Society and Morals. Part VII. The Morals of Capitalism (continued). (1918)

From the April 1918 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part VII.

We have seen that, under the wages system, the prime force used to subject the worker to exploitation is the economic pressure which bears upon him by reason of his propertyless condition. This condition, it is evident seeing the economic inferiority of the capitalists, depends for its perpetuation upon the recognition by the workers of the “rights” of capitalist property. The bourgeoisie are not a military class like the feudal nobility or the Roman freemen, but depend upon the working class even for the military force they command.

We can see, therefore, how extremely important it is to the capitalists that the proletariat should be contented with their social status, or, at least, see in capitalism a system of production at once necessary, inevitable, and just. Incidentally, it may be mentioned that these same conditions demand the continual readjustment of the institutions of the system in proportion as the workers as a class change their views regarding things social.

The very subtlety of the relation between himself and the capitalist is favourable to the fostering of the illusion in the workers’ mind that he is a “free agent.” The appearance of a contract “freely” entered into with an employer who, to a certain extent, he is free to choose, veils the real nature of the relation. The worker, as a rule, fails to see that economic necessity is a compelling force even more powerful and imperative than the whip and torture of the chattel-slave era. He does not see that they who monopolise those things by which alone he can live dictate, as a class, if, when, and where he shall live and under what conditions. On the contrary, he believes the doctrines assiduously taught him by the master class through their dupes and hirelings, the teachers, politicians, parsons, pressmen and “men of literature.” These, assisted by a whole series of institutions suited to the purpose, beset the worker from the cradle to the grave with influences which tend to mould his mind to the form most suitable to the needs the bourgeoisie.

Lest he should be indiligent and lazy in the production of profits he is taught that “toil ” is in itself a virtue (his teachers forget to mention that for him, like other virtues, it must be its own reward) and that the interests of both employer and employee being identical, a benefit to the former is, in the long run, beneficial to the latter also.

Lest the standard of comfort he aspires to be unduly raised (leading to a demand for increased wages) the worker is enjoined to be thrifty, frugal, and sober. Even poverty itself is glossed into a kind of goodness. He is told of the “peace of mind” which comes with practising the “virtue” of contentment. Discontent is branded as a vice and its preachers as “disturbers of the peace.” The very term “agitator” acquires a vicious and sinister significance.

History is perverted ; elaborately faked “histories” being written for use in the schools and out of them, which emphasise the “evils” of previous or contemporary non-capitalist forms of society, whilst showing in the most favourable light possible modern institutions and especially the capitalist class. The “historians” prove (!) that all revolutions have meant only anarchy, chaos, and bloodshed, with no beneficial results. “Reform,” is, however, allowed to be useful and good when judiciously applied by “wise statesmen.” Thus is the maxim driven home—never rebel, but trust the “great men” at the helm of State and industry.

“Patriotism,” so useful as an obscurant of class differences, a means of dividing the working class into national sections and of rallying them to fight their masters’ battles under the disguise of “national interests,” is cultivated and characterised as a cardinal virtue in these “histories.” National traditions, character, and achievements are, with this end in view, glorified and shown off in exaggerated contrast with those of foreign nationalities. Thus the working-class child in England is told of the glorious empire which is his “heritage,” but of which, in all probability, he will never possess more than the clay which clings to his boots.

The Press, owned by and used in the interests of the bourgeoisie, ably carries on the work begun in the schools by selecting, misrepresenting, and suppressing information regarding the events of the day. The religious organisations, by fostering ignorance and superstition, also do their share in the same mind-moulding process, though with decreasing efficiency as religion becomes more and more undermined by the growth of scientific knowledge.

Thus we see that the code of morality believed in by the bulk of the working class, is, to a very large extent, based not upon their own class interests, but upon the interests of their exploiters the capitalist class. It is a bourgeois, not a proletarian morality. It helps to preserve bourgeois society ; it serves as a support to exploitation and oppression.

We saw that this function of morality is also a phenomenon of feudal society, but that it was very largely bound up with religious belief. Under capitalism, however, not only does this form of morality play a very much larger part than under feudalism, but it is to an ever-increasing extent dissociated from religion and connected more and more to secular theories of social relations communicated to the working class through the so-called educational agencies under the control of the ruling class.

The Decay of Competition.

Capitalist morality, since its first triumph, has not remained stationary, but has, on the contrary, been continually modified and adapted to the changing needs and interests of the bourgeoisie, which naturally flow from the evolution of the industrial system.

No previous form of society has witnessed such rapid economic changes during its existence as capitalism, and as a result, at no period in history have ideas been so completely and rapidly revolutionised as during the epoch of the bourgeoisie.

The most striking of these changes we will proceed to briefly outline.

In the first place commercial competition, so characteristic of capitalism in its prime, produces results which tend to bring about its own negation. Competing capitalists needs must, if they are to win success, be continually striving to sell cheaper than their competitors. This cheapening is obtained by the use of more and more efficient labour-saving machinery and ever more perfect means of sub-dividing the labour process, co-ordinating productive activity and eliminating waste of energy and material.

But as the machinery in use grows decade by decade more and more elaborate and intricate, it increases in costliness. Moreover, large-scale production embracing much invested capital is less wasteful than numerous concerns on a small scale. Consequently in the evolution of capitalism larger and larger aggregations of capital are requisite for “success in business.” The “big” capitalists survive the competitive struggle while their many small competitors eke out an ever more precarious existence until they are “crushed out” out and join the proletariat.

Then the few remaining “big men,” seeing that further strife means less profits, draw together either openly or in secret ; combines, trusts, and cartels become the order of the day. This stage is best illustrated in the United States, where in many lines of industry competition is practically extinct ; but in England and Germany this process is almost as advanced.

All this, of course, brings about a change in the outlook of the capitalist class. By their most advanced theorists “competition” is now discredited and looked upon as wasteful, inefficient, and obsolete. The wealthy magnates, now reduced to a comparatively small sect absolutely divorced from productive activity, look upon labour as a degrading thing. They ape the manners of the “old aristocracy” whom their forefathers hated, and covet nothing so-much as a title (which, of course, they are prepared to pay for). Still they must make a pretence of being socially useful, and so they give it out, and perhaps actually believe, that they are the “brain ot industry,” upon which the welfare of civilisation rests. The working class are declared to be mere “brainless automata useless without the guiding genius of the ‘captains of industry.'”

The small capitalists, too, have their outlook modified in the face of their approaching disaster. They become “super-democrats,” and appeal to the workers for support, urging them to join in an agitation against the trusts “who are robbing the people.” They strike out in the political field for “clean government”—the abolition of bribery and corruption—when they see the long purses of the plutocrats working wonders in the executive, the legislature, and the law courts. They still retain the old “individualism,” invigorated by their hatred of of the new monopolies which are strangling them, but, in some cases, in favour of State ownership as the only practical alternative to the oligarchy of the trusts.

Capital’s “World Politics”.

We are now to deal with the most important series of changes, social and intellectual, which have flowed with the evolution of capitalist production.

For several reasons, chiefly perhaps, freedom from the ravages of war, English industry in the 18th century had outstripped that of all other countries. Capitalist production first successfully flourished in England and it was here that machine industry was first adopted. The productivity of the English labourer leaped forward amazingly. The enormous mass of commodities turned out with the new machinery was far beyond the meagre consuming powers of the poverty-steeped proletariat of England and had to be sold abroad. A flood of cheap factory products was poured upon the world-markets. England became the “Workshop of the World.” It was the “golden age” of English capitalists, who revelled in unequalled prosperity.

The foreign policy of the statesman during this period was a peaceful one. International complications which would hamper the steady running of the industrial forces and thus disturb the continuous stream of profits pouring into the coffers of the British, bourgeoisie, were studiously avoided. Militarism and war were discredited : they were expensive. They brought, moreover, no compensations at all to be compared with the objectionable features they presented, for as nothing could withstand the competition of the British factory product, the military conquest of markets was, generally speaking, quite unnecessary : they were automatically monopolised.

But despite all the Utopian dreams of British capitalism, this state of things could not last for ever. The effect of English trade was to stimulate and quicken capitalist development in the next most industrially advanced countries, whose bourgeoisie hastened to organise their resources and to introduce machinery. At first slowly, but none the less surely, America, Germany, and France, with others close to heel began to threaten Britain’s trade supremacy, first in their own “home market” under the shelter of protective tariffs, and even to compete with growing success with British goods in the open markets of the world. The world monopoly of England was gone. Even her “first place” among commercial nations was being seriously challenged. Now that their long era of uncontested triumph was drawing to a close a change began to make itself manifest in the outlook of the English capitalists. An influential section of the British bourgeoisie, who, so long as they had no competitors were staunch believers in “free trade,” began now to cry out for “protection” against “foreign goods.” The “tariff reform” campaign was started.

Now began that furious struggle between the capitalist classes of the great bourgeois nations for commercial supremacy. Each rival group is striving to dispose of a huge surplus of commodities, a surplus which grows ever larger as more and more efficient machinery is used to cheapen production. It must be got rid of, for to fail would mean disaster—bankruptcy for the exporters, the bulk of the bourgeoisie, and industrial stagnation. Consequently while the old foreign markets are as far as possible more thoroughly exploited, new, unexplored ones are constantly sought.

But the inevitable result of the export of goods produced in industrially developed areas to countries where capitalism is non-existent or but feebly developed is to break down all communal and feudal conditions and to force these countries upon the path of capitalist evolution. As Marx and Engels said in the “Communist Manifesto,” capitalism creates a world after its own image. The “Dark Continent,” the “Celestial Empire,” and “Holy Russia,” are all transformed with astonishing rapidity at the magic touch of capitalist commerce. Everywhere new capitalist nations are sprouting into life and entering into the maelstrom of international competition. But this means that one-time markets are now becoming competitors in need of a market themselves to dispose of their own ever-growing surplus. While the markets are thus tending to diminish or will soon do so, the competitors for them are on the increase. Thus the tension grows : production within the bounds of capitalism is approaching the end of its tether ; when will the breaking point be reached ?

As the sphere of economic interests of the bourgeoisie of each nation expands with the pressing need for new markets, so also do their political interests. Their political ideal is no longer merely national ; it is imperialistic. They each strive lo secure and monopolise as many markets and potential markets as possible. They obtain trade “concessions” from the governments of “backward countries,” often by pressure. Over areas where they export and establish means of production and transport—machinery, railways, etc. (practically synonymous with their foreign investments of capital)—they form or attempt to form “spheres of interest” and protectorates, or pursue a policy of annexation. Wherever possible they strive to monopolise for their own use areas rich in raw materials—mineral deposits, etc. Thus in recent years the bourgeoisie in Germany have elaborated their Mid Europe-Mesopotamia scheme ; in Britain the policy of “economic unity of the Empire” and of expansion in Persia and Mesopotamia, and the capitalists of the U.S.A. stand as “protectors” of Central and and Southern America ; France, Italy, and Japan all have their schemes of imperial expansion.

Competition is no longer between individuals or even corporations, but between groups of capitalists having the whole force of the respective armed States behind their ambitions and demands. Imperialism, especially in competition with rival imperialisms, means militarism and war.

Of course the old “Liberal-pacifist-free-trade” theory still finds a number of supporters among the less intelligent capitalists and theorists, or among those whose interests are not, as yet, menaced by foreign competitiors, but who, nevertheless, are compelled to stand part of the colossal expense incurred by a vigorous military system. The struggle between the old idea and policy and the new has at length reached its climax in the titanic war, and most of the erstwhile free-traders have abandoned the old position for the new. Liberalism has now become a thing of the past, for the economic conditions which engendered it have passed away for ever.

Imperialism, especially under the impulse of its exacting offspring, the war, has revolutionised the capitalist mind. The old “individualism” is dead as a working philosophy. Whilst, in the “Liberal” period, the capitalist class largely achieved its prosperity through each capitalist seeking independently his own welfare without much regard for, or need of, the support of his class, now that competition between its national sections has become intense, class solidarity’s within the nation has become imperative. The great expense of militarism and the need for efficiency demand concessions and sacrifices from the individual members of the bourgeoisie. The capitalist who disregards the interests of his class is despised.

Organisation for war having become an economic necessity, military service is now considered an imperative obligation. The military spirit is glorified ; military traditions are revived. The State is no longer regarded, as in the individualist period, a necessary nuisance, useful to keep the workers down (maintaining “order,” it is called) but otherwise the less in evidence the better. Now, on the contrary, it has become the “saviour of society” (i.e., of the bourgeoisie). Only by its powerful aid can the needs of the capitalist class be satisfied. The State, in addition to securing military efficiency, now organises and presides over the industries of the nation, striving to co-ordinate national production, eliminate waste, and otherwise promote that efficiency required for the intense competition in the world market. To do this the State takes complete control over many of the most vital branches of production and communication—the railways, shipping, munitions of war factories, agriculture, etc.

Of course, the working class must be attracted to the imperialist philosophy to make its aspirations successful. The “sons of toil” harken to the imperialist politicians and intellectuals who, with flowery phrases, describe and glorify the race for supremacy in the world market which takes to the unsophisticated “savage” of other lands the “triumphs” of modern capitalism, laces the deserts with railways and telegraph wires, and conjures up like mushroom growths everywhere, the crowded city and the whirring, smoke-belching factory. This process, the workers are told, is part of a mission—a mission to carry civilisation and culture to the barbarian. But the national sections of the bourgeoisie are each striving to be, if possible, the sole bearers of this culture, that is, in plain language, to obtain a monopoly of the new markets. Therefore they conduct their business, their overseas profit-seeking, to the cry of “national culture,” be it other variety—a culture which in each case is supposed to possess a “superior essence,” a superfine quality surpassing every other brand of culture. Following from this is formulated the “superior race” or nation doctrine. Thus whilst Joseph Chamberlain, a spokesman of British Imperialism, declared that “the Anglo-Saxon race is infallibly destined to be the predominant force in the history and civilisation of the world,” and Lord Rosebery proclaimed the British Empire to be the “greatest secular agency for good the world has ever seen,” Von Bernhardi and Triechski rave over the “world mission of Germanic civilisation.”

Patriotism assumes under the impulse of imperialism a new and virile significance. From the school, the pulpit, and the Press its dogmas and falsifications are preached with redoubled energy to a deluded proletariat. Efficiency in production and communication being not only a factor in military power, but, more important still, the prerequisite for success in the international market, ths economic relations of the worker, once considered a private matter, are now magnified into affairs of “national interest,” and the concept of patriotism is broadened to include them.

The worker who fails to concentrate all his energy in his work, on securing the maximum of output, who, for instance, “goes on strike,” is dubbed unpatriotic. The hard-won regulations of the labour unions, hitherto receiving a tardy recognition from the bourgeoisie as necessary evils, are now discredited and partly repudiated, being attacked as hindrances to output liable to lead to “national eclipse and disaster”—as unpatriotic.

R.W. Housley

(To be Continued.)

White supremacy is stupid (1993)

From the November 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

In a world that is becoming smaller and societies that are becoming multicultural, it may be time for Western culture to examine critically its view of other cultures. For how much of Western culture is made up of prejudice about other cultures? How much of Western identity is constructed upon the negative identity of others?

Decolonization in a political sense has occurred. What remains to be addressed, however, is cultural decolonization. The legacy of several hundred years of Western expansion and domination, manifested in racism, continues to be recycled in Western cultures in the form of stereotyped images of non Western cultures.

Social Construct

It has often been observed that "race" is not a reality but a social construct. In his study of the "Jewish question'', Jean-Paul Sartre wrote, "Don't ask what the Jews are, but what we have made the Jews”. This applies equally to images of Africa and blacks. The term "White on Black” refers to the whole spectrum of relations in which Western interests were dominant — the trans-Atlantic slave trade, master-slave relations on plantations in the Americas, colonialism, the post-colonial era. and majority minority relations in the Western world. In each of these situations Europeans constructed images of Africa and blacks on the basis of selective perception, expedience, second hand information mingled with reconstructed biblical notions and medieval folklore, along with popular and "scientific” ideas that were current at the time.

Stereotypes of Africa and of blacks are still in circulation but old images have faded away or acquired new meaning and new images have arisen. In the second half of the 20th century, "race” is no longer invoked as the primary key to differences; it has been succeeded by systems of differences founded not on biology but on culture.

"Race" discrimination has increasingly yielded to discrimination along cultural lines, bringing with it different sets of images. Hence "racism" in the literal sense is no longer a satisfactory term to understand the changing realities. Culture as a new basis for differentiation is much more diffuse in its ideological claims than race theory, but in some ways equally effective in establishing boundaries and demarcations. While science marched forward, popular thinking in Europe still followed Christian modes of thought. Genesis (9:18-27) relates that "Noah drank wine and fell into slumber while naked”. Ham, his youngest son, saw him but did not cover his shame, whereas his brothers Japheth and Shem covered their father with cloth. Awakened, Noah praised Shem and blessed Japheth. but cursed Ham.

Curse of Ham

In the early Church the curse of Ham or Canaan was regarded as an explanation of slavery, but not simply of blacks because slavery at the time was "colour-less". The association of the curse of Ham with blackness arose only much later in medieval Talmudic texts. In the 16th century it became a Christian theme and by the 17th century it was widely accepted as an explanation of black skin colour. From here it was just a step to the interpretation of the curse of Ham as an explanation of and justification for the slavery of black Africans.

The view of Africa as a continent condemned to eternal servitude was well suited to a theological assessment of slavery. According to the theological explanation, the Continents were peopled by descendants of Japheth (Europe), Shem (Asia) and Ham (Africa), ranked in a master-servant relationship. Until well into the 19th century, even after the development of the theory of race, this remained the most popular explanation of slavery.

Minorities often a find place in society in certain specialized occupations. No matter how unreal and how dependent on circumstances its position in the labour market is. it is often extremely difficult for a minority to overcome the stereotyping that goes with that position.

The occupational roles allocated to blacks in Western society are an example a minority specialization which has been in existence so long that it seems to reflect the "natural" order: entertainment and sport.

The first role blacks were permitted to perform in White society, after that of slave or servant, was that of entertainer. Indeed entertainment was itself one of the functions of slaves. Entertainers do not threaten the status quo but embellish it. Emotive expression by blacks is accepted and conforms to the rhythm myth, the stereotype of musicality. Thus over the past century, blacks have become the musicians, dancers and buffoons of Atlantic culture.

Sporting challenge

Another terrain on which blacks have been permitted to manifest themselves is in sport. Several sports had travelled along with Africans to the New World and. according to a study by the tennis champion Arthur Ashe who died recently, by the mid-19th century several sports were integrated. The achievements of black athletes challenged "white supremacy" and breached the myth of "racial" inferiority. The integration of sport is part of overall black integration. But it is also a limited kind of success. Their success seems to confirm one of the stereotypes of the black as bestial brute, the all brawn-and-no-brains kind of athlete. At first the story was that blacks were inferior to whites in every respect, physically as well, and therefore unfit to compete with whites led to other stories about blacks having "abnormal muscular qualities, different from those of white men”.

Recently a Tory councillor in Derby was quoted as claiming that "black people do not use swimming pools because they cannot float":

"Retired teacher Colin Brown, 59, said: 'Black people are very heavily boned and they sink. It’s a physiological fact that was taught when I was studying physical education. You never see any black Africans in Olympic swimming finals, do you?’” (Sun, 9 September).

Racism never comes alone. It forms part of a hierarchical mental set which also targets other groups. The features attributed to groups define by “race" are not peculiar to racism, but are also attributed to entirely different categories defined according to social status, gender, age, nationality and so forth.

What racism and other forms of prejudice and discrimination all have in common is social inequality. The common denominator is power — the power that arises from a hierarchical situation and the power required to maintain that situation and, also the anxiety that comes with power and privilege.

Michael Ghebre

Tooth, Nail and Tiger-Skin (1953)

From the August 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

Britain’s traditional cultural intercourse with Europe has in the past hundred years been supplemented—and possibly, to some extent, supplanted—by a transatlantic inter-traffic. Having no barrier of language to surmount, the exchange between Britain and America has included popular as well as academic culture; aided by radio, talking pictures and, most recently, the long residence of thousands of American servicemen in Britain, the features of everyday life in America have impinged more and more upon British custom.

National culture in America has no long history preceding the mechanization of work and leisure, and so the slick, trashy product is more easily accepted there, while its importation into Britain has frequently caused concern to those who stand as guardians of public taste and morality. The adjective “American,” is often one of disapproval; and never has the disapproval been stronger than for a contemporary art-form which, hard as the moralists try, keeps on growing in popularity—American comics.

American comics are not comic. Their subject- matter is cowboys, crime, horror, adventure, sex and space-travel. Something over fifty million copies are sold every month in the United States, and since the war there has been a growing readership in this country. They are marketed by syndicates which operate on both sides of the Atlantic, and are produced by artists working in assembly-line fashion—one drawing the figures, another doing the lettering, and so on. America calls them “squinkies,” and their stock-in-trade is beatings, bludgeonings and fee faw fums.

The beginnings of strip drawings are ancient Egyptian rock tombs have sets of pictures recording the phases of wrestling bouts and acrobatic feats. The modern comic strip began in the American popular press near the end of the nineteenth century and, until recent years, drew its material almost wholely from workaday and domestic life; the awful child, the henpecked husband and the pert stenographer were its dramatis personae. With humour as the chief intention, the technique and conventions of the strip were perfected.

It was during the great depression that humour gave way to adventure, suspense and muscle-parade; possibly everyday life was too grim to be funny any longer. Tarzan and Superman took over, and the comics turned to worlds where nobody asked: “Brother, can you spare a dime?” The squinkies were born. Their theme was action, and they were uninhibited in portraying it; the war stimulated them to greater extravagances.

The aim of the squinkie artist is to create arresting, vigorous movement and easily recognizable character-types; the limitation of the small squares—and part of them is taken up by the speech “balloons’’—prohibits fastidiousness or subtlety. Technical quality varies considerably, from slick, stylish work to that of talentless amateurs. All characters are clearly labelled. Villains have black hair and thin moustaches, scientists are lean and bespectacled, and heroes have a superabundance of muscle (Ka’anga, Lord of the Jungle, has calf muscles slightly larger than his head). Heroines are wasp-waisted, but otherwise pneumatic.

Musical comedy costume is everyday wear in the squinkie world. Janga, Flower of the Wilds, Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, and Tiger Girl all appear in chic animal-skin swimsuits, while Dara of the Vikings prefers a two-piece, with helmet. The jungle men keep to trunks, of course, and the skymen—Superman, Captain Marvel and the rest—go about in long red underwear. There are rigid conventions of speech, too. In the jungle and other far away places, including outer space, they use archaic English, while all spies talk with strong foreign accents. Girls in danger have to scream “Eeek!” and villains coming to their inevitable sticky ends are obliged to shout “Aarghhh!”

These are the superficial conventions of the American comics. They present, for the most part, fantasy worlds. Into these, however, they project beliefs and customs of the actual world; thus their real content is not in their local colour but in their themes, and carries a much more significant set of conventions.

The simplest, broadest and most obvious of these conventions is that good—which is equated with law and patriotism—must always triumph over its opposite. The squinkies are as determined about this as all other juvenile literature, but infinitely more ruthless; when Captain Thunder or Tiger Girl grapples with evil, the end justifies any means. In the crime strips, the violences of the gangsters and killers are exceeded by those of the police, while the various jungle lords and space conquerors manhandle wrongdoers in ways which make all-in wrestling look soft stuff.

The only circumstances in which good does not always win by a knock-out are those in which unearthly powers are involved. The squinkies have great respect for the supernatural, and make it score freely off the lay population. “The Monster from the Pit," for example, a shaggy, shark-toothed immortal from Transylvania who changes into a New York policeman by day and goes out for blood at night, is last seen taking a large bite at his would-be slayer’s throat after a graveyard fracas. The postscript asks: “How many more lives will be snuffed out by the evil Grakhu . . . before he is once more sent to the pit of evil which spawned him? None can tell.” The moral clearly is that witches, warlocks, boggarts and long-leggity beasties are a different thing altogether.

If supernatural beings are the highest class of villains, foreigners are the lowest. To be foreign in the squinkies is to be a suspicious character. Spies and saboteurs are easy game, while the perversity of murderers, mad doctors and jungle marauders is explained from their lack of fluent English. Easterners are horrific unless they are the faithful servants of jungle princesses, in which case they are simpletons, or unless they are young women, in which case they are exotic but sinister. The credulous reader can hardly avoid being persuaded that the English-speaking nations breed the best types.

Love is virtually taboo in the squinkies, but they have a high sex content The exploits of the heroines lead them into comprehensive displays of their startling universal physique. Senorita Rio, a Government counter-spy, spends much of her working time being up-ended. Most of the jungle nobility have mates, whom they continually rescue and occasionally call "my love.” Much of the paraphernalia of perversion—inter-woman fights, whips and so on—finds places in the comics, and brings to mind that their era of popularity has also been that of the Hadley Chase school of novelists.

Since their introduction to this country, squinkies have been continually under fire. Educationalists, clergy and the press have united to denounce them as a danger to morals, an incentive to mental laziness, and a cause of delinquency. As has been remarked, that has not reduced their circulation and may even have increased it. Obviously, there is something about American comics. What cultural and social significance have they? And are the charges against them true?

In the hands of accomplished or thoughtful writers and artists, the least agreeable subject-matter can be presented to some value. That cannot be said for the comics. Their situations, dialogue and characterization are crude; their drawing is never better, and usually worse, than competent; they are badly printed in gaudy colours on the cheapest paper. On their intrinsic merits, they could be written off as contemptible or laughable, or—more correctly—classified with lavatory-wall graffiti. Their paramount element, however, is one to which the lavatory wall never pretends: they present ideals and patterns of behaviour.

The principal ideals promoted by the comics have already been noted. Summarized, they are that good always wins in the end, the end justifies any means, being good means being strong, foreigners are nearly always bad. the supernatural is to be respected, and women are to be judged in terms of physical desirability. None of these is a new or unconventional proposition, though the loudest cry against the comics is that they are subversive to morality. These are, in fact, the commonly accepted standards of our society at the present time; it is significant that the last war, which established in public consciousness that ends justify' means, also brought forth the squinkies. The ethics of the strip are the ethics of dropping atom-bombs on Japanese cities. It is not a case of saying that the brutalities of the comics are insignificant compared with the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, though that is true; the important point is that the morality which accepted the atom-bombs as regrettable but necessary means for a “good” cause to subdue an “evil” one is precisely the same as that of the comic, down to the inclusion of such details as the anthropologists’ explanation that the Japanese are not quite the same as other people—scarcely human, in fact.

The behaviour-pattern of the comics, therefore, is an effect primarily and not a cause of modifications in morality, and—more important still—the modifications themselves are produced by the ever-changing stream of social necessity. Morality is the scheme of behaviour needed to safeguard the institutions of a social group; our society, in which the nation-state is constantly preoccupied with war and its preoccupations, has had to modify its scheme to meet the needs of increased belligerency.

The question of sexual morality is not distinct from that of morality generally. The family, the institution which it protects in our society, has in recent years weakened as a coherent and durable group; the result has been a sharp slackening in the formerly rigid code of sexual morals. The carnality of the comics mirrors rather than promotes this trend; in fact, there are few popular papers and magazines which do not deem it necessary for their circulations' sake to titillate their readers' sexual imaginations. The juxtaposition of venery and violence in the comics has additional significance. Popular fiction and the films show an increasing addiction to this sort of subject-matter; its emergence as a dominant theme in the past has preceded the ends of social epochs—the decline of Rome, the seventeenth century in England, and the years before the revolution in Russia.

The anger against American comics, then, is anger against the changing conventions of our time—in some cases, perhaps, the rage of Caliban at seeing his face in the glass. It remains to consider the other charge against them, that they are encouragements to mental laziness. If this were true, it would apply also to the popular press and most of the agencies for supplying information and entertainment. The publishers of comics, like the press and the entertainment industries, give the public what the public can cope with. The truth is that the education given to a great number of working people provides them with neither the verbal skill nor the critical outlook necessary to serious reading. They are equipped to read comics, tabloid newspapers, simple-phrased stories, and very little else. A great deal is heard about the near-illiteracy of Army recruits (one hears nothing, however, of illiteracy among young women—presumably because they are not conscripted for anything); their lack of simple verbal mechanics being known, it seems hardly consistent to accuse them of mental laziness because they like comics.

The squinkies, then, are part of the cultural pattern of our time, and reflect its consciousness just as the popular domestic novel reflected that of Victorian England. Their simple function is to provide escape, but their illusory or distant worlds form backgrounds against which the modern morality play is acted; that the morality is brutal and prurient is a comment upon our society, not upon the passing phenomena which mirror it. The exclusion of American comics from this country would mean no loss. Neither, however, would it contribute to the re-establishment of moral standards which are no longer compatible with the driving forces of society, or to an improvement in the literacy of Army recruits. The sincere, worried people who want the comics banned have failed to understand the relationship between a popular art-form and its irreversible social environment; if they could do so, there would be less concern with the rash on the face and more with the organic causes of the malaise of our society.

Robert Barltrop

Letters: Taxes and the self-employed (2010)

Letters to the Editors from the May 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Taxes and the self-employed

Dear Editors,

There’s usually something interesting in your magazine and February was no exception, with the article ‘Who Bailed Out the Bankers?’.  If I understood it, it was suggesting that taxes fall on the employers and not the workers. We never see the money which is deducted from our gross pay and it was never really ours. I was wondering how self-employed people would fit into this. The woman who cuts my hair is self employed and she certainly has to find the money to pay her taxes. Is she exploited? But who by, when she employs herself and no one else employs her. But is she then an exploiter? How could she be when she doesn’t employ anyone? There are quite a lot of self employed people around and I’m not sure how they fit into your ‘them and us’ picture. What do you think?

Tony Trafford (via e-mail)

Reply: 
We take the view that ultimately taxes come out of profits rather than wages and salaries. This is because wages and salaries are the price received by workers for selling our mental and physical capacities and like other commodities the price of our ability to work is determined by the amount needed to produce and reproduce it (for instance, the training received by an engineer helps to explain why an engineer’s salary is invariably higher after qualifying than that of an unskilled worker).

This is not to imply that wage rates are set in stone, but to say as we did in the article that at any point in history they gravitate around a point influenced by such factors and, of course, by trade union action too to ensure they don’t sink below even these levels. In effect, this means that while some taxes are paid by workers (such as VAT) the burden of taxation must ultimately fall on profits,  which is one of the reasons the owning class – and the various factions within it – find it of such interest and importance. This is what we explained in the article, and if you are interested in exploring this particular issue, how the burden of taxation falls on the owning class in practice is also discussed in the relevant chapter of our pamphlet The Market System Must Go – Why Reformism Doesn’t Work.

The ‘self-employed’ are a slightly different case, as you imply, because they do not receive a wage or a salary resulting from a contract of employment. The self-employed (such as the small shopkeepers, etc) were technically part of the capital-owning class but who, as Marx pointed out, were forever being reduced towards the living standards of the working class through competition from the more successful capitalists and conglomerates. As such, their position has historically been one of the most vulnerable in capitalist society. Indeed, over time, the ranks of the self-employed shrank significantly due to this process of the concentration of capital into ever fewer hands, with smaller firms and the self-employed getting taken over or pushed out in the competitive struggle for profits.

In recent years though, there has been something of a turnaround in the numbers of those who call themselves self-employed. Not in the sense that the types of economic activities traditionally carried out by the self-employed have expanded much (in the main they’ve continued to shrink) but because a new layer of workers have had their pay and conditions de-regularised or ‘contracted out’ either by the state sector or by the corporations. This has been done as a way of stimulating efficiency (getting the self-employed to work from home for fees is usually cheaper for businesses than when they were formally employing the same people on salaries, with national insurance and pensions, etc to do the same work ‘in-house’).

So we have a situation whereby in reality, unless the self-employed are also employing others then they cannot be exploiters, and they are usually living on little more (sometimes less) than the average wage themselves, due to the pressures of commercial competition. They typically pay taxes nominally like workers do, and are, despite their ‘self-employed’ status, in an economic situation that is little different in most respects to wage and salary earners with contracts of employment.

Editors 

Cultural diversity

Dear Editors

In my opinion, the obituary written for Vic Brain was well written (Socialist Standard, April). I have always thought that people who are enthusiasts of things like the Welsh language, Scottish Gaelic, the Scots language, Irish Gaelic, Cornish language etc, are doing something which even under the uniforming pressures of capitalism is contributing to “cultural diversity” (as described in Vic’s obituary). Some might argue, I suppose, that our class position as wage slaves should mean that all other enthusiasms and identities should be subordinated or rubbished. I was glad to see your obituary writer was a bit more generous and thoughtful. I see no contradiction, for example, in having a Scottish identity related to your geographic roots, being interested in the Scots language and history etc , and also seeing a logical case for a world based on voluntary cooperation.

What are you thoughts on the subject of “cultural diversity”?

J. Russell, 

Glasgow, Scotland

Reply:
We have no objection to “cultural diversity”. Differences of language, food, music and the like will continue to exist in a united socialist world; indeed would no longer be subjected to “Mcdonaldisation” as today under capitalism. We would add that different cultures can exist in the same geographical area and that individuals can partake of elements of different cultures (you don‘t have to come from Scotland to enjoy the bagpipes or from China to enjoy Chinese food). Our objection is to the exploitation of cultural differences for political ends, as for instance to set up or maintain a state or as the basis for a political party.

Editors

Jottings. (1910)

The Jottings Column from the August 1910 issue of the Socialist Standard

The risks of capitalists have been finely illustrated at the expense of the cinematograph people who shelled out some £30,000 to the principals in and promotor of the recent glove contest in America. One Jeffries essayed to "take up the white man's burden," which in this instance was to prove the superiority of the white over any other human complexion. It was thought a pretty safe calculation that the universal interest in the spectacle of "Mistah Jeff " taking up the white man's burden, would warrant the outlay, but alas ! for the "schemes of mice and men," it was forgotten that the same pictures might show the black man helping him to lay it down again. Of course the overlooking of this contingency made all the difference.

#    #    #    #

Was it to be supposed that civilisation could stand it ? We all know that civilisation is based firstly upon the superiority of the white to the coloured races, and secondly upon the superiority of the capitalist to the ordinary or worker white. But what sort of an effect would these moving pictures have upon the social aspect in Africa, and what tale would they whisper into the ear of young India, and how would they be received on the banks of the Nile, where the burden of the white man's civilisation sits none too lightly on brown backs ? The best black man has beaten the best white. The best black is better than the best white. The black is better than the white.

#    #    #    #

As Japan snatched the halo of sanctity from the Western brow when she drove the Russian legions before her, so these pictures of the best white man trying and failing to chew all he had bitten off might be taken by the dusky ones the world over as evidence that the miraculous no more belongs to the white skin than to the Western position, and that even the most godlike of white men has a crick in his neck if the axe is put on in the right place—and then goodbye to British misrule in India and Egypt, and farewell to white supremacy in East and West. And then when the worker white made the startling discovery that there was nothing inferior to him he might begin to seriously ask if  there is anything superior, and such an inward searching really would place the foundations of our capitalist civilisation in jeopardy.

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And now will anybody put up a purse for the Parliamentary champions of the I.L.P. and the S.D.P. ? It need not be a large one for these gentlemen's price is not high. Some time ago Mr. Will Thorne, M.P., raised "hell and Tommy" to get a battleship built on the Thames, and with the assistance of that other good Liberal, Sir John Bethell, M.P., succeeded in steering an order into the offices of a Thames shipbuilding firm. Mr. Keir Hardie, M.P., on the other hand (according to the Manchester Guardian, July 5) said that five and a half million pounds were to be added to the naval expenditure this year and asked : "Where is this going to end ?" He went on : "When will the working class of Great Britain realise that so long as you go on squandering millions upon the navy and the army there is no money left for social reforms ? "

#    #    #    #

Now here ia a pretty kettle of fish ! Both Bill Thorne, M.(um)P.(er) and Keir Hardie, M.(um) P.(er) are reformers of the first water, and while the latter cusses over the naval expenditure, the former yells for more. Pitch them a twenty-four foot ring — a twelve-foot — nay, a six-foot will better suit their agility, not to say slipperiness — and let them set to.

#    #    #    #

At the same meeting where Mr. Hardie gave voice to the words quoted above he also had something to say upon the Conference on the House of Lords question. "It is a matter of no concern of mine," he said, "whether the Conference meets with closed or open doors, but may I say in fairness to the Conference that if there was to be a conference at all it was in the vary nature of things bound to be a secret conclave. Whenever the Miners' Federation meet the masters to discuss matters in dispute you do not admit the Press, and rightly too."

This, of course, is quite in keeping with the good old I.L.P. tradition. Don't admit the Press, the might tell the "rank and vile," and the "rank and vile" have got to be "(b)led."