Another Idol Gone (1942)

From the October 1942 issue of the Socialist Standard

Another nasty jolt has been given to the fiction that the workers have not the capacity to understand the fundamental problems of life and should seek guidance from experts.

Not only do philosophers merely view the world differently but individual philosophers, after insisting for the best part of a lifetime that their view is the only true one, will suddenly recant and put forward an opposite view with equal conviction. They recognise their past errors with the ease, impudence and dogmatism of the Communist Party. It is just a further illustration of the utter futility of relying upon philosophy as an assistant in the struggle for working-class emancipation.

A recent example of the recanter is Dr. C. E. M. Joad, who, for some peculiar reason, is credited by reformers with a reputation for brilliance as a thinker. He also figured as the backbone of the B.B.C. Brains Trust, and is a teacher of philosophy at one of the Universities.

Before the outbreak of war Dr. Joad wrote a book supporting the pacifist attitude on war, but shortly after the war commenced he recanted this view. Recently he has written an article recanting his fundamental views on philosophy. This article is entitled “From Sunlight to Shadow” (Evening Standard, 25/8/42) and the Evening Standard have printed in thick letters above this title : “After 30 years of agnosticism, Dr. C. E. M. Joad has become a believer in God.”

Dr. Joad is fond of presenting different points of view (most of which only appeal to people on account of the language in which they are embedded), and in the process he has either got his own points of view mixed up or else he never had any. May we add that to be logical and honest Dr. Joad should have all his writings on philosophy to date withdrawn, and added to the waste paper collection, along with other rubbish, as he is now starting once again from scratch. We wonder if he will still have the face to carry on his job as teacher of philosophy, though, of course, capitalist economic experts still hold down their jobs in spite of their admitted bankruptcy on such questions as crisis and unemployment, and the most ghastly mistakes in forecasting the future. If an ordinary worker exhibited similar incapacity in the job he was paid to do he would soon find himself walking the streets. However, there is a reason why the “experts” keep their jobs, but we cannot go into it at the moment.

Let us now consider Dr. Joad’s article, and see what message, if any, he has for the workers in his new-found philosophy.

He opens with a discussion of the reasons that led him to agnosticism thirty years ago. His criticism of Christianity, including the question of whether earwigs had souls, he finally sums up with the following statement : “Seeing no answers to these questions, I consigned the whole religious bag of tricks to the shelf, where they have mouldered in cold storage ever since.”

Notice the phrase he uses, “mouldered in cold storage.” Now things don’t moulder in cold storage, and this is true of Dr. Joad’s putting “on the shelf.” What in fact, he did was to put the problem on the shelf because he was unable to solve it, and yet he has presumed to stand as an authority and guide on the subject ever since ! Now, appalled by the spectacle of the world at war and a debauch of unbridled savagery, Dr. Joad, the philosopher, savant, and guide, finds himself out of his depth. His superficial understanding will not guide him through the morass, so, like the primitive savage, he throws up his hands and appeals for supernatural aid. It hardly seems credible that a man with his opportunities should not have reached sufficient understanding years ago to realise that war was inevitable and that he would therefore have adjusted his ideas accordingly. But perhaps this is too much to expect from an “expert” who lives in a cloud of words and thrives upon clever and empty repartee.

He tells us in the article that he never held the view that matter was the only reality but believed that there were “certain absolute values of beauty, of truth, perhaps of goodness, perhaps even of God, who revealed Himself in the values”; that there was something else that accounted for beautiful music and Shakespeare’s sonnets. The fathead ! Darwin considered a worm far more beautiful than any music, and mathematicians are enthralled with the beauty of figures. What about the “Back Room Boys,” who produce designs for “beautiful bombs” and beautiful bombers with the object of decimating beautiful cities and beautiful bodies ? Is the present writer expected to believe that a principle of evil or a principle of good is responsible for the production of the wonderful caterpillars that are eating up his cabbages ? And what about the weather that simply won’t do its stuff—has the principle of evil got hold of this too ? or does Dr. Joad now believe that earwigs have rather shabby souls ?

Stumped for an adequate explanation of the latest catastrophe of war he can only see in it a proof that there is another absolute value—evil. What he completely fails to grasp is that as our physical and mental faculties evolve over hundreds of years so also do our ideas of what is pleasing and our capacity to produce what is pleasing. Thus there are no such things in his sense as absolute values. All values are relative and change with social evolution. To kill is evil in peace times but in war it becomes good, and Christianity, to which Dr. Joad is appealing, supports it.

Dr. Joad writes that he had been trained to regard evil as a by-product circumstance, economic and psychological, and that by removing the circumstance the evil would be abolished. Now observe the meaning the learned professor applies to these terms in the following extract:—

“I can believe this no more. The evil in the world to-day is too widespread and obtrusive, our noses are being rubbed too firmly into it, to enable us to take any longer so easy a view of its nature and origin. Is all the torturing and murdering and persecuting and raping that disgraces contemporary Europe to be dismissed as a by-product of the poverty and/or psychological maladjustment of young men born in Germany 20 or 30 years ago ? It seems unlikely ! Evil, then—there seems no escape from the conclusion—is endemic in the heart of man. But to believe in the reality of evil and to have no recourse against it save such as lies in the sporadic efforts of one’s own will and the slender integrity of one’s own judgment, that is, for me, a frankly intolerable position.

There must, one feels, be some outside source from which assistance can be invoked. ‘So there is,’ says religion, ‘there is God, and if, believing, you pray to Him, grace will be vouchsafed whereby evil may be resisted.’ Hence arises the paradox, that one is driven to believe in the existence of a benevolent and participating God, precisely because of the fact of evil.”

What a pity he doesn’t do a bit more knowing and less believing and feeling. The present writer knows that if he abolishes the caterpillars he will save the cabbage and therefore he is picking them off, and, given adequate assistance, would be completely successful.

The quotations from Dr. Joad’s statement provide a glaring example of what little knowledge he possesses of the subject he is discussing. Who claims that the evils of war are a by-product of poverty or the psychological maladjustment of young men ? Only ignoramuses like Dr. Joad ! Was the Franco-Prussian War, the Russo-Japanese War, the Boer War, or the last Great War due to these causes ? Of course not. Was any war in history due to them ? Again of course not. Was even the Peloponessian War in Greece two thousands odd years ago, with which Dr. Joad should be very familiar, due to these causes ? The suggestion is absurd and could only come from an idle and disillusioned dreamer. One fact alone should banish from the mind any such ideas, and that fact is that for hundreds of years it has been the wealthy, property-owning class who have decided whether or not war should be declared. For the mass of the people the position has been—their’s not to reason why, their’s but to do and die.

The main fact is that wars are a product of the clashing economic interest of various property owners in different parts of the world who struggle for markets, trade routes, sources of supply of raw materials, and so forth. While private property with its clashing sectional interest remains war in all its barbarity will always cast a shadow over the social picture and no help can come from a mythical outside force.

If Dr. Joad had faced up to this position thirty years ago he would have realised that wars are always barbarous, no more so now than centuries ago. Greece in the age of Pericles, one of the brightest periods of all time, was disfigured in its warfare by just the same torturing, murdering, persecuting, and raping as has disfigured every war from that day to this.

Dr. Joad has put the wrong title to his article. He should have called it “From the Shadows to Despair.” This mental collapse is not an isolated instance, and it just reinforces our contention that to understand what is happening to-day it is essential to grasp the real basis of the social system, the capitalist private ownership of the means of production, which is beneath the hunt for profit and the consequent class division, economic conflicts, and wars. Given the conditions that lead to war then war will always produce the barbarities that have upset Dr. Joad’s mental apparatus. The solution is the building up of a new system of society in which private ownership will have no place.

In conclusion, we would call attention once again to the fact that philosophers only view the world differently; the point is to change it.

Gilmac.

The Judgment of Joad (1941)

From the June 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard 

It is most lamentable that Socialists, in their long and arduous struggle to dispel working-class political ignorance, receive hindrance rather than help from those acclaimed by many as intellectual leaders. In April’s Socialist Standard we referred to the shortcomings of Mr. George Bernard Shaw on the subject of Socialism, and now we feel impelled to pass judgment on Dr. C. E. M. Joad. Writing in’ the New Statesman and Nation, for May 3rd last, in an article, “The Wheel Comes Full Circle (II),” he observes:

“It is one of my most profoundly held convictions that the methods for the achievement of Socialism which have been fashionable during the last twenty years . . . can be productive of no good thing.”

He accordingly welcomes the “renewed intrusion of ethical concepts into political and more particularly into socialist, political thinking,” and one of his conclusions is that “there is a definite relation between Socialism, as my generation were brought up to understand it, and the values of ethics and the virtues of Christianity.”

Let us make it clear to Dr. Joad, that if his concept of Socialism be accepted by the rest of his generation, then neither he nor they were brought up to understand it, and, as evidence, let us quote again from his article :

“In my last article I described the conceptions which have increasingly dominated Communists, and we may add Socialists—for what Socialism has there been in England during the last twenty years, save that of Communism?—in the period between the two wars. And now again there is a change. John Strachey writes a book which appeals to faith in the name of love. . .”

With absolute confidence we defy Dr. Joad, or anyone else, to prove, (a) that the Communist Party has even been Socialist; (b) that Mr. John Strachey has even been a Socialist; (c) that there has at any time been a Socialist organisation in this country other than the Socialist Party of Great Britain.

Let us offer Dr. Joad further information regarding Socialism, so that he may know that the hope for humanity lies there, and there alone, and not in those doctrines he falsely conceives to be Socialist, nor yet in the Christian approach.

Dr. Joad argues that “Socialist” methods are fallacious because one cannot “be sufficiently sure one is right to justify one in the infliction of untold suffering in the present to make straight the way of the future,” and because human beings are corrupted by power. We share his aversion from the “authoritarian dogmatism” of these methods; but they have nothing to do with Socialism, neither has “the ordering and ruling of human beings.” Socialism cannot be till society consciously desires it. Violence will not achieve it, and consequently there will be no need of power to impose it.

Regarding his suggested alternative, Dr. Joad mentions without a trace of rebuke the Oxford Union tenet, that an essential condition of world reconstruction is a “return to God through organised religion.” (Italics ours.) Does he not realise that the State, instrument of man’s oppression by man, was even in early times essentially theistic, and that organised religion—including such as the Catholic overlords of Spanish workers and the Church of England landlords of London slums—is a potent factor in that oppression ? What, one may well ask, has this to do with “love, kindliness, respect for the individual” ?

Assuming Dr. Joad really means Christianity, then we may reply that while Socialism will be the practical realisation of “Love thy neighbour as thyself” (whereas capitalism is its antithesis), yet the Christian belief leads men not only to seek salvation apart from this earth, but also to feel that the patient endurance of hardship will speed that salvation. It contends, too, that if man is to have material emancipation here, it must be consequent upon his moral reform.

Particularly apposite is Dr. Joad’s comment that the record of two thousand years of ethical incentives to the betterment of society “is not encouraging.” He tries to argue away this point. Fails. Gladiatorial games and duelling have gone, yet the slaughter of man by man is surely more prevalent in the world than ever before. Wars may be condemned, but the condemnation is generally utilitarian rather than principled. No longer is there persecution for witchcraft; yet in its place we have widespread maltreatment of the workers who struggle for a better world.

Concluding his plea for ethical considerations, Dr. Joad states: “I do not think the appeal to moral values is always futile.” Let him observe that war and other capitalist evils which beset us are invariably bound up with appeals to moral values.

We strive for Socialism—common ownership and democratic control of the means of life—not because it is moral, ethical, virtuous, or seemingly eligible for any other relative abstract description, but because it is a scientifically demonstrable social and economic necessity.

Richard Tatham

Christianity's Diminishing Returns (1939)

From the March 1939 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Thy Kingdom Stands, nor Falls for ever.”—(Well-known hymn.)

Thirty-five years ago, when the S.P.G.B. was founded, religion was an issue in debate. To-day the churches are trying to recapture their failing interest, and preserve what is left. A year or two ago the Archbishop of Canterbury, and others, loudly announced a Recall to Religion. The promoters of a united faith have been busy. At the world conference on “Faith and Order,” in August, 1937, the Scottish Roman Catholic Archbishops departed from a long-established practice, and sent observers with a watching brief. On the one hand, growing scientific knowledge has lowered the Church’s stock. The pundits thought they could find refuge in the  writings of the oracles of modern physics. But they found none among recent discoveries in other fields, and especially in psychology. These latter were much more intelligible to most people, equally exciting, and widely read. On the other hand, week-end amusement, ready to hand in the shape of cheap transport, radio and cinema, has eclipsed the churches in their appeal. Even the cheap-jackery of advertisement fails to fill many a parson’s empty pews. God is on diminishing returns.

One of the attempts to weld together the faithful appeared in the form of a report on “Doctrine” last January. Ostensibly, the Committee was set up in 1922, by the late Dr. Davidson, then Archbishop of Canterbury, and Dr. Lang, the Archbishop of York, to—

  Consider the nature and grounds of Christian doctrine with a view to demonstrating the extent of existing agreement within the Church of England, and with a view to investigating how far it is possible to remove or diminish existing differences.” —(Page 55, Manchester Guardian Weekly, January 21st, 1937.)

but it is patently an attempt (adapting the words of the Manchester Guardian at the time) “to make the acceptance of the traditional doctrine of the Church easier for men of modern ways of thinking.”

The Committee was prepared to modify what were once thought to be central tenets of the Anglican faith in order to make adherence less exacting. (For instance, they no longer demanded belief in the Virgin-Birth. Some were prepared to grant the “symbolism” of the creeds and the miracles. They were, likewise, not prepared to insist upon the historicity of the Gospel accounts, but were willing to accept a wide variation of opinion on the character of the Sacraments.) They practically omitted to deal with more fundamental matters, on the ground that these lay outside the terms of reference. As a matter of fact, to face the issue squarely in the light of modern knowledge, would be filing a petition of Christian bankruptcy.

True, as the report sometimes states, even members of the Commission were not always unanimous—a circumstance which they bore with greater composure than the history of the Church would have led one to expect.

But even though unification may be achieved, religion is rapidly losing its claim on the people. C. E. M. Joad wrote two articles in the New Statesman and Nation (January 22nd, January 29th, 1938), in which he analysed the losses on various flanks. Between 1906 and 1936 the Anglican and Free Church schools lost over three and a half million scholars—about fifty per cent. The number of clergymen active in the Church of England has also halved during the same period. An analysis carried on in churches and chapels shows a drop during this time of over seventy-five per cent, in attendances. This drew one resentful letter from a cleric, who tried unsuccessfully to discount the facts. There is also a shortage of candidates for Dedication. A memorial submitted to the Archbishops (December 13th, 1937) proposed to combat this by a number of simple devices. One of these was to urge celibacy as a less expensive mode of life, which would enable the ministers to live on a more meagre salary: —

   The memorial deals with the changes in the social aspects of country districts. Fewer sons of the wealthier classes are being ordained, it is stated; fewer ordinands have any private means. Filling country livings becomes increasingly difficult.

   The remedy at present sought is the amalgamation of benefices, very unpopular in the parishes. This, says the memorial, is surely wrong. The remedy is for the priest to live not in the big glebe house but in a cottage, like his humble parishioners.”—(Daily Telegraph, December 13th. 1937.)

The growth of the poorly-paid element in the Church has been partly responsible for a new outlook, especially in the great cities. In the words of the New Statesman and Nation (January 22nd, 1938): "The Church of England, once the backbone of Conservatism, has become increasingly sympathetic to the more moderate aspirations of Labour ” (p. 107).

But now that working-class demands and actions are a factor in the life of the nation, the Church has had to trim its sails accordingly. The working class will find little support, however, from the classical upholders of privilege and wealth. The Bishop of Durham's letter to The Times (September 24th, 1935) is quoted because, typically, it hides under a cloak of apparent devotion to the miner’s interest a deep antagonism:—

   As matters stand with us in England, I am fully persuaded that strikes and lock-outs are not only widely calamitous to those directly concerned, but unfair to the nation as a whole, and, in the true sense of the word, immoral. It has been my experience to live through two great strikes in this Diocese, and I am unable to see that any other result came from them than suffering, economic confusion, and lamentable social embitterment

   Therefore, in the interest of the whole community, and therein specially of the miners, the clergy cannot, in my judgment, rightly or wisely associate themselves with movements which contemplate, and logically result in, open conflict.

But, to confine ourselves to exposing the religious sham would be a sterile undertaking. Belfort Bax wrote in 1902, in ”The Religion of Socialism ”: —

  There is a party who think to overthrow the current theology by disputation and ridicule. They fail to see that the theology they detest is so closely entwined with the current mode of production that the two must stand or fall together . . .

And that, indeed, is the truth. Religion has slavishly adapted itself to the needs of the hour, and can in these latter days even court the working class. The Kingdom of God has been proven a myth. The Church is no longer militant. Religion serves no ethical, moral or social purpose other than that which corresponds to the need of a privileged class, who take little further stock in it. And the sooner the workers get rid of both, the better; and so much the quicker find a more prosperous state than they are likely to get from the declining ministry upon earth.

C. J. Kilner.

The Fallacies of Joad (1943)

From the August 1943 issue of the Socialist Standard

We Socialists are constantly urging workers not to judge persons or political parties by labels. It is this free acceptance of terms or words used to describe political opinions and policies that is responsible in no small measure for the confusion and misunderstanding which exists in the minds of workers everywhere to-day.

If there is one tag used more often and indiscriminately than any other it is the label of "Socialism,” and it is only by a critical examination of the various nostrums put forward by pseudo-Socialists that the bankruptcy of their claims are revealed.

A case in point is that of Dr. C. E. M. Joad, who has on many occasions stated he is a Socialist. Dr. Joad is a man who receives much favourable publicity from the Press and the B.B.C. and who has come to be regarded with a great deal of respect by large numbers of workers who fall easily under the spell of erudite and fluent speakers. He is a member of the Brains Trust and a man of undoubted ability in certain spheres, but Socialist knowledge is not one of his assets. This is made clear in an article in Reynolds of April 18, in which Dr. Joad gives his reasons for aspiring to enter the post-war Government as a Labour member. He says: -—

   I have spent my life in learning and teaching, and I can see how the educational system of this country plays a greater part than any other single factor in perpetuating the division of our nation into two peoples —the privileged and the unprivileged.—(Reynolds, April 18.)

Dr. Joad then gives his solution as to how this division can be ended. He proposes to abolish the present educational system of, on the one hand, elementary schools for children of the working class, and on the other hand, kindergartens, preparatory schools, public schools and Oxford or Cambridge for children of the wealthy. In its place he wants to substitute a system in which every child is given an equal opportunity of developing his talents as a man and serving the community as a citizen, irrespective of the economic position of his father.” (Reynolds, April 18.)

Now it is true that the education, given out to-day plays a part, among other things, in perpetuating the class division in society. Whether or not it is greater than any other single factor is a point that need not concern us here. The influence of education on the preservation of things as they are is not due, however, to the two different standards of education, as Dr. .load thinks, but to the fact that education is coloured by a capitalistic outlook and inculcates into the mind of the child an unquestioning acceptance of the present order of society. Capitalist education is the antidote to revolutionary ideas.

The important point, however, the crux of the whole matter, is this: that education merely helps to perpetuate the class division—it is not the cause. It follows logically that even if you remove one of the perpetuating factors whilst leaving the basic cause untouched, then the effect of that cause will remain.

If Dr. Joad knew as much about the Socialist case as he would have us believe then he would know that the cause of the class division, not only in this country, to which Joad refers, but throughout the world, is an economic one: class ownership of the means of life. The class that owns and controls the means of wealth production, the land, factories, workshops, machines, etc., is obviously in a privileged position. Because of their ownership of the means of producing the things by which all men live they can deny access to these things by those that own nothing but their labour- power—-by far the largest portion of society. The propertyless class, then, are enabled to live only by the consent, and subject to the conditions of those who own the world’s resources.

The proposals that Dr. Joad puts forward do not assail the privileged position of the capitalist class. The continuance of the ownership of the means of living is unchallenged. In fact, this is implicit in Dr. .load’s statement when he talks about every child being given an equal opportunity “ . . . irrespective of the economic position of his father." What does this statement imply if not that economic inequality will still prevail? If there are rich and poor then there are privileged and unprivileged. Riches are synonymous with privilege; poverty with slavery.

Unlike this self-styled ”middle-class intellectual,” we Socialists, members of the ”unprivileged” class, put before our fellow-workers a case that really strikes at the roots of the problem. Our solution is not educational reform, nor any other kind of reform, but abolition of private property—capitalism. When the means of producing wealth are owned in common by the whole of society no class will be able to exploit a subject class. There will be no classes—in other words there will be no privileged and no unprivileged. And as regards education, only then will, there be available to every child the very best that modern science and technology can offer. The whole vast field of man’s knowledge will be open to all the children of society. That is the Socialist case and one that Dr. .load could well learn.

S. Pizer