"Science, natural and social" (1950)

From the August 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

“. . . Today it seems that we are again in the process of launching a new phase of science—one in which social as well as natural phenomena are to be made amenable to scientific understanding and rational control.

“As with natural science, social science too has had its earlier stages. It too passed through the stage of trial and error, in which social organisation shaped itself under the influence of unconscious adjustment together with non-rational rules of conduct and non-scientific interpretations of human destiny. It also had its traditional phases, often tightly bound up with philosophical and theological interpretative principles, as, for example the climax of the Middle Ages. And it has had its birth of free speculative inquiry, parallel to the Greek phase of natural science—but two thousand years later, in the philosophers of the seventeenth and especially the eighteenth century.

“Finally, its modern stage now dawning has had. like the modern stage of natural science, its scattered precursors, its Roger Bacons and Leonardos—and it has had its precursor in the restricted sense, its equivalent of Francis Bacon in the Renaissance. Many, I am sure, would put Herbert Spencer in this position; but I believe that the true John the Baptist of social science is Karl Marx. Herbert Spencer, for all his academic knowledge, or perhaps because of it, was more in the position of an Old Testament prophet. His work was essentially analogical. He demonstrated that social science was an inevitable development; but his notions of what form it would actually take and what methods it should employ were vague and essentially erroneous.

“Marx, on the other hand, developed a system directly based on social facts and directly applicable to them. He did not just prophesy. A Messiah; he indicated THE Messiah. As natural scientists tend to undervalue Bacon because he himself did not make discoveries or work out experimental techniques, so social scientists tend to under-rate Marx because his system is a dialectical one, ready-made and complete with an answer to any problem, not sufficiently empirical and inductive for their scientific taste. But at least Marx, like Bacon, gave expression to a new outlook and a new method of attack, and helped materially to alter the intellectual climate so as to make it propitious for scientific work in his field . . . ”

(“The Uniqueness of Man”, by Julian Huxley. Pages 224—225).

Slavery and History. The Evolution of Subjugated Labour. (1909)

From the February 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

The essential characteristics of slavery are, we find, human subjection to and labour for the profit of masters. When man’s labour produces more than is indispensable for his maintenance, slavery is born. Prisoners of war, instead of being killed and eaten, or simply killed, are kept alive in order that they may work for their captors. Thus slavery is unknown to the more primitive folk of the savage, hunting stage. As defined, however, it is found wide-spread among peoples of a higher development, and passes historically through innumerable modifications. Nevertheless, three leading forms successively mark the course of later social evolution, namely, chattel-slavery, serfdom, and wage-labour; for the latter comes well within the definition.

We are well aware that the popular notions on slavery, and, indeed, those fostered by capitalist journalism, are mostly confined to an acquaintance with “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Herbert Spencer’s view of the matter may, therefore, well be quoted as showing the far wider scope of the institutions. He says, (Vol. 3, p. 456, Prim. Soc.),

“The current assumption is that of necessity a slave is a down-trodden being, subject to unlimited labour and great hardship ; whereas in many cases he is well cared for, not overworked, and leniently treated. Assuming slaves everywhere to have ideas of liberty like our own, we suppose them to be intolerant of despotic control: whereas their subjection is sometimes so little onerous that they jeer at those of their race who have no masters. Assuming that their feelings are such as we should have under the same circumstances, we regard them as unhappy ; whereas they are often more light-hearted than their superiors. Again, when we contrast the slave with the free man, we think of the last as his own master ; whereas very generally, surrounding conditions exercise over him a mastery more severe and unpitying than that exercised over the slave by his owner : nature’s coercion is often worse than man’s coercion.”

Spencer had to make out that the subjection of the wage-workers to the capitalist class is simply “nature’s coercion,” but otherwise his view is quite acceptable.

In offering our fellow workers some information on the condition of their historical forebears, we shall, true to the materialist conception of scientific Socialism, see in the evolution of slavery, not the idealist’s progress of ideas out of ideas, independently of material conditions, from earlier cruelty to later gentleness, but simply a reflex of the movement and progress of productive methods. A remodelling of institutions not according to heaven-sent aspirations, high ideals and “moral” religions of Greek, Mahometan and Christian, but as the further expansion of economic forces required.

The earlier written histories describe the Mediterranean and North European peoples as being, many of them, advanced to the threshold of civilisation, and still organised by kinship in contradistinction to organisation according to the territory inhabited; some living largely by agriculture, and others, like the Semitic tribes of Western Asia and Northern Africa, a pastoral, nomadic life. Private property was accumulating amongst them, even to the land itself in some cases, while domestic animals, cattle, goats, and so forth, were such everywhere. It is above all upon this new factor that depends the subsequent history of civilised peoples, including the evolution of slavery. Military raids were frequent, and provided conquerors with plunder, more fertile lands, and, above all, with prisoners, who were made to tend the cattle, or to do the more laborious work of the fields. At a later stage the ranks of slavery were swelled by poor citizens or tribesmen selling their children, and even themselves, into bondage in payment of debt. The book of Leviticus hands down to us the rules for the treatment of both the “stranger” and Hebrew bondsmen.

Greece.

Some of the Grecian tribes when they conquered a neighbouring people simply bound these to the soil and compelled them to bring to their conquerors a certain fixed part of their produce, leaving their family institutions untouched, and even allowing them to accumulate property. Thus, amongst others, the Spartans held their helots ; and indeed, much of the military organisation of the former was required to keep the helots in subjection, for they long retained the memory of their free condition.

In Attica and Corinth, the distinctly commercial states, however, great numbers of chattel-slaves, largely barbarians, were held and exchanged. “At the time of the greatest prosperity the whole number of free Athenian citizens, women and children included, amounted to about 90,000 ; the slaves of both sexes numbered 305,000 and the aliens foreigners and freed slaves—45,000.” (“Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State,” by F. Engels.) Slaves furnished all kinds of useful labour. Many were in domestic service, others were cooks, bakers, tailors, miners, labourers on agricultural estates, seamen, oarsmen, etc., while the State had slaves for soldiers, and even policemen. “The free Athenian regarded this police duty as so degrading that he preferred being arrested by an armed slave rather than lending himself to such an ignominous service.” (Engels.) In Greece, although their condition underwent important changes, the slaves were mildly treated, and enjoyed considerable legal protection. Slaves came increasingly to acquire property rights and then, as Spencer has it, “the slave’s condition was much that of a freeman paying heavy taxes.” As to the outcome, Engels says that

“The great number of slaves is explained by the fact that many of them worked together in large factories under supervision. The development of commerce and industry brought about an accumulation and concentration of wealth in a few hands. The mass of the free citizens were impoverished and had to face the choice of either competing with their own labour against slave labour, which was considered ignoble and vile, besides promising little success, or to be ruined. Under the prevailing circumstances they necessarily chose the latter course, and being in the majority, they ruined the whole Attic State. Not democracy caused the downfall of Athens, as the European glorifiers of princes and lickspittle schoolmasters would have us believe, but slavery ostracizing the labour of the free citizen.”

Rome.

In the earlier period of Roman history the head of the family (paterfamilias) had full power of life and death over all the members of his household—wife, child, and chattel-slave—and all were treated in general with great rigour. Slaves when old or otherwise useless were often “exposed” to starve upon an island in the Tiber. Many servile revolts are recorded—some of them of formidable proportions. That under the gladiator Sparticus in 73 B.C. lasted over the course of three years, and was only suppressed by a mighty effort by the Roman State—and this in spite of the fatal lack of cohesion and discipline among the men, who in seeking their freedom could not escape the temptation to linger in Italy for the plunder of the cities.

Later, under the Emperors, multitudes of slaves were employed in the various mechanical arts, while the cruelty of the masters was restrained by law, and property might be acquired. Further, the continual warfare with its consequent strain of military service upon the citizens resulted in the impoverishment of the poorer of these, and their lands passing into the hands of a few great landholders. Agriculture became entirely a slave occupation, carried on upon great estates called latifundae ; a system that led to the depopulation of Italy and the extinction of any class capable of resisting the Imperial tyrants or the barbarian invaders who followed.

The attitude of Christianity towards slavery was, and is, well exhibited in the notion of St. John Chryostom, that the apostle did not insist on the suppression of slavery because it was desirable that men should see how truly the slave could enjoy liberty of soul—the slavery of sin being the only real slavery. Indeed, Christianity is quite innocent of the milder treatment of slaves during the later Roman period, or of the decline of chattel-slavery, for, as Spencer puts it, by the partial failure of the supply of slaves through conquest, “the Romans were obliged to have recourse to the milder but more tedious method of propagation ; and this improved the condition of the slave by rendering his existence and physical health an object of greater value to his master.” Negro slavery in America is fairly well known, and considerations of space prevent us from giving it special treatment here. However, it is well to mention that it arose in consequence of the great demand for agricultural labour there, of a kind suited to hot and damp climates. It received its great impetus from the invention of the cotton gin at the end of the eighteenth century, when cotton became definitely available for clothing in competition with wool and flax. The “peculiar” Southern institution was abolished only when it threatened to prevent the full expansion of normal capitalism based upon wage-labour ; and the clash of material interests there involved an expenditure of blood and treasure rarely matched in history.

Collapse of chattel-slavery.

Now while the Teutonic eruption all over the European portions of the Roman Empire brought with it its own, as yet but little developed, servile institutions, yet it is true that this famous period roughly marks the transition (amongst Western peoples) from personal to territorial slavery—from chattel-slavery to serfdom. The steady degradation of the free population and consequent contraction of markets, resulted in the decay of the large-scale slave-worked agricultural estates ; and since the great numbers of slaves now became a burden upon their owners, these were now largely freed, and small-scale agriculture by “colonists” replaced the older system. These small cultivators paid a fixed sum, or a proportion of the product to landowners, and in other respects were indeed the prototypes of the mediaeval serfs. With regard to the Germanic overrunning of Gaul, Seebohm is quoted by Spencer as inferring that the mediaeval serf was the “compound product of survivals from three separate ancient conditions, gradually, during Roman provincial rule, and under the influence of barbarian conquest, confused and blended into one, viz., those of the slave on the Roman Villa, of the colonus or other semi-servile and mostly barbarian tenants on the Roman Villa or public lands, and of the slave of the German tribesman, who to the eyes of Tacitus was so very much like a Roman colonus”

Feudal Europe.

The wide-spread prevalence of the type of subject labour known as serfdom characterises above all the Middle Ages with its baronial sway and feudal organisation of society. The barbarian conquest of the ancient world, in spite of an intellectual setback, did, after all, but continue social evolution—reinvigorated, however, by the new blood from the northern forests. During and after the migrations the conquerors settled amongst the older cultivators, taking the major portion of the land and working this themselves, aided by the bondsmen they held. The long period of war and conquest had, however, left its mark upon their social organisation. The chieftains’ families had acquired the privileges of hereditary and military aristocracy and remained at the head of a new social class (itself a result of the new division of labour : cultivators—warriors), the professional soldiers. Continual warfare between the various military chieftains (e.g., the Heptarchy in England) induced most of the agriculturists, organised as these were in village communities, to place themselves under the care of a lordly “protector,” in return for which protection they surrendered the titles to their lands. Monasteries and churches in this way became, during the ninth and tenth centuries, amongst the largest landowners, and their bishops and abbeys powerful nobles. The protecting lord, baron, seigneur and his retainers had to be fed, clothed and sheltered in their massive castles and were able to exact this by commanding the services of the protected vassals for definite periods— corvée. This servile condition existed, however, in different forms : the services to be rendered and the civil rights vary with time and place. The monarch sometimes, especially in later times, sustained by the burgher class seeking its particular interests, ruled in favour of the lighter forms of serfdom.

Decline of serfdom.

In England typical serfdom gradually disappeared toward the close of the Middle Ages, and in most other European countries considerably later. It was abolished in Russia by Imperial edict as late as 1861. Serfdom had its frictions, as witness some robust rebellions- e.g., the villeins’ revolt under Jack Cade and Wat Tyler, likewise the Jacquerie in France and the Peasants’ War in Germany.

But the determining influence in its decline, in the last analysis (as in the case of all other social phenomena with the exception of the earliest experiences of the race, when society was more under the influence of sexual relations) was essentially economic, although a superficial reading of history may provide an idealist and purely political explanation. The progressive division of labour and its application in newer and more efficient methods, together with the resulting growth of cities, has everything to do with the rendering of serfdom obsolete and incompatible with progress. In England the change from the old, large, open field, yet scattered, small-plot system of agriculture, to the enclosed field system, together with the displacing of husbandry in favour of pastures, for sheep raising, in response to the demand for wool, had much to do with decreasing the need for numerous workers fixed to the land. “Owing to the spread of new agricultural methods, their services ceased to be valuable,” says Spencer, quoting Cunningham.

The development of the bourgeoisie in the cities and their need of defenders resulted in many serfs finding refuge and livelihood with them. In Italy the serfs were largely feed in this way, while the wide-spread demand for money on the part of the nobles during the Crusades, and in emulation of the now prosperous city merchants, led the manorial lords to look rather to rent payments than to services ; and finally it was being discovered that “free-labour” was more efficient and profitable than “servile-labour.” Spencer has it that “German observers in Russia, as quoted by Prof. Jones, say that a Middlesex mower will mow as much in a day as three Russian serfs. The Prussian Councillor of State, Jacobi, is considered to have proved that in Russia where everything is cheap, the labour of a serf was double as expensive as that of a labourer in England. In Austria the work of a serf is stated to have been equal to one-third that of a hired man.”

It is of some interest to note that vestiges of serfdom survived in England until quite recent times. Thus colliers and salters were bound for life to the mines in which they worked, and their sons with them, until the end of the eighteenth century, while well into tho nineteenth century a “free” labourer could not choose, so were conditions arranged, to leave his employer without incurring risk of punishment. Finally, as regards the real relations of servile and free labour, and the determining causes thereof, the views of these two, certainly not Socialist, and eminently respectable, thinkers, may not be out of place. Thus, John Adams in the American Congress of 1776, “That as to this matter, it was of no consequence by what name you called your people, whether by that of freemen or slaves. That in some countries the labouring poor men are called freemen ; in others they were called slaves ; but the difference was imaginary only. What matters it whether a landlord employing ten labourers on his farm gives them annually as much as will buy the necessaries of life, or gives them those necessaries at short hand ?” (From “Lost Principles of Sectional Equilibrium,” by “Bararossa,” 1860.) Herbert Spencer concludes in this way. “When slave labour and free labour come into competition, slave labour, other things equal, decreases as being less economical. The relative lack of energy, the entire lack of interest, the unintelligent performance of work, and the greater cost of supervision, make the slave an unprofitable productive agent. Hence with an adequate multiplication of labourers it tends gradually to disappear.”

Reviewing, then, slavery in the only fruitful manner, that is, historically ; considering its origin, manifestations and developments, we find that so-called free-labour—wage-labour—falls into its proper place as a later development, of servile production. Free-labour is seen then, to have its roots in chattel-slavery and serfdom, and its future—but to that, shortly. For while labour has been gradually freed from the shackles of chattel and villein conditions, it yet undeniably partakes of the essential characteristics of slavery, viz., human subjection to and labour for the profit of masters. Its distinction from the older forms is sufficiently indicated in the well established Socialist term—WAGE-SLAVERY.

However, the existing order, capitalism, based upon wage-labour, contains and develops within itself its own negation, as did the earlier social systems. The ancient order, based upon chattel-slavery, could not survive the degradation consequent upon the fullest development of that basis, and gave way to the agricultural and military barbarism, which soon developed the feudal system, leaning mainly upon serf-labour. This in turn prepared within itself its own destroyers,—the merchant and artizan class of the towns, the bourgeoisie, who, overthrowing the nobles, and also the King where he could not be made to serve their turn, have become the dominant class, and have moulded society much in their own sanctimonious image. The historically indicated negation of capitalism is Socialism: and the revolutionary instrument of its achievement is the modern class of wage-workers who, stripped of property, are compelled to seek a livelihood by selling to the bourgeoisie their labour-power, but who, in so doing, at the same time acquire an understanding of the conditions of their own development, become class-conscious, and organise for their emancipation. Thereby “emancipating society at large from all its exploitation, oppression, class distinctions and class struggles.”

History dictates the final overthrow of slave-founded society, and the establishment of fraternal society—SOCIALISM.

John H. Halls

Herbert Spencer and Socialism. (1907)

From the April 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

Reprinted from the Burton Evening Gazette

Sir,—In a recent issue of your paper there appeared a report of a lecture on “Herbert Spencer,” which was delivered by Mr. F. E. Lott, F.I.C., A.R.S.M. Being an ardent admirer of Mr. Spencer and his “Synthetic Philosophy,” as well as an enthusiastic Socialist, I may be permitted to crave your indulgence for the following remarks regarding your report.

The passage which engaged my attention is the following:—

“His principles of sociology showed that he was no believer in Socialism, though he had often been hailed as such. The principle of ethics was, perhaps, the most important part of his works, and in it he demonstrated that Socialism attempted to improve social life by breaking the fundamental law of social life.”

I presume that the fundamental law of social life referred to is the principle of every man being entitled to the fullest liberty so long as the like liberty of others is not infringed. With this principle as thus expressed in abstract terms I think few Socialists would disagree. The difficulty arises when we discuss what constitutes an infringement of the liberty of others. Spencer held that the State was an organism. But in applying his principles to man in his relation to the State he treated Society not as an organism but as an aggregation of individual units.

Another quotation may be allowed me from a letter from Spencer to John Stuart Mill—

“The view for which I contend is, that morality properly so called—the science of right conduct—has for its object to determine how or why certain modes of conduct are detrimental and certain other modes beneficial. These good and bad results cannot be accidental, but must be necessary consequences of the constitution of things, and I conceive it to be the business of moral science to deduce from the laws of life and the conditions of existence what kinds of action necessarily tend to produce happiness, and what kinds to produce unhappiness. Having done this, its deductions are to be recognised as laws of conduct, and are to be conformed to, irrespective of a direct estimation of happiness or misery.”

Now, how can Socialism be viewed as infringing those principles ? The Socialist looks upon Society as an organism of which human beings form the cells. Any disease of the cells of an organism is injurious to the organism. Anything depriving the cellular tissue of its proper nutrition causes a disease of the tissue, and the organism suffers. The Socialist viewing the present society, based upon the class ownership of wealth and the means of wealth production, sees that many millions of the human cells forming that society are deprived of the means of proper sustenance, whilst others of those human cells are fed to repletion. As one organ of the human organism may be a parasite seeking aggrandisement at the expense of the other organs, so in the body social we have a class of machine-owners living as parasites upon the labour of machine-minders.

View human society as it has been pictured by Mr. Charles Booth in his investigations into London poverty, by Mr. S. Rowntree in York, others at Egremont and elsewhere, as well as the conditions mentioned in the Interdepartmental Report on Physical Deterioration, and the more recent report on the condition of the working-class in Dundee. From these reports it is evident that at least 13,000,000 people in this country are living below the line of bare physical efficiency. And why ? Because Society to-day is organised in the interests of a class. That this is the inevitable result of a long process of evolution makes it none the better for the working class, though this knowledge affords a hope that the end of the evolutionary process is not yet.

The reason is that the worker to-day can live only by selling his labour power—his power of working—for such a remuneration as barely suffices to replace the energy expended on his work, together with rearing, in the cheapest possible manner, a family of future workers to replace him when he gets “too old at forty.” In return for this wage—this food, clothing, and shelter—the worker toils for a longer period than is necessary to replace its value. The surplus he creates in this surplus time forms a product which is divided into various parts. These parts are the profit, the rent, and the interest of the ruling class.

The Socialist, therefore, contends that profit, rent and interest are merely the various shapes which is taken by the unpaid labour of the worker. He further contends that every new improvement of machinery, each wage-saving contrivance, which speeds up the working-power of the individual worker, increases the wealth of the capitalist, while it further degrades the worker. The division between extreme wealth and extreme poverty has never been so great as it is to-day. Though the economic position of the worker is declining relatively to his powers over nature, his potential power of altering the structure of Society is ever increasing. The manufacturer, the merchant, producing in order that his capital may fructify, has to compete in the market with other men of similar aim. Each manufacturer seeks to augment his share of the market. In prosperous times, like the present, he works his machines at full pressure to meet the demands of the market. Unwitting his efforts, his rivals do likewise, and the market becomes glutted. Men are thrown out of work, thus reducing the “effective demand” for commodities. Amidst the plethora of wealth poverty increases. Under capitalism, says Charles Fourier, “poverty is born of superabundance.”

The capitalist, finding his warehouse glutted with merchandise, ofttimes perishable, and his machines idle, finds it difficult to meet his bills. The necessity of paying his creditors, of redeeming his bills of exchange, makes it imperative to sell at a loss. During such a period of commercial stress bankruptcies are many. On the other hand, those manufacturers with a larger capital who are better able to face those times find in them their most glorious harvest, and buy up their smaller rivals.

Thus the tendency of modern competition is towards the concentration of capital in fewer hands, and the growth of gigantic businesses. Competition must necessarily evolve monopoly. 

We see, then, that the evolution of modern industrial forms is towards the trust. No human effort can head back this movement. Under Free Trade or Protection, under Monarchy or Republic, the trust alike flourishes. To-day, then, it is evident that the evolution of industrial forces and of methods of production, upon which the social superstructure is erected, is in the direction of sameness of life, sameness of outlook, monotony in dwelling, monotony in work, monotony in every phase of our mental, physical and moral life, under which man must sell his labour as a merchandise, under which he is virtually a slave to a wage system.

Against this the Socialist makes a vigorous protest. The Socialist is an individual who wishes to introduce a system of society under which the highest individuality of every man could be developed. He claims, however, that in the necessary toil of Society in providing the means of satisfying human needs every healthy man and woman should bear their share. With the present power of man and the machinery at his disposal two hours work a day on the part of every adult member of the community, excluding the aged and the infirm, would more than meet the necessary demands of Society, and beyond that Society would not seek to restrict his efforts in any way.

Surely this would not constitute so great an interference with man’s individuality as does the social conditions of to-day with its overwork on insufficient wage. Socialism would be a system of Society in which the needs of the individual would be no longer antagonistic to, but harmonious with, the needs of Society. It would be a condition not of Man v. Society, but of Man and Society with identical interests. In such a society only would it be possible to properly “deduce from the laws of life and the conditions of existence what kinds of action necessarily tend to produce happiness and what kinds to produce unhappiness.”

To prepare for the establishment of such a society is the object of The Socialist Party of Great Britain, which recognises the need of propagating these principles, and building up a political organisation which will capture the forms of Government for the express purpose of taking command of the trusts and of the means of producing and distributing wealth. We are seeking to get rid, once and for all, of individual ownership of social forces, to the end that man’s individuality, health, comfort, and welfare may be secured.

I am, sir,

Your obedient servant,

“Economicus.”

Blogger's Note:

There's a lot of references to Burton-on-Trent in this issue of the Socialist Standard. I initially got my hopes up - like you do - that “Economicus” writing to a local newspaper in Burton might mean that “Economicus” was the pen-name of a local SPGBer in Burton. A 'J. Blundell' is listed as the local contact in Burton in this issue of the Socialist Standard, but it turns out Blundell joined the SPGB in March 1906 and “Economicus” was appearing in the Standard as early as May 1905.

Is Society an Organism ? (1906)

From the December 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

The question of Socialist policy is raised in a new manner by Mr. Philpott Wright in a letter which appeared in the last issue of this journal. He, it appears, does not agree that Society is an organism, and even asserts that should Society be found to be an organism in fact, then the policy of the revolutionary Socialist must in consequence be wrong. Now, Mr. Wright’s attitude, as I shall endeavour to show, is based on several curious misapprehensions both of the nature of Society and of the essentials of an organism.

An organism defined.

In the first place, in order to decide whether Society is an organism or not, it is necessary to know the essential characteristics of an organism, and the following, I think, fairly defines them. To be an organism, Society must grow, that is, combine external material with its own substance; it must also have some degree of involuntary, necessary, interdependence or cohesion between its essential parts or mass ; it must possess incipient or advanced differentiation of function between its parts ; and, above all, it must possess the quality of life, or change and development due to the influence of its environment and to the reaction of its own expansive energy, in other words, it must possess the faculty of the “adjustment of the internal relations to external relations.”

The social organism fulfils all these requirements, and though the highest types of human Society may be indefinite as compared with the human body, yet they are much more definite than many low forms of organic life. To enumerate briefly Society’s organic attributes, we find that individuals in Society are necessarily and involuntarily interdependent, for shelter, for defence, and for food; indeed, without this organic interdependence, modern aggregations, from the savage pack to civilised society, would be utterly unable to exist in the land they now occupy. We find that differentiation of function, itself mainly involuntary, is represented by the highly complex division of labour which has grown up in the production of the necessaries of life. Class division and class rule are, in their inception, also the outcome of this division of labour ; in the earlier stages chiefly to provide the necessary stability, order, and military defence, demanded by the continued production of the material necessities of life ; in later stages to provide also the political or social order essential to the expansion and development of the prevailing methods of producing wealth. The social organism, we find, also lives and grows, it increases in size and complexity, it adapts itself to the changes in its environment, to the altered conditions resulting from its increasing size and growing needs, and to the influence of other social organisms. Society, then, is undoubtedly an organism.

The confirmation of authority.

Mr. Wright, however, makes the astonishing statement that he has ”studied the subject for some years” and has “been unable to find an atom of evidence to prove that Society is an organism.” He also asks “how can Society be said to even resemble an organism ?” Herbert Spencer’s work in this connection is too voluminous to be detailed here, but summaries of his conclusions are reproduced in even elementary handbooks which no genuine student could ignore. Space forbids the quotation of the whole of Professor Hudson’s summary of Spencer’s parallelisms between individual and social organisms, but for Mr. Wright’s benefit I epitomise the main points.

Both societies and individual organisms insensibly augment in mass, and assume during growth a continually increasing complexity of structure. In the early stages of a society as in an undeveloped individual organism, there is scarcely any mutual dependence of parts, and both gradually acquire a mutual dependence that becomes at last so great that the life of each part is made possible only by the life and activity of the rest. In each also, the life and development of the whole organism are independent of, and far more prolonged than, the life and development of any of its component units, who severally are born, grow, reproduce and die, whilst the body politic composed of them survives many generations, increasing in mass, completeness of structure, and functional activity.

Herbert Spencer and others have so firmly established the fact of the organic nature of Society that one is surprised to find it brought into question. Indeed, to deny that Society is an organism is to fall back upon the exploded ideas of the physiocrats, of Locke, and Rousseau, who regarded Society as a voluntary association founded upon a purely imaginary “state of nature.”

The misunderstanding of the nature of an organism under which Mr. Wright labours, is made plain when he says: “human society to be an organism must be as complex and contain the same organic parts as its individual members.” To take only the type of organism recognised in his letter, the human body, that is entirely composed of cells. It is indeed a colony of cells which have in the course of evolution attained their present functional differentiation. Each individual cell does not reproduce the same complexity, nor does it contain the same organic parts, as the human body in its entirety. Obviously, then, Mr. Wright is wrong. The assumption that the structure of an organism as a whole must be reproduced in its every unit crops out again in his query : “Where in Society can you point and say, there are the brains, there are the lungs, and there is the heart of Society.” Apparently he refuses to believe that Society is an organism because he cannot see its feet !

Unwarrantable assumption.

From one unwarranted assumption Mr. Wright is led to another, for he assumes that the necessary episodes in the development of the individual human being must be literally reproduced in the social organism in the form of motherhood, rearing of the “baby society,” etc. That the material basis of the new social form must be completely developed or prepared under the old social order itself, was clearly shown in the long quotation from Marx given by T. A. Jackson in a previous controversy. But it is, above all, evident that while all organisms conform to fundamental evolutionary laws, yet each particular organism has also its own lines of development due to its own peculiar conditions. Hence the development of the social organism will not necessarily proceed on all fours with the development of any individual organism whatsoever. The way Society developes depends upon its own peculiar conditions, internal and external.

In view of these facts the whole of Mr. Wright’s argument falls to the ground, for he has assumed that Society, if an organism, must develope in the same way as the human body; when he should instead have studied the peculiar nature of the social organism, and from an examination of its economics and history have traced the laws of development peculiar to it. The question as to whether the reformer or the Socialist is right in his policy does not depend upon Mr. Wright’s conception of an organism at all, but upon whether the position of the revolutionary Socialist is, or is not, in accord with the facts of Society’s growth and structure. If the Socialist analysis of Society and History is correct, then, whether Society be called an organism or a plum pudding makes not the slightest difference in the result.

Though professedly revolutionary, Mr.Wright informs us (in italics) that “a new society has never been born in the whole recorded history of civilisation.” It is a moot point whether that is meant simply as a play upon the word “born,” or whether it is intended to convey the absurdity that only one form of political society has ever existed, and that (to adapt Mr. Wright’s metaphor) the French Republic, for instance, is but the society of Louis XVI “with its moustache waxed.” If he does not mean this, if he means by “society” in this case not solely the political and legal superstructure but the whole social organism, and that no new social organism has arisen during historic times, then he might have saved himself the trouble of writing, for every Socialist knows that in each case the various stages of the ever-changing methods of production, and the political revolutions to which their changes have given rise, and the new forms of exploitation and political societies of which these revolutions have been the starting points, have been episodes in the life history of one and the same social organism.

The argument amplified.

The inevitable double use of the word “Society” is, perhaps, the cause of confusion, for like many another word it has more than one meaning. In one sense it stands for the social organism in its entirety, in another it means solely the political and judicial superstructure as distinct from the gradually changing economic basis. The distinction may be made clear by a very homely illustration. The social organism may be compared with the common lobster in its outer skeleton or shell, while Society in the political sense may be likened to the shell alone, A useful function is performed by the shell in the life of the lobster, but as the animal grows the shell gradually becomes unsuited to it and impedes its further development. Now the shell, having outlived its usefulness, is shed so that the animal may continue to grow, and the new shell which is formed is suited to the next stage in the animal’s development. This casting of the shell occurs as often as the growth of the lobster requires it, and literally fulfils Mr. Wright’s demand for an organism which “kills off its organic parts and still waxes stronger and stronger.”

Society in the narrower sense is, then, the political and legal superstructure or shell of the social organism transformed or created by the class whose political control has been necessitated by the conditions of production of the material livelihood. Owing to the continuous development of the methods of wealth production and the changed social relationships thereby caused, the ruling class and the social order they have formed are gradually turned from forms of development of the economic forces into hindrances or fetters. At length economic conditions develope so far under the old society that they are ripe for, and necessitate, the change; then ensues a period of revolution, and the ruling class, having become functionless or worse, must give way to new control and interests in harmony with the new economic conditions and the further development of Society as a whole. This seizure of political power by a hitherto oppressed class is a revolution whether accomplished peaceably or the reverse, and sooner or later the whole political and legal superstructure, and the old property relations, undergo a transformation into a social order in harmony with the now paramount interests and conditions. A new society is born, and a further stage in the development of the productive forces is rendered possible by the destruction of the old legal and social forms which hindered their expansion and full use.

Manifestations of organic growth.

It being the nature of men and classes to cling to privilege and power until compelled to abandon them, it is evident that the class struggle is engendered by the very nature of the social organism, just as truly as the struggle of the crustacean to free himself from his outgrown shell is imposed by the laws of his organic being. Mr. Wright, therefore, is in error in supposing that the existence of internecine strife negates the social organism. No organism is entirely free from internal strife, but the higher in the scale of organisation and the healthier the organism, the more does strife become subordinate to the welfare of the whole.

In the wonderful social organism of the hive bee, which presents several striking analogies with humanity, we see a state of things very similar to that which Mr. Wright describes as a “monstrosity seen only in nightmares.” We see the working bees overworked, emaciated, and dying in hundreds in the struggle for existence. We see the drones, fat, and lazy, and fed by the workers. The function of the drones is to fertilise the queen bee, and their numbers and the food they consume are out of proportion to their usefulness, Until their function has been fulfilled, however, the gluttonous drones are tolerated ; but soon after the queen bee has been fertilised, at a period after the function of the drones has been fulfilled, the working bees drive out or exterminate the drones who have become functionless and unnecessary.

Mr. Wright attaches too much importance to the idea that evolution is solely a continuous and equable process. Herbert Spencer has, in his “Law of the Rhythm of Motion,” demonstrated the universal ebb and flow of life, and Professor De Vries, at Hamburg, pointed out that “plant and animal species remain for a long time unchanged ; some finally disappear, when they have become old and unfit for the conditions of life, which have in the meantime altered. Others are more successful, and, to use his very expression, ‘explode’ and give life to numerous new forms, of which some assert themselves and multiply, and others, which are unfit for the conditions of life, disappear.” Again, Professor Darwin, in his Presidential address to the British Association last year, stated that, “the physicist, like the biologist and the historian, watched the effect of slowly varying external conditions, he saw the quality of persistence or stability gradually decaying until it vanished, when there ensued what was in politics called a revolution.” He added that in biology they should “expect to find slight continuous changes occurring during a long period of time, followed by a somewhat sudden transformation into a new species, or by rapid extinction.”

The Revolutionary method justified.

The phenomenon of metamorphosis, the many examples of sudden change of method function which abound in nature, together with the opinion of many scientists, all show that revolution is part and parcel of the evolutionary process. But it should be borne in mind that in the natural sciences as well as is sociology, the period of more than usually rapid change that is called revolution, is in general primarily a change of function rather than a change of structure. Kautsky’s illustration of the birth of a child is intended to make that clear. This fact, together with the necessity for the revolutionary method in working-class politics, may be shown by an illustration drawn from Society itself.

The huge and complex machinery and methods of production which constitute a great trust can only be the outcome of a prolonged evolution or growth, but the huge trust itself may most easily be made to minister to the well-being of those who were formerly exploited by it, by it being taken over by the people at one blow. The idea of the trust being socialised piecemeal and gradually, item by item, is preposterous. With the socialisation of the trust, then, there occurs only a slight change in structure—but an entire change of function. But that is not all. Before this can occur, in order that the taking over by Society of the trust may really change its function from a means of profit to the capitalist into a means of well-being to the workers, it is necessary that Society be identified, not with the exploiters, but with wealth producers. Hence the necessity for the social revolution before all things, for only when the political power has been wrested from the now useless capitalist class can the political machinery and the economic forces developed under capitalism be transformed in function from instruments of exploitation and oppression into the means of life and happiness of a people.

I would like to have gone further, and to have shown how the nature and fuller development of the vast associated methods of production of to-day necessitate social organisation and democratic control, and how the great power of social production must render the existence of any functional governing class henceforth unnecessary by the liberation of the mass of mankind from the greater part of the toil of production; and how the great power of social production must render the existence of any functional governing class henceforth unnecessary by the liberation of the mass of mankind from the greater part of the toil of production; and how also the social organism with the attainment of Socialism approaches that stage of unity and organised directive intelligence and power which may fairly be called the attainment of social consciousness. But, like Mr. Wright, I am constrained to apologise for the length of my epistle, which already has far exceeded the modest limits I had at first assigned to it. Sufficient has, I think, been said to show at all events, that Mr. Wright’s objections to the reality of the organic nature of Society do not hold, being based on mistaken ideas of the essentials of an organism and of the nature of Society.

F. C. Watts

Doubts and Difficulties: Why We Oppose Other Parties. (1906)

Letter to the Editors from the December 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

Stanley Villa,

92, Duckett-road, Harringay. 

16/9/06.

To the Executive Committee, S.P.G.B.

Gentlemen,—I am writing to you, to express my thoughts on a matter that has given me much food for reflection lately, and anxiety moreover that the cause may suffer. I put the question to Comrade Anderson the other night at Harringay, asking whether he “ignored the efforts of any Socialist not connected with the S.P.G.B.,” even though they may be successful in making class-conscious converts ; also whether he would help, or receive help from, them or not.

His reply was that the S.P.G.B. does not recognise any Socialist not connected with them.

That is pretty definite, but has it never occurred to you that that is a rather dogmatic position ? Can it be reconciled ? Now before we go any further let us understand one another.

I am a class-conscious Socialist, opposed to the two orthodox parties. I accept your Declaration of Principles as a sound basis of waging the class war. I have been instrumental in my small individual way, more or less of influencing others on those lines. There are hundreds of others also the same as myself.

Leaving out of the question for the present whether they belong to any party or not, the fact remains that the result to be achieved is the awakening of the proletarian mind, to which class they belong.

That being so then, it matters little how a man is converted, or by whom, so long as he understands Socialism, and can be relied upon to vote for a Socialist, and not a Liberal or Tory.

The one who taught him, and who was successful in converting him, may have been a member of any other Socialist organisation, or none at all, or he may have been converted in instalments, by different persons, members of different organisations and various unattached, each one contributing to the sum total of information and conviction.

In the face of possibilities like this, and it is a possibility, is it not absurd to ignore the efforts of anyone not connected with the S.P.G.B.? There are many such, totally ignorant of its very existence. There may be members of Socialist organisations who do not see the wisdom of forsaking their society and joining a new party, formed by their comrades, who, dissatisfied with certain tactics in the existing organisations, decide to do so, and wage war on the very parties under whose auspices they formerly carried on propaganda, and for whom they possibly secured many new members.

Just imagine the ridiculous position of a member of the S.D.F. of four years ago, for example, who is now a member of the S.P.G.B., turning round and denouncing the very members of the S.D.F. who may have been the means of his conversion, and some whom he may have converted, which members, moreover, are using the same arguments as he used, and is using, to convert others now.

What sense would there be in his saying:—”You’re no Socialist: you’ve been converted by the S.D.F., and the S.D.F. is not a Socialist party” ? Now, gentlemen, although you may have some reason for your actions and position, you will admit it looks very ridiculous in the eyes of the uninitiated and illiterate mob, such as were congregated around Anderson on the night in question, who, by the bye, were asking some of the most absurd questions, besides belching forth torrents of obscene invective, and giving me the depressing impression that progress seems almost impossible with such awful ignorance prevailing amongst the very class whom we rely upon to help us in the social revolution. And that is the very thing that should be most guarded against. Are not the opponents and the unthinking continually throwing that up in our teeth, that “they are a house divided against itself” and “that is the happy state of affairs that will accrue under Socialism,” etc.? Besides, where is this procedure likely to stop ? It is just possible that there will be members in your party, who will not agree with certain actions or tactics decided upon at a Conference in reference to trade unions, e.g.—and may kick over the traces of the S.P.G.B., and start yet another little band of “determined and vigorous revolutionists,” and they in their turn may also have a split, so that in the end there is a conglomeration of infuriated, over anxious sections flying at each other’s throats, and making the already existing confusion worse confounded.

I hope you see my point: pray don’t think I am going for you or bearing you any animosity. Far from it, I sincerely admire your little party, for the earnestness and pluck that is displayed, sometimes against such disheartening odds. My only object is to reason together for the good of the cause we have at heart. Every Socialist worthy of the name has the sincerest desire to do something for the realisation of his ideas; and if those ideas are Socialistically sound, who, pray, is in the superior intellectual sphere (otherwise than self appointed) to dictate as to whether he can correctly teach others ?

But you will say, “Oh, yes, so-and-so is a very good lecturer, but then he only does good from the standpoint of such and such a party.” Well, for the life of me I cannot see the reason for hostility on that account. I suppose if he were to deliver the same lectures from an S.P.G.B. platform he would be a fine chap, an able exponent, etc. It would seem that the party is the thing, not Socialism. Is he likely to make more converts on your platform ? Indeed, how do you know that he may not have been instrumental in converting some of your very members. In fact every member owes his conversion to an evolution of influence external to his party.

Surely you do not expect to get the whole of the proletariat converted, and members of your party by such means. Even if you maintain that the revolution can only be accomplished by every Socialist joining your ranks you will have to use the arguments of those parties you denounce to convert the “snobbishly” respectable wage slave residents of modern Suburbia forsooth : they cannot be converted by the same tactics or argument used in Lambeth or East Ham for instance.

That is why I for one contend that a united party is neither practical nor desirable at present, when a person is not allowed to think or say what he or she conscientiously believes, but must rigidly adopt a party ticket, they are more likely to remain hostile. But if they can they can be approached through sentimental channels, their prejudices may be overcome, their sympathy aroused, and finally their enthusiasm gained. Thus a much broader field of propaganda is open at present.

Let each section do their work in their own way : they are all aiming at the same goal, only have different roads of getting there, forsooth, if some are farther round, well, they arrive in the end and pick up some strangers on the way that otherwise might never have come.

I do most grievously deplore the confusion that is caused by this and that party wanting to claim all the intelligence, and warning customers not to deal at the shop next door, so to speak. To everyone that is converted I venture to say there are a dozen embittered or disgusted. And where does the freedom of thought come in? We say we want the workers to think for themselves, and then they are told that they must not think that they can realise their social emancipation by belonging to any but, the S.P.G.B. What are they to think of that?

Do let us be reasonable I beseech you, allow every man the right to belong to what party he fancies most; assist everyone who is aiming at the emancipation of humanity from the galling chains of monopoly and capitalism, no matter of what party, religion, race or colour he may be. Then and only then shall we succeed in convincing the world that we stand for freedom, justice, and universal brotherhood.

Apologising for writing at such length and trusting you will see the reasoning of my appeal to you in the name of the cause, and wishing you, one and all, every success, I remain,

Yours fraternally,

Fred W. Tod.

Reply:

We welcome criticism. We are therefore glad to have the opportunity of publishing Mr. Tod’s letter. The more so as we think his difficulty is shared by many.

* * *

Mr. Tod tells us that he views our Declaration of Principles as a sound basis on winch to wage the class struggle. But the whole of his letter is a plea for the abrogation of that portion of the Declaration which declares hostility to every other political party. The S.D.F. is a political party even as the Liberal Party is. So too is the I.L.P., and the Labour Party. The acceptance of our Declaration of Principles, therefore, signifies a refusal to help those “other Socialist parties” in the way Mr. Tod suggests.

* * *

We cannot think that Mr. Tod is justified in saying that we should recognise everybody and everything which is making for Socialism. We do not. We fully recognise that every action of every political party, of every person, and of every economic force is making for Socialism. We know that a political party may be what is termed re-actionary, but to-day the re-action reacts in the direction of progress toward Socialism. This is not, however, what Mr. Tod means. His idea is that there are Socialist parties outside the S.P.G.B. ; that the aim of those parties is the realisation of Socialism ; and that, therefore, those parties should receive the support of the members of the S.P.G.B.

* * *

Through the action of the members of those parties people are converted to Socialist views, and any person securing the conversion of people to Socialism should be recognised by the S.P.G.B. So runs the argument. But how are we to recognise them ? My conversion to Socialism was mainly the result of reading the works of Mr. Herbert Spencer, and of seeking to apply the principles enunciated therein to the conditions of the working class with whom I lived. Mr. Spencer was a militant opponent of anything trending towards Socialism. How is he to be recognised by the S.P.G.B., and are we to help those of whom he is the type ?

* * *

But, says Mr. Tod, how absurd you are,—you who have within the last four years been members of the S.D.F.—to attack that body and its members, and amongst them those whom you yourselves have converted. This is entirely fallacious—false premiss, false conclusion. In the first place we do not attack the members of the S.D.F. because they are members of the S.D.F. We simply criticise such political actions of theirs as are inconsistent with membership of a sound Socialist party. We only condemn the S.D.F. in so far as they have departed from a clearly defined, class-conscious, working-class party. We do not criticise those whom we have converted, for, in so far as they are open to our criticism, they have not been converted.

* * *

The time, says our correspondent, is not yet ripe for a united Socialist party. So we must live and let live. But why ? On the contrary we think the time is ripe for a united Socialist party, but it must accept the Declaration of Principles of the S.P.G.B. There can be no possible justification in any country for the existence of more than one sound, class-conscious, working-class party, and in Great Britain we find that there is but one—the S.P.G.B. We should be pleased to hear of converts being made to Socialism, whatever the cause of conversion. Possibly the S.D.F., the I.L.P., the Fabian Society, the Liberal Party, or the Tory Party may aid in the conversion of men and women to Socialism. So far so good. But when once they are converted they must recognise that the S.P.G.B. is the party which they must join, as this is the only party with a sound Socialist, organisation.

* * *

“What sense,” asks Mr. Tod, “would there be in saying, ‘You’re no Socialist: you’ve been converted by the S.D.F., and the S.D.F. is not a Socialist party’?” But has this ever been said ? What we do say is “You say you have been converted to Socialism by the S.D.F. The S.D.F. is a body whose ‘Socialism’ is peculiar. Do you believe that your belonging to a party like the S.D.F., which does not run its candidates on purely Socialist lines, which allows its own trade union members to break its own rules, which has supported capitalist candidates and made bargains with capitalist parties, is in the best interests of the Socialism in which you profess to believe ? If so your Socialism is tainted and may prove a hindrance rather than a gain to Socialism.”

* * *

The justification offered by our correspondent for the existence in this country of more than one Socialist party is that different arguments must be put forward to meet different minds ! The arguments which appeal to Suburbia do not appeal to Slumurbia. We are, of course, very well aware of this. We know that the interests of the dwellers in the one locality are not the same as the interests of those in the other. Circumstances, however, alter. The trust is rearing its head in this country and will make the interests of the Suburbians the same as those of the Slumurbians. They are all being crushed into the same class with like interests, like aspirations, like ideals. And the argument of class interest which appeals to one must appeal to the other.

* * *

Our friend then goes on to insinuate that in the S.P.G.B. the members must not give utterance to their own opinions. He remarks “When a person is not allowed to think or say what he or she conscientiously believes, but must rigidly adopt a party ticket, they “(the public)” are more likely thereby to remain hostile.” In the S.P.G.B. the members certainly vent their own opinions. The freest expression of opinion is tolerated. When, however, that opinion is contrary to the Principles on which the Party is based it is felt that the reasons which induced the member to join the Party no longer exist. The member thereupon ceases to have a right of membership and must go outside.

* * *

In the S.D.F., on the other hand, freedom of speech is anathema. It is only a few years since that Federation (sic) sent a circular to its branches saying that further criticism within the organisation must discontinue. But even with them where they lose in freedom of speech they gain in freedom of action, especially at election times, when the methods of action of the various members are as diverse as if each were a law unto himself.

* * *

We of the S.P.G.B. are in the position of the Scotsman who said “Honesty is the best policy—I’ve tried them baith.” We have sampled the tactics of the S.D.F. and found them wanting, and we are now trying a policy of unswerving adhesion to the organisation we have formed and of militant hostility to every other. At the same time we know that many of our future members must come from the ranks of parties it is necessary for us to attack. We are opposed to the action of Mr. Tod, which we believe to be pernicious, but we should be pleased to welcome him to our Party as soon as he is able to subscribe to our principles and policy. We have no quarrels with individuals. We believe in the possibility of political redemption for most of those we criticise, and know that before we found the true path we were ourselves possessed with our modicum of political original sin.

* * *

It is, of course, possible that our Party will not succeed, but Socialism is inevitable, and the party which will bring it into realisation will be organised on our lines, with our policy, our principles, and our methods. Believing this we can only think that it is futile to fritter away our energies in helping unsound organisations. We must decline to lower our flag. We are out for Socialism, and this can only be gained by weeding out error, pointing out mistaken tactics, converting people to our ideas, and organising them upon a proper basis. I hope this will go some way to explaining our point of view to Mr. Tod, whose further criticisms we shall be pleased to deal with.

Economicus.

The Origin of Private Property in Land. (1905)

From the December 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

"How did possession of land become individ­ualised ? There can be little doubt as to the general nature of the answer. Force in one form or the other is the sole cause adequate to make the members of a society yield up their combined claims to the area they inhabit. Such force may be that of an external aggressor, but in either case it implies militant activity. . . . It seems possible that the primitive ownership of land by the community, which, with the development of coercive institutions lapsed in large measure or wholly into private ownership, will be revived as industrialism further developes. . . . In legal theory landowners are directly or indirectly tenants of the Crown (which in our day is equivalent to the State, or, in other words, the community). The community from time to time resumes possession after making due compensation. Perhaps the right of the community to the land thus tacitly asserted will in time to come be overtly asserted and acted upon, after making full allowance for the accumulated value artificially given".

Herbert Spencer

Answers to correspondents. (1926)

From the November 1926 issue of the Socialist Standard

W. Gregor (S. Wales) :—

Herbert Spencer’s declaration that Socialism was inevitable, was made in a letter to M. G. Devenay, of Paris, a few weeks before Spencer’s death. We will try and give you chapter and verse for this later.

J. Cameron (Glasgow) :—

Your question : Are Socialists Atheists ? is fully answered in our pamphlet “Socialism and Religion,” price 2d.

Socialism and the essentials of Anarchism. (1926)

Letter to the Editors from the September 1926 issue of the Socialist Standard

Another correspondent’s letter and our reply.

The Editor, Socialist Standard,

Socialist Party of Great Britain,

17, Mount Pleasant, W.C.1.

Dear Sir,

I have followed with interest the discussion which has been conducted in recent issues of your journal with Mr. Beer, of Deptford. It has prompted me to pen the following observations, which I trust you will publish together with a reply in your next issue.

A statement from you upon the theoretical differences which you assume exist between Socialism and Anarchism would be welcome. You must recognise that criticism of the activities of exponents of a creed is not criticism of the creed itself. The essential feature of Anarchist philosophy is the recognition, in the words of Herbert Spencer “that each man possesses the right to do that which he wills in fulfilling the demands of his own life, in so far as he infringes not the equal right of every other man.” Or, in other words, that he possesses rights as an individual. Anarchism asserts further that individuals when confronted with alternatives of action, choose that which is conducive to self-interest. Private property society tends to confine this self-interest within the narrow zone of immediate economic advantage, thus placing a premium upon petty cunning and scheming. It stifles the development and increasing differentiation of individuality and insists upon conformity to type. Mankind, however, is struggling, for the most part, unconsciously, toward a society in which the liberty of the individual, and the interest of the community will be synonymous terms. Recognising the essentially egoistic motivation of human behaviour, Anarchism asserts that only by fulfilling his obligations to himself in developing his individuality, can Man act in the communal interest. For individuality implies a logical self-completeness. The individual is a self-contained universe, the peculiar product of heredity and environment to whom no other individual is exactly similar. Consequently, no one but himself can legislate for himself, and therefore Anarchism is only realisable in a community of persons who have freely associated for mutual benefit. The antithesis of Anarchy is coercion. Moral values in such a free society would be based upon equity, and a mutual respect which is foreign tQ our present social structure.

The opinion is often expressed that Anarchists lack a policy, a suggestion with which I will now deal.

A blind evolution operates in the social, as in the organic and cosmic spheres, oblivious to human desires. Revolutions occur when the appropriate stage of evolution has been attained. They are the culmination of processes operating unnoticed over a lengthy period. Recognising this to be so, and also that man, in common with all matter, is the creature of the environmental stimuli amongst which he exists, Anarchists can only hope to convert humanity to an outlook diametrically opposed to that which its social surroundings induces, by the presentment of a clearly defined revolutionary gospel. That is the Anarchist policy, as I understand it. Persistent propaganda, characterised by clarity of thinking and consistent adherence to established principles. I used the term “Humanity,” above, intentionally. For the whole of mankind are the victims of social shortcoming, a logical deduction from acceptance of economic determinism which can scarcely be refuted, but is apt to be forgotten. The class conflict is the blind struggle of two camps, both of whom suffer from the same disease, which it is the role of the socially subservient to cure.

This is a brief sketch of my conception of Anarchist philosophy and policy. Trusting for a reply in the “ S.S.,” I am,

Yours sincerely,

John Adamson.

Our Reply.

This letter is printed as a further example of the difficulty in obtaining a statement of the Anarchist attitude upon social questions. The writer sets out by upholding Herbert Spencer’s individualistic dictum which followed from Spencer’s defence of private property in the means of life. In the very next sentence, our Anarchist rejects Spencer and opposes private property society. The argument that the individual possesses rights has been answered by other Anarchists that might is right, and the only right. The fundamental fallacy of the natural rights theory was completely refuted by Spencer himself in his “Study of Sociology” in his masterly statement of the organic nature of society.

Our correspondent is another Anarchist who ignores the fundamental conflict in Socialist and Anarchist ideas.

He claims that mankind are going towards a society in which individual and communal interest will be harmonious. What will be the basis of that society? Our Anarchist does not say. Our position is briefly that economic evolution has made common ownership of the means of life the inevitable next step in social progress owing to the form taken by the modern instruments of production. They cannot be individually owned except by a class of exploiters with the resulting poverty and insecurity of today. The economic pressure upon working-class life will compel the workers to seek knowledge to change the system in accord with the social necessities of production—social ownership. Further, that as the manner of ownership determines the manner of control, common ownership decrees democratic control by the wealth-producers.

Our correspondent offers no alternative to the Socialist position. He does not even deal with it. If he was a supporter of private ownership, his individualistic theories might be logical. If he agrees with common ownership, he must appreciate the necessity of social control.

The basis of social as well as individual life is food, clothing and shelter—the material requirements of life. How will they be produced and distributed in our Anarchist’s future society? We are not told. We are told that mankind is struggling unconsciously towards individual and social harmony. But our correspondent also says that Anarchism can only be realised by a body of persons who have freely associated for mutual benefit.

Which of his two positions he really favours we do not know. Economic necessity being the driving force, the workers will be compelled to carry on production for themselves. That economic necessity will not wait until the fruition of our correspondent’s dream of everybody freely agreeing to the terms of association. The common welfare decides, and therefore in matters of social necessity, such as the operation of the great means of production and distribution—the majority will count. Mr. Adamson and individuals who resolutely object to all forms of coercion will find that economic evolution is a great coercing force. In the production of every day’s means of living, all the producers must share upon a commonly agreed plan—democratically decided—not a plan that makes our everyday wants wait upon a whole series of groups of individuals debating and arguing until the last waverer is won to the others’ point of view. These matters of social evolution and economic development are forgotten bv our correspondent, who evidently does not see that the means of production demands co-operative working.

We are offered statements such as : “the individual is a self-contained universe,” and that “no one but himself can legislate for himself.” These are completely refuted by our Anarchist himself when he claims that mankind are struggling towards a society in which the individual and the communal interests will be synonymous. If the individual is a self-contained universe, why our correspondent’s desire for a community of persons for mutual benefit? Why the need for propaganda amongst others? The insistence of self-interest as a guiding motive by our correspondent ignores the facts pointed out by the Socialist, namely, that a common interest existing among the working-class, it is to their interest to act together as a class to establish a society which promotes the self-interests of the workers : Socialism.

We have frequently, in these columns, stated the attitude of Socialism to Anarchism, and do not feel that it is worth while to go into the whole matter once more at present, especially as each Anarchist who writes has an anarchism all of his own, each one apparently being a law unto himself, if not ”a self-contained universe.”

Adolph Kohn

The men of science and their “religion”. (1925)

From the September 1925 issue of the Socialist Standard

The subject of the history of the conflict between science and religion, is one which provides its students with an interest from more than one point of view. Not only does it reveal how, with the advance of scentific knowledge, religion has been compelled to either abandon or modify its teachings, it also shows how accommodating some scientists can be when dealing with religion.

That the positive outcome of science spells death to religion is a fact which some scientists either attempt to conceal or avoid in their own peculiar way. Like certain of the leading lights of the Church, who pretend that the findings of modern science can be harmonised with religion, some “scientists” are not averse to trying to reconcile the irreconcilable.

Readers of Herbert Spencer will recall his celebrated attempt in this direction, as given in the first part of his work, “First Principles.” In that work, Spencer speaks of all things, including the universe, as having proceeded from “an infinite and Eternal Energy.” But, said Spencer, about this “Infinite and Eternal Energy” we neither know nor can know anything; it being “an inscrutable mystery.”

This “Unknowable,” Spencer declared, belongs to the sphere of religion, whilst all that is known or is knowable belongs to the domain of science. Therefore, to follow Spencer, since religion and science are totally independent of each other, the one concerned with “The Unknowable,” the other with the knowable, both should keep within their own province and be “reconciled.” In reality, this was Spencer’s way of performing a feat of mental gymnastics. For surely there could be no stranger reconciliation. Religion is made to give up to science all that is knowable, and to rest contented with absolutely nothing to live upon. The humour of the position is delightful, although, apparently, the humour was not intended by Spencer. His so-called reconciliation reminds one of the man who agreed to being with his mother-in-law on condition that she committed suicide.

However, there was little need for surprise when it was learned that Spencer himself found it necessary to state in his “Autobiography” that he regarded his work on “The Unknowable” as being “relatively unimportant.” In fact, he agreed that it had no direct bearing on his general scientific works. Nevertheless, “The Unknowable” has comforted many poor souls who must have an abstraction of some kind to worship.

The fatal mistake made by Spencer rested on his treating religion and science as though they are absolutely exclusive subjects. And the same thing is done by certain of the present day scientists. But while this position may be a very convenient one to those who desire to avoid an “awkward” situation, it is none the less unscientific and absurd. For, fundamentally, religion and science are not as the poles apart in the sense laid down by Spencer. Both are concerned with explaining the world around us. Religion claims to explain the universe in terms of the supernatural, everything, to the religionist, even when he claims to accept the doctrine of evolution, is the outcome of “God Almighty.” Science, on the other hand, explains everything, as far as actual knowledge goes, along lines of natural causation, and finds no need for the “hypothesis of God” to explain anything. Thus, since religion and science are seen to be fundamentally opposed in their explanations of natural phenomena, the conflict between them is inevitable and irreparable. Nevertheless, not all scientists are prepared to indicate the logical outcome of their own work in the field of science; some prefer to pander to the prejudices of the religionists. To give a case in point : In connection with the recent trial in America, where a teacher was charged with “breaking the law” by teaching evolution, Professor J. Arthur Thomson contributed an article to the Daily News on “Evolution and the Bible.”

In that article Professor Thomson quite easily disposed of those people who rely upon Bible teachings to refute the principle of evolution. He reminded his readers that the evolution doctrine is the only scientific account yet advanced to show how living things came to be as they are. He also pointed out that, while there is unanimity among scientists regarding the fact of evolution, there is a considerable difference of opinion among them regarding the “factors of evolution.” Further, the Professor well describes the doctrine of evolution as “a piece of naturalistic historical description.” But, as the old saying goes, after the Lord Mayor’s Show comes the dust cart—instead of showing how all this conflicted with religion, the Professor attempted to “square the circle” in the following manner :—

“It should be noted, however, that the fundamentalist reaction and obscurantism may be partly due to a lack of carefulness in the scientific presentation of evolutionism. Thus the evolution theory has often been presented as if it necessarily implied an acceptance of a mechanistic or materialistic philosophy; and man’s affiliation with mammals has often been stated in a manner so crude that it has obscured his apartness. There is no reason in the world, as far as we know, why a sound evolutionist should not have a religious philosophy. Rather there is, we think, every reason in the world for being both evolutionist and religious.”—Daily News, July 14th, 1925.

Now, it would have proved interesting had the Professor explained what he meant by “a materialistic philosophy,” and how an evolutionist could embrace religion. As they stand, these statements may mean anything and everything but the right thing. Anyhow, there is good ground for believing that Professor Thomson has a special reason for slighting materialism. Materialists have long been the butt of misrepresentation and abuse. As Engels once said of certain of the opponents of materialism, they represent it to mean “gluttony, drunkenness, carnal lust, and fraudulent speculation.” In fact, materialism has been charged with every conceivable vice. Hence the desire of certain “scientists” to repudiate materialism. Nevertheless, the fact is that the doctrine of evolution and science in general, does logically imply a materialistic philosophy, Professor Thomson and other scientists notwithstanding. For that philosophy is simply a view of nature founded upon the facts established by modern science. As Professor Sir Ray Lankester says :—

“The history of scientific discoveries is a history of materialistic successes : for no scientific discovery has ever been made that is not based upon materialism and mechanism.”

Some scientists may disown materialism, but, as another writer has observed, “it lies at the basis of all their efforts.” No matter in which department of science a scientist may be engaged, whether as Astronomer, Geologist, Biologist or Sociologist, his business consists of ascertaining positive knowledge of nature’s workings. And one of the outstanding facts of modern science is, that there is no break or gap in the continuity of natural phenomena. Where gaps exist, the scientist explains that they are only in our knowledge, and not in the “framework of things.” An isolated happening in nature is a myth, for cause and effect is seen to be the rule operating throughout. From this it follows then that the idea of supernatural interference is a figment of the imagination. Science has rendered “God” not only unemployed, but unemployable, without even the power to draw the “dole.” 

When Professor Thomson tells us that an evolutionist may have a religion, we are prompted to suspect that he associates a meaning with religion which it will not logically bear. Nowadays religion has come to mean all sorts of things, and thus we hear of “the religion of ethics,” “the religion of humanity,” and even “the religion of Socialism.” But this is all so much a matter of confusing the issue. Historically, religion has meant the belief in and worship of supernatural beings, and this is its essential meaning to-day; it cannot be separated from the god idea. As Engels has said : “If religion can exist without God, then alchemy can exist without its philosopher’s stone.”

Scientific investigation has revealed that religion first took form in primitive times through the ignorance of primitive men concerning the world around them. Fear and ignorance gave primitive man his gods, and Jehovah, the God of the Bible, is really no more than the gods of the savage transformed under the pressure of a continuous social development. Thus, “religious philosophy,” to use Professor Thomson’s phrase, necessarily implies a belief in this “God” and implies the acceptance of the story of creation.

The evolutionist who can harmonise the myth of “Divine creation” with the principle of evolution may be regarded as sincere, but only at the expense of his sanity. If the Professor, in his capacity of biologist, attempted to explain the differences between man and the anthropoids by saying, “God created them,” he knows he would be ridiculed by his brother biologists. And well deserved such ridicule would be.

Robert Reynolds

Hero Worship: A Conversation With a Visitor from Mars. (Part 2) (1927)

From the December 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard 

(Continued from last month.)

“However, Marty, I think Wells hits the right nail on the head when he explains Napoleon’s amazing popularity with his troops by the fact that they never saw him save on a few theatrical and emotional occasions, and that his soldiers idolised not Napoleon, but 'a carefully fostered legend of a little pet of a man, who was devoted to France and to them all.’ Napoleon, it seems to me, was both 'the child of the Revolution’ and the embodiment of the reaction against it. Society in the 18th and 19th century was crying aloud for 'reform,’ but was not ready for a system of society based on common ownership. Napoleon represents the rejection of the theories of Anacharsis Cloots and the beginnings of the Capitalistic State; whilst the French bank, the University and the 'Code Napoleon' were the result not so much of his 'original genius,’ as of the evident social and economic need for them.”

"There must have been, I suppose, in your planet’s history,” remarked the Martian, “many 'great men’ who have attempted to change the course of social or economic development. Have any succeeded?” "Well,” I replied, "I do not know of any individual who has changed the course, but a few have stemmed it for a while. In Roman history, Sulla attempted to re-establish the lost power of the Senate and to crush the rising Equestrian order, which consisted of wealthy traders. To effect this he framed a constitution. In a few years, however, his constitution was practically disregarded, and all that remained of his labours were his administrative and judicial reforms, which, although secondary considerations with Sulla, yet satisfied the social need for better organisation, and thus endured. Strangely enough, Marty, a comic-operatic 'Sulla,’ is operating in Rome to-day, and with the puffed-up pride mediocrity fondly hopes to achieve the success denied to his more illustrious predecessor. How truly Marx interpreted history when he wrote, 'Great historicaL facts and personages appear twice—once as tragedy and again- as farce.” (From 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon.)

Many more examples, however, could be given, Marty, of men whose desire and aims have been thwarted by economic conditions, but time prevents me from doing anything save naming a few, such as Cromwell, Charles XII of Sweden, and (possibly) Lenin of Russia. Spencer has ably summarised the conclusions just arrived at in his essay, "The Social Organism,” portions of which, with your permission, I will “inflict” upon you:—

  “It is not by the 'hero as king’ any more than by collective wisdom that men have been segregated into producers, wholesale distributors, and retail distributors. The whole of our industrial organisation, from its main outlines down to its minutest details has become what it is not simply without legislative guidance but, to a considerable extent in spite of legislative hindrances. . . .  By steps so small that year after year the industrial arrangements have seemed to men just what they were before—by changes as insensible as those through which a seed passes into a tree; society has become the complex body of mutually-dependent workers we now see.  . . . The failure of Cromwell permanently to establish a new social condition and the rapid revival of suppressed institutions and practices after his death show how powerless is a monarch to change the type of a society he governs. He may disturb, he may retard, or he may aid the natural process of organisation; but the general course of this process is beyond his control. . . . Thus, that which is obviously true of the industrial structure of society, is true of its whole structure. The fact that constitutions are not made but grow is simply a fragment of the much larger fact that under all its aspects and through all its ramifications, society is a growth, and not a manufacture.”

“Well,” said the Martian, I have learned a great deal from your discourse; in the first place my conviction that human societies are not jig-saw puzzles, the parts of which have been contributed by 'great men,' but are living and ever-changing organisms in which both 'great' and 'little' men play their respective parts, has been doubly strengthened, whilst it seems evident that 'hero worship’ varies in its form and function according to the state of the community in which it exists. Thus, I gather that, early man was too self-occupied and practical to be carried away by sentimental personal idolatry, and individual control was sanctioned simply because it was the only positive control known. Later, with the evolution of abstract ideas and ideals, moral civilization came into being with the resultant glamour that attached itself to the governing members of society. In the past, my friend, ‘hero worship' seemed to have fulfilled at least one useful purpose—it provided a control over what would be, I assume (compared with your present machines for mass production), crude and strangely miscellaneous instruments of production; that is to say, society, fearing anarchy, submitted to the subordination of efficient individuals. But what of the utility of 'hero worship' at the present time?”

W. J.

(To be continued.)