We Are World Changers (1942)

From the July 1942 issue of the Socialist Standard

An Irish writer, Seán Ó Faoláin, in a book he wrote entitled “An Irish Journey,” made the following remark ; —

“When you go to war you do what you do in the movies, tear your ticket in half, and the half you leave outside is your critical faculties.” (p. 252.)

The statement has another meaning as well as the one the writer wished to convey.

The tragedies and upheavals of war give fresh life to philosophical, religious and mystical views of various kinds, partly because mental strain disturbs the capacity for clear thinking in many people, partly because these views give the feeling of an escape from problems bound up with war, and also partly because these views serve the interests of the class of privileged people who wish to emerge from the war with their privileged position unshaken.

The more the brains of workers are tortured or lulled with mystical views the less clear is the thinking they can do about their fundamental problems. The worst of the matter is that people derive a temporary relief from putting these problems behind them as insoluble or accepting them as inevitable. In this they are like the early Christians who gave up hope of improvement in their earthly life and despairingly accepted their miseries without resistance, treating them as scourges on the path to paradise.

The problems of the workers, endless toil, poverty and insecurity, are neither inevitable nor insoluble. They are the product of the economic conditions of to-day just as the problems of the chattel slave and the serf were the product of the economic conditions of the times in which they lived. In fact, the fetters that bind the producer are a heritage from the dawn of civilisation, when a portion of mankind grabbed a privileged position and forced others to do the work.

Food and air provide what is called physical and mental energy—moving and thinking. The limbs move and the brain thinks. Thoughts are either pictures of the world around us or are based upon our surroundings. We can only understand what people may tell us by relating it to our own actual experiences. In the early days of the human race picture-writing gave place to the use of symbols in passing on messages and ideas. It is similar with the mental development of the child in our times; actual pictures are replaced by symbols but behind the symbol is the immediate world around the child.

Our thoughts are based upon our surroundings and our surroundings, our environment, is partly physical— mountains, rivers, plains, and so on—and partly social— our connections with our fellows. Our thoughts therefore are shaped partly by the physical and partly by the social environment. As our main concern is obtaining the necessities of life, which can only be accomplished by close connections with our fellows, the social environment is the dominating influence in shaping our thoughts. This social environment has undergone radical changes across the centuries and so have man’s thoughts.

Looking at the matter from another angle, the fundamental aim of human beings is to be happy, and happiness for the overwhelming mass of the world’s population is bound up with an adequate supply for each person of the physical necessities of life—food, clothing and shelter.

But the satisfaction of his bare material needs is not enough to make man happy. He also requires mental satisfaction. That is to say that as man has been helped onwards to his present civilised state through mental exertion it has become essential to him to engage in mental as well as physical activity. Thus, whatever form it may take, the opportunity must exist to exercise the intellect. In other words, man cannot be satisfied with a mere animal existence like a cow in a field—however much some may have cause to envy the cow !

Across the ages man has exercised his brain to enlarge the supply of necessities and also to explain the world around him. His endeavour to explain the world has been limited by the state of knowledge of his time, but, more important still, by the nature of the glasses through which he has looked at the world. Thus to the Greeks and Romans, in spite of their intellectual achievements, a world containing universal suffrage was unthinkable because chattel slavery was the basis of their social systems.

The bare, gloomy mountains and the fructifying river gave a colouring of savagery and voluptuousness to the religious outlook of the Egyptians. But under this colouring was a basis of thought that reflected the social conditions in the valley of the Nile; for instance, the threat aimed by the religious hierarchy at the ignorance of the well-to-do about what would happen after death. By playing upon this ignorance the priesthood was able to acquire vast wealth and influence. From that day to this the wealthy have paid for their ignorance but have also been assisted by the priesthood to hold on to their privileged positions.

Apart from the few mystics who, intentionally or unintentionally, blind themselves to the needs of the world around, the main preoccupations of people to-day is either adjusting present society to make it run more smoothly or building a new society out of the present one. Thus it is agreed that the present social order creaks badly. As the Socialist is bent upon building up a new society out of the old he examines the old to find out the nature and the cause of the creaks. This cause is the private ownership of the means of living.

The problem that should encase the attention of the workers, apart from the obtaining of the means to live, is therefore the problem of how to get rid of poverty and insecurity for ever so that they may live like men and women and not like beasts of burden. This problem is bound up with the present organisation of society into wealth owners and wealth producers—capitalists and workers. All the producing and distributing of wealth is done by workers—those who are compelled to sell their energies in order to live. All the fruits of production pass into the hands of the investors, the capitalists, who in the main do not, and need not, work, but who own the products of labour because, through their shareholding, they own the land, factories, ships and other means and instruments of production.

While this division of society into two classes, with interests that are fundamentally opposed, remains, there is no way of abolishing the poverty and insecurity problem. In other words, there is no way by which the workers can lose the characteristic of beasts of burden providing comfort and security for wealthy idlers. The solution of the problem makes necessary the abolition the basis of classes—the abolition of the private ownership of the means of living. This abolition can only be accomplished by building society upon another basis, the common ownership of the means of living—Socialism.

Thus the Socialist accepts the materialist conception of history which is one that is based upon the knowledge provided by history that changing economic conditions are the driving forces in social changes. It is the Socialist outlook upon the world, the glasses through which he looks, and necessarily so as the Socialist is out to change the world. Whatever views philosophers may hold is therefore, immaterial to the Socialist because he is a world changer and is only concerned with what works towards that end.

It is for this reason that the Socialist turns a cold eye upon the new philosophic, religious and mystical interpretations that bubble up from a tormented world, as attempts on the part of their authors to find a mental escape from evils that frighten them or to parry the blows that promise to sweep privilege out of the world.

Philosophical views of the world are numbered by hundreds but, in the long run, they have not influenced for the better the lot of the wealth-producing classes throughout history, though they have sometimes provided battle cries for new classes seeking privileged positions for themselves.

Thus whatever kind of philosophical or mystical views may be put forward at different times to explain the world as it is, it has no fundamental bearing on the practical question of changing the world because the latter depends upon the economic interest of sections of the population. The Socialist appeals to the workers on the ground of their economic interests which is what counts in the struggle to obtain a secure basis for happiness for all.

All people are born alike in this, they pursue what they believe is their best interest. It is therefore the duty of the Socialist to convince the workers that the movement for Socialism is a movement that is in harmony with their fundamental interests, which of course it is.

While the poverty problem remains the workers need not bother and bemuse themselves about the views of philosophers and their like. The point is to change the world by establishing Socialism and then they will have time and opportunity to dream in comfort about whatever systems of thought give them interest, amusement or satisfaction.

Gilmac.