Tiny Tips (2024)

The Tiny Tips column from the July 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

The gap between rich and poor has widened particularly in countries that have become more integrated into the global economy, such as China, Russia and some Eastern European countries…. ‘The influence of globalization on income inequalities worldwide was greater than we had expected’, summarizes Valentin Lang, junior professor of International Political Economy at the University of Mannheim and author of the study. ’We were particularly surprised that these differences were mainly due to the gains of the richest and that the lower income groups benefited little or not at all’. 

(ZeroHedge)

Still, over the years the men have been re-considering many of the customs they took for granted in their youth. This includes even female genital mutilation – which is practiced on daughters as a rite of passage. ‘We’ve noticed that it makes our girls weak’, says Lengees. With hindsight, Lengees says he wishes he could have traded his past Moran life for an education. ‘Look at this phone my children gave me’, says Lengees, holding it out. ‘I only know how to press this button to answer it if someone is calling me. I can’t even call out.’ Being illiterate, he says, ‘is like being a deaf person. You don’t understand the language people are using. It’s like you’re not even fully in the world’. 

(NPR)

….Topham noted how the Smurfs live in a Kibbutz-like farming community and rely on self-sufficient methods of means and production. Moreover, the Smurfs coexist happily without using money, sacrificing themselves for the greater good of the community.

(Movieweb)

‘New study in Nature confirms that if we want to avoid the next pandemic—we should stop destroying biodiversity, heating, and polluting the planet’, Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum, who leads the World Health Organization’s climate change unit and was not involved with the study, wrote on social media. ‘Just one more reason to go for a greener, healthier future’.

(Common Dreams)

Salman Rushdie says free Palestinian state would be ‘Taliban-like'.

(Middle East Eye)

‘Millions of children across the country do not have anywhere safe and decent to call home. These children are living without space to study, play or even have a good night’s sleep; while their parents struggle to afford essentials like food and clothes’. 

(wsws.org,)

It is a system driven not by human needs and wants, but by the pursuit of profit that has no end. This system has only been around for a few hundred years. But in that short time it has reshaped the world with new technologies, infrastructures and innovations. This has given us the potential to truly meet the needs of everyone, to give everyone a life of freedom and fulfilment. 

(Communist Future)

The US government is currently considering a reclassification of Vietnam under the US Tariff Law as a “market economy,” which would provide Vietnam major economic benefits, even though Vietnam does not satisfy basic labor rights standards. 

(Human Rights Watch)

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

Halo, Halo! (2024)

The Halo Halo Column from the June 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Who knows what goes on behind the closed doors of convents? Bitter Winter (19 April) reported that the French Dominican Sisters of the Holy Spirit were so aggrieved at the behaviour of one of their nuns that they asked the Vatican to send in one of its Gumshoes to investigate her. The Sister was then effectively fired. Displaying secular umbrage she then took herself off to a tribunal and got herself awarded two hundred thousand euros for false dismissal. The tribunal apparently found the investigation biased because the Cardinal in charge of it was ‘friendly’ with another nun known to be an opponent of the one in question’.

#    #    #    #

‘An influential traditional priest aged 63 has sparked outrage in Ghana by marrying a 12-year-old girl… During the ceremony, women speaking in the local language Ga told the girl to dress teasingly for her husband. They can also be heard advising her to be prepared for wifely duties and to use the perfumes they gifted her to boost her sexual appeal to her husband.’ Apparently, the girl (shouldn’t that be child?) ‘started the rites to become the priest’s wife six years ago, but the process did not interfere with her education.’ She will also be ‘educated’ in her ‘marital responsibilities such as childbearing’. An NGO reports that 19 percent of girls in Ghana are married before they reach eighteen and 5 percent get married before their fifteenth birthday (BBC 1 April).

#    #    #    #

Charlie Hebdo is a French Private Eye-type magazine. In 2006 the magazine reprinted twelve cartoons depicting the founder of Islam which the Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten had published in 2005. This did not go down well in certain sections of society. In 2015 two Algerian brothers entered the offices of Charlie Hebdo and killed twelve of the staff and wounded eleven more.

In 2022 Salmon Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses was attacked in New York. He was stabbed several times and as a result lost sight in one eye and the use of one hand.

In 2021, an educator in West Yorkshire was teaching religious studies. ‘The lesson that sparked the controversy was designed, ironically, to explore issues of blasphemy and free speech, and of appropriate ways of responding to religious disagreements’ (Guardian 31 March). What triggered the subsequent furore? He showed a cartoon which may have been one of those originally published by Jyllands-Posten. ‘The school immediately suspended the teacher, and ‘unequivocally apologised’ for using a totally inappropriate resource, promising to review the curriculum with “all the communities represented in our school”’.

The teacher was forced to leave his post and is apparently still in hiding.

Ain’t religion wonderful.

DC

Mad Monx (2023)

From the October 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard 

In 1327 a Benedictine monastery in northern Italy suffered a calamitous fire which destroyed a magnificent collection of irreplaceable books and manuscripts. It was determined that the cause was arson. The perpetrator was an aged fanatical monk who sought to keep certain knowledge hidden away. Oh, that was fiction, Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose.

Marx was one of those whose books were destroyed by the Nazis, also keen to keep knowledge hidden. Burnt too were the works of Heinrich Heine. Heine’s 1821 play, Almansor, contains the line: ‘Where they burn books, they will, in the end, burn human beings too’.

Science-fiction writer Ray Bradbury was also queasy at the repression being practised by the Soviet Union. Russians resorted to manual copying of literature (samizdat) and passing it from hand to hand.

In 1953, Bradbury’s dystopian novel, Fahrenheit 451, appeared. Fahrenheit 451 refers to the temperature at which books burn. Set in a future America, it was the job of firemen not to extinguish conflagrations but to initiate them for the purpose of book burning.

‘Sticks and stones might break my bones but words cannot hurt me’ goes the old anti-bullying children’s rhyme, but publishing words can certainly lead to the violence it rails against.

Recent burnings of the Koran in Denmark and Sweden, which have freedom of speech enshrined in their constitutions, have led both countries to contemplate introducing laws to stop such actions. This is not the first time that such events have occurred and the consequences have, in some cases, resulted in extremely violent protests. Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson warned that a spate of Koran burnings in the country has triggered ‘the most serious security situation since the Second World War’. One cannot believe he is referencing the Religion of Peace (sic).

Violent protests followed the publication in 1988 of Salman Rushdie’s novel Satanic Verses. Ayatollah Khomeini, then leader of Iran, called for the death of Rushdie. In August 2022 a stabbing attempt was made resulting in Rushdie losing the sight of one eye and the use of a hand.

A Pew Research Center analysis found that 79 countries and territories out of the 198 studied around the world (40 percent) had laws or policies in 2019 banning blasphemy, defined as speech or actions considered to be contemptuous of a god or of people or objects considered sacred. Twenty-two countries (11 percent) had laws against apostasy (abandoning one’s religion).

In March 2023 the Spectator wrote:

‘No religion ought to be given the power to constrain political discourse or behaviour in order to protect its adherents from being scandalised, and no government should help it by silencing its critics. If a Wakefield resident was to burn the Quran publicly in protest at the pretensions of the fundamentalists (something, incidentally, that can now cause you to be arrested on serious public order charges by police increasingly desperate not to appear anti-Islamic, as happened some years ago), we should fight to protect his right to free speech in the same way as we would if he had been a secularist or left-winger who had burnt a Bible or an American flag’ (tinyurl.com/bdebukkd).

Theory at odds with reality?

Earlier in 2023 an American Tennessee pastor live-streamed a book-burning event urging his flock to throw their Harry Potter and Twilight copies into a bonfire. Because why? Because, he said, ‘IT’S WITCHCRAFT 100 PERCENT! All your Twilight books and movies. That mess is full of spells, demonism, shape-shifting and occultism. Stop allowing demonic influences into your home’. Does he know it’s 2023 not 1933? Or perhaps he thinks it’s 1633.

Whatever the literary merits, or otherwise, of J K Rowling’s works – Harry Potter has sold over 500 million copies since 1997– in an example that modern heresy will still get you burned at the stake, metaphorically, Rowling’s defence of biological women has seen her banned from events celebrating her own books and films. The three main actors whose careers were kickstarted in the Potter film series have been vocal in condemning her.

Not much support for Voltaire’s ‘I don’t agree with what you say but I will defend with my life your right to say it’ there. Nothing is free under capitalism but free speech increasingly comes at a price.

‘Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past’. In George Orwell’s 1984 the protagonist Winston Smith is employed in the Ministry of Truth’s Records Department. Here he altered historical newspapers and photographs to concur with whatever the Party line was at the time. The removal of ‘unpersons’ was often carried out in this manner in the Soviet Union.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union statues of Lenin were systematically removed from the state the Soviets had previously controlled. Understandable if you’ve been subject to repression for many years but the removal of literary figures seems churlish.

As part of its de-Russification, Ukraine has been removing monuments to Alexander Pushkin the Russian poet, playwright, and novelist, thought to be the greatest Russian poet and founder of modern Russian literature.

A few years back Iran was, allegedly, (the report comes from the American-supported Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty) considering removing Persian astronomer, mathematician and poet Omar Khayyam from its education curriculum. Changes were because ‘Officials believe that in order to attract the younger generation they must increase the intensity of their religious and ideological propaganda in schools. They think that a large proportion of young people are turning away from religion and government ideology because of the weakness of propaganda in the education system and the mass media’. Shades of Goebbels?

When William Caxton introduced the printing press into England in 1476 he would have been unaware of the law of unintended consequences. Pity that so many are now experiencing them.

Dave Coggan

The Gulf: one year later (1992)

From the January 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

With the dust from Kuwait's burnt oil-wells barely settled, the race is on for UK companies to beat their rivals back into the Gulf, with rich pickings on offer from reconstructing Kuwait's war-ravaged economy and the return of local dictators to their old playgrounds. And just to show that the pursuit of profit knows no boundaries of race, religion or nation, British companies are again climbing into bed with the “bloodthirsty mullahs" in Iran, as they too seek to rebuild a country laid waste by Iraqi bombs and missiles— also supplied, of course, by US and British companies.

Last May, just three months after the Gulf War finished. US business announced the resumption of its offensive when Al-Ahlia-Gulf Line, bottler of Coca-Cola for the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Oman, commissioned the first modern, high speed multi-packaging machine in the Middle East. According to company general manager Jim Hill, this followed “extensive tests over the past 12 months in the local Dubai market". So even as US bombs fell in neighbouring Kuwait and in Iraq, the sharp suits from Coke were planning their own offensive on the pockets and teeth of Middle Eastern youth.

British companies could not take this sort of thing lying down. The massive participation by Britain in the Gulf War—where it supplied the second largest Allied contingent—was undertaken not for protecting Kuwaiti sovereignty, nor out of particular concern for its oil. British troops were in the Gulf to stop the domino-like internal collapse of Saudi Arabia and the other four states of the Gulf Cooperation Council—Qatar, Bahrain, the UAE and Oman—which could easily have followed an Iraqi victory and a triumphalist Saddam calling on the people of the region to rise up against their corrupt and despotic rulers.

And why this touching concern? Because British trade with the Gulf states is currently worth well over £4 billion a year, according to figures compiled by the Department of Trade and Industry. Last year, as the Gulf crisis was unwinding. British, companies did some £2 billion worth of business with Saudi Arabia alone. So now the British government is anxious that its support for the local dictators during the war results in adequate rewards for the British companies it is there to represent.

The first post-war move came from the Birmingham Chamber of Industry and Commerce, which organised a tour with the DTI of 32 British companies to Saudi Arabia, which returned in triumph with over £3.25 million in confirmed orders. “This was the most successful mission in 25 years of overseas promotion work,” Birmingham Chamber of Commerce leader Mike Turner proudly announced. A vast amount of restocking was taking place in the parts of the kingdom most affected by the war, a process being exaggerated as Saudi businessmen pump supplies into Kuwait, said Mr Turner. Interestingly, he also reported that members of the Kuwaiti elite, unimpressed by the money making opportunities in their shell-shocked native land, were to be seen wandering neighbouring states transacting all sorts of business there. Mr Turner’s advice to recession-struck companies in the UK was to visit the region in person—"the rewards are there for companies taking the trouble”.

Business interests

The government was not slow in taking up his suggestion. Whatever accusations have been laid against the DTI for “inaction" during the domestic recession, the same cannot be said for the way it sprang forward as the champion of British business interests in the Middle East, loudly announcing a Britain in the Gulf 92 exhibition to be held in Dubai at the end of April.

Any interested readers—and particularly those about to lose their homes through mortgage or rent arrears—should apply by the end of this month at the latest to take advantage of the very generous level of support being offered by the DTI. “Eligible British companies will recieve a 50 percent subsidy on the cost of a standard, 15 square metre stand”, proclaims the DTI's promotional literature. "This will include company name, carpet, flower arrangements, furniture (1 table. 3 chairs) and stand cleaning"—the latter presumably undertaken at competitive rates by some of the tens of thousands of Palestinians or other "foreign” workers expelled by the Kuwaiti leadership since its return from a heroic exile. In addition, the DTI offers a "subvention” (not a subsidy, you understand) to cover one third of the not inconsiderable costs of up to two representatives per company.

"In the aftermath of the Gulf War, Anglo-Gulf relations have never been better", enthuses Britain in the Gulf 92 News. "The DTI attaches the highest importance to sustaining and enhancing the level of British trade with the six countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council”. And it is not only the DTI which is involved in pushing British business in the region. “The campaign began in December and includes reports and special programmes through the BBC Arabic Service and the Central Office of Information". So much for BBC's lofty claims to "independence”—“Nation Shall Sell Unto Nation" should perhaps be its motto in the Middle East.

The Gulf War victory by the US and its allies has ensured that Dubai remains a safe place for UK business: "The pro-business policies of the government arc reflected in the liberal regulatory environments which include no taxation on profits or incomes, nor foreign exchange controls”, says the DTI. The good citizens of Dubai earned the undying respect of the DTI by ignoring the crisis enveloping the region last year and buying 13 percent more from the UK, bringing total exports to the UAE as a whole to £R600 million in 1990.

International Conferences and Exhibitions Ltd, which is jointly arranging the Gulf 92 exhibition with the DTI, was the only exhibition organiser in Dubai to carry out its programme of events during the Gulf crisis. And the response of a grateful Dubai business class to having their skins saved by British tanks, was to endow British firms at the Opportunity in the Gulf exhibition—held in Dubai three months after the ending of hostilities—with a further £20 million worth of orders, with the same amount again anticipated for the near future.

Gulf elites

And business opportunities in the region now extend much further that the basic construction, power and transport contracts of yore, argues the DTI. The Gulf elite clearly feels secure enough to enjoy the better things in life again:

The high level of government expenditure is fuelling a boom in private sector investment, reflected in a spate of new high rise office developments, five star hotels, apartment blocks, sports clubs, shopping malls and luxury villas, all of which require a full range of luxury fittings.

It also generates the need for a whole lot more services essential to the well-being of redundant oil workers, refugees and displaced peoples throughout the region—things like "printing, advertising and financial expertise”.The children of the rich are also back to unrestrained consumption, it would seem, with consumer spending being "stimulated to record levels on items such as clothing, domestic appliances, cars, food and drink, jewellery, sports equipment and overseas travel”.

A list of companies so far enlisted for the DTI's Gulf 92 extravaganza tells its own story. Starlite Chandeliers, for example, is exhibiting a range of crystal chandeliers and light fittings, while Gainsborough Silver Collections will be displaying "a selection of pieces from its comprehensive range of silver plated tableware”. The list goes on to include limousine converters and Moores of London's "corporate jewellery in solid silver and gold plate", and so on.

Finally, what of the Iranian connection?

The carefully planned visitor promotion campaign for the Britain in the Gulf 92 exhibition will cover the six Gulf Cooperation Council states and also extend to Iran, a country with which Dubai has close trading ties.

Could this be the same country the British government sanctimoniously severed diplomatic ties with after its leader issued a death threat against Salman Rushdie which has still not been withdrawn? Yes indeed, and here is the reason:

In addition to the massive rebuilding programme planned for Kuwait, reconstruction schemes in neighbouring Iran, only 40 minutes flight from Dubai, are also arousing unprecedented interest on the part of UK exporters.

So if the government starts to backpedal on its stance against Iranian state terrorism—by banning demonstrations by Rushdie supporters, for example, which it actually did in November—you will know the reason why.

Andrew Thomas

Dreams and Nightmares (2015)

Book Review from the March 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

David Goodhart: The British Dream: Successes and Failures of Post-War Immigration. Atlantic £9.99

This is a real mixed bag of a book, a curate’s egg as you might say. It combines some interesting observations about migration with some rather unconvincing arguments.

Goodhart points out that many of the outcomes of immigration to Britain were unplanned and not those envisaged; but this after all is what happens with much government legislation under capitalism. The Salman Rushdie affair of 1989, arising from the publication of his novel The Satanic Verses, led to a boost in the authority of Muslim leaders in Britain, and ‘began to mark out Muslims as a special, and in some ways especially problematic, minority’. Satellite television has played an important role in slowing down the integration of immigrants into mainstream British culture, as it enabled people to watch news and soaps from ‘back home’ (Turkey, for instance) rather than the BBC.

Goodhart sees himself as a Labour-supporting ‘progressive’ but as one impressed by Conservative politician David Willetts’ claim that cultural diversity undermines the legitimacy of a universal welfare state. This just illustrates how little difference there is between Labour and Tory policies, and it is also part of the current attack on benefits for those at the bottom of the pile. He observes that forty percent of ethnic minority Britons (not all of whom are immigrants, of course) are poor but he has little idea of the capitalist framework within which migration and the struggle for jobs and housing occur. He refers quite often to ‘the elite’, but this seems to mean the political and media establishment rather than the capitalist class. Moreover, last year’s Sunday Times Rich List featured nine immigrant individuals or families in its top twelve, but the extent of inequality gets almost no mention here.

The two biggest sets of arrivals in the last decade are Poles and Somalis, neither of whom Goodhart regards as ‘model immigrants’ (which presumably would mean causing no problems and producing plenty of profits for the owners of industry). The Poles are mostly hard workers but (though no real evidence for this is provided) have helped to drive down wages for the unskilled. Moreover they ‘mainly have a guest worker mentality and many have no particular interest in joining British society’. As for Somalis, they are highly dependent on welfare, and as a group have retreated into themselves. So refusing to integrate (whatever that might mean exactly) is seen as a major problem. Perhaps, if they lived in grand mansions in some posh part of London and consequently had little contact with the average worker, that kind of non-integration would be acceptable.

Paul Bennett

Rear View: Censorship (2018)

The Rear View Column from the November 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

Censorship

The banning of books by governments is a form of censorship which took place in the Roman Empire and continues to this day. ‘No book, it seems, is too substantive or too insignificant to be banned in Kuwait. Recent targets of the government’s literary censors include an encyclopedia with a picture of Michelangelo’s David and a Disney version of The Little Mermaid.  David had no fig leaf, and the mermaid, alas, wore half a bikini. ‘There are no hijab-wearing mermaids’ said Shamayel al-Sharikh, a Kuwaiti women’s activist. ‘The powers that be thought her dress was promiscuous. It’s humiliating.’ . . .  Responding to the demands of a growing conservative bloc in Parliament, the government is increasingly banning books. In August, the government acknowledged that it had banned 4,390 books since 2014, hundreds of them this year, including many works of literature that had once been considered untouchable, setting off street demonstrations and online protests’ (nytimes.com, 1 October).

No to no platform

Socialists, by contrast, oppose any form of censorship. We have always been prepared to give opponents of socialism a chance to express their views from our platform. This is because we are convinced that our views are right and that this will emerge from full and free debate — and if we are wrong we want to know, so that we can stop wasting our time. Censorship, whether through the legalised violence of the state or that of self-appointed political and/or religious guardians is anti-socialist and anti-working class and must be exposed whenever it rears its ugly head. No view (not even religion) should be exempt from being criticised. The main case against censorship is that it considers that people are too ignorant to decide for themselves and so must be protected from hearing certain views. All censors, actual or would-be, consider themselves a cut above the rest. They are not corrupted by reading De Sade’s The 120 Days of Sodom but their servants would be. They are not affected by reading anti-Christian or anti-Muslim writings – Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses is viewed in this way by many faithful – but their followers would be. They are not affected by rants of the Left or Right but other, less enlightened people would be.

Corrupted by socialism?

The Marquis de Sade died over 200 years ago in an insane asylum, yet much of what he had to say remains relevant today. He championed democracy, was opposed to every form of punishment (‘it is far simpler to hang men than to find out why we condemn them’), saw the class-divided nature of society and sided with ‘those who can only get a living by their labour and sweat.’ Indeed, Geoffrey Gorer in The Revolutionary Ideas of the Marquis De Sade (1964) points out that Sade stood in opposition to contemporary philosophers for both his ‘complete and continual denial of the right to property,’ and for viewing the struggle in late 18th century French society as being not between ‘the Crown, the bourgeoisie, the aristocracy or the clergy, or sectional interests of any of these against one another’, but rather all of these ‘more or less united against the proletariat.’ Gorer thus argued, ‘he can with some justice be called the first reasoned socialist.’

End censorship

The Ayatollah Khomeini called in 1989 upon all good Muslims to kill Salman Rushdie for writing The Satanic Verses, a novel with a dream sequence in which the prophet Mohammed indulges in a few last temptations of his own. This fatwa resulted in numerous killings, attempted killings, bombings and book burnings. The Communist Manifesto was banned by Tsarist Russia and Nazi Germany. Along with volumes of Capital, copies were burnt openly in Berlin on 10 May 1933 by students from the Wilhelm Humboldt University, all of them members of right-wing student organisations,  and watched by some 70,000 people. Ironically, it was Marx’s friend, the poet Heinrich Heine, who wrote some one hundred and ten years earlier ‘where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings’ (Almasor: A Tragedy, 1823, as translated in True Religion, 2003, by Graham Ward). By contrast, ‘…communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!’ (The Communist Manifesto, Marx & Engels, 1848).

The religious mentality (1989)

From the March 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of spiritless conditions. It is the opium of the people. (Marx, Introduction to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law)

These are embarrassing times for the religious opium addicts who want to uphold their ideas in the company of rational people. Last year saw thousands of religious Americans ranting and raving because cinemas showed The Last Temptation of Christ. Christ on the cross is shown fantasising about having sex with Mary. The Christians screamed blasphemy: our Lord would descend to no such vulgar antics in the course of crucifixion: he was human, but he wasn't that human. The Bishop of Durham shuffled around hoping that his nutcase followers would get off the TV screens and back on their knees where they belonged. Leave the intellectualising to Bishops who know how to square circles. But the self-appointed censors were the real Christians; they knew that in the New Testament Christ says that anyone who doubts him will face eternal damnation. Still, at least the crazy Christians did not want to kill the film's director—just making him mute would have suited their Christian consciences.

Crazy Muslim consciences are not so easily satisfied. The Ayatollah Khomeini has called upon all good Muslims to kill Salman Rushdie for writing The Satanic Verses, a novel with a dream sequence in which the prophet Mohammed indulges in a few last temptations of his own. Copies of the work have been publically burned by Muslims in Bradford.

Let us not beat about any religious bushes on these book  burnings: they are the acts of modern Nazis who think that ideas can be destroyed by fire, Max Madden, the Labour MP for Bradford, motivated both by a cynical quest for the local Asian vote as well as some sincere but half-baked anti-racist sentiments, has called for an extension of the blasphemy law to include Islam. In short, it would be illegal (punishable by fines and imprisonment) to speak or write in ways which give offence to Muslim irrationalists, just as it currently is in relation to Christian irrationalists. In this wholly undemocratic enterprise Madden has been supported by other Labour MPs, including Bernie Grant. Madden even went so far as to state on BBC Radio Two that any book likely to cause offence to Muslims should be published only if they were granted by the publishers a right of reply. One can only speculate as to which particular guardians of the absolute Truth of Islam would be granted this right for, as Madden must surely know, there are several factions of the religion, each bitterly opposed to the others.

The Rushdie matter has highlighted the basic issue in relation to religion. It is not, as secularists have rather tiresomely contended for decades, about whether god exists. Scientific thinkers are hardly likely to waste time arguing about an invisible entity which demands faith as the proof of its existence. Does god exist? Do fairies live at the bottom of my garden? Is Elvis Presley alive? Let those who can define these supernatural phenomena offer proof. Religious thinkers have not tended to be bothered with scientific investigations to establish proof; faith will do nicely. The issue is not what they believe, but that they believe. Believing is what you do when you don't know, and religious belief is certainly based on ignorance of what there is to be known. The religious mentality is one which substitutes what is believable for what is scientifically knowable.

With his or her pack of beliefs, the religious individual looks at the world, embracing that which reinforces the beliefs, retreating from experience which conflicts with them. New knowledge, untried feelings, novel perspectives must be first mistrusted, then banned. Nothing must interfere with the dogma. If Christians really believe that Christ lived and was a pure and wonderful person, then they would have the confidence to withstand a film which says otherwise. But dogmatism is fragile. It is upheld by denying all other images than those which reinforce it. The Ayatollah's assassination call, as well as being a cynical political tactic to distract his war-weary subjects (some of whom might just be thinking about assassinating him and others in the theocratic mullah elite), is also a sign of a lack of confidence. It is the uncertainty which all dogmatists always feel and always will feel: it was lack of assurance which led Christ to state that all doubters would go to Hell and Lenin, at the Tenth Bolshevik Congress in 1921, to say that those who did not follow the leadership were state enemies.

When Muslims in Britain petitioned the Ayatollah about Rushdie they were testifying that their beliefs were under threat by truths they could not handle. Polite and embarrassed liberal Muslims have said that the Ayatollah does not represent real Islam. Maybe he does not (on the basis of Sura 42 verse 35 of the Koran, governments established by coups are said to be sinful), but whether one old Iranian tyrant is a good Muslim is not the point. To be a good Muslim is to possess a religious outlook; to be religious is to offend against the most elementary requirements of reasonable thought. And a society inhabited by unreasonable workers is one which is safe for the minority who prey on ignorance.

Marx, as well as referring to religion as "the opium of the people", called it "The self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet found himself or has already lost himself again". The religious mentality exists in those workers who have not yet discovered the essential, exhilarating fact that we are the gods. We must make the future out of the material conditions which surround us: gods, prophets, bishops and mullahs are the illusory masters who people invent to tower over them. The socialist transformation of society will banish the capitalists from the earth and the gods from the skies—or to be accurate from the minds of men and women, where they have exercised their pernicious fantasies for too long. Those who choose to believe in powers beyond will be free to do so in a socialist society. Indeed, without the state to adopt this or that religious dogma as the official one, religious believers will be freer than they are now. Freer, but never free to tell others what to do. It will take more than a divine injunction from a white-beared guru to tell socialists what we can think, say or write.

SC