Anti-climax (1951)

From the March 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard

During the past year our attention has been turned to the skys in many ways. We had Fred Hoyle’s Lectures (broadcast by the B.B.C.) on the New Cosmology, giving many of us a fascinating insight into the wonders of the universe. In a B.B.C. broadcast we also learned that Societies exist to plan trips to the moon and later to mars, although it is stressed that many years will elapse before they can actually be attempted. In the same programme (Focus on Interplanetary Travel), we were taken on an imaginary trip (by rocket) to the moon.

A book was published entitled, “The Conquest of Space.”  W. Ley had collected technical information on this subject and presented it with pictures (by Chesney Borestell) based on the latest authentic research. The trips to the various planets in the book were, of course, purely imaginary. Becoming “sky-conscious” Hollywood gave us a brace of films, “Destination Moon” and “Rocketship X-M.,” but the most spectacular appeal to public attention was made by the “ Flying Saucers.” This elusive and much publicised phenomena caught the public imagination and the most extraordinary rumours were circulated regarding their speed, manoeuverability and brilliant light, particularly in America where they mostly appeared, although people in British Isles claimed to have seen them.

On 7th October, following much advance publicity, the Sunday Express featured a series of articles on the subject entitled (rather dramatically) “Is another world watching us?” The author, Gerald Heard, was introduced as “distinguished writer and well-known broadcaster,” and the articles were extracts from his book, “The Riddle of the Flying Saucers.” He certainly spread himself at length on the subject as the series did not finish till 3rd December. First a mass of testimony was brought forth by those who claimed to have witnessed the phenomena. Then it was said. “The question of their speed seems to rule out any human designer. . . from a quiet brooding to a speed of 18,000 miles per hour.” Heard put forth an astonishing assortment of suggestions quite seriously, the most fantastic being that they were “manned” by insects from outer space. (Insects being able to withstand the pressure of the tremendous acceleration). Each planet of our solar system was solemnly examined and mars singled out as the only one upon which insect life could exist.

We were told that U.S. Army and Navy denied all knowledge of the saucers: surely Mr. Heard could not be so naive as to accept that as conclusive? A child of average intelligence would realise that if It were a military or naval “ top secret ” it would be disowned rather than acknowledged prematurely.

The conclusion of the articles is more fantastic than all that has gone before and we really question whether Mr. Heard is indulging in that pastime, colloquially known as pulling our legs. He quotes earlier on that “No form of life as we know it could exist on mars, but insect life.” Nevertheless he concludes in the following extraordinary manner:—“The earths rind of rock (the lithosphere) may not be at all thick. It may be possible with our 'modem atom power explosion to burst through it. Then, quite likely, out would come our molten insects. Martians might well have strong views about planets that explode themselves. For turning ourselves into a dust belt filling our entire orbit with a thick mist of fragments we might cut off a dangerously large amount of the all- too-little sunlight they now get . . . When we twice struck Japan and then not to slaughter but to astound— made the Pacific spout, when we, time and again sent up great super-thunderheads of smoke, spray and the wreckage of human industry and human bodies right up into the stratosphere, then we put out a finger to beckon attention on any watching fellow planet that we were the little fellow out for trouble and able and itching to give it. They could hardly have failed to see that defiant wanton signal. Does that close the question Why Now?”

Well! Here comes the anti-climax, the secret is out—flying saucers are atom test balloons. The information was released by the chief of Nuclear Research, U.S. Navy (Daily Herald, 13/2/51).

Shades of Jules Verne. On 31st December, 1950, the Sunday Express patted itself smugly on the back that it had led the field with articles on “that interesting topic Flying Saucers ” and were much flattered that other newspapers were following their lead. They can claim no credit, rather the reverse, for sponsoring these articles as a serious attempt to solve the mystery.

The Astronomer Royal (Sir Harold Spencer Jones) took a dim view of the whole thing and said (when questioned about flying saucers) “It is very significant that most of the reports appear to have come from a country where mass hysteria is rather prevalent.”

We will close by following Mr. Heard’s lead and indulge a short flight of fancy. Supposing that space ships brought beings from another planet. One imagines they would be fleeting visitors to this miserable world of conflicts, and want alongside potential plenty. Interplanetary travel presupposes a more intellectual and very much farther advanced form of life, the outcome of which we should presume to be a classless society, where all the evils that are the outcome of capitalist society could not exist. The inevitable and ultimate goal of all human endeavours.

Many of us would want to “thumb a lift” for the journey back.

F. M. Robins

A Trotskyist Oddity (2020)

Book Review from the July 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

I Want To Believe: Posadism, UFOs and apocalypse communism by A.M. Gittlitz. Pluto Press, 

The Argentinian Trotskyist J. Posadas is mostly known among left trainspotter circles for his belief in UFOs and advocacy of nuclear war. This book reveals a different story. Rather than a crankish outlier, he is revealed as pretty much a typical guru of a Trotskyist sect, with policies and positions typical of mainstream Trotskyism.

Born Homero Cristalli, in 1912 in Buenos Aires, he was the child of Italian immigrant shoemakers, who were themselves involved in left-wing politics. He grew up malnourished, and became an entertainer, and (briefly) a professional footballer. Football would be an enduring feature of his life, and his cadres at conferences would be required to have a match, leading in one instance to the French police being called to their supposedly secret meeting place because neighbours heard the shouting.

He became involved in the radical Buenos Aires milieu, and came to the notice of a group of Trotskyists after a short poem calling for unity with the Spanish government (during the civil war) he wrote was published in a left newspaper. The group, the International Communist League (LCI) had been typified as ‘coffee-bar wankers’ (the author, incorrectly, attributes this to Trotsky himself), and were seeking to break out of their intellectual ghetto and connect with the working class.

Cristalli proved to be an enthusiastic and energetic organiser, and made successful work with the shoemakers union. His working class authenticity made up for his limited theoretical grasp of Trotskyist positions. J. Posadas was a collective name of the group’s leadership, and Cristalli began to join in writing Posadas’s editorials. Eventually, he would possess the name entirely (the ‘J.’ was never defined).

Although Trotsky is venerated in many parts for his theoretical subtlety, in reality, his plans amounted to ‘go back to your constituencies and prepare for civil war’. His orientation was to try and form the command/control of a military force that could win that civil war, hence his and his followers focus on leadership. In practice this usually meant small groups trying to orientate towards and piggyback on bigger movements. In Argentina, this meant the strongman Juan Peron, who successfully co-opted the workers movement for his own ends.

Cristalli became a full time revolutionary, depending on the income his faction could bring in from its membership in the Fourth International, and he came to prominence in the internecine manoeuvring of the factions in the international, and became a supporter of Michel Pablo, who ostensibly led the International after Trotsky’s murder. This position, along with his energy and charisma, led him to being among the pre-eminent Trotskyists in Latin America, eventually with groups in Cuba, Brazil and Ecuador.

When the Second World War failed to bring about the revolutionary wave Trotsky predicted, the Fourth International’s leadership veered between trying to enter mass communist parties or supporting anti-colonial guerrilla movements. Cristalli visited Cuba after the revolution there and ended up being singled out as a leader of the Fourth International by Castro as he denounced and suppressed Cuban Trotskyists.

It was the Cuban missile crisis that developed Cristalli’s position on nuclear weapons. He was, though, not alone in wanting a nuclear confrontation with America: Che Guevara and Castro both wanted the conflagration. Cristalli’s position was that the imperialist states would not surrender to socialism without using their nuclear weapons, such a confrontation was inevitable; but that with the greater population of the communist world, only communism could emerge from the aftermath. This was simply a logical continuation of the basic position of Trotskyism to a world with nuclear weapons.

His other famous position, on extra-terrestrials being communists, was in fact not his position. Gittliz reveals that his notorious essay, ‘Flying saucers, the process of matter and energy, science, the revolutionary and working-class struggle and the socialist future of mankind’, was in fact written to close down debate from an enthusiast for UFOs in his party. In some senses his argument ‘We must appeal to the beings on other planets, when they come here, to intervene and collaborate with Earth’s inhabitants in suppressing poverty. We must make this call to them’ is simply a continuation of the notion of appealing to powerful figures to try and make changes.

 The UFOs simply became a distinguishing feature by which other Trotskyists could deride him and distinguish themselves from his organisation.

The secrecy of Cristalli’s organisation was essential in the face of real repression (some of the cadres were arrested and murdered by repressive regimes in Latin America). This, coupled with stern sexual moralism (including seeing homosexuality as degenerate) led to Cristalli controlling the sex lives of his cadres, separating married couples to work in different areas. He abandoned ‘democratic centralism’ in favour of his personal rule of the organisation, or ‘monolithism’.

It comes as no surprise to discover that he was caught receiving oral sex from a young female recruit. He responded in a fashion we are becoming accustomed to from the US president, of accusing all of his colleagues of being sexually promiscuous. He expelled them all, and then fathered a child with the recruit. As Gittlitz notes, this situation is not unique, and other Trotskyist sects had similar stories (Gerry Healy and the WRP springs to mind).

The book ends with an essay on the birth of the Posadas meme as a generation of young leftists rehabilitate the Ufological legend for the slogan ‘Fully automated space communism’, used ironically but still indicating a search for hope in a time of fallen ideas. Gittlitz points out that for a short period, references to Posadas outranked Trotsky himself in Google searches thanks to the memes.

Pik Smeet

Reason (2012)

Book Review from the April 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Reason Why. By John Gribbin.Allen Lane. £20.

In the 1960s, a group of heterodox Trotskyists known as the Posadists shackled the UFO craze, then sweeping the world, to ‘socialism’ (in their case doubtless meaning some form of half-baked developmental dictatorship). Their leader Juan Posadas ‘reasoned’ that since these alien visitors were technologically advanced they must also be communists, and called for their assistance and our emulation. Now it is likely that UFOs were nothing more than secret US aviation experiments (could anything be more otherworldly than stealth aircraft such as the B-2 or the F-117?), but the question remains “where are the aliens”? Gribbin answers with Occamist precision: “They are not here because they do not exist”.

Subtitled “The miracle of life on earth”, this book seeks to argue why life, especially intelligent life with advanced technological capacity, is extremely unlikely to be duplicated in our galaxy, if not, indeed, the universe. While the influence of the moon in making the earth habitable is well known, the author contends that there is a wide range of other factors at work. As an astrophysicist, he most effectively explores the really large ones to do with the peculiar position, composition and geography of our solar system, but seems on unfamiliar ground with evolution (for instance, rating the intelligence of Troodon, the most advanced dinosaur, as on a par with a baboon, whereas most reliable sources rate it as a clever chicken) and ventures not at all into history – how unlikely, looking at the untold eons of hand to mouth survival, is the evolution and survival of technological civilisation? Like Posadas, Gribbin also ventures into science fiction with a purely speculative account of the emergence of complex multi-cellular life in the early Cambrian involving the collision of Venus and a supercomet. Despite its limitations, which include a lack of illustrative diagrams, this is a worthwhile book, with a firm and easily accessible scientific background.

The implications are clear. If we are indeed alone, what a crime it is to put the fate of civilisation in the hands of the capitalist system whose reckless wars and insane waste of resources endanger our very survival as a species. As the twenty-first century progresses and human knowledge and abilities expand, it will become increasingly obvious that only socialism can provide the necessary preconditions for our continued long-term existence.

Keith Scholey