Chess and politics (1986)

From the July 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Chess, which has been played for several centuries, is now a big-money, nationalistic sport just like World Cup football. Variations of the game existed in India and China nearly fourteen hundred years ago. Persian manuscripts dated about 600 AD refer to the game, and board games resembling chess have been found in Egyptian tombs over 3,000 years old.

In pre-capitalist times chess met disapproval and was even banned by the Christian and Islamic religions because it was used for gambling. Gamesmanship, hustling and patronage seemed to have emerged in the 15th century with the progression of the game to its present form, as modifications to the moves of some of the pieces made it more interesting and more widely played. Money could be made for the top players from gambling and sponsorship by the rich and influential. Such was the competition and jealousy aroused by the prospects of fame and fortune that Paolo Boi and Giovanni Leonardo were poisoned by rivals in the 16th century.

Wilhelm Steinitz was the first player to become recognised as "world champion" after he defeated Anderssen in 1866 although before this a number of players had been unofficially recognised as the strongest players of their time. Although there has never been the rigid distinction between amateur and professional players that exists in other sports, chess prior to the 1860s had been dominated by men with private incomes as the time demanded for tournament participation effectively excluded workers. The development of chess clocks to time the moves, making the games of reasonable length, and properly arranged tournaments enabled professional players, without private income or sponsors, to compete for prize money.

When spectators were charged half a guinea (52½p) entrance fee in 1876 to see Steinitz play Blackburne at the West End Chess Club, London The Chessplayer's Chronicle was outraged: "The thoroughly mercenary spirit in which this latest exhibition of professionalism was conducted throughout has heartily disgusted all true chessplayers." (Hartson. W 1985 The Kings of Chess, Pavilion Books, London)

The chess establishment was shaken again in 1890 when Steinitz defended his world title against Isidor Gunsberg and agreed that the winner should receive two thirds and the loser one third of the prize money put up by backers instead of the winner taking all. Nevertheless, Steinitz was unable to make a satisfactory living from the game and when asked why he had competed in the taxing 1898 Cologne tournament when over 60 years of age, he replied: "I can spare the fame but not the prize money".

The next world champion Emanuel Lasker, who defeated Steinitz in 1894, was determined not to suffer the poverty of his predecessor and insisted on a higher remuneration for his appearances in tournaments and exhibition games. But Lasker failed to improve the financial circumstances of his fellow chess professionals. Karl Schlechter, the gifted Viennese player who had been strong enough to hold Lasker to a drawn world title match in 1910, died of pneumonia brought about by malnutrition in 1918 and Akiba Rubinstein, winner of 21 major tournaments, ended his career in poverty.

In common with most other sports, the history of chess is one of struggle both for the establishment of the game and for the players until modern methods of communication, and television in particular, reached audiences of millions. Chess "superstars" emerged, able to earn considerable sums of money from their playing abilities. But, also in common with most other sports, chess became a political weapon marked by bitter nationalistic rivalry.

Alexander Alekhine, world champion 1927-35 and 1937-1946, proved a useful tool in the hands of the Nazis. Between 1941 and 1943 he played in a series of tournaments in Nazi-occupied countries and in 1941 wrote a series of articles entitled "Jewish and Aryan Chess" in which he tried to "prove" the superiority of Aryan "attacking" play against Jewish "defensive" methods. Apart from the absurdity of such a racist hypothesis, the first two world champions Steinitz and Lasker were both Jewish Rubinstein, considered by many to have played the most perfect chess ever seen before the first world war, was a Talmudic scholar and ultra-orthodox Jew. In using Alekhine in their propaganda war the Nazis had chosen carefully. Alekhine had joined the Communist Party in his native Russia but later fled the country and denounced Bolshevism. In turn he was denounced and written out of Russian chess history where he had won prizes at St. Petersburg in 1912 and 1914.

Many of the chess Olympiads have been political events in which the interests of the sport took second place. The Munich Olympiad of 1936 was an advertisement for the Nazi regime; Albania refused to play South Africa at Siegen in 1970 and were defaulted 0-4; at Skopje in 1972 Albania refused to play Israel and were scored 0-4; they then withdrew and the entire score was annulled; the Nice Olympiad was a political circus rather than a chess event. Algeria and Iraq refused to play Rhodesia and Tunisia refused to play Israel. The results of these matches were estimated by computer. South Africa withdrew after FIDE (chess's ruling body) decided to expel them and defaulted their last three matches and Rhodesia were also expelled.

The most blatantly political chess event in recent years was the "Against Israel Olympiad" held in Tripoli in 1976 in opposition to the official Olympiad at Haifa. Mike Newman has described how, with a playing strength which could be barely sufficient to reach minor counties' standard in Britain, he played top board for Gambia and achieved a creditable personal score of 8 out of 13, such was the poor playing strength of the 34 competing nations attracted by Libya's payment of all expenses. (Chess vol. 42 pp. 63-64). Chess was encouraged in Russia after 1917 by an organised state programme, in part to discourage excessive drinking among the masses but also to raise the general cultural level, and for use as a political weapon against rival countries outside the Russian empire.

Chess in Russia prospered as a result of state sponsorship and the propaganda war was vigorously (though at times absurdly) pursued. Alekhine and Bogolyubov were praised, denounced for defecting to the West, and later rehabilitated as heroes. Krylenko too fell victim to the purges and was imprisoned and later shot on Stalin's orders for lowering the standard of chess. Even for such a monster as Krylenko the charge was grossly unfair as he had done a great deal to raise the level of chess (even if for the wrong reasons) and, indeed, his name was restored in the anti-Stalinist years when Khrushchev became leader.

The internal politics of FIDE have been governed by expediency; the rules controlling the conditions of the world championship tournaments and the Candidates' tournaments which decide who should play the world champion have been changed time and time again, bowing to political pressures and financial considerations more often that to the interests of the game. At times the pre-match squabbling before the Fischer v Spassky world championship in 1972 bordered in the farcical. And even before then Fischer had vociferously complained about the conditions of the Interzonal tournaments and accused the Russians of cheating in the Candidates' tournaments. Fischer probably had a genuine grievance because the Russians tended to play a large number of brief drawn games against each other and saved their energy for long hard-fought battles against non-Russian players.

The Korchnoi v Karpov matches of 1978 and 1981 were even more farcical: Korchnoi had defected from Russia but his family were refused permission to leave. Tournaments in which Korchnoi appeared were boycotted by the Russians and his name did not appear in their chess publications. Korchnoi accused Karpov of trying to hypnotise him and receiving coded messages in yogurt. Karpov won both matches and, ridiculous as the arguments surrounding the matches seemed, like the Fischer v Spassky match, public interest was aroused. Chess enjoyed a spectacular boom as a result of the publicity.

Chess has become big business: the sale of chess books exceeds that of any other sport; Karpov has become the first chess millionaire; chess sets, chess clocks, score sheets and magazines secure world-wide sales. Capitalism impoverishes our lives; besides enslaving us economically it perverts even our leisure interests in the name of profit. Instead of being a stimulating game played in a spirit of friendliness, chess has been tainted by nationalism, commerce and political rivalry between capitalist states.

Carl Pinel

Greasy Pole: Catching The Eye (2014)

The Greasy Pole Column from the January 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

How many compulsive viewers of Prime Minister's Questions have noticed that there is one MP who is always firmly in the same seat behind David Cameron (perhaps he gets there early to reserve it) and does not take part in the racket of bellows and sneers which signal that the Honourable Members are representing their constituents? Then after each question, before the Prime Minister has had time even to consult the 'briefing' which is painstakingly composed to tell him how to respond to, or avoid, each question, this Member gets to his feet and stays there until the next one is asked when he again stands up, then sits down ...until PMQs comes to an end. The procedure for this event is that backbenchers who have missed out in the ballot to ask a question may try for a supplementary by standing to 'catch the eye' of the Speaker. Is this what motivates this Member? Or are his trousers too tight? Does he suffer from cramp? Is he trying to get a clearer view of Balls and Miliband?

Eton

The Conservative Party Member of Parliament for South West Bedfordshire is Andrew Edmund Armstrong Selous, who went to Eton (although his response to a Guardian survey of his educational background was that he would 'prefer not to reveal' that detail) then Oxford for a degree in Industry and Trade so that he was ready to become a director of the family firm and an insurance underwriter. From that it was almost natural to try for a place in Parliament but first Selous had to prove himself at an unconquerable Labour seat such as Sunderland North where in 1997 his vote was 6,370 while the Labour incumbent got 26,067. In 2001 he won South West Bedfordshire; his majority was a mere 776 but those were hard times for the Tories, with Tony Blair and his street-corner grin and verbiage seemingly threatening us with Labour rule into the foreseeable future.

Sleep-Outs

In opposition Selous spent some time as a Whip until in 2006 he connected himself to a wider horizon as Shadow Minister for Work and Pensions and then, when Cameron ushered in his rag-bag of a Coalition, a 'proper' job nearer the sharp end of power as Parliamentary Private Secretary to Iain Duncan Smith. That was when IDS had been transmogrified into a kind of crusader against the scourge of poverty with an ambition to re-adjust the entire 'benefits' system so as to present it as a lasting remedy to that granitic problem. In tune with this fantasy Selous burrowed into local organisations such as the Conservative Christian Fellowship, the South Bedfordshire Community Family Trust, Leighton Buzzard Parkinson's Disease Society. He is reported to have 'taken part' – although exactly what this demanded of him is not clear – in annual sponsored sleep-outs to publicise the fact that there are some people who are too poor to have somewhere to sleep. For one such charity – Watford New Hope – he did not sleep out but did some time in the dry and warmth of their workshop where wood and furniture are re-cycled.

RBS

Whatever motive may have driven Selous in his persistent efforts to catch the Speaker's eye it cannot have been an urge to give to the Commons a usefully critical view of what property society does to its people. A typical example of his stifling attitudes is that he supported the British attack on Iraq on the inadequate, quickly discredited, argument that Blair's old friend and Attorney General Lord Goldsmith had '. . . clearly advised the Government that the military campaign in Iraq is clearly legal'. He is listed as being strongly supportive of the replacement for the mass-destroyer Trident submarine (one of which is said to be able to kill and lay waste on the scale of the entire bomb loads dropped in the last war). In calmer waters he opposes equal rights for gay people and was against the ban on hunting. In June he spoke up for the Royal Bank of Scotland, so recently a prime example of the profit motive rampant. Selous now thinks that the RBS '...has gone from a bad bank under the last government to a normal bank now and it has actually made a profit of over £800 million in the first three months of this year'. What he did not say was that this bank, as part of being 'normal', is now planning to re-commence paying dividends but also imposing a fresh programme of 'savings' which will entail the sacking of thousands of employees who will thus be forced to face some of the most demanding aspects of their reliance on surviving through the sale of their labour power – and therefore on IDS and what may remain of his ministry's 'benefits'.

Lean English

If Selous was looking for a blast of national publicity to help his career it recently arrived, although in an unintended way. And when it did it illustrated that there are limits to his charitable urges. In June George Osborne held forth to the Commons on the potentially rich theme of immigrants who are also benefit claimants, saying that it was a 'reasonable requirement that anyone on benefits would have a basic grasp of English... From now on, if claimants don't speak English, they will have to attend language courses until they do'. Selous was quick join in this but his contribution was deficient in one crucial respect. He tweeted that he would '...strongly support the loss of benefits unless claimants lean English'. The mis-spelling was greeted by a flood of derisive responses, typical of which was 'Were did you lean to rite so good?' which compelled a panicky Selous to delete the tweet. The episode served to emphasise the assessment of him by politics.co.uk under The Worst MP On Twitter that his stuff is 'meaningless, regurgitated of the highest order...no real engagement with constituents...never actually speaks to them...' If Selous does ever succeed in catching the Speaker's eye it is very unlikely that he will grasp the opportunity to offer anything original or penetrative. It would be in his interests if, when the other Members are in full cry, he were to duck down behind the seats in the Commons rather than expose himself.

Ivan

Eysenck at LSE: Socialist Defends Free Speech (1973)

From the June 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

On Tuesday 8 May Professor Eysenck, who holds certain controversial views about the intellectual abilities of American negroes, was forcibly prevented from expressing his views at the London School of Economics. Responsibility for this political censorship was claimed by a Maoist group. Our comrade Dom Zucconi, an LSE student expressed Socialist opposition to this suppression of free speech, as the following report from the Daily Telegraph of 11 May shows:

“Tuesday's incident was last night described as a "disgrace and discredit to socialism and a brief for fascism" by Mr. D. Zucconi, a student who described himself as a member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain when he proposed the motion to apologise to Professor Eysenck.

'How does one best deal with fascism? With the butt-end of a rifle or with ideas? The political process is a battle of ideas and, unless you can rebut these concepts, you are lost', he said.

‘In preventing him from speaking, you are resorting to the same tactics you accused fascists of using', he told the meeting to loud cheers.”

For the record, the precise wording of the motion proposed by Comrade Zucconi and carried by a large majority at the LSE Union meeting was:

“This Union strongly deprecates the conduct of those present at Professor Eysenck's meeting on Tuesday who appointed themselves to decide that nobody should be allowed to hear a point of view with which they disagreed. We place on record that only in the healthy atmosphere of free expression can ideas be debated, false ideas debunked and sound ideas developed. We therefore apologise to Professor Eysenck for the action of a minority in preventing him from being heard.”

The Socialist Party of course has always practised the principles expressed in this resolution. 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 legalized violence of the capitalist State as enforced by the Courts or by the violence of self-appointed political guardians as displayed at the LSE, is anti-socialist and anti-working class and must be exposed whenever it rears its ugly head.

THE IMPORTANCE OF FREE SPEECH    

Statement by World Socialist Society at LSE

As members of the Socialist Party of Great Britain we are opposed to all censorship, whether it be through the legalized violence as enforced by the courts of the capitalist state or by the violence of self-appointed moral or political guardians. Let there be no misunderstanding of the meaning of what happened here last week. A body of people decided that the rest of us should not be allowed to hear certain views they considered objectionable; they took it upon themselves to use physical violence to achieve this end — and succeeded. In other words, they successfully censored what we should hear. But will they stop here? Will they now proceed to prevent Eysenck expressing his views in writing? And, after that, will they burn the books he has already written? And what are the prospects for those of us who disagree with them if ever they win control of political power? Will we be shot or just put into concentration camps? These are serious questions since they are the logical extensions of the policy pursued by last week's political censors.

There is a further point: all censorship — especially censorship of this kind, allegedly exercised for the benefit of the working class — is an insult to the intelligence of ordinary working men and women since it implies that they cannot be trusted to hear or read certain ideas and are incapable of making rational judgements on the merits of rival ideas. Those who favour censorship always assume that they are somehow superior to ordinary people and have the right to decide what ordinary people should or should not hear. Censorship is an elitist policy — but those who favour it here at the LSE such as the Maoists and Trotskyists have nothing but contempt for the ability of the working class to understand Socialist ideas and to establish Socialism by and for themselves.

The classic case for allowing unpopular minority views to be expressed — including those with openly anti-democratic ones like fascism AND Maoism — has never been refuted: if they are wrong then their case will perish in the course of free, rational discussion; if they are right then censorship delays discovering this. As our resolution passed by the Union last Thursday puts: "only in the healthy atmosphere of free expression can ideas be debated, false ideas debunked and sound ideas developed". We are always prepared at all our meetings to give opponents of Socialism a chance to express their views. For we are convinced that our views are right and that this will be shown in any free debate — and if we are wrong we wish to know so that we can stop wasting our time. WE STATE unambiguously that ALL censorship is anti-Socialist and anti-working class.

Last week's incident has done one thing, if nothing else. It has brought into the open those who favour censorship of political ideas: the Maoists and Trotskyists. They have placed themselves in the same camp as the fascists themselves and stand exposed as the dangerous enemies of the working class prostituting the good name of Socialism.

We stand for the common ownership of the means of production, without distinction of race or sex, organised democratically.

Robert Blatchford (1924)

From the February 1924 issue of the Socialist Standard

Robert Blatchford recently resigned his post on the Sunday Chronicle and Sunday Herald. The reason he gave was that he was "tired of all this dirty business of lying about the Labour Party and similar tactics" (Daily Herald, January 7th, 1924). This sounds fine, and it drew from George Lansbury a column of extravagant appreciation, but when one remembers something of Blatchford's career it seems particularly out of place that he, of all men, should be praised for his independence and disinterested enthusiasm for Socialism. He had in his own words "been associated with these papers for seven years," and during those years had reached the point of repudiating most of the views of his youth, including all that he ever held of Socialism. He had shown himself one of the most violent of the stop-at-home fighters who gloried in the knowledge that the workers were butchering each other for the class Blatchford was serving. After selling his "great genius" to the capitalist Press for seven years, Blatchford decides to desert them; curiously, just at the moment when the Labour Party is about to take over the administration; and for this we are expected to honour him!

There are some who charitably ask that Blatchford be forgiven his treachery of the past seven years as a "mistake." Must we then also forgive his even more transparent treachery over the Boer War, when the open Imperialism of the British capitalists was opposed by Lloyd George?

As for his work for Socialism, it is as well to remember that it was the Clarion and its editor who reaped all the glory, not Socialism. The activities he organised were "Clarion" clubs and choirs and vans, and, as shown below, he appears to have reaped no small advantage from them. George Lansbury's opinion certainly does not seem to have been shared by one who knew Blatchford well—his brother Montague.

In a letter to David Lowe, reproduced by him in Forward (December 22nd, 1923) Keir Hardie wrote as follows: —

"House of Commons,

"9th August, 1902.

"Dear Davie,

"I am sending you a Manchester Guardian. It is good. When at Halifax recently I spent an evening at a friend's house where Mont. Blatchford was present. The bottle went round, and he came over to say that the C. (Clarion) was about to burst. That Nunquam and Dangle had not spoken, save to wrangle, for weeks. He afterwards saw me home in the wee sma' 'oors. The two able men have quarrelled about the division of the spoil. Each has an income, presumably, all told, of £600 a year. He, M.B., was happy on less than half, but the others had inflated notions of living; the more they got the more they wanted; they no longer wrote for the love of the Cause but purely for what it brought them; the Bounder, when alive, kept things straight with his fine scorn, but now there was no one to intervene, and the meetings of the Board were a series of wrangles over money affairs. All this and more, with much reiteration. He was sick of it, and was going to clear out, and felt sure the whole thing was about to burst . . . " 

"Nunquam," of course, is Robert Blatchford, and "Dangle" is A. M. Thompson, another loyal servant of the employing class who may also be expected to develop a tender conscience now that his erstwhile comrades have become His Majesty's Government.

Edgar Hardcastle

Editorial: Ten Years of Struggle. (1914)

Editorial from the June 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

On the 12th June of this year the Socialist Party completes ten years of effort in the service of the working class. Of course it is mere sentiment to say that therefore the 12th of June is any more important than the 11th, but, after all, sentiment is a very real attribute of the human make-up, and has its uses. So we will indulge it to the extent of calling the day auspicious, if for no better purpose than that of doing a little stock-taking.

It has become a matter of history how a band of stalwarts, weary of struggling with the reactionary and traitorous elements in the S.D.F., and hopeless of being able to place that decrepit organisation on a sound basis, came out of it, and with a few others formed a revolutionary political working-class party.

There were prophets in those days, and the prognostications of those gifted with second sight concerning the period which would elapse before the "new party" went to pieces would make interesting reading now, in view of how it has fared with us and what has happened to them. But the "new party" was born with a strong constitution, and it survived—and even flourished.

The reason for this comes out with startling clearness after ten years of battle. It is simply that it is founded upon fundamental principles.

Ten years have been a sufficient time for these principles to be thoroughly tested, and they have been so tested. They have been tested by the undesirables who came into the Party at its inception, and by those who have crept in since. But as always they have enabled the Party to purge itself clean and healthy. But they have been further tested by the inroads which time has made upon the roll of the founders. For while the membership of the Party is seven times as great as at its formation, the band of founders is sadly reduced in number. Yet our Declaration of Principles has proved, in other hands than those who framed them, a sufficient instrument for their revolutionary purpose. We know therefore that it will suffice to the end.

World War One – lest we forget (2002)

From the August 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

The German invasion of Belgium and Luxembourg in 1914 was of military benefit but a political gamble. It enabled the German armies to flood into France by avoiding the main border defences and it allowed Belgian coal mines and factories to fall into German hands. The political gamble was whether or not this move would bring Britain into the war on the side of France.

For the previous century Britain had remained neutral in European conflicts, preferring to use diplomacy to maintain its top position in the balance of power by setting its capitalist rivals against each other. The British capitalist ruling class had supported Prussian aggression and a united Germany in the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71) and had applauded the formation of a German Empire. However, during the last quarter of the 19th century British capitalists began to realise that Germany was now rapidly replacing the traditional French enemy as their major commercial rival.

The unbridled European scramble for African colonies saw Germany savagely acquire four large areas of that continent. This new swift-growing capitalist society was in desperate need of sources of raw material, markets for their manufactured goods and regions for capital investment and possible emigration. When tremendous mineral wealth was discovered in the independent territory of Transvaal, the anti-British Dutch settlers (Boers) favoured allowing Germany to access these riches. This prompted the voracious British capitalists to embark upon a vicious and ruthless military policy of consolidation in Africa. By destroying, disarming and dispossessing war-like tribes (including the well-organised and disciplined military Zulu nation in 1879), they were then able to concentrate upon annexing the Boer territories of Orange Free State and Transvaal.

The first armed conflict between British and Boer (who were well-armed with German weapons) in 1881 resulted in a British disaster but led later to a far more determined action in 1899-1902 (known as the Boer War, during which 26,000 civilian Boer women and children died in British concentration camps. The eventual British victory assured British capitalists an additional bonanza in wealth and completely foiled the plans of their devastated German rivals. Having staked everything on an industrial society, German capitalists were left in a desperate situation of having no access to the raw materials that were so essential.

The German ruling class now turned their thoughts to the limitless riches that surrounded them in Europe. By expanding their control in all directions Germany could obtain all the resources her industries would ever need and would rocket Germany easily to top spot in the world capitalist league. Plans were made accordingly.

British capitalists were also anxiously aware of the possibility of Germany gaining access to Europe's riches and with the invasion of Belgium in 1914 the great fear was that such a state, with a powerful fleet controlling the Channel ports, could seriously challenge Britain's command of the seas. British capitalism could not allow this to happen.

Non-stop slaughter

So Britain declared war on Germany on 4 August 1914 and had troops in France alongside her allies just in time to face an almighty military onslaught. A massive German army of 1½ million men stormed through Belgium with the objective of reaching and occupying Paris and the Channel ports of Dunkirk and Calais. On the left of the line the British halted the German advance at Ypres where heavy fighting continued through to November. This was the first Battle of Ypres.

In the centre of the line the allies were driven back to the outskirts of Paris where, in September, the Germans were halted at the Marne river. Counter-attacks by the allies pushed the Germans back to the Aisne river by the end of 1914. The front line then stabilised and for 3½ years trenches and massed artillery transformed the war into a virtual interminable siege, extending from Switzerland to the sea.

All along this “Western Front” the names of obscure towns and villages became immortalised as grim reminders of the obscene indifference that exists towards the expendability and suffering of workers in our social system, known as “capitalism”. Young men were shot, bayoneted, gassed, blown to pieces or drowned in water-filled shell craters in their tens of thousands – human sacrifices to the God of Profit and Commercial Greed.

The fighting in capturing, losing and re-capturing a few yards of territory under the most horrific conditions and the great expenditure in effort and explosives plus the unacceptable casualties and loss of life, all became quite acceptable. The only significant movement, which swayed back and forth, was in the centre of the line between Loos and Verdun known as the “Somme Battles”.

Fighting was continuous all along the Western Front but ferocious major battles were unleashed at strategic points. On 22 April 1915 a heavy bombardment signalled another attempted “breakthrough” by the Germans in the second battle of Ypres. Civilians streamed out of the town and headed south. During the afternoon the Germans launched a poisonous gas attack, the first time such a weapon was ever used in warfare. Sixty-thousand allied troops died in this extended battle during which the Germans advanced two miles. This portion of the front was then pounded by artillery shells almost unceasingly for the next two years. The region was reclaimed marshland which was used as pasture. Farmers had been required by law to maintain drainage ditches which, of course, were quickly wrecked. Rains added to the already soggy terrain which eventually became a landscape of foul-smelling mud, peppered with water-filled shell craters. In time this treacherous morass would suck in and engulf men, horses, guns and later even tanks. Every new shell explosion would throw up rotted corpses which would slowly sink from view again.

In the Spring of 1916 the Germans launched a massive attack against the French at Verdun. For four months the battle raged and troops on both sides were massacred. The line held, but to relieve the exhausted defenders the allies mounted an equally massive offensive against the Germans on the Somme (1 July 1916). This first battle of the Somme was aimed at pushing the Germans back on a wide front. A seven-day artillery bombardment was followed by a “creeping barrage”, infantry advancing behind a screen of slowly progressing shell explosions. Constant pressure was applied to the German positions, British tanks appeared for the first time in September 1916. the few tanks became ineffective when this area of irrigation and river systems also turned into a quagmire. Conditions worsened during the winter but the “push” was resumed in the Spring of 1917. Progress was slow and at a huge cost in lives – 600,000 allies were lost for again of about 20 miles.

In April 1917 a British offensive captured some high ground overlooking Ypres, the notorious Vimy Ridge. The same month had the USA declare war on Germany but it would be a year before trained American troops arrived in France.

Life in the trenches after a battle has been described:

“By day, the only signs of life in the 'moonscape' of no-man's land was the hoarse and parched voices of the badly wounded pleading for help which would never arrive and the hawks and carrion crows alighting to gorge upon the many corpses. At dusk hordes of rats, seemingly in their billions, materialised to indulge in feasting upon the dead and the dying who were too weak to fend them off. Bodies were reduced to khaki-clad skeletons within hours.”

On 7 June 1917 the British eliminated another German position that overlooked Ypres. Nineteen mines were exploded in tunnels burrowed beneath the Messines Ridge. This was followed by an artillery barrage from 2,266 guns and howitzers and an infantry attack by 80,000 men. The rim of land was captured at a cost of 1,700 allies lives. This was merely a prelude to the third battle of Ypres, described even today as one of the most squalid bouts of butchery in the history of warfare – now more generally known as “Passchendaele”.

On 31 July 1917 4,000 allied guns pounded German lines for ten days. Four-and-a-half million shell reduced the villages to rubble and then turned the rubble to dust. For four months, mostly in heavy rain and waterlogged conditions, this mindless slaughter continued unabated. In October the Germans unleashed another new weapon for the first time, mustard gas which caused blindness and burns. On 4 November the Canadians captured a mass of shell holes that had once been Passchendaele. The allied line had advanced five miles for the loss of nearly 400,000 allies and at least 200,000. Six months later the Germans had recaptured all the ground the allies had gained since 1914.

On the night of 21 March 1918 the Germans hurled themselves at the British in the centre of the allied line in the second battle of the Somme. For a week the British were forced back but eventually halted the German advance at Amiens. The Germans then launched massive attacks against the French to the right which drove the line back once more to the Marne, where another stubborn resistance held the ferocious German attack.

War-weariness and exhaustion was affecting both sides by this time. The original British regular army had been destroyed in the first few months of the war. Kitchener's volunteer army, comprising those who had so enthusiastically flocked to the recruiting offices in 1914-1915, had been destroyed at the Somme. The British were now scraping the bottom of the barrel to replace the horrific losses. The very young, the old and the unfit were all being dragged in. When fresh American troops joined the final allied offensive which opened on 18 July, the Germans wilted and were rolled back until the final victory on 11 November.

The aftermath

Left behind, marking the position of the Western Front, was a scene of utter destruction. Every landmark had been wiped out and was unrecognisable. But nature healed the man-made wounds of the landscape. Shattered tree stumps threw out leaves and the ground became covered in poppies – a plant that thrives naturally wherever soil is badly disturbed – which became an emblem and trademark for a new “Remembrance” industry. Towns and villages were painstakingly rebuilt and today only the pages of history and the many man-made memorials make the visitor aware of the insane carnage that was acted out in these areas.

Accurate numbers of losses on the Western Front are unknown but, even today, bones and skulls are unearthed by ploughs and ditching machines. Many memorials list names of those “lost without trace”, 55,000 engraved at the Menin Gate, 34,000 at another memorial nearby and so on. These are just the names of British and empire troops and do not include French, Belgian or German losses. Acres of war graves litter France in which those whose remains were found are laid to rest.

Today, in this year of 2002, the land on which these war graves exist has become valuable and the French government have made it known that they intend allowing these grave sites to be used for capitalist development. The thought of bulldozers and construction activity operating upon these plots is abhorrent to many workers who see this as a lack of respect, gratitude, reverence and esteem, etc for those who died for “freedom”. The harsh question should be asked: What respect, gratitude, reverence or esteem did these reluctant and unsuspecting heroes ever have when they lived? A basic understanding of capitalism would indicate that the only freedom workers ever fight for in wars is the freedom for their national, capitalists to do exactly as they wish to make a profit.

Ron Stone

Proper Gander: Screening The Working Class (2014)

The Proper Gander Column from the January 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

Occasionally, TV companies allow programme-makers to bite the hand that feeds them. A recent mouthful was the Royal Television Society Huw Weldon Memorial Lecture Totally Shameless: How TV Portrays The Working Class (BBC4). In this insightful and engaging polemic, Owen Jones explains why it’s become acceptable for television to denigrate the working class.

As the broadcasting industry expanded from the late 50s, new opportunities arose for people from lowlier backgrounds to enter the profession. Consequently, a growing number of TV shows reflected working class experiences, from Galton and Simpson’s edgy sitcoms to gritty dramas like Cathy Come Home and The Spongers. By the mid 80s, the working class had been weakened by the decline of the unions and the rise of individualism. The media and the government started to drum into us that ‘we’re all middle class now, apart from those scrounging chavs’. The popular perception of class has shifted towards being defined by culture, according to a study by polling group Britain Thinks. Someone who listens to Radio 4 and owns a cafetière is ‘middle class’, while someone who reads tabloids and watches soaps is working class.

Worryingly, the term ‘working class’ has often become equated with the derogatory term ‘chav’. Because of this change in the way we see class, and fewer opportunities being available for people from poorer backgrounds to enter the television industry, the traditional blue collar working class has virtually disappeared from our screens. The schedules have become dominated by ‘cops, docs and frocks’, with the ‘docs’ – or documentaries – often being voyeuristic prole-baiting sneerathons. Gypsies, for example, are presented as ‘a strange breed to be prodded through the bars of their cages’. Extreme examples of benefit claimants, such as families with a dozen kids, are paraded as the tips of uncouth, freeloading icebergs. It’s now the norm for television to depict the working class as ugly stereotypes like Vicki Pollard and those chewed up and spat out by The Jeremy Kyle Show.

Jones’ argument usefully illustrates how television mirrors and contributes to the current belittling of the working class. He wants to fight back with a return to programming which reflects working class struggles honestly, and not through the distorting prism of bourgeois ideology. He doesn’t spend long enough discussing how the belief in a ‘middle class’ gives a misleading view of society’s real class structure. However, he rightly prefers to use definitions of class based on ‘wealth and power’, rather than lifestyle. After all, ‘an aristocrat who watches The X Factor is still an aristocrat’.

Mike Foster

The Review Column: Why Students Demonstrate (1968)

The Review Column from the June 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Why Students Demonstrate

As any surviving Suffragette will agree, demonstrators, in their time, are rarely popular—a fact which contains the seeds of its own consolation. Most workers, accepting their lot, are quick to condemn anyone who tries to disturb their apathy with protests drawing their attention away from the television set and onto social problems.

So it is that the students are denounced wholesale, as long haired layabouts who dissipate wildly generous grants in promiscuous sex and punch ups with the police—and their horses.

This, of course, is a maliciously distorted picture. The majority of students scrape by on meagre grants, and have to swot hard for the simple reason that, being workers, they must pass their exams on schedule. Even the small minority who may go in for violent demonstrations are by no means the dirty villains they are made out to be.

It is more than a formality to condemn the violence of some of the demonstrations. There was certainly some inexcusably ugly behaviour from the students when the pro-Smith Tory M.P. Patrick Wall went to speak at Leeds University last month. This sort of activity gets nobody anywhere, although it does arouse sympathy for Wall.

It is not being kind to the students to point out that an inescapable—and useful—feature of youth is its desire to reform the world, confident that it can do better than the mess which, it thinks, its elders are responsible for. At the same time a student has every encouragement to investigate and discuss the world—and under capitalism that means world problems, like nuclear war and poverty.

Perhaps some of the scorn for students springs from the suspicion that they might be thinking, probing and responding more than the ordinary worker in his semi-detached.

But how much cause for concern have they? The demonstrations are at the moment about the wrong issues—about the symptoms of capitalism's malaise instead of its root cause. The real issue, the one worth demonstrating about, is whether we keep capitalism or have a society fit for humans to live in.

The Local Elections

With each successive test of their electoral popularity, the Labour Party falls to undreamt-of depths. The results of last month's local elections almost defy belief; it is impossible to imagine what emergency, what gimmick, would be enough to save them in a general election.

Perhaps we are at a turning point in political history—no less than the break up of a major party of capitalism and a consequent reshaping of the political set-up. It is not surprising that Labour's debacle has come so soon after the triumphs of 1964 and 1966. This has happened before; in 1906, for example, when the Liberals swept in on a landslide on massive promises of reform.

The anarchies of capitalism, its disputes and conflicting interests—and finally the First World War—exposed the Liberal pledges, soured their image and in the end finished them as a political force. What would follow, if a similar fate befell the Labour Party? At the moment there is no sign of a comparable alternative; if none emerges the Tories will be opposed by only fragments—by what remains of the Labour Party, by a few Liberals and Nationalists and, who knows, perhaps by some neo-Nazi M.P.s.

Another major reform party may grow out of the ashes of Labour's defeat, but the experience of this government, if of no other, should have been enough  for the working class. It should teach them that no capitalist party can solve their problems, that capitalism cannot be run in their interest, that this social system smothers and kills the strongest of reformist intentions.

It should be a standing warning against political promises and tricksters, and persuade the workers of the urgency of establishing a new society.

Integration into What?

In the uproar which followed Enoch Powell's odious speech, it was inevitable that certain facts on immigration should be overlooked.

It would be idle to pretend that there no problems connected with a movement of population—within, as well as across, frontiers. But at most the immigrants may aggravate problems in housing, hospitals and schools; they cannot cause those problems because they already exist. Immigration may expose social inadequacies, which can also be uncovered by events like war and slump. And, as usual, the people who face up to the problems and deficiencies of capitalism are the working class; not racialist politicians living in comfort, dreaming of Greek poetry in Belgravia.

We should also not forget that the immigrants themselves may be ignorant of the facts of their situation. They plead for integration; it is pertinent to ask, integration into what? The assimilation of the immigrants would mean that they join the labour market on the same terms as other workers, that they can be legally swindled by the insurance and hire purchase companies on the same sort of agreements as the native born, that they can take on the lifetime debt of a mortgage at the same rates of interest as anyone else.

Their children will be trained, in schools and universities, to take their place as workers alongside others, They will be subjected to the same degrading exploitation. the same poverty, the same waste of their lives in servitude to the master class.

Immigrants have as much to learn as the rest. As they become integrated into the working class they must realise their social situation. and that no worker can escape the repressions of capitalism.

They must also come to understand what has to be done about it.

Workers disunited (1988)

Editorial from the July 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Who are the workers? People who go to work, of course: those who have no alternative and must work in order to live. The necessity is created by the constitution of capitalist society. There is an owning class, to whom all the means of producing and distributing wealth belong. The fundamental fact of ownership establishes the pattern of life for the remaining nine-tenths of the population. They have to sell their labour-power for wages, on an exploitative basis: to produce surplus-value—rent, interest and profit—for the owners. Outside the minority who live by ownership, we are in the working class, and consequently in the struggle against the capitalist class.

The belief that a lot of workers are not in it because they belong to a "middle" class is a very useful one to capitalism because it is divisive. It was institutionalised in an Act of Parliament in 1864 which commanded the running of workmen's trains. These continued until the second world war. They were early-morning trains whose passengers paid approximately one-third of the normal day fare. The purpose was to hold down wages in industry and the distributive trades, and there was a long list of unskilled and semi-skilled occupations eligible for workmen's tickets. Clerical workers were excluded, and the tickets were not issued from stations further out on the lines. Thus clerks were separated from "workers" and could go to work later. They could also look down on them because workmen's trains were slow, crowded and dirty; and could live in outer suburban districts while the labouring sections were held in the inner cities.

Nevertheless, clerks and the "professionals" are all in the working class. They are as insecure and as vulnerable to the problems imposed by capitalism as all the others in the non-owning nine-tenths; very often, their respectability is a nastier kind of poverty. To realise the solution of these problems, their first and greatest breakthrough must be to [recognise] the fact of their class position. We live in a world of Them and Us, but it is necessary to identify Us.

Does this mean that the labouring poor have got to embrace workers who think they are middle-class as their brothers and sisters? The unskilled and semi-skilled in general know they are working-class, because they are continually told so; what they need to learn is some implications of it. Principally, it is for the "superior" workers to face up to and act upon. They must grasp that they are not superior, that the middle-class is a myth, that all those who work for wages or salaries are in the same boat. When they understand this, they can stop insulting other members of their class—in particular, by romanticising versions of working-class life which are disguised imputations of inferiority.

The left is guilty on this count. Most of those who pronounce the word "worker" with veneration don't think they themselves are workers; they are the educated vanguard who choose to get among the workers. If that conception were true, a person would be much more among workers in a football crowd than in a left-wing gathering. But whose doctrine is this? It reasserts the divide-and-rule outlook and the contemptuous stance of capitalism. The capitalist says the workers are stupid and vicious. He wants this repeated by one section of workers against another; his position depends in it. The reply of class-conscious workers is that they are educated in a sense he can never be, and that their—our—capability will get rid of the wealth-based arrogance of his kind.

Class awareness is the all-important condition for bringing a new world into being. It arises from existence under capitalism; workers become all the time more responsive to their environment, the framework of which is the wages system. The task of socialists is to give precision to those responses. We judge all claimants to working-class support by their attitude to class. Whoever conceals it or distorts its meaning is acting contrary to the interests of the workers. The apparent divisions between social and occupational groups are shadows cast by the real and irreconcilable division between capitalists and all workers. Class rule can and shall be ended, through the understanding of what class is.

Marx and Spencer (2003)

Book Review from the November 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

The First Darwinian Left. Socialism and Darwinism 1859-1914. By David Stack, New Clarion Press, 2003.

This book is in part a reply to Peter Singer's A Darwinian Left: Politics, Evolution and Co-operation (reviewed in the April 2001 Socialist Standard) in which he agreed with those who have turned Darwinism into a theory of biological determinism and pleaded for reformists to become biological determinists too.

Stack points out that, when Darwin's theory was first making headway at the end of the 19th century, amongst its prominent advocates were Socialists and leftwing reformists. Only, what they saw in Darwin was not a theory of biological determinism but a theory of evolution that could also be applied to human society.

Reformists, such as Ramsay MacDonald of the ILP in Britain and Edouard Bernstein in Germany, saw Darwin's theory of evolution, when applied to society, as backing their case for a gradual reform of society. According to them, since society was a sort of organism it could not be changed mechanically or forcibly by a political revolution but could only change gradually, organically, through slow evolution. Hence Bernstein's agreement to call the English translation of his 1899 criticism of Marxism, sponsored by MacDonald's ILP in 1909, Evolutionary Socialism. All this is examined in detail by Stack.

But it wasn't just reformists and gradualists who were influenced by the idea that society was an organism and that it, too, evolved. In fact, this did not come from Darwin himself at all but rather, in Britain, from the philosopher Herbert Spencer (1820-1903). The early members of the Socialist Party were influenced by Spencer, as can be seen the volumes of his Principles of Sociology, inherited from an early member, lying unread today on the shelves of our party's library. There were also favourable references to Spencer in the 1910 SPGB pamphlet on religion and in early articles in the Socialist Standard: e.g., the front-page article of the December 1906 issue was entitled "Is Society an Organism?", to which the unequivocal answer was given: "Herbert Spencer and others have so firmly established the fact of the organic nature of Society that one is surprised to find it brought into question".

How did the revolutionaries refute the gradualists' arguments for evolution? Seeing society as an organism, they saw it too as having to survive by adapting to its environment (i.e., to the technological way in which its members got from the rest of nature what they needed to survive). Society in its capitalist form was based on the private ownership of the means of production, while the production process had become socialised or collective. This arrangement was ill-adapted to its environment and so society had to change, or rather had to be changed by the revolutionary action of the working class.

The view that Darwinian evolutionism did not rule out revolutionary change was given a boost, by a passage in his presidential address to the annual conference of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Cape Town in 1905, by one of Darwin's sons, Professor George Darwin:

"The physicist, like the biologist and the historian, watched the effect of slowly varying external conditions; he saw the quality of persistence or stability gradually decaying until it vanished, when there ensued what was called in politics a revolution. These considerations led him to doubt whether biologists had been correct in looking for continuous transformation of species. Judging by analogy, they should rather expect to find slight continuous changes occurring during a long period of time, followed by a somewhat sudden transformation into a new species, or by rapid extinction".

This passage was quoted on a number of occasions in the Socialist Standard. It has to added, though, that Professor Darwin was an astronomer and mathematician not a biologist himself (though he does seem to have anticipated Stephen Jay Gould's theory of 'punctuated equilibrium').

Stack makes the point that pre-WWI Marxism was hardly influenced by the ideas of Hegel. As the pun put it, it owed more to Haeckel (a German Darwinist) than to Hegel. He offers this as a criticism but it is open to question whether Hegel would have contributed anything more, or any less, useful than Spencer. (The only people in England at the time who read Hegel were a group of Idealist philosophers in Oxford.)

Stack's book throws some interesting light on the intellectual life of the period during which our party was founded and which inevitably had some influence on it. One curious omission is any reference to Anton Pannekoek's Marxism and Darwinism that was published in English by Charles Kerr in Chicago in 1908, so falling within the period.

Adam Buick

A Darwinian Left (2001)

Book Review from the April 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Darwinian Left. Politics, Evolution and Co-operation. By Peter Singer, Wiedenfeld & Nicholson.

This book is based on the mistaken assumption that Socialists are not Darwinians. Right from the start, Socialists embraced Darwin's theory of the evolution of species through natural selection, and propagated it in the face of religious obscurantism. Indeed, a number of well-known early Marxists came to socialism through Darwinism, Karl Kautsky in Austria and Edward Aveling in England for instance.

What Singer has done is to accept the hi-jacking of the terms "Darwinian" and "Darwinism" by rightwing ideologists who see both nature and human societies as involving a competitive struggle for survival between selfish individualists. Singer does concede that Socialists accept Darwin's theory, but criticises us for refusing to extend it from nature to human societies. Socialists do indeed say this (after all, Darwin only claimed to be a biologist, not a sociologist) and have been saying it for a hundred years now, ever since we had to confront the "Social Darwinists" of the turn of the last century who used Darwin's theory to justify the rugged individualism of US capitalism during the age of the Robber Barons. Typical of such people today are the editors of the series of which this book is one, "Darwin@LSE".

The argument between Socialists and such people is not about the validity of Darwin's theory of evolution but about the evolved biological nature of humans. Are humans an animal whose biologically-evolved brain allows them to adopt a great variety of different behaviours depending on the social and physical conditions they were brought up in or is there something in their biological makeup that restricts their behaviour within a relatively narrow range which Singer lists as "greed, egoism, personal ambition and envy that a Darwinian might see as inevitable aspects of our nature"?

Certainly, humans can and do exhibit these traits, but the question is: are they innate and are humans capable of behaving in other ways too (answer: yes, of course they are)? Also, the view that the main feature of human biological nature is behavioural versatility and flexibility is no less Darwinian than the opposite view. It is in fact the more accurate, given the evidence accumulated to date by anthropologists, geneticists and neuroscientists.

Although we don't like the term a "Darwinian Left" exists and has done for over a hundred years, arguing that humans are a biologically-evolved species whose behaviour is socially, and no longer biologically, determined and that the societies which groups of humans live in evolve on a quite different basis from that of the evolution of biological species. For a start, it is a key principle of Darwinism that acquired characteristics cannot be inherited; that was the view of Lamarck which Darwinism replaced. When it comes to social and technological evolution, however, Lamarck rides again: acquired characteristics can be passed on, by non-biological means of course; which is why such evolution is much more rapid than Darwinian biological evolution, and why in fact humans have had to adapt to many different types of societies since we first evolved without our biological nature changing hardly at all. Fortunately, that nature includes precisely the capacity to adapt to different social environments.

What Singer is seeking to be is a leftwing biological determinist, a left-wing Social Darwinist. Singer, however, is not a socialist but a reformist—his hobby horse is that animals have abstract "rights" and that this should be enshrined in law—so has no problem seeing himself as the leftwing of an essentially anti-socialist ideology.

Adam Buick

Cooking the Books: ‘I’m Not Going First’ (2014)

The Cooking The Books column from the January 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

’I don’t want UK to be at the forefront of tacking climate change, says Osborne’, ran the headline in the Guardian (28 September) reporting on an interview George Osborne gave just because last year’s Tory conference. His exact words were:

‘I want to provide for the country the cheapest energy possible, consistent with having it reliable, in other words as a steady supply, and consistent with playing our part in an international effort to tackle climate change. But I don’t want to be the only people out there in front of the rest of the world. I certainly think we shouldn’t be further ahead of our partners in Europe.’

Given capitalism, and given his position as a member of the government of one of the many states into which the capitalist world is divided, his logic was impeccable. If Britain alone imposed stricter conditions than its rivals on releasing CO2 from burning fossil fuels into the atmosphere, this would increase the cost of energy to firms producing in Britain and undermine their competitiveness on world markets. The governments of other states follow the same logic. So nothing effective gets done to tackle climate change.

The main source of CO2 emissions is the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas) to power industry and transport and to provide heating and lighting. The trouble is that different states have access to fossil fuels more, or less, than others and each wants ‘the cheapest energy possible.’

So, any international scheme to reduce CO2 emissions that involved, for instance, cutting back on burning coal would disproportionally effect states for which this was the cheapest source of energy. It would increase the cost of production across their whole economy and make its products less competitive. The government of a state in this position will therefore oppose or seek to delay or water down any such scheme.

The same applies to oil. Of the fossil fuels burning gas emits the least CO2. So, a scheme to favour this at the expense of burning coal or oil would favour states with easy and cheap access to gas.

It is these conflicts of interest between capitalist states with different energy supply conditions that is preventing agreement on doing any effective to reduce even the rate of increase of CO2 emission let alone the absolute level.

It is also why no one state is going to unilateral measures to do this. Greens who campaign for their government to be ‘out there in front of the world’ on this are being naïve. Any government which did this would, by undermining the competitiveness of its industries, provoke an economic slowdown with increased unemployment and so likely be voted out of office.

Global warming is a world problem requiring a world solution. This is not going to happen under capitalism. Something may well be attempted, but it will be too little, too late. The only framework within which the problem can be solved is where the Earth’s resources have become the common heritage of all. Then there will be no capitalist vested interests standing in the way nor any market forces working against a solution.

Marxism and Darwinism by Anton Pannekoek (2003)

From the October 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

(The Socialist Party has just re-issued this pamphlet with the following new introduction)

It could be asked why the Socialist Party in 2003 should re-issue a pamphlet on Marxism and Darwinism written almost a century ago by the Dutch socialist, Anton Pannekoek? Written in 1905, it can hardly be expected to add anything new to the subject of Marxism. Also, since then, there has been a vast accumulation of evidence in support of Darwin's evolutionist theories, with the result that they are almost universally accepted. This may be true but the continuing importance of this pamphlet is for different reasons. Pannekoek brought together the works of Darwin and Marx in a way that not only showed how each complemented the other but also provided vital lessons even for today.

What Pannekoek did was to present in a few simply written pages an integrated view of our human past which enables us to see in clear perspective our origins as an animal species and also our social nature which has been a key part of developing society. He shows how these two sides of our lives, the biological and the social, have not been entirely separate. Particularly in the section “Tools, Thought and Language”, he suggests that our physical attributes, the product of biological evolution, once pre-disposed a toolmaking tradition that stimulated abstract thought, language and an ability to develop socially by accumulating our experience from one generation to another. Eventually this dynamic interaction between the physical, mental and social with the natural environment was expressed as culture and then latterly, history.

What is also important in this pamphlet is its awareness of change. This is not just a reminder of the impermanence of things but also of our powers to create a society better able to provide for our needs. It was for this that Pannekoek recognised the importance of a scientific approach. Although he was trained as an astronomer and mathematician and made significant contributions in these fields, he also realised that it was in the study of human relationships and social problems where sound theory should lead most urgently to sound political action. It was this that took him into the fields of Darwinism and Marxism. “Thus, both teachings, the teachings of Darwin and Marx, the one in the domain of the organic world and the other upon the field of human society, raised the theory of evolution to a positive science.” (page 6)

With The Communist Manifesto issued in 1848, The Origin of Species in 1859 and the first volume of Capital in 1867, within a few years, Darwin and Marx placed our understanding of human origins and developing society on a scientific basis. This gave great strength to radical opinion which challenged supernatural ideas of creation and elitist views of history. Henceforward these lost much of their authority and were placed on the defence.

But the use of Darwinism was not only by those who were against creation and the political power of religion. Vulgarised as merely the “survival of the fittest” in the economic competition between individuals “social Darwinism” was used to justify class society. In this view capitalism was depicted as “the natural order of things”.

Pannekoek comments, “Strong as these arguments may appear at first sight they were not hard for socialists to overcome”. In countering these views he cited the social nature of humankind which meant that individuals draw their strength from co-operation with others. Indeed, human development would never have been possible without co-operation. Because it conferred vital survival advantages on the group co-operation can be said to be more in line with our natural inheritance.

This being the case, although strictly speaking, nothing humans can do can be said to be “unnatural”, it is evident that the class relationships of the capitalist system and the competitive economic individualism through which they operate are most destructive of the interests of the whole community. It was Pannekoek's vision of our past and of our future possibilities inspired by the works of Darwin and Marx that still has the utmost relevance to the plight of humanity today. It sets out the political means by which we can bring our social nature and our needs as individuals into harmony with social relationships based on co-operation.

This is why we are re-issuing this classic pamphlet, not simply because it is a historical document but also because it still blends the science of our origins as a species with an understanding of social development, our problems and what needs to be done to solve them. Like many radical writers of his day, Pannekoek was greatly impressed by the development of science in all fields and especially its application in rapid technical innovation. He was optimistic that progress would lead to a great working class movement and political action to create a classless society in which all means of production and resources will be held in common by all people and used solely for needs.

The fact that this is still to be achieved only adds to the urgency of our need to realise Pannekoek's vision. “With the abolition of classes the entire civilised world will become one great productive community . . . Here a new career opens for man; man's rising from the animal world and carrying on his struggle for existence by the use of tools, ceases, and a new chapter of human history begins.”

The pamphlet can be obtained from:The Socialist Party, 52 Clapham High St, London SW4 7UN for £1.30 (postage included). Cheques and postal orders should be made payable to “The Socialist Party of Great Britain”.

Diary of a worker (1980)

From the November 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

Monday

Woke up. Went to work. Came home, had tea. Switched on box, sat down, fell asleep. Woke up, switched off box, went to bed. Couldn't sleep, finally dropped off at 1 o'clock.

Tuesday

Six o'clock alarm went off. Dragged myself out of bed. Missed bus, late for work. Came home, had tea, switched on box, load of rubbish on a Tuesday. Watched a programme called The Voyage of the Beagle which I thought was a Walt Disney adventure story. Turned out to be about someone called Darwin collecting bugs. Fell asleep in the armchair. Woke up, switched off telly and went to bed. Couldn't sleep, so read Penthouse instead.

Wednesday

Prayed for alarm not to go off. Alarm went off. Pulled myself out of bed. Quick cup of tea and some toast. Switched on tranny for time check. Disc jockey gibbering away. Switched off quickly. Dashed out to bus stop, missed bus, late for work. Bit of excitement in work today. The management was holding a presentation for old Dobbs, who was retiring after fifty years service with the firm; gave us a break from the usual boring routine. They presented him with a digital alarm clock, guaranteed for ten years, which means it will probably last longer than he will. Came home, had tea, switched on the television. Catastrophe! Telly wasn't working. Slumped in chair completely stunned. Too numb to gave a catnap, so I decided to read the Sun which I didn't have time to do in the tea break. Finally decided to have an early night. Couldn't sleep, so I decided to try counting sheep, only trouble was that they all seemed to have old Dobb's face.

Thursday

Hoped the alarm was broken. Alarm not broken. Crawled out of bed, had breakfast. Jones next door offered to give me a lift into work every morning in exchange for my giving him petrol money, which meant that I could have an extra half-hour in bed every morning. Sauntered out of house and climbed into car. Car wouldn't start. Climbed back out again. Missed bus, late for work. Got a red-hot tip from a man at work whose cousin drinks in the same pub as a man who works in a stable, so at dinner time I nipped out to the bookie's and stuck a pound each way on Dangling Carrot running in the three-fifteen at Doncaster. Horse got beaten by a nose. Came home, had tea. Television fixed. Switched on, sat down. Good night for television. Fred and Ginger tripping the light fantastic. Fell asleep. Woke up, switched off box, went to bed. Finally dropped off at two.

Friday

Hoped alarm would fail to go off. Alarm failed to go off. Panic. Jumped out of bed, threw on clothes and rushed out. Quick "Good morning" to Jones's bum sticking out of from under bonnet. Missed bus, late for work. Read in the paper today about a chap who had just won three quarters of a million pounds on the football pools. Too much money for one person. They should divide it up into lots of smaller prizes so that more people would have a better chance of winning. Besides, you couldn't be happy with all that money. Look at all those stories you read about how unhappy rich people are.

Got another sure-fire tip today, this time from the canteen lady whose granny plays the ouija board; Pie In the Sky running in the two-thirty at Lingfield. Since I got paid I could afford two pounds each way. Unfortunately, it didn't have a prayer. Came home, had tea. No telly tonight, instead went up the pub. Had a few pints, played darts, had another few points . . . staggered home, went to bed, no problem falling asleep.

Saturday

Fell out of bed before alarm went off. Too ill to have breakfast. Actually managed to catch the bus and was congratulating myself when I remembered that I don't work on a Saturday. Back up the pub tonight. Lively and interesting discussion about whether that last goal was offside at today's match, and then down to the serious business of playing our darts league match. Out of the pub and into the Chinese take-away, then home in time for the late-night double movie bill: Carry on Wage-Slave followed by: The Night of the Blood Sucking Parasite.

Sunday

Best day of the week. Walked round to the pub for a couple of pints before dinner. Afterwards it was such a nice day, I decided to stroll home through the park so that I could work up an appetite for my favourite meal, that traditional English dinner of roast soya beef, and instant Yorkshire pudding. I was crossing the square when I spotted this guy up on a soap-box, so I stopped for a laugh. He was talking about a world without money! What a load of rubbish. I was going to stay and shoot down all his commie arguments but then I realised that it was almost time for Match of the Day so I decided instead to leave with one really witty parting shot, I shouted: "Why don't you go back to Russia?!" Nobody laughed. They were probably all Commies too. Imagine, a world without money! No money to buy all the things you want. Doesn't bear thinking about. Arrive home to see Jones's feet sticking out from beneath his car. He asked me if I was going back round for a few pints later on. Mumbled an excuse about having to something in the house. Actually, I didn't want to admit that I'd spent the last of my pocket money, so I stayed in and watched the telly instead. Some good films showing on a Sunday night, only trouble is that they are on too late. Went to bed. Couldn't sleep. Very restless tonight, kept thinking about that guy and his world without money. Told me that I was a slave! Crazy. I'm free to do what I like. Eventually dropped off to sleep at three . . . at six the alarm went off . . .

Tone.