Intelligence and equality (1982)

From the September 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialism is all about equality, but that does not mean that everyone will look alike, dress alike, live in similar homes, have the same interests, behave more or less the same. It does mean a society where everyone will have equal access to everything that is produced. Production in abundance is a prerequisite of socialist society, long since made possible by capitalism’s technological advances.

Sexual reproduction enables an unending variety of possible combinations of genes. It is estimated that each individual is capable of reproducing 8 million different germ cells which, when combined at fertilisation. gives a possibility of 60 billion different offspring. Given such a variety, how can it be argued that people can be "made equal”?

But what about the question of whether mental abilities are inherited? It could be argued that if "intelligence” is largely genetically determined, gifted people would always stand a better chance of ensuring a more comfortable life-style for themselves, provided that "intelligence” is well rewarded by society. But what is "intelligence"? The following quotation from Elements of Psychology, by Krech. Crutchfield and Livson, leaves us no wiser:

Intelligence is a concept variously used and variously defined. Some people define it as the ability to adapt to new circumstances, others as the ability to learn and still others as the capacity to deal with complex and abstract material. . .

Do people possess a greater share of wealth or a better standard of living because of superior mental abilities? Let us disregard the 10 per cent of the population who do not have to work because they own the means of living. This is a straightforward transfer of capital from parents to children; clearly, if these children were imbecilic they would still get their inheritance. It is within the other class—the 90 per cent who have to work in order to live—that some researchers feel they have found evidence to suggest that intelligence is largely hereditary.

IQ Tests

Tests to measure innate "intelligence quotients" were developed by the Frenchman Alfred Binct at the beginning of this century, for the purpose of detecting mentally “subnormal” school children. The formula for IQ is a person’s mental age divided by his chronological age multiplied by 100. If a child is at the average level expected of his age group he will have an IQ of 100. It was soon found that a person’s mental development stagnated at the age of about 15, so an adjustment was needed to this formula thereafter.

IQ tests were administered on a large scale in America before the First World War, supposedly to measure the recruits’ innate mental abilities and assign suitable candidates to officer jobs. These first tests were very crude indeed and looking at them now it is hard to believe that scholars could have seriously considered using them, or have granted credibility to their results. But they did; and some astonishing conclusions were drawn, such as that the average American had a mental age of 13, which was considered just above the level of moronity.

R. M. Yerkes, a Professor of Psychology, presided over the administration of IQ tests to 1.75 million recruits during the First World War. The tests were often worked out by people already in eugenic societies with definite biases towards "Nordics” and the upper strata of American society. The academic reports and recommendations of these mental testers were as nauseating as any of the propaganda put out by the Nazis in Germany. These are some of the views of Dr. Arthur Sweeney, in Mental Test for Immigrants, which were made part of the appendix to the hearings of the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalisation on 24 January, 1923:

psychological tests . . . have furnished us with the necessary yardstick . . . The Army tests . . . revealed the intellectual endowment of the men . . . The tests are equally applicable to immigrants . . . All that is required is a staff of two trained psychologists at each port. . . We cannot be seriously opposed to immigrants from Great Britain. Holland, Canada. Germany. Denmark, and Scandinavia . . .We can, however, strenuously object to immigration from Italy, Russia. Poland, Greece, Turkey. The Slavic and Latin countries show a marked contrast in intelligence with the western and northern European group. . . One cannot recognise the high-grade imbecile at sight. . .

They think with the spinal cord rather than the brain . . . The necessity of providing for the future does not stimulate them to continuous labour . . . Being constitutionally inferior they are necessarily socially inadequate . . . Education can be received only by those who have intelligence to receive it. It does not create intelligence. That is what one is born with . . . The D minus group cannot go beyond the second grade . . . we shall degenerate to the level of the Slav and Latin races . . . pauperism, crime, sex offences, and dependency . . . guided by a mind scarcely superior to the ox. . .

We must protect ourselves against the degenerate horde . . . We must view the immigration problem from a new angle . . . We must apply ourselves to the task with the new weapons of science . . . the perfect weapons formed for us by science . . . it is now as easy to calculate one’s mental equipment as it is to measure his height and weight. The examination of over 2,000,000 recruits has tested and verified this standard . . . this new method . . . will enable us to select those who are worthy and reject those who are worthless.

Literate recruits were given what was called the Army Alpha, illiterates the Army Beta. The Beta was supposed to be "fair" to illiterate immigrants unused to American habits and frames of reference. In reality these were culture biased, as borne out by the fact that the average score of immigrants on IQ tests increased markedly with the duration of their residence in America. This fact was conveniently overlooked by the mental testers. Also, contrary to the statement that "education does not create intelligence", it turned out that the average mental age of American recruits during the Second World War showed a considerable increase on the average for those in World War One — the World War Two recruits had been much better educated.

The following is an example of the type of multiple-choice test given to recent immigrants with an inadequate grasp of the English language and little or no knowledge of American culture:

Crisco is a: patent medicine, disinfectant, toothpaste, food product 

The number of a Kaffir's legs is: 2,4,6,8 

Christy Mathewson is famous as a: writer, artist, baseball player, comedian

Or consider the Alpha analogy: Washington is to Adams as first is to. . . Considering the cultural bias of these tests, it is not surprising that immigrant groups least familiar with American culture and the English language scored low on the IQ charts.

Apart from being racist, in favour of "North Europeans", the tests were also used to explain differences of wealth in terms of "superior" and "inferior" genes. The argument in the following excerpt is still commonly heard today:

These men in their ultra altruistic and humane attitude, their desire to be fair to the workman, maintain that the great inequalities in social life are wrong and unjust. For example, here is a man who says, “I am wearing $12.00 shoes, there is a labourer who is wearing $3.00 shoes; why should I spend $12.00 while he can only afford $3.00? I live in a home that is artistically decorated, carpets, high-priced furniture, expensive pictures and other luxuries; there is a labourer that lives in a hovel with no carpets, no pictures, and the coarsest kind of furniture. It is not right, it is unjust". . .As we have said, the argument is fallacious. It assumes that that labourer is on the same mental level with the man who is defending him . . .

Now the fact is. that workman may have a ten year intelligence while you have a twenty. To demand for him such a home as you enjoy is as absurd as it would be to insist that every labourer should receive a graduate fellowship. How can there be such a thing as social equality with this wide range of mental capacity? The different levels of intelligence have different interests and require different treatment to make them happy . . .

As for an equal distribution of the wealth of the world that is equally absurd. The man of intelligence has spent his money wisely, has saved until he has enough to provide for his needs in ease of sickness, while the man of low intelligence, no matter how much money he would have earned, would have spent much of it foolishly and would never have anything ahead . . .

These facts are appreciated. But it is not so fully appreciated that the cause is to be found in the fixed character of mental levels. In our ignorance we have said let us give these people one more chance — always one more chance.

The first IQ tests were structured within the frame of reference of the educated, white city-dweller and therefore would not show up the true abilities of somebody from a different ethnic or social background. They measured a person’s training and the quality of their social environment rather than potential ability. A great deal of work has since gone into making IQ tests as “culture-fair" as possible, although this cannot be completely successful as long as social distinctions prevail; for example it would be possible to compare blacks and whites from a strictly “professional" background only, but even “professional” blacks would have experienced colour prejudice and a higher percentage of them would probably have come from a relatively poor family background—two environmental factors which would influence their IQ scores.

Twin research

Identical twins have been used as test objects to prove once and for all which factor plays a greater role in the determination of intelligence—environment or heredity. Identical twins are the result of one fertilised egg dividing to produce two individuals with exactly the same genetic make-up. Fraternal twins—two egg cells fertilised by two sperm cells—have also been used in kinship related intelligence studies, although these twins would be no more alike than ordinary brothers and sisters.

At first sight, some of the studies performed with identical twins reared apart seem to provide strong evidence that heredity is the determining factor in mental abilities. Correlations varying between .7 and .9 for identical twins reared together and apart have been quoted in various studies (total correlation being set at 1.0). However, these figures are questioned by L. J. Kamin in his book The Science and Politics of IQ. After an extensive perusal of primary sources, he challenges the validity of famous twin studies, like the Shield study and the Juel-Nielscn study.

Kamin's objections can be summarised as follows. Firstly, the researchers were politically biased—they probably expected to find that their interpretation of intelligence increased with social status. This may have influenced the nature and administration of the tests as well as the interpretation of data. Secondly, the competence of some of the mental testers is questioned; for instance, interpretations of IQ were accepted from vicars who, in the course of their duties, would administer “concealed" IQ tests to London grandparents. Thirdly, twins reared apart were not, as often claimed, placed arbitrarily in totally different environments. It appeared that a large proportion of the separated twins were reared by relatives of more or less the same social standing. Fourthly, Kamin questions the methods and accuracy of the calculations used in arriving at the various correlations.

And lastly, he questions the reliability of secondary sources. Many famous writers on the social implications of the heritabilty of intelligence would pick out and quote those studied which agreed with their own point of view and leave out others reaching opposite conclusions. It seems then that as yet no reliable scientific evidence exists to enable anybody to claim that intelligence is genetically determined. However, it is known for certain that some illnesses resulting in subnormal mental abilities are hereditary—like trisomy-21 mental deficiency.

One programme in a recent BBC series on education in Britain examined the effects of young people's backgrounds on their scholastic performance and job expectations. A familiar trend showed up: students at universities still come mainly from “professional" families, while children of the unskilled still do not on the whole expect to take up academic careers. All this in spite of the observations of the makers of the series, who compared young children in a wealthy area of Surrey and a deprived slum area in Liverpool. The tiny tots in Liverpool seemed just as bright and lively as the Surrey children; however, with time the majority of the Liverpool youngsters would probably end up in unskilled jobs or on the dole, whereas the youngsters in Surrey would most likely end up in the more comfortable end of capitalist exploitation.

Some might argue that mental abilities exceptionally above or below average are inherited. But for the large majority it seems more likely that their scholastic performance is profoundly affected by their family background. If a person has had the optimum attention, stimulation and care from the new-born stage onwards, plus very good material conditions, this is bound to have a positive effect on their achievements in school. 

We are presently living in a social system, capitalism, which depends on an appalling waste of human abilities. Extreme poverty results in mass starvation. Malnutrition, if it does not result in death, often cripples brain capacity for life. In this part of the world, less extreme poverty still ensures that large numbers of people grow up in deprivation, non-expectation and obedience to the system and its various leaders—clergymen, politicians, royalty— who reinforce the idea that the majority of us are not "intelligent" enough to deserve a better existence.

Torgun Østenseth

Sources: 

"A nation of morons”, article in the New Scientist, 6 May 1982.

L. J. Kamin, The Science and Politics of I.Q. 

David Krech. Richard S. Crutchfield and Norman Livson, Elements of Psychology.

The Socialist Forum: Can Russian Peasants be Industrialised? (1932)

Letter to the Editors from the April 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard

A correspondent writing from St. John (New Brunswick) asks some interesting: questions about the possibility of making efficient factory workers out of the Russian peasants:—

Isaac Don Levine, author of the “Life of Stalin,” … in a recent article in the New York Scribners’ Magazine, would have us believe that a Dictatorship such as the one in Russia can by no manner of means create a proletariat, capable of working in machine industry in anything less than several generations or centuries. He implies that the Slav is racially an inferior type, not amenable to factory discipline, and a clumsy animal in other respects.

If it is true that an agricultural population is not of a type that can readily be adapted to machine production, and it takes generations of workers coming originally from rural districts to make mechanics, how can we account for the remarkable rise of German industry in the space of forty or fifty years up till about 1914? The majority of Germans, prior to 1860 or 1870, were villagers and farmers, and in a very few years after coming to the cities, turned out lo be capable mechanics, and this same thing happened in other places. Any number of Polish, Hungarian and Balkan peasants who arrived in the United States prior to 1915, took their place in machine industry without any experience, and fitted right into the scheme of things, their children even more so, after them.

If the Soviet Government succeeds in obtaining the required number of capable technicians and foremen to manage the factories and shops built and building, in this five-year plan, what is there to prevent the transformation of millions of mujiks into machine tenders as has happened in other countries?

Yours, etc.,

M. Wasson.

Reply

Not having seen the article by Mr. Levine we do not know what evidence he adduces to show either that Russian peasants or Slavs generally are incapable of being trained as industrial workers.

It is true that some employers (e.g., Ford Motors) in their selection of workers give preference to American or Canadian born, or to immigrants from Great Britain, Germany, etc., and often reject applicants from the more backward European States. There is, however, no evidence to show that the latter are unsuitable because of racial characteristics. An explanation is that some countries, having reached a fairly high level of capitalist development, have framed their general and technical education in a way which produces workers suitable for up-to-date factory work. Workers from backward countries and rural areas are unlikely to possess the qualifications of training and education needed.

It is interesting to recall that in Great Britain, in the early days of the factory system, employers found the same difficulty in compelling handicraftsmen and peasants to fit themselves into the discipline of machine production.

The whole question of racial differences is discussed very thoroughly by Friedrich Hertz in his “Race and Civilization” (Published by Kegan Paul, London, 1928, and by the MacMillan Co., New York). He shows how old are the theories of racial superiority, and how completely they cancel each other out; for there is no race that at some period has not cherished the illusion of its own innate superiority. Hertz deals with the capacity for social progress and reached this conclusion :—

“The differences between distant groups of one and the same linguistic family or race are greater than those between any two ‘unrelated’ races as a whole. This assertion can be proved up to the hilt. Therefore it follows from this that it is not racial character which has prevented the backward from progressing, but environmental influences.” (P. 259.)

He gives a neat answer to the belief in the superior fitness for industrialism supposed to be possessed by non-Slav races by pointing out that early in the 19th century it was said that the Germans also were inherently a backward race. He quotes Genovesi as having written in 1820 that the Germans would never be able to develop a trade and commerce or produce a population like the French and English. A German writer when he first heard of railways being built was of the opinion that such things were of no good to Germany, because the German character was too easy-going (p. 59).

In Hertz’s book there are a large number of illustrations of stupid theories of racial superiority being encouraged by ruling classes for their own interests. He shows, for example, how these theories were used by the Governments during the war.

As regards the Russian Five-Year Plan, the Soviet Government have banked very heavily on early success of their industrialisation schemes. The slowness with which peasants can be trained to equal the efficiency of workers in advanced capitalist countries is likely to present a very difficult problem to the Government there, hardly less difficult than the problem would be if—as Mr. Levine suggests—the Slavs could for racial reasons never be industrialised. The Russians themselves claim, with what justification we do not know, that they have every reason to be optimistic about their ability to produce skilled workers. According to Mr. J. C. Crowther (an English scientist who visited Russia) :—

“The Russians have evolved their own system. They say a raw worker can become as skilled in six months by this training as he would in four years casual work as an artisan’s mate in the shops. They propose to put 700,000 workers through such courses in 1931” (“Industry and Education in Soviet Russia.” Pub. Heinemann, 1932).

Ed. Comm.

The struggle in South Africa (1986)

From the November 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

South Africa is the fourth most populous country in Africa, after Nigeria, Egypt and Ethiopia, but it is by far the richest in terms of wealth produced and capital accumulated. Although representing only four per cent of the land area of the African continent and only seven per cent of its population, it has been estimated that South Africa has 30 per cent of its income, 43 per cent of its mining production, 87 per cent of coal production, 75 per cent of steel production, 57 per cent of electricity production, 56 per cent of rail traffic, and 50 per cent of its motor vehicles and telephones. South Africa, then, is by far the most developed capitalist country in Africa. Its economy is based on the export of minerals (gold, platinum, chromium, diamonds) whose earnings have permitted the development of sizeable manufacturing and service sectors.

The special feature about South Africa is of course what for want of a better term will have to be referred to as the "racial" breakdown of its population. Of its 26 million people, some 18 million (70 per cent) are of African origin, a little under five million (18-19 per cent) of European descent, the remaining three million or so being made up of about three-quarters of a million Indians and of people of mixed European. Asian and African descent.

Everyone in South Africa is by law classified into one of four “groups": European, Bantu, Coloured and Asian. The first group is also officially described as "Whites" and the others (as on park benches) as "Non-Whites". These, it must be emphasised, are the official legal classifications. They are not biologically-defined, but politically-defined groups, even though an individual's biological features and ancestry are used in this political definition. These classifications are absurd even on their own terms. For instance, some "Non-Whites" are whiter than some "Whites", while some "Europeans" are just as much of mixed origin as are those classified as "Coloureds": however their ancestors were able to pass as Whites sufficiently long ago to escape the race classifiers’ investigations. Further, Bantu (like Aryan) is a linguistic not a biological classification and, besides, is completely rejected as contemptuous by those so classified

Needless to say, "Non-White" too is also rejected as being the equivalent of "non-existent". Some political activists and groups in South Africa use the term "Black" as a substitute for — indeed as a reply to — "Non-White", thus including the Africans, the Coloureds and the Indians in a single group facing the Whites. Others, however, use "Black" to mean just the Africans. This can obviously lead to confusion, especially as in British usage the terms "Coloured" and "Black” are synonyms.

This whole discussion of so-called racial classifications shows that, in the end, no term is completely neutral, all are more or less political as the term used indicates the group or groups of human beings that the user thinks should unite (or be separated). In this game, then, the only terms that are acceptable to socialists are such terms as human race, citizens of the world, world working class and workers of the world.

Your racial classification in South Africa is important as it determines where you can live (and where you can’t) and. until very recently, who you could marry and who you could have sexual relations with (and with whom you couldn't). It also determines whether you are a first, a second or a third class citizen. For in South Africa there are, legally and not just factually, three classes of citizenship.

The first class is composed of those who have full political rights, the same for instance as those nearly everybody has in Britain and in particular the right to elect the members of the national law-making body. Such full political rights are enjoyed only by the Whites — by only one in six — less than 20 per cent — of the population.

The second class, constituted as recently as 1984, is made up of the Coloureds and the Indians who were allowed that year to elect their own members of the national parliament who have a limited (very limited in fact) role in the law-making process. This limited role was recognised by the overwhelming majority of Coloureds and Indians who boycotted the elections — there was a turnout of only about 20 per cent — seeing participation as an acceptance of their second-class status.

The third class is composed of the African majority — representing 70 per cent of the population — who are without any political rights whatsoever at national level. Some do have a vote at local level, while others (some four million) can, on paper, vote for the parliaments of the so-called Bantustans like the Transkei. In fact these latter are not regarded as being South African citizens at all, let alone third-class ones.

Apartheid — which is merely the Africaans for segregation — originally had a much more ambitious project than maintaining White political supremacy by denying the other groups full citizenship rights. As laid down by the National Party which has held power in South Africa without interruption since 1948, it wanted to prevent the Africans from becoming permanently established in the "White" towns and to allow them to be there only temporarily as migrant labourers (and. of course, domestic servants). But what apartheid, as embodied in rigid laws which the National Party government enacted after coming to power in 1948 sought to keep apart, the development of capitalism brought together. Over the years a permanent African urban working class, employed at all levels in manufacturing and service industries and not just in mining, has come into being. In fact since 1975 the majority of urban dwellers have been Africans.

The National Party governments have had to recognise this and to make concession after concession to the economic facts: Africans have been permitted to form trade unions and have taken strike action, the notorious pass laws are soon to be abolished, while other reforms have granted urban Africans property and even municipal voting rights in the towns. Only two of the original pillars of apartheid now remain — the Group Areas Acts laying down residential segregation (and reserving 85 per cent of the land area for the Whites) and the discriminatory political structure — but this latter too is now beginning to totter.

South Africa's present political structure where your say in the political decision-making process depends on your racial classification and which completely excludes 70 per cent of the population is so anachronistic that it is universally — and rightly — condemned, especially since political power is now being brutally used to impose the government’s authority on the unwilling majority. Even the capitalists and Thatcher condemn it. There is no reason to challenge their sincerity here since the South African system is anachronistic even from a capitalist point of view. Historically capitalism has sought to reduce all relations and differences between people to one: economic, to whether you are rich or poor, employer or employee, capitalist or worker. It didn't demolish feudal relations based on birth and legally-defined estates to see such distinctions re-introduced as racially-based citizenship classes.

Basically, capitalism wants a political structure which protects and enforces the property rights of the owning class and which ensures political stability within which the extraction of surplus value from the working class can proceed undisturbed by extraneous. non-economic considerations. Although both theory and practice have shown that political democracy is the ideal capitalist political form, this is not something that the ruling class anywhere has ever spontaneously applied nor, when faced with the choice between political stability and political democracy, will a capitalist class automatically prefer the latter. Historical experience (Nazi Germany. Fascist Italy, Franco Spain. Greece under the Colonels for example) shows that they will sacrifice political democracy and embrace dictatorship, at least for a temporary period, if this is the price of securing a stable political regime.

So political democracy has generally had to be forced on capitalism by popular pressure, in particular from the working class. Workers were right to press for political democracy since this provides the best framework both for the propagation and spread of socialist ideas and for the peaceful establishment of socialism. Since political democracy does not exist in South Africa, workers, besides becoming socialists, need to struggle for its establishment there too.

Over 50 per cent of the population of South Africa now live in the towns and, as indicated, since 1975 over 50 per cent of this urban population — which is overwhelmingly working class — wage and salary earners — has been African, a percentage which is growing all the time. This African and Coloured urban wage and salary working class majority, representing an even greater percentage of factory workers, could bring enormous political pressure to bear on the government to move towards granting them the same political rights now enjoyed exclusively by White workers. In fact the South African capitalist class has already got the message and has also been putting pressure on the Botha government to move in this direction.

Of course it is not going to be easy. People are going to be thrown into jail. People are going to be beaten up. And people are going to be killed by the "security" forces. Indeed, all these things are happening at this very moment. Sooner or later, however, the South African government is going to have to retreat as it did over economic apartheid and to move more and more towards political democracy. But the struggle should not stop there. Political democracy is not an end in itself — it leaves working class exploitation intact and working class problems unresolved — but merely as a means to the end of socialism. This more important struggle will still need to go on.

Adam Buick

White supremacy is stupid (1993)

From the November 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

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

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

Social Construct

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

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

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

Curse of Ham

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

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

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

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

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

Sporting challenge

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

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

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

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

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

Michael Ghebre

Tiny Tips (2025)

The Tiny Tips column from the November 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

The unrest reflected much deeper frustrations, including high unemployment, particularly among young people, growing poverty and anger at corruption and mismanagement. People see public resources channelled into luxury spending and infrastructure deals benefiting a few powerful figures connected to the ruling People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), while basic services and jobs are neglected.

[Inter Press Service News Agency]

In 1978, Clive James reviewed the official biography of Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev (General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1964 to 1982) by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism, CPSU Central Committee. “I read the whole thing from start to finish, waiting for the inevitable slip-up which would result in a living sentence. It never happened.” James found it so dull that “If you were to recite even a single page in the open air, birds would fall out of the sky and dogs drop dead.” 

[MSN]

The announced $7 billion would be the biggest official tranche of funding to Ukraine’s drone industry so far. It’s close to the $6 billion that Ukraine’s defense minister, Denys Shmyhal, has said Kyiv needs to cover this year’s production of first-person-view drones, interceptors, long-range drones, and missiles. While new, Ukraine’s drone industry has increasingly been in the spotlight for producing cheap but effective weapons regularly being used to destroy Russian loitering munitions, armor, artillery, and production facilities. 

[Yahoo]

From an anarcho-communist perspective, this moment is not simply about one man’s death. It is about the world that produced both Charlie Kirk and the man who killed him. It is about capitalism’s ever-present violence, about the state’s monopoly on force, about the way political antagonisms are escalating into open bloodshed. It is about what happens when a society soaks every interaction in hierarchy, coercion, alienation, and humiliation, and then acts shocked when someone pulls a trigger…Wage labour itself is enforced by violence. If you refuse to work, you starve, or you are policed, or imprisoned. The entire edifice of private property rests on threat and force. 

[The Slow Burning Fuse]

North Korea’s Kim vows to build a ‘socialist paradise’ [sic]. 

[Morning Star]

Having a home of our own is essential to leading a dignified life, but in Venezuela, where access to housing is enshrined as a right in the Constitution, renting adequate accommodation is an unattainable luxury for hundreds of thousands of families, and buying property is almost impossible. Not only do market prices far exceed the average household income but inflation has also wiped out home loans, leaving citizens without access to financing. 

[Equal Times]

There is no genetic or biological basis for dividing the human race into distinct “races”. There are just groups of human beings — all of whom came from Africa originally — who developed slightly different physical characteristics over time as they travelled to, and adapted to, different climates and environments. 

[The Conversation]

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

Will “The Last Hottentot” hold us back? (1948)

From the October 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

Among the many problems that hinder the workers from understanding Socialism the problem of how it is possible to establish Socialism, in face of the “backwardness” of sections of the world’s population, occupies a prominent place. It really springs from the same patronising root as the complacent idea, “Of course I can understand but the poor mutt next door hasn’t the mental capacity to do so.” The strange part of it is that, lumped in with this “backward” section, are peoples responsible for many of mankind’s most brilliant achievements during the last two thousand years or so, some of which were accomplished when the people of these islands were running about unclothed and with painted bodies; of such are the Egyptian, the Arab, the Turk and the people of India and China. The place of “honour,” amongst the “backward” sections, is occupied by the negro, and yet it is just the negro who explodes the fiction of racial grades of mental capacity. Let us take one or two outstanding examples of this.

Toussaint L’Ouverture, a West African negro slave, organised the slave revolt at Haiti in 1797 and revealed himself to be one of the foremost generals of his time, defeating an army consisting of 20,000 of Napoleon’s veteran troops, expelling the French, British and Spaniards from Haiti, and inaugurating a period of peace and prosperity on the island. His “cultured” Western opponents, unable to upset the negro regime, eventually invited him on board a man-of-war for a conference, under a solemn promise of immunity, but, when they had got him on board, put him in chains, and he died in captivity.

Booker T. Washington was an American negro slave boy who had no chance of learning the simple elements of reading arid writing until he was fifteen, after the Emancipation Act of 1864, and even then he only learnt from other negroes in voluntary classes; yet he became an accomplished writer of English and a lecturer on many subjects. In the opening lines of his book “Up From Slavery” he wrote that he did not know when he was born or where, but he had a strong suspicion that he was born at some time somewhere!

Within the space of a century, in spite of the multitude of disabilities suffered by the negroes in America after the abolition of slavery, they have produced front rank workers in the fields of industry, science, art and literature. The Maoris of New Zealand, and other “backward races,” reveal similar mental capacity when they are drawn within the social orbit of modern nations. While walking along one of London’s main streets, during the early part of the year, the writer saw a group of young men and women from West Africa who were in London attending a conference. The girls, who had typical African faces, were slender, beautiful and charmingly dressed—obvious products of advanced culture, no different from their Western sisters except in colour and vivacity. Comparing them with the pictures of West African women in travel books was like comparing a chic Parisian woman with a hardworking peasant woman of the provinces. It was obvious that the social circumstances of these African girls were not those of a backward community, and it was this that made all the difference.

There is no fundamental difference in mental capacity between any sections of the world’s population; there are only differences in the quantity and diversity of the information acquired, which depends upon the particular social circumstances. Take a group of babies from anywhere on earth, even from the Hottentots and Bushmen of Africa, put them in circumstances where they can acquire the requisite knowledge and they will rival the best the West can produce in achievement in different directions. Go into any main street in a thickly populated area and you will see crowds of people, all of whom can run, jump, sing and so on. Here and there some will run better, jump better, sing belter, but all are capable of doing these things if they are physically sound. So it is with thinking. All over the world there is a general average mental capacity which, given the opportunity, can quite competently acquire modern culture—and the elements of Socialism. The opportunity lies in the existence of social conditions favourable to the development of Socialist ideas.

The full span of human life is only a tiny fraction of the span, of organic life on this planet. In the womb of time it took millions of years for the earliest organism to develop into the human organism; in the womb of its mother months are sufficient for the embryo to pass through similar phases to develop into a child. From childhood to manhood the boy or girl can absorb the achievement of his own particular section of mankind. In the advanced nations they absorb what is advanced, as the miner’s or cotton-operative’s daughter or son, who has passed through a university, has proved; in the backward nations they absorb what is suitable to the way they live, much of which is outside the mental horizon of advanced nations. A Hottentot or a Bushman, armed with his few simple tools and weapons and his bush craft, can live in the African bush; a white man can only live there if he transports modern equipment and leans on the native. Transport a Hottentot baby, just after birth, to the centre of London, rear him in a family like other London children and he will grow up like them in mental culture. Transport a London baby, just after birth, to a Hottentot family and he will grow up like them in mental culture. The Hottentot only becomes what he is today because of his primitive surroundings, and traditions associated with those surroundings. A child born anywhere on earth is born with a brain of the average capacity of mankind. How the physical and mental capacities develop afterwards depends upon social circumstances; alter the social circumstances and the mental development is different. In other words the capacity is similar but the acquirements are different. All the basic discoveries of mankind which made civilisation possible, fire, tools and weapons, pottery, metal-working, agriculture, writing and so forth, were made by sections of mankind which, according to present standards, would be regarded as backward.

What are called backward races are not backward in mental capacity; they live in circumstances that are primitive compared with the circumstances of highly developed nations. While they remain outside the orbit of modern production, or only serve it from outside, they remain tied to primitive ways and traditions. Once they become absorbed into capitalist civilisation, that is to say, once they take part in building up capitalism on their own account, then they cut the cord that ties them to the past. The negro in America has done this, Japan has done it, Russia, China and India are doing it now. Japan became a first class modern nation and Russia is on the threshold of a similar condition. Everywhere native populations are stirring restlessly, struggling to cast off the shackles of the past in order to enter into the heritage of today; and it is being accomplished at a pace that increases in speed as time passes. One nation learns from another and the backward learn from the forward, borrowing not only capitalist methods and ideas, but also the aspirations of the working class that is subjected by Capitalism. What took the Western nations centuries to accomplish the East is accomplishing in decades. The old protest, that Socialism must wait upon the intellectual development of the backward nations, is losing power as the world is being transformed into one level of development and Socialist ideas are penetrating everywhere. In the last half-century vast areas of the East and West have made tremendous strides along the capitalist road, and the rate of progress multiplies; in thirty years Russia has developed from a ramshackle semi-feudal empire into a first class world power, India is undergoing the birth-pangs of a capitalist state which will transform its primitive village economy and obliterate the traditions associated with this economy, the same may be said for Burma, as well as other of the, until recently, “backward” areas.

One thing is clear. The main resources of the world are now contained within the boundaries of nations that are either highly developed capitalistically or are on the verge of becoming so. Even the primitive agricultural communities of India will soon be overwhelmed as India gets upon its capitalist feet. There is, therefore, nothing to hold back the inhabitants of these advanced nations from uniting in a world Socialist commonwealth. In such circumstances what would be their attitude towards groups that might have lagged behind? Quite obviously it would be one of helpfulness; supplying these backward groups with everything they needed, physically and mentally, to bring them up to the general level as participants in the new world social order; and the assistance would be given free, with a generous regard for the traditions and feelings of those who had not yet cast off the cramping heritage of the past.

No, it is not “backward nations” that are clogging the footsteps of social progress but lack of understanding amongst worker’s of the “advanced nations,” and part of this lack of understanding is comprised in the patronising view that some are endowed with a mental superiority that marks them out as the chosen people. All human kind are similar parts of one mental piece, and when they get the opportunity they show that it is so.

There are no fundamental mental barriers to the acquisition of knowledge essential to the establishment of Socialism. What are apparently mental barriers are in reality social ones. These are fast disappearing as the social system that has made possible the production and safeguarding of sufficient means of existence to provide comfort for the whole of the world’s population draws all the inhabitants of the earth into its orbit.

Gilmac.

Self-Made Man and His Undoing (1993)

Book Review from the October 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Jonathan Kingdon: Self-Made Man and His Undoing. Simon At Schuster £20.

Human beings are related to other animals, and most closely to the other primates, especially chimpanzees and gorillas. The first hominid fossils (those belonging to the homo family) are found in Africa, and date back perhaps two-and-a-half million years. The origin of modern humans — as opposed to earlier hominid species such as erectus or Neanderthals is more controversial, but one theory again sees an African homeland, around 200,000 years ago. Since that lime, members of homo sapiens have expanded over most of the planet, changed the world we inhabit in numerous ways, and have themselves been changed in the process. It is this last point which is the focus of Kingdon's book, and, as the title suggest, his view is that humans have changed themselves, by dint of adapting to the world around them.

Our differences from our nearest animal relatives, the chimps, are enormous, even though we are genetically very close to them. For instance, we have a very different facial structure, with far smaller jaws and teeth. This may be explained as the result of humans' developing cooking, so that we no longer needed massive jaws to cope with raw meat and plants, which were eliminated through natural selection. Our hands became more efficient at manipulating tools, as an upright stance meant that they were not needed for support. In general, the invention of tools and technology led to quite drastic changes in our physical characteristics. As jaws became smaller, relative brain size increased and the capacity for speech — with all its implications for social organization evolved.

If the idea of an African origin for modern humans is correct, our ancestors must have spread out from there to the rest of the Earth. Probably the first expansion was to India, and thence to the rest of Asia and Australasia. Sea levels were lower than today, and 65.000 years ago Australia was linked to New Guinea, but travel from the Asian mainland still required boats, which can now be seen as one of the greatest human inventions. Perhaps 40,000 years ago, moderns expanded into Europe, replacing the Neanderthals (though others regard Neanderthals as one of the many ancestors of modern humans). The American continent was settled, from Asia, only around 15,000 years ago.

Human expansion over the Earth led to encounters with many different kinds of prey and different types of climate, and humans adapted to their local circumstances, thus leading to the evolution of different human appearances in terms of build, skin colour and hair type. For instance, people from tropics have on the whole far less body hair than other humans: this is presumably because body hair impairs the efficacy of sweating and so makes it harder for the body to remain cool. Comparably, people in areas where malaria occurs have developed defences against it, such as the sickle cell trait. Brown eyes, probably the original human colour, are a better protection in bright sunlight than blue. Blue eyes turn up in various parts of the world, including Africa and India, but are dominant only in northern Europe, where summer is short and selection working against non-brown eyes must have been weaker.

Kingdon deals dismissively with the concept of "race”: all humans are hybrids with mixed ancestries, and it is quite impossible to identify distinct races. As he says in a fine phrase:

“What it is to be a human will always be more complex, interesting and important than what it is to be any particular type of human."

The "undoing" of the title is dealt with in the last couple of chapters. Unfortunately this is a familiar and unoriginal discussion of environmental damage and the supposed dangers of over population. The usefulness of the book, however, lies elsewhere. It helps, to be honest, to have some prior knowledge of the topics he discusses, but Kingdon gives a clear and well-argued account of human evolution and adaptation, stressing all the while how solving the problems of surviving and reproducing has been the key to this aspect of human history.

Paul Bennett

Why Jew-baiting? (1938)

From the October 1938 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is nothing new about Jew-baiting. As a pastime and a political subterfuge it has been practised since the Jews became distributed over the world's surface. Likewise, the arguments advanced in defence of this time-honoured practice are far from original. They have been trotted out with monotonous repetition for centuries. The Jews are represented as money-grabbers, sweaters of labour, price-cutters, and unscrupulous exploiters, and their suppression is advocated in order to prevent these practices. There is no lack of evidence to prove that Jews indulge in these undesirable practices. The tailoring sweat-shops in the East End of London, and the many cut-price shops with Jewish proprietors, are the illustrations usually given. What the “Down with Jews" advocates overlook is that these practices are not confined to Jews. There is no monopoly of. exploitation by any particular Jewish confraternity. It is the prerogative, of any native or alien, if he owns sufficient wealth, to use that wealth in the exploitation of others, and the degree of such exploitation is in no way determined by the race, nationality or religion of the exploiter.

Unfortunately, many workers are prepared to give a willing and attentive ear to the passion-inflaming hocus of the anti-Semitics. The natural resentment of the worker towards exploitation, being himself a victim, makes it a comparatively simple matter to enlist his sympathy in an attack upon any particularly vicious aspect of his greatest grievance. Knowing this, there are politicians and political parties prepared to pander to working-class sentiments in this direction in order to further their own ends. In this way the vilifying and. howling out against Jews has become the chief means employed by the Fascist parties to attract attention and support to themselves.

Most workers realise that they are exploited, but what they do not realise is the process of that exploitation and in what way it is possible to. remove it. The worker, owning nothing more than his ability to work, must, perforce, sell that ability in order to acquire the needs of life. When he is fortunate enough to find a buyer for his energies he receives, as the price of those energies, a wage. The wages of the working class must be less than the total of the values added in the process of creating wealth. Workers, by applying their energies to raw materials, create wealth which has value. If the wages received were equal to the values produced, then, quite obviously, there would be nothing for the purchaser of working-class energies. It is the amount of values created, over and above the amount received by the creators in the form of wages, which constitutes the surplus that is taken by the non-producing class, the class that owns the raw materials and the machinery which is used in the process of production. Here we have the process by which the worker is exploited.

The capitalist class, having taken the surplus value, then proceed to divide it amongst themselves according to the particular form of the wealth which they have invested. The landlord, the industrialist and the financier, each struggles for a larger share of the spoils of working-class exploitation. In their attempts to score over one another they strive for control of the political machine, because that control means power to the section which wields it. To obtain control of the political machine the support of the working class is needed, particularly at election time, and to get the support of the working class it is necessary to promise to ease the degree of exploitation.

One group of capitalist interests will represent other groups as being the villains of the piece. At one time the industrialists will claim that the high rent taken by the landowners is crippling their industry, and that, in consequence, wages must be low in order that their trade may not suffer. They advocate the subduing of the landowner and the royalty-taker as a means of improving working-class conditions. At another time the financier is the villain who, by the extortion of a high rate of interest on the money he has advanced, is slowing up the wheels of industry and causing unemployment and increased poverty.

The Jews, because they have become dispersed throughout the world, and because in the past they have been, to a great extent, kept on the move, have had to convert any property that they have acquired into some portable form. Money is the most portable form of wealth, and, as many Jews have accumulated money, they have become moneylenders. Financier is the modern name for a moneylender on a large scale.

In most capitalist countries a number of Jews will be found among the finance section of the capitalist class. Also, in most capitalist countries, a far larger number of Jews will be found among the working class. The Jews, just like the English, or the Americans, or the Hindoos, are divided into classes, exploited and exploiting. They differ, in that respect, not a bit from any other nationality or race (it is difficult to define them as either). The fact that a few of their number are to be found amongst the most wealthy and powerful groups of capitalists means little to the workers.

The other instances of excesses, such as price-cutting and labour sweating, are likewise not confined to Jews. All cut-price shops are not owned by Jews, and all Jewish-owned shops are not cut-price shops. Price cutting is an inevitable consequence of the competition of capital. That the tailoring trade is a sweated one is not due to the fact there are many Jews engaged in it but to the competition and other factors which prevail. Many of the sweated ones are themselves Jews.

All political parties are but the expression of class interests. All political parties that have not as their object the overthrow of the capitalist system must represent, to a greater or less degree, the interests of capital, even though the members do not realise it. For the workers to take sides in the struggles of different groups of capitalists for the spoils that have been wrung from themselves will help them not a bit. It is very much like a man taking sides in a struggle between a group of pickpockets, who have robbed him, to decide which of die thieves should have the lion's share of his property. Of course, if the thieves can enlist him on one side or another he can become a great help. His real concern should be to regain his property. An attempt to do that would unite the thieves against him.

The dividing line between capitalist sectional interests may not be so dear as in days that are past, but they still remain. Hiding these interests behind promises of reforms which are supposed to benefit the workers is an old game. So is the trick of cloaking the struggle behind religious or racial differences. That is what is being done by those who attempt to inflame workers against Jews. The discontent of the working class, instead of being marshalled into channels where the workers would become Socialists, where they would be converted from rebels into revolutionaries, is turned to serve the purpose of one or the other conflicting interests of the capitalist trinity, rent, interest or profit.

The claim of the Fascists that the Jews in this country constitute a state within a state is nonsense. Such an idea can only arise from a misconception of the nature and function of a state and an exaggerated notion of the purpose of Jewish organisations. Any group of nationals in a foreign land, if they are persecuted, will seek to protect themselves and attempt to organise for the purpose. Such organisation does not constitute a state, neither does it necessarily imply a hostility to the state of the country in which they reside.

If the proposals of the rabid nationalists of the world were carried to their logical conclusion, and all aliens were deported, there would be a terrible crush when all the Britons from abroad were returned to their native shore.

From whatever angle the arguments of the anti-Semitics are examined, they will reveal nothing which will materially benefit the working class. The political activities of workers are side-tracked. Instead of organising consciously for the overthrow of capitalism, they fight one another within the framework of that system. Their masters sit tight and enjoy the privileges which accrue from the system. Racial, national or religious differences count for nought. The fact that men and women are members of a dispossessed class gives them a common cause. The converting of the means of wealth production and distribution to the common ownership of society as a whole is the cause, and the Socialist Party of Great Britain works to achieve that end.

W. Waters

New pamphlet on Racism (1966)

Party News from the October 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

A new Socialist Party pamphlet, entitled The Problem of Racism, is available. The previous pamphlet on this subject The Racial Problem, published in 1947 has been out of print for some time. The Problem of Racism is not just a revision it is a completely new pamphlet. In 1947 it was the Jewish Question that was prominent. Today it is the Colour Question. This change is taken into account in the new pamphlet which examines the colour question in Britain, America, South Africa and Rhodesia. There are chapters too on the scientific theory of race, the historical origins of racist theories and on African nationalism.

There is an unfortunate error. The reference on page 41 to Guyana should, of course, be to Guinea.

Pamphlet obtainable from Socialist Party (Dept SR), 52 Clapham High St., London, SW4. Price 1/6.

Blogger's Note:

Unfortunately, the text of The Problem of Racism pamphlet is not currently on the SPGB website. Hopefully that can be rectified in the future.

Letter: Reply to the BNP (2003)

Letter to the Editors from the July 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Reply to the BNP

Dear Editors,

Regarding your article “No Asylum from the Wages System” (Socialist Standard, June), the BNP now has 16 elected councillors. Yes, we consider that wherever native people of the world live, their genetic ancestry in that region, often going back many 100s, if not 1000s of generations in those regions, make them pre-eminent in those regions. Just as individuals work to buy their own homes and leave them to subsequent generations (and not to strangers), we acknowledge that our forebears created the UK, its infrastructure, roads, towns, villages, ancient buildings and institutions, many fighting, some giving their lives, in wars to protect our native land. i.e. we own the UK. We welcome strangers and people from alien lands but only on the condition that our proprietorship is paramount, an idea branded as “racist” by the enemies of Britain. No doubt the anti-racists and lefties in the UK would complain if whites went out and colonised parts of the Third World (Rhodesia is a prime example where white rule was beneficial and now the native blacks are reverting to type and the country goes to the dogs South Africa the same).

You say: “For example, the report Migration: an Economic and Social Analysis from the Research, Development and Statistic Directorate of the Home Office, demolishes a great many of the myths around immigration observing that migrants tend to have higher incomes than natives (on the whole, although they occupy a great range of income brackets), and that there is ‘little evidence that native workers are harmed by migration’”.

This is a distortion – the report does not refer to “migrants” but immigrants who have been here for more than one generation, and it goes on to say that of the immigrants who have higher incomes than natives and better qualifications, 48 percent of them are from “white” countries (USA, Australia, EU etc). The remaining have lower economic activity and worse qualifications. (Alan Travis in the Guardian made the same mistake). I think you are confusing the report with the Home Office report “The fiscal effect of migration” (January 2002) where it shows that migrants pay £1.5bn more in taxes than they receive in benefits, again if you look at the detail you will find that 1 percent of tax payers pay the highest 20 percent of taxes – i.e. once migrants such as US and Japanese financiers etc are taken out of the equation, the remaining migrants (i.e. refugees, asylum seekers etc) are a net loss. Still, never let the facts get in the way of a good story.

The idea of abolishing national borders is crackers.

Dr Phil Edwards, 

BNP National Press Officer

P.S. do you support the anti democratic activities of the ANL?

 

Reply:

1. The link you try to draw between a particular part of the globe and the “genetic ancestry” of the people living there is just nonsense. You talk about this often going back “100s if not 1000s of generations”. But, taking a generation as being 30 years, just going back a hundred generations (not hundreds) is going back 3000 years, i.e. to 1000 BC. You’re not seriously contending are you that the island of Britain should belong only to the descendants of those Iron Agers who were there then, whoever they were (and their ancestors will have come from various parts of the continent of Europe)? In which case, most people living in Britain today, being descendants of later settlers (such as the Celts, Romans, Anglo-Saxons – yes, the English language will have to go, too –,Vikings, Normans, Flemings, Irish) fall into your category of “stranger” and “alien” to be offered grants to go and resettle “where they came from”.

And, if we go back a thousand generations, i.e. 30,000 years, there’s probably weren’t any humans living in Britain. Go back another thousand generations and all humans are still living in Africa, where the common ancestors of all of us humans evolved. So, the logic of the argument from genetics points rather to the view that the whole Earth should belong to the whole human race.

In any event, from what you say about Africa and from the BNP’s street-level propaganda, the only genetic difference you are concerned about is skin pigmentation. Which is as stupid as wanting to distinguish between people on the basis of the colour of their hair. Neither skin colour nor hair colour gives the slightest indication of what a person is capable of or thinks or is likely to behave, or anything else, except, that is, how they are going to react to exposure to the Sun’s rays.

2. You are quite right that the infrastructure of the big island off the North West coast of the Eurasian landmass was built up by the labour of generations of serfs and wage-workers, many of them the ancestors of a large proportion of the current population, but this does not mean that their descendants therefore “own” Britain. Far from it. You yourself quote figures which show the unequal distribution of income in Britain (at least 20 percent going to the top one percent). This reflects the uneven distribution of profit-yielding assets, where the top 10 percent own as much as the remaining 90 percent. The ownership of land in Britain is even more concentrated, with aristocratic families such as the Queen and the Duke of Westminster owning vast tracts of it. No, Britain is not owned by its “native” population, but by a tiny minority of rich property owners. It’s their country not ours. We only work here.

3. The Home Office study was about “migrants”. We only paraphrased what it said, which was: “Migrants have higher average incomes than natives, but this average masks the polarisation of experiences, with migrants over-represented at the top of the income distribution but also highly concentrated at the lower end of the income distribution, and experience lower activity rates” and “There is little evidence that native workers are harmed by migration” (p. viii). But, whatever the study says, we still say that migration – out of as well as in to Britain – has not harmed people born in Britain. In fact, it hasn’t made any difference, either way. The problems we face are not caused by workers from other parts of the world migrating to this part, but by the capitalist system of class ownership and production for profit instead of the common ownership and production geared to satisfying people’s needs which will be the case in socialism.

4. We are not advocating the abolition of frontiers here and now under capitalism, if only because we know it’s not going to happen: the capitalist states, into which the world is currently divided, will always prefer to be in a position to control the labour force within their frontiers. What we envisage is that when the resources of the Earth have become the common heritage of all the human race then the world would no longer be divided into separate states, and people would be free to travel anyway in the world without needing a passport or visa and whether to live or to work or simply for pleasure.

5. We do not support the Anti-Nazi League and its undemocratic policy of seeking to restrict freedom of speech. We are in favour of free speech for everyone, not excluding fascists. And we practice what we preach, having debated in the past with Mosley’s BUF and the National Front. Not because we have any sympathy for their views, but because we think that the best way to deal with these views is to expose them for the dangerous nonsense they are. We’d be prepared to continue this debate with you at a public meeting, but we know that the “anti-fascists” would employ bully-boy tactics to stop it taking place. Pity. Since we would have welcomed the chance to publicly expose the BNP, before an audience of interested workers, as the peddlers of divisive and irrational nonsense that you are.

Editors.

The Immigration Question (1976)

From the July 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Migration is described in the Encyclopaedia Britannica as “an outstanding feature of human life”. That spells misfortune for it, for there are no features of human life that are not exploited and mangled under capitalism. In mid-1974 there were 1,673,000, or 3.2 per cent, of the population, in Britain who were “of New Commonwealth and Pakistani ethnic origin” — that is, black. The figure for 1967 was 1,016,000, or 2.1 per cent, (figures from Office of Population Censuses and Surveys, quoted in The Times, 27th May 1976). An estimate for 1954, given in The Colour Problem by Anthony H. Richmond (Pelican 1955) was 100,000.

Not all immigrants to Britain are black, of course. Approximately 4 million people left Ireland for various countries, including Britain, between 1850 and 1900. and nearly half a million again between 1951 and 1961. In 1931-38, 150,000 people entered Britain from Eire together with 350,000 from European countries. However, in contemporary usage “immigrant” means black. The freshly-coined official term “New Commonwealth” means this, and excludes immigrants from Canada, Australia and New Zealand. In that frame of mind Indians, Pakistanis and Africans are made to appear as menacing invaders.

The latest phases in this alleged problem are claims that every Asian has a tribe of probably-bogus relatives claiming entitlement to join him, and unrest which has included four apparently indiscriminate racial murders. There is now widespread agreement that something must be done to control immigration. The secretary of the Punjabee Society of the British Isles wrote to The Times on 29th May: “Enough is enough.” Bob Mellish MP, former Labour Chief Whip, in the News of the World on 30th May: “Controls must be stricter. Numbers must get fewer and fewer until we arrive at a complete stop.” And there are the National Front and Enoch Powell, neither of them funny. The former deal in fear and ignorance, as did the Nazis whom they admire; the latter has talked repeatedly of racial carnage in a manner which, to quote Bernard Levin, “is making it more likely that his predictions will come true”.

The Myths

The argument put by Mellish and others is that the number of immigrants is too great for resources inside Britain.

Is there anything that can be done to control the number of newcomers in any one year to take account of the problems of employment, housing, schools and social services?

(C. Legum and A. Raphael, The Observer, 30th May)

Mature and sober as this sounds, it is only a nicely-stated confirmation of what largely underlies racial tension: “If I blacked my face I might get a council house . . . The teacher’s too busy looking after the black kids who can’t speak English . . . They get endless Social Security, but if we went we wouldn’t . . . etc.” Either it is true that black immigrants rob the natives of jobs, houses and services, or it is not. Some recent facts are as follows.

The 1971 General Household Survey showed that 35.5 per cent, of the black population in Britain are skilled manual workers, and 30 per cent, semiskilled or unskilled; 17 per cent, have non-manual jobs, and 10.5 per cent, are “managerial and professional’.’ In The Economic Impact of Commonwealth Immigration by Jones and Smith (Cambridge 1970) the average benefits received per black head from Social Security totalled £16.30 a year, as against £28.30 for the “home” population; for Health and Welfare £18.30 as against £18.60; in Local Authority housing £0.90 as against £3.00. The General Household Survey showed also that 23 per cent. of black households were overcrowded (insufficient bedrooms) as against 6.2 per cent. white ones, and 33 per cent. lacked the use of a bath as against 12 per cent.

If it is argued that the presence of immigrants nevertheless exacerbates existing problems, that simply is not true. The housing problem has been acute throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, yet at all times sufficient houses have existed. A report in The Times on 22nd April 1976 said: : "There is a surplus of about 850,000 houses in the United Kingdom, according to the Nationwide Building Society, which yesterday published its latest survey on housing trends.” At the same time, in 1972 there were 13,000 homeless persons in London (Shelter, Paper 4) and in 1966 60-70,000 overcrowded households in London (Census). The “shortage”, as always, is because housing is beyond the reach of those who need it, not because of any absolute scarcity. What on earth has that to do with immigration or alleged differences between black and white?

The Truths

The provision and extent of welfare services and education is a matter of government policy at any given time. However, if the concern really were about population pressures on “a tiny nation of over 50 million” (Mellish) the official figures for both-ways migration should allay it. For several years the numbers entering Britain have been substantially fewer than those leaving. In 1974 the net “loss” was 85,300; from 1969 to June 1975 it was 368,100. This has practically always been the case; the sole exception was the 1931-38 period, when the world depression at the beginning caused a fall in emigration and an inward balance of 23,821. It is stated also, in the annual report On the State of the Public Health published by the DOHSS on 28th March, that in 1974 Britain had “an unprecedented low birth rate of 13 a thousand” and “The population rose by only 55,173, the smallest increase ever recorded in peacetime”.

Were immigrants to respond to declarations of the capacities and needs of “host” nations, they would be scurrying about the world everlastingly. In 1948 the Royal Commission on Population recommended a policy of “combining encouragement of emigration with with a policy of selective immigration to make good any shortage that might arise in Great Britain”. During the 1939-45 war a number of West Indians were imported to work in factories in the north of England, while the United States repealed its sixty-one-year-old policy against Chinese immigration. On 2nd June 1976 the Australian Minister for Immigration announced that workers from anywhere were wanted, mentioning "East Timor, Indochina, Chile and many other places” (The Times, 3rd June).

Since the “bread-and-butter” argument against immigration is false from beginning to end, what we are left with is racial prejudice. Moreover, it is racism of a particularly dishonest kind which knows that in the open it has not a leg to stand on, and so hides behind plausible-sounding theories of population pressure and injustice to the home population. Over twenty years ago Dr. Roger Pilkington, the geneticist and anthropologist, wrote in the British Medical Association’s magazine Family Doctor:

Leading experts had declared that available scientific knowledge provided no basis for believing that the groups of mankind differed in their innate capacity for intellectual and emotional development. “Given the same opportunities of education and environment the performance and ability of individuals does not differ appreciably from one race to another.”

(The Guardian 28th April 1955)

Profit and Prejudice

The capitalist class are too well aware of their interests to practise racism. They may have individual private sentiments, and they are pleased to see it dividing the working class. But while Enoch Powell sees immigration “foaming with much blood” (April 1968) and producing “firearms and explosives” (May 1976), the capitalist’s vision of it is a lather of surplus-value and fizzing with interest-rates and profit. The Times on 9th June carried a report on Southall, the London industrial suburb where 20-30,000 of a population of 70,000 are immigrants, mostly Indian, and where disturbances have taken place recently.

According to the report, Indians first went to Southall in the early nineteen-fifties to work in a rubber factory. It continued: “Today there is still plenty of work, mainly unskilled, available in the district. Heathrow [London airport], especially after dark, seems to be entirely serviced by Punjabis in their bright turbans and saris. There is a fair amount of light engineering and there are some food-processing plants. The engineers in the local coach-works are Indian, and many of their coaches are on hire to the town hall to take Indian children out of Southall to integrate them and to improve their English.”

Therein is the whole position. Immigrants are wage-workers, or peasants who think they will improve their condition by becoming wage-earners. Coming to Britain or any other country, they are not instituting a separate fraternity; on the contrary, they are joining one massive group in a common situation — the industrial working class. Don’t be mistaken about this. The working class are all those who own nothing but their ability to work and so have to sell that, week by week or month by month, for a price called a wage. The resultant problems of being hard-up, badly housed, uncertain of employment and generally short of the essentials for a decent life, are universal in that situation. Real or fancied differences are unimportant beside it: this is what everyone in Southall, and nine-tenths of the population of the capitalist world, has in common.

The idea of a national identity which becomes a personal one and makes the others “foreigners” is a direct product of the nation-state which is the political unit of capitalism. Thus, each nation has its own history studded with its own partisan myths, and each represents its traditions and customs as the acme of civilization. The legends about immigrants all reflect this, which is why they repeat themselves indiscriminately. Everything said about Indians and Africans now was said about Jews, Irish, Poles, Italians, Chinese etc. in the past (the contemporary story that black people eat tinned cat-food was preceded by one, in the nineteen-thirties, that Italian immigrants ate cats). Its counterparts the world over are the same: for example, in France all murder, rape and offensive conduct is attributed to Arabs. This nonsense is easily disposed of; what is more important is to see whence and why it arises.

What to Do !

“Liberal attitudes” and anti-discrimination laws are no answer. Are we really to believe that having black policemen and magistrates and enabling Indians to join golf clubs is the road to social harmony? The obvious outcome of these policies will be divisions and rancour among the immigrants themselves, and that is already happening. On 30th May The Observer reported an interview with a Mrs. Singh, who is a young BSC from Calcutta and lives in “a pretty suburban house in Hounslow”. Her opinions were that illiterate Indians should not be allowed in, and It was regrettable that “lower class, illiterate Indians collect together in places like Southall and Bradford”. Liberal legislation may be handy for Mrs. Singh and her like, but whose interests are served by trying to persuade people to live contentedly together in districts from which they would like to escape but can’t?

The solution to the problem is not “integration” or fresh restrictions, but recognition by all workers that they are in the same boat. The working class have no country: only their class identity. Those who enter Britain and those who emigrate from it — and the position is the same for other countries — are on the whole leaving adverse economic or political conditions, hoping for something better and influenced by a possibility for reaching it. Inevitably, in huge numbers they are disappointed and made the objects of the frustration of people already on the other side of the fence where the grass is not greener after all. For all of them there is a practical alternative, the establishment of a classless society without frontiers. Stop listening to the rabble-rousers and the liberalizers, and find out about Socialism.

Robert Barltrop