact, with only a little comment from one or two newspapers and the House of Lords. The subject of this censorship was a poster issued by the Family Planning Association which, after being displayed on many Tube stations, was withdrawn when the Transport Commission received some objections to it. The Commission justified their action by referring to a ruling of theirs which states that they “. . . will not accept posters which refer to religious or sacred subjects in a manner which might give offence or which contain matter or illustrations likely to be considered religiously controversial." 

What sort of a poster was it, to involve this ruling? We decided to find out. We spent a fortune on Tube fares, our eyes grew sore on advertisements for corsets, for films starring curvy B.B. or tough- slugging Westerners. We saw posters which exhorted the rush hour workers to partake of gracious living by drinking a certain Brown Ale—with out-of focus candelabra in the background.

Apparently, nothing in this pot-pourri of sex, violence and alcohol had raised a murmur of protest. At last we found the poster. We examined it closely, searched diligently for something in it which a reasonable person might object to. We could find none. It was not offensive, nor was it lewd. If anything, the people in it were a little overdressed.

It is difficult, then, to imagine the majority of Tube passengers objecting to this advertisement. We can only assume that it was removed because of a minority of religious purgers, who pressed their point in a barrage of protest. We have seen this happen before; the Lord’s Day Observance Society has used the technique for years, often against Roman Catholics. A more subtle method of suppression, this, than of yore, when Catholics would reduce to human charcoal any burglar or peasant who had difficulty in grasping a Papal chemical formula about bread and wine turning into flesh and blood. Or when Calvinists would burn a scholar who rejected a complex theory which held that there was a being called God, who was three people—and at the same time only one. More subtle, because the spread of materialist knowledge has made it harder to whip up hatred over theological disputes; but still reprehensible. For human progress depends upon the decisions of conscious people, not upon gags applied to society by a sanctimonious minority.

What about birth control? Much of the opposition to it is almost a mania for the intensely personal nature of sexual relationships makes it easy to rouse strong feelings in the matter. Some opponents—notably the Catholics —maintain that the use of contraceptives is a defiance of the "Almighty Will": others that it invites an increase in juvenile promiscuity. Can we expect, then, that Catholics are not promiscuous? The Chief Medical Officer of the London County Council has reported that during 1959 there were 183 unmarried female immigrants from Catholic, anti-birth control Eire who, because they were pregnant when they came to this country, had to be assisted by the L.C.C. Welfare department. The Catholic Church is as helpless as any other organisation in these matters. Without a doubt, much of the religious opposition to birth control is roused by the fact that it is an attempt to shape our own environment, instead of leaving it to the will of a mythical supernatural being.

In fact, birth control is at present only a method of spreading out workers' relative poverty, an attempt to prevent ourselves slipping too far into degradation and dire need. Whether we practice it or not, whether we have two children or sixteen we remain workers, depending on our wage to live. In underdeveloped countries, birth control is often given official backing, but the older established capitalist nations leave it as a matter of personal choice, only raising the issue of government support in. for example, times of slump.

We should remember that man’s future lies within his own society and that birth control could be a factor in fashioning the sort of world that man desires. But this in turn depends upon man’s social knowledge and his rejection of, for example, religious theories with their threats of hellfire and purgatory. When he has reached that stage, he will be facing the many aspects of living a civilised life in a developed society and there will be no bigots to decide what he may or may not do.

Jack Law