Editorial: The Working Week (1960)

Editorial from the May 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the nineteenth century trade unions struggled for shorter hours and meant just that. In post-war years, when low unemployment should have made it rather less difficult to press claims, campaigns for shorter hours have become disguised efforts to get more overtime pay.

In 1938 when the standard working week for most industries was 48 or 47 hours the inquiry made by the Ministry of Labour into pay and hours in manufacturing industry showed that the men were on average doing 47.7 hours.

In 1946 and 1947 the standard week was generally reduced to 44 and the hours actually worked averaged 46.6. By 1952 they were back again to the 1938 level of 47.7, and in October, 1959, averaged 48.5.

Now a new movement is bringing the standard week below 44. In the past few months agreements have been reached covering four million workers, the new hours being mostly 42, but in 1959 the numbers of workers on overtime was increasing again after an earlier fall. It remains to be seen, when the shorter hours agreements come into effect, whether the earlier experience will repeat itself and 'shorter hours' in fact become longer.

Editorial: Profits and Wages (1960)

Editorial from the May 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

The British propertied class came out of the war much worse off than when they went in but in the past few years they have been moving towards their former position. The phrase used by the Chancellor of the Exchequer is that what has happened since 1952 “ has about restored the balance.”

This arose out of a question put by Mr. Douglas Jay on 22nd March, 1960, about the increase of wage rates and dividends. Mr. Heathcote Amory replied that whereas weekly wage rates have increased by about 42 per cent, between 1952 and January, 1960, and by about 3½ per cent. between 1958 and January, 1960, provisional estimates about dividend payments show that dividends paid by companies on ordinary shares in 1959 were about 78 per cent. higher than in 1952 and about 12 per cent. higher than in 1958.

The reply was followed by a further interchange. Mr. Amory admitted to Mr. Jay that these figures show that under the Conservative governments “dividends have been increasing faster than wages,” but retorted that between 1938 and 1952 "dividends increased by only 30 per cent. whereas wages increased by 100 per cent. ”

Then Mr. Amory agreed with a Tory interjection that workers’ earnings (he probably meant wage rates) were falling behind the cost of living under the Labour government and have got ahead since.

Figures given in the official Economic Survey 1960 show that company dividends on ordinary' and preference shares rose by nearly 30 per cent. between 1955 and 1959 from £655 million to £848 million.

May Day (1960)

From the May 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

The engraving (by William Blake after the painting by Collings) reproduced on the cover graphically represents May Day in 18th Century London. Prominent in the days celebrations were the little chimney sweeps (in the engraving they are shown holding dust pans—the symbol of their trade), who were annually released on May 1st from the bondage and brutality of their dangerous job.

When my mother died I was very young.

And my father sold me while yet my tongue 

Could scarcely cry “ 'weep! ’weep! 'weep' 'weep' "

So your chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep.

Blake

The E.T.U. and the Press (1960)

From the May 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists take every opportunity of examining and commenting on all the facets of capitalist society, including that much-publicised field, at the moment, anyway, trade unions. We oppose all other political parties, but when dealing with trade unions the fact that the leadership of any particular union has a political bias does not affect our judgment of their activities on the industrial field. As good or as bad as they may be, we recognise that trade unions are the weapon of the working class in the field of industry, and we therefore support the principle of trade unionism, rather than trade unions.

In line with this reasoning, let us take a look at the Electrical Trades Union. Readers will no doubt be aware of the large amount of publicity that has been given to it—charges of malpractice, rigged ballots and Communist Party interference in the running of its affairs. In fact, over the last two years, the working class, and the electricians in particular, have been subjected to a veritable barrage of “information” and “advice” about their leaders. This culminated in the re-election of the General Secretary, Frank Haxell (much to the disgust of the daily and weekly press) with a lower majority than he obtained five years ago.

In the past, members of the Communist Party have been elected to trade union posts and although the press have commented on these, it has not been with the same ferocity and abuse that has been meted out to the E.T.U. There is no doubt that the Communist Party's allegiance to the Soviet Union has been largely responsible for this, but this is not the only reason: another, and, we think, more important view was contained in an editorial printed in The Guardian (25/2/60). under the heading “T.U.C. Troubles.’’

  The strike weapon was forged in the last century, when local industry was largely self-sufficient, and a strike was often the only way of bringing grievances to attention. Today a strike should be a weapon of last resort—it is absurd to make thousands of workpeople in the motor factories lose wages because of a dispute in one firm that happens to make a vital component.

And it offers a solution:

  If power to call a strike were delegated to a Motor Industry Committee of the T.U.C., the strike would become the weapon of last resort that it ought to be. 

No doubt this would be an admirable solution for the capitalist class. One can imagine the inter-union strife that would go on between the smaller craft unions and the large unskilled unions, especially in the motor industry, before they even agreed that a strike was necessary, with the consequent delay and effect on the workers’ wages and conditions. And if the observations of some trade union leaders like Mr Carron of the A.E.U. are any guide one could visualise an attempt to outlaw strikes with the approval of the T.U.C.

Now, where does the E.T.U. fit into this? First, it must be made known that although they are the seventh largest union in the T.U.C., they have no representative on the T.U.C. General Council. This is the result of the block voting of the two great general unions, the Transport and General Workers and the General and Municipal Workers, ostensibly because of the ET.U.’s “Communism,” but probably also because of their militancy and the fact that they have not always been prepared to play ball with the T.U.C. on a number of vital issues. Notably among these were their criticisms of the wage freeze when the Labour Party was in power after the war.

This, we contend, is the type of activity that should be supported by the T.U.C., not the Guardian “Motor Industry Committee,” which would basically protect the interest of the motor industry section of the capitalist class.

But this is not all. The Guardian Editorial also said:

  The real sickness of the E.T.U. is not the conduct of elections but the fact that its President and General Secretary were members of a Party alien to everything that British trade unionism stands for, and if the pitiful rump of electricians who care enough about their union to vote in its elections want to have Communists as their officers they are entitled to their choice.

No doubt The Guardian would like to see officers hand-picked by "appointments," as operates in a number of other unions. No, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. The electrical worker today is one of the highest basic paid workers in industry. On top of this, he is a key worker. No wonder the vast monolith of capitalism, with its interdependence of workers, is worried about the E.T.U. So long as a trade union acts in the interest of its members it is fulfilling its proper function on the industrial field.

Perhaps the last word can be given to the Financial Times, which had this to say about the leadership of the E.T.U. (22/2/60):

  The leaders of the E.T.U. are clearly successful. They are able negotiators who drive a hard bargain, and they are not above uttering the occasional threat which everyone knows they will carry out.

In conclusion, we have this to say to trade unionists. Your right to strike has been bitterly fought for in the past: be careful that you protect it in the future, irrespective of the views of any newspaper or trade union leaders.

J. P. E.

Blogger's Note:

I'd bet one of my bitcoins that J.P.E. was Johnny Edmonds. Same initials and the connection with Electricians Union.

Socialism or Nationalisation (1960)

From the May 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Only when industry and transport etc, are owned and democratically controlled by the whole community can service to the whole community be a reality. Nationalisation or State Capitalism is not the solution to the problem."

Nationalisation or Socialism?  (1/-)

Finance and Industry: The New Pound Note (1960)

The Finance and Industry Column from the May 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

The New Pound Note

Several newspapers have commented on the continuation in the new pound note of the meaningless words “Bank of England Promise to pay the Bearer on Demand the sum of one pound,’’ and have wondered why it has not been dropped. Not that it was always meaningless. When gold coins circulated as currency, before 1914, the promise meant, by law, that the holder of a £5 Bank of England note (there were no £1 notes) could demand gold coin for it over the bank counter. And that meant that the purchasing power of the note was always the same as that of the legally defined weight of gold contained in the coins. If the law had remained unchanged and if the promise still had meaning the holder of a pound note could demand from the Bank a sovereign, or gold pound, the present price of which in the gold market is over 60s.

The fall in the value of the note corresponds to the combined effect of the pound having been reduced from 4.86 American dollars to 2.8 dollars, and the gold content of the dollar having been reduced by nearly half in 1934; so that the pound note represents only about a third of the gold it represented in 1914. This has been brought about by the inflation of the currency. Yet all that the Radcliffe Committee on the Monetary System had to say in its report last year was:

  The authorities have explained to us in evidence that they do not regard the supply of bank notes as being the only, nor nowadays the only important, supply of money . . . bank notes are in effect the small change of the monetary system. (Para. 348.)

“Small change” is an odd term to apply to an increase in the note issue by about £1,670 million, from the £530 million of 1938 to the present £2,200 million.

And when the Committee added that “the government’s function in issuing notes is simply the passive one of ensuring that sufficient notes are available for the practical convenience of the public,” they might have recalled that historically every government that has helped to pay its way by the printing press has made the same plea and disowned responsibility for the effect in raising prices.

Cinema Tax

When the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced the abolition of the cinema tax the Cinematograph Exhibitor’s Association said there was no chance of a reduction in seat prices “because it had always been part of the industry’s case in pressing for abolition that it needed the money.” (The Guardian, 5/4/60.)

Apparently the tobacco firms also “need the money” because they are putting up prices by the amount of the extra 2d. duty on 20 cigarettes.

Angry newspaper readers have written many letters of protest at the “unfairness” of it all.

In fact, the eventual outcome will not depend on what the interests think they need, but on what they can get away with; the economists call it “what the market will bear.” If competition is keen enough they will all have second thoughts.

The taxation experts who advise the Chancellor of the Exchequer look at it differently. If an industry is doing very well there is room for the government to skim off some of their excess profit. That was the situation in 1916 when entertainment duty was first levied. Now that the industry has fallen on hard times, taxation revenue declines and the point could be reached that it would be hardly worth the expense of collection.

More about Russian Gold

The Guardian (8/4/60) published an informative article by Mr. Victor Zorza reviewing developments in the Russian gold-mining industry since the changeover from dependence on the compulsory labour of political and other prisoners to the growing introduction of workers attracted by prospects of higher wages and a share in their finds. Some former prisoners have been freed though still confined to the gold mine areas. He quotes estimates by non-Russian “experts” ranging from an output almost equal to South Africa’s to a figure about half that amount and expresses the opinion that output must have fallen greatly with the decline of prison labour, though the introduction of up-to-date industrial techniques of mining may be expected to raise it again. His own view is that Russia may not possess the big gold reserves sometimes assumed to exist, and that the big sales of Russian gold in world markets in recent years may be not far below total output.

Fifty years ago under the Czar’s government gold prospectors instead of selling the gold to the government at the fixed price often smuggled it into Japan where they got the much higher world price. Things have not changed. Prospectors are still supposed to sell to the government, but Zorza reproduces from the Russian press accounts of gold mine prospectors of today smuggling the gold out of Siberia to Moscow and making a handsome gain. One miner awaiting trial is alleged to have got away with half a ton, worth over £200,000 in the world market. And just to remind us of the similarities of Capitalism east and west of the Iron Curtain the same issue of The Guardian publishes news of one of the series of cases from Pakistan of people (including airline stewards) charged with smuggling gold across the frontier.

By-Product of Automation

Automation, because it involves huge expenditure on expensive plant, gives the employers an additional motive for going over to shift working, so that the plant is not lying idle for a large part of the 24 hours. The T.U.C. report Automation and the Trade Unions noted this: — 

  “In order to obtain the greatest possible use of expensive plant and equipment, it is not unlikely that the growth of automation will be accompanied by efforts to extend shift working.”

For many years trade unions tried to resist shift and night work and nobody can pretend that from the workers' standpoint it is not a worsening of conditions. The March issue of the T.U.C. monthly, Labour, summarises a report on the problems that arise when shift work is introduced:

  Domestic life of the family is suddenly upset; feeding and sleeping arrangements are disturbed and leisure time curtailed. The strain on a wife in such circumstances is “considerable,” says the report, particularly if a shift rota system involves a succession of changes.

Along with the difficulty of the workers trying to sleep in the daytime in a noisy home, there is the problem of getting meals at awkward hours and the problem of finding transport to and from work.

One of the attractions of automation noted by the government booklet Automation in Perspective is that ”automation lowers cost and can help to keep British goods competitive in price with those of other countries’’—and the other countries will of course be doing the same in order to keep competitive with British prices. As far as the extension of shift working is concerned it introduces a new concept of capitalist society, living worse to keep down with the foreign Joneses.

Edgar Hardcastle

50 Years Ago: The German Social Democratic Party (1960)

The 50 Years Ago column from the May 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Social Democratic Party in Germany occupies a similar position to the party similarly named here. Its programme (the Erfurter Programme) consists of the theoretical part, based on the teachings of Marx—the materialist conception of history, the surplus value theory and the class struggle—and the practical, consisting of reforms and palliatives; and we allege that the whole existence of the German S.D.P. has been spent in the advocacy of those reforms, to the detriment of Socialist propaganda. In the early days of our Party we held the erroneous view . . . that the German workers must obtain certain reforms because the revolution from feudalism to Capitalism was not complete. But we found that conditions there make a Socialist Party quite as possible as here.

From the
 Socialist Standard, May, 1910.

The German Social Democratic Party, reformed after the collapse of the Hitler regime, recently adopted a new programme from which the theoretical link with Marxism and also the commitment to wholesale nationalisation has been dropped.

Schlock, Payola and Gyp Sellers (1960)

From the May 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

We live in stirring times. Rockets landing on the moon, bigger and more powerful weapons to ensure peace, and scientifically minded and humane world leaders prepared to use these weapons if peace is no longer possible. Capitalist civilisation in the mid-twentieth century has certainly produced a unique morality and given us poor ignorant workers a set of social values very difficult to live down to.

Consider the advertising profession. Is it not one of the most typical of capitalism’s great institutions, and also one of the most necessary processes between the raw material and the commodity we consume? If there was no advertising, how would we know that our very life depended on our using pink toothpaste? In fact, without advertising, how would we know what to eat, drink, wear, inject, smoke, etc.? We would be completely lost.

But now, of course, we have Commercial Television, and can therefore learn all these vital facts while sitting in a state of complete mental relaxation (or even stupor) in a darkened room before the Magic Screen. It puzzles us considerably how our forefathers existed without television, and yet they seemed to bumble along somehow.

Recent investigations show, however, that television is nowadays assuming its rightful place in the home. A survey of 200 homes in a town in Northern England revealed that three homes had bathtubs, six had hot water, four had their own toilets, but 125 had television sets!

Time magazine of 9/11/59 quotes Mr. Walter Lippmann (a famous American critic) as saying that the U.S. laissez-faire policy has turned TV into "the creature, the servant, and indeed the prostitute, of merchandising.”

Mr. Lippmann’s strong words were uttered following disclosures that certain American TV quiz programmes were “fixed." As is only right and proper when a National God is in danger, a minister of religion (and also a participant in the quiz shows) girded his loins and defended his God (Time, 16/11/59). “Most of us have a great deal of larceny in us," drawled the Rev. Charles ("Stony") Jackson of Tullahoma, Tenn. "The fact that I am an ordained minister does not make me a saint.”

If a licensed representative of the Almighty can fall into temptation, is it any wonder that lesser mortals (including children) were persuaded to collaborate in the deceptions of the quiz shows? The same edition of Time reports that “. . . of 150 quiz witnesses who appeared before the New York County grand jury and swore before God (or on their affirmations) to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, no less than 100, said District Attorney Frank Hogan, had lied.. . .” Obviously these upright, honest, American citizens had been well trained by their contact with the elevating atmosphere of Commercial Television, which in turn draws inspiration from the worthy sponsors of its programmes.

A former advertising chief of one firm involved in the “fixed quiz show” saga neatly summed up the whole subject when he thought that producers “ were living between the mixed values of show business and advertising, and moral values were lost sight of ” (Time, same issue).

"Moral values” notwithstanding, it is plain that, under the beneficent influence of this great “free enterprise" system of ours, the marketer of commodity A must employ ail means (fair or foul) to beat the marketer of commodity B to the lion’s share of the market. One of the means he employs is to purchase the talents, the "integrity,” the showing time, etc., of TV networks, which, in turn employ all means (fair or foul) to attract audiences for their programmes.

These recent disclosures of some of the mystical practices and rituals of commercial television have been said to "tarnish" that great institution’s "Image." it is all rather as if someone had testified that the Virgin Mary was not really a virgin at all, and that the "miracle cures 'at Lourdes were faked.

Payola

"Everybody has become so suspicious that if you say ‘Oh, my God!’ on television, people think you're being paid off by the Holy Father." (Famous actor quoted in Time, 23/9/59.) Now actors, like other workers, must live. They must pay their agents and their psychiatrists, pay off their former wives, eat, etc. And, to help make both ends meet, it is only natural for them to look out for some “perks’’—such as the rewards they get for mentioning brand names of commodities (or even making indirect references to such commodities) on television programmes. For instance, one famous comedian said, "Look, Mom, no cavities! ” (the slogan ot a certain brand of toothpaste) on a TV show, and another comedian greeted a guest star with, "What’s this you're wearing—My Sin? ’’ This "plug" was reported to have resulted in "payola" to the tune of $1,000.

If it were not for those gentlemen (called "disk jockeys") who play gramophone records on radio and television, how many of us would ever hear or remember the folk music of our day which emanates from such inspired sources as Archer Street in London? Fortunately for us, these wise men are quick to spot the very best records and then see to it that we hear them over the air at frequent intervals. For the record industry is a thriving one, and record companies will pay a lot of money to sell us excellent records of, say, the amatory aspirations of pre-pubertal boys.

No doubt our readers will by now appreciate that disk-jockeys only tend to “ride” (i.e., ‘plug”) these winning records if they are offered some inducement. Some may consider that the mere playing of these musical treasures would be reward enough, but we regret to state that many disk-jockeys in America have been discovered to have accepted monetary rewards or expensive presents. Some of the more influential disk jockeys have financial interests in record companies and even singers; this may possibly also influence their choice of records.

The latest development in this interesting chapter of honesty and “morality” in American show-business is the emergence of a specialised type of “payola" —to wit, “girl payola” American record companies were recently reported to have shipped two aircraft loads of girls to "entertain" disk-jockeys attending a conference in Miami; doubtless the record companies hoped that, inspired by the love of a good woman, a disk-jockey would oblige by playing (repeatedly) the “right” record on his show after the tiring conference was over. Could business ethics and “morality” be better exemplified?

Despite McCarthy-like government investigations most people involved in the “music business” in America would prefer to retain the status quo, “payola" and all. As Time reports: “The last thing most people in this industry want is to clean it up,” admitted one musician, “ It’s too lucrative for too many people.”

Gypping the Sucker

Thanks to the benign influence of modern commercial television, the fairground quack, the huckster, and the pavement confidence-trickster, have been incorporated in those intellectual offerings of the Silver Screen—the “commercials.” American TV audiences have been so saturated with their high-pressure brand of “commercials” that a special device (called a “blab-off” switch), by which the exhortations of the peddler of a commodity may be summarily silenced, is in great demand. The sale of these “blab-off” switches is much deprecated by the sponsors.

But we digress. Despite apparent differences, the fairground huckster and the TV "commercial" are fundamentally similar: there must be, in both cases, the capitalist duality of seller and buyer. As the chairman of the American Federal Trade Commission investigating alleged dishonesty in advertising methods stated (Time, 4/1/60): "In the blunt language of the street . . . the gyp seller depends on the sucker buyer and can't exist without him." Thus the "gyp seller" and the "sucker buyer" take their place alongside other classical dualities—Holmes and Watson, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, and capitalist and worker.

Here are some interesting little deceptions practised by American TV "commercials":

 Sticking food particles to a plate before putting it in a dishpan to demonstrate the inferiority of a competitor’s detergent.

  Lacing breakfast cereal with ice cream so that child models will smile with delight at being served the advertiser’s particular brand. 

  Saturating a sponge with a powerful bleach to prove how one cleanser leaves a stained sink sparkling white, while competing brands leave black smudges.

  Filling a coffee pot with hot wine because real coffee tends to photograph like crankcase sludge.

   Icing a bake-it-yourself cake with shaving cream because real icing melts under hot floodlights.

(Time, 4/1/60.)

Even responsible executives in the American advertising hierarchy feel that deception in advertising methods would be difficult to eradicate. Said one (Time, 4/1/60): “Dishonest advertising is here. It is real. And whatever the percentage, the amount is large and is not diminishing.” The same outspoken executive went on to ask: “How can four different cigarettes all be lowest in nicotine, lowest in tars; how can three different headache remedies all work fastest? ” He has us there.

One of the most important principles of our private property society is “He who pays the piper calls the tune.” Members or representatives of the owning class pay large sums of money in attempts to capture the market from their rivals, and are not greatly concerned about the methods employed. In other words, the end justifies the means; a philosophy which must inevitably lead to trickery, dishonesty and cynicism.

Those who support the private property system would no doubt argue that advertising, “commercial” TV, “show business" (in. short, the topics we have discussed here) are examples of “freedom,” “democracy," and “incentive" — alleged hallmarks of capitalism.

Socialists would rather argue that capitalism, with its inexorable drive for expanding markets and more profits, is forced to foster cheating, sham values, artificial desires, and inequality (both political and economic), in its blind drive to its goal—the sale of the commodity.

This thumb-nail sketch of the kind of world capitalism has made, with its own peculiarly twisted type of "morality," may help to show why ordinary workers, who would normally never dream of cheating at a card game with friends, are drawn into the sordid deceits of “phoney” quiz shows. It is of particular interest to Socialists because the deceits and trickery of the advertising business are only reflections of much larger deceptions—those of the apologists, politicians, and spokesmen of capitalism. Perhaps by aiming our Socialist dart at one target, we may hit both. '

Michael La Touche

A Man’s Eye View of Evolution (1960)

From the May 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is no longer a moot, question or a matter of opinion whether the theory of organic evolution (Darwinism) is valid or not. The science editor of Saturday Review, John Lear, in a special Darwin issue (14/11/59) says:

 . . . the irrefutable evidence (proves) that living things—from invisible microbes to man—slowly acquired their present dimensions, properties and functions (including consciousness) under such analyzable natural law as variations and natural selection.

This general acceptance of Darwin's epoch-making contribution underlies the widespread celebration of the 100th anniversary of the publication of the Origin of Species. There is hardly a popular journal that has not had a special issue devoted to Darwinism.

It is especially significant that Darwinism has uprooted religious superstitions. In spite of the appearances of religious growth and persistence, hardly any one is any longer religious in his own daily spheres of activities. Apologists usually qualify their defence of religion with statements that transform their “convictions" into statements of ethics and morals. A case in point is no less an authority than Samuel Miller, Dean of the Harvard Divinity School, who wrote in a featured article, devoted to Darwinism, in the Saturday Review (14/11/59);

  The whole imaginative structure of Christian truth, elaborated in myth and symbol, for the most part has crumbled under the impact of the last three centuries of revolutionary thought, scientific methods, and historical studies. The vision of reality articulated in this great Biblical formulary has evaporated and no longer serves as the frame of reference for elucidating the mysteries of being human . . . We have reached a new maturity of freedom from superstition and credulity.

And John Lear (referred to above) goes a step further:

  Our now misplaced supernaturalism. slightly mitigated, but persisting into the new Age of Science, has left our social and political leadership unprepared to define accurately our present problems. 

We find the key for the understanding of biological evolution in Darwinism, which deals with the evolution of biological organs in particular, the evolution of animal organs transmitted through heredity. Marxism may be summarized as the study of the social evolution of human tools (the deliberate planning and making of things to be used by man) as a substitute for animal organs. Progress of man may be seen in his ever-increasing mastery over nature, traced through the evolution of his material conditions of existence.

Both Darwinism and Marxism have the same purpose of explaining the processes enabling living beings to ensure their food and life.

Darwinism shows why those animals best adapted survive in the struggle for life and transplant their more suitable qualities on to their progeny. What is selected and transplanted is their equipment—their organs. These organs are part of the body and are subject to biological laws of heredity and variation.

Marxism, in its examination of man’s evolution, is the study of tools, outside the body. Man’s struggle for existence is carried on with tools. Its evolution is a social phenomenon and not a biological one. Man is not limited by biological restrictions as is the rest of the animal kingdom. Man is not limited to specific modes of life or natural environments. With the aid of tools he adapts himself to varying climates and changing conditions. Whilst his bodily equipment essentially has not changed for tens of thousands of years, his “artificial organs” (tools) have enabled him to adapt to constant and rapid changes. (It might be said that man, with his knowledge of biological laws, is bringing to a close the biological evolution of the previous billions of years. Truly, man is on the verge of becoming master over his own destiny.)

Materialism

The reason why the Marxists of 1859 were among the very first to hail Darwinism was the realization of a landmark in corroborating the validity of the materialist attitude that there are physical-material explanations for all phenomena and that everything is interrelated and in a constant process of motion and change. Modern science is becoming aware that there is neither dualism (the concept of the universe being two-fold, the spirit world and the material world) nor design in nature and that it is monist (the concept that all existence is an interrelated whole with no independent parts).

Coupled together, Darwinism and Marxism were powerful blows against superstition and led the way to the realization of the evolution of existence. Who would deny, today, that there was a time when there were no men or even living organism? Anyone aware of geological truths would not dispute that there was a time without the existence of the earth. Less understood is that there was a time without astronomy and without mass (matter in the form of particles). What more appropriate occasion to point out the spreading recognition of evolutionary processes in all phases of infinite existence than in these comments dealing with Darwinism and Marxism.

We next proceed to the ambitious task of correlating the multitude of scientific explorations and contributions into a unified outlook on science, as an interrelated whole, establishing the patterns of evolutionary processes that bring us up to the present.

Let us summarize a man’s eye view of the evolution of existence in light of today’s science. It is a summary of processes and not mechanisms. It is concerned with generalizations and not specific details. Both Darwinism and Marxism are on sound grounds in their generalizations of processes, yet history may and does reveal errors in their specific details and applications.

All existence may be classified into five major stages: Matter, Astronomy, Geology, Biology and Sociology.

By its very nature, existence is never at rest, it is in a constant process of motion resulting in a parade of changes. The further one goes back, the simpler, more widespread and longer-enduring are the stages. In the evolutionary process, each succeeding progression emerging out of its antecedents becomes more complex and less widespread. Each later stage is but a particular phase of the preceding larger general stage of evolution.

The all-encompassing generalization of all existence is matter, from which rose astronomy. Eventually, geology—the child of astronomy—appeared on the scene, one of its consequences being biology, from which sprang sociology.

The above description of motion and change also applies within the development of each of these great generalized stages of existence, as well.

In a word, we are tracing, here, the evolution of existence from its simpler and earlier form as energy to its latest and most complex form as capitalism.

All existence consists of matter. Matter is not confined to mass, however (things that are tangible and occupy space). Energy is also matter. The very strides in atomic physics are the visible demonstration that both energy and mass are forms of matter—are material. The famous Einstein formula (Energy equals mass times the square of the speed of light) speeded up the actual conversion by man of tangible mass into intangible energy (NOT the release of energy already stored up in mass, such as the heat energy in coal). Likewise, intangible energy can be converted to mass.

The earliest and most abundant phenomenon of existence that we are aware of is energy. [1]

Over countless eons of time, eventually, a single positively-charged proton became the nucleus around which a single, negatively-charged electron revolved. This object was both a form of energy and a form of mass. It is hydrogen, the simplest and the most plentiful (over 99 per cent.) of all the mass in existence.

Evolution can be visualized in the atomic scale which lists elements by the quantities of electrons in their atoms. Elements start with hydrogen (one electron), the first element, then helium (two electrons), all the way up to uranium and the man-made elements.

Eventually, elements combined into molecules. The earliest molecules were gasses, later liquids and the highest form of mass is solids; each form of mass is distinguished from the other by the speed and distance of their electrons in their orbits and also by their organisation within the molecule.

The evolution of matter is from its simplest form as energy to its most complex form as solids.

The embryo of astronomy was nurtured in the evolution of energy into mass. Not until the particle, hydrogen atom, appeared did space come into existence. Space is a relationship of mass, it has no meaning, otherwise.

Evolution in astronomy is traced by densities; the earlier stages being less dense and the higher stages being relatively dense. The most rarified aspect of astronomy is intergalactic space. The space between galaxies constitutes over 99 per cent. of all astronomical existence and illustrates how relatively insignificant is the amount of mass in the cosmos. The density of intergalactic space is estimated to be one hydrogen atom per cubic meter. Man has been unable to even come close to this sort of a vacuum in the laboratory. The next higher stage in astronomy is interstellar space, which consists of one hydrogen atom per cubic centimeter. Then arose planetary nebulae with thousands of hydrogen atoms per cubic centimeter and which is quite a vacuum on its own merits. The next higher development in astronomy is stellar atmosphere with its millions of hydrogen atoms per cubic centimeter. Finally, came the stars and, in particular, our own star, the sun.

Our vast solar system, with its fantastic distances, is like a small pebble near the outer edge of the Milky Way, our own galaxy. Our sun is but one of billions of suns in the Milky Way. All these stars, put together, are dwarfed into a tiny fragment of the area of our galaxy. Then, there are groups of galaxies forming an astronomical system known as a cluster. Sometimes, these clusters are called universes (the term, “universe” is also used to refer to both a galaxy and the cosmos). There are billions of clusters each with billions of galaxies. And all, clusters and galaxies, revolve around a centre and have orbits. The term, cosmos, usually refers to the entirety of astronomical phenomena.

Isaac Rab

(WSPUS)

(To be concluded next month)

[1] We have no information about evolution within energy but we do know that the properties of energy are related to their frequencies.