I must admit I find the wireless lectures very stimulating. The lecturer has prepared his subject, there are no interruptions, no interjections, no bronchial whoopings, no scuffling feet, no late-comers or early-goers; in short, there is perfection—nearly. I say nearly, because one feels sometimes that the speaker has prepared his paper in some far-distant country, a good many years ago, and has just walked off the steamer into the studio. Unsuspectingly, he says his little piece, and favoured by the absence of a visible audience, delivers himself of some “truth” that had better remained in its coffin. Now perfection would provide for the lecturer being reminded that his data were slightly mildewed ; that possibly in picking up his notes for the lecture on “The Sex Life of Slugs,” be had inadvertently added a leaf from the lecture on “Stamp Collecting in the Stone Age.”
Something of this sort must have happened to Sir James Jeans, for in his “Point of View, ” broadcast on February 24th, be made an astonishing mix-up. It is only charitable to assume some such accident, for no scientist since 1880 would have included such matter in a serious lecture. At a birthday party perhaps, or a Fleet Street “smoker,” but not in any place where the bracing-wind of science can reach.
“Quite frankly,” he commenced, “my point of view is that of a scientist—an astronomer.” He will not need me to remind him that a scientist frames and tests theories based on verifiable data.
We may take it that when Sir James Jeans says, “We believe that the earth is merely a tiny fragment of the sun, which got splashed off, almost by accident, something like 2,000 million years ago,” he could produce some sort of evidence. When he tells the listening world that the earth is millions of years old; that it remained uninhabited for millions of years; that life arrived and passed through the forms of protozoa, fishes, reptiles, and mammals culminating; in man, we may assume he is dealing in facts; that volumes of ordered knowledge bolster up his statements, and that scores of eminent colleagues agree with him. And yet, would you believe a scientist would commit himself, before an audience of millions, to the following fragment of ordered knowledge.
“Our socialist orators tell us much in glowing terms about the hypothetical socialist future. Why do they tell us so little about the socialist and communist experiments of the past, in which their theories were really tested? It is, I think, because those experiments all ended in failure. The truth seems to be that no socialist state ever endures for long—as such. ”
That, of course, is where his manuscript must have got mixed up with the lining of his lunch bag, and he found himself reading a pre-war page from the Swamp Herald or Daily Express. Unfortunately his attention has not been drawn to the happening, and the statement has received the publicity of print in the Listener of March 5th. However, as there may be some few people who think he really meant what he said, I am prepared to make a public confession. I also have wondered in the past why our Socialist orators have told us so little about the Socialist and Communist experiments in which their theories have been tested. I candidly admit my heart gave a great bound, when I heard him raise this question. I thought I was going to satisfy the hope of a lifetime, and hear the names of the Socialist states referred to. Sir James was strangely reluctant to mention them. He himself deplores the reluctance of our Socialist orators to do likewise. I am keenly disappointed, and it looks as though the truth is where I have long suspected. Failing some scientific evidence from Sir James Jeans, I shall be compelled to affirm that he does not know of such a state ; that there never was such a state and that Socialist theories have never been tested “really” or in any way. Both his reluctance, and that of our Socialist orators are founded in the same fog-bank. There never was such a Socialist state. The noble knight must have mixed his notes.
The fact of the statement having also been printed rather complicates matters, and perhaps some little explanation may put things right. The ground has been covered many, many times in this journal, and there is not room in this article to cover it again. But this may be said. As a scientist Sir James Jeans will have heard of evolution. It is the name we apply to the process of development by which life, the earth, and the universe, have changed from simple beginnings to their present state. Nothing is stationary; nothing stagnant—all is ceaseless change. The very Alps were once liquid mud; the mighty oceans were thin gases; the whole earth a boiling globe, incapable of any form of life as we know it. Scientists have described for us the whole wonderful pageant of change, which through millions of centuries, slowly paved the way for the coming of man ; and man is fond of regarding himself as the crown of evolution. Anyway, crown or not, he appeared very late upon the scene and has still a lot of development before him. Like everything in the universe, he has evolved. Although h likes to regard himself as something distinct from what he calls Nature, his links with animal ancestors are beyond dispute. Every baby, born into the world, recapitulates in embryo stages of his journey.
Apparently man has always been a gregarious animal, that is, he liked living in company. Other forms of life do, too, baboons, elephants, whales, birds, etc. This custom has clung to man, ever since he was man. And no matter how his mode of life has changed — hunter, pastoralist, or civilised—he has ever been found in communities. These communities have in turn been the subject of change—in a word, have evolved, and scientists can tell us why one form of human society gave place to another, and how our own form stands at the end of a chain. This will suggest, of course, to the intelligent reader, that there is no reason why this should be the end of the chain. But before we consider that, there is one important point to make. Evolution is only a name we apply for convenience sake to a process. It is not like the word God, which we spell with a capital letter, and use as a convenient cover for all we do not know. Evolution is simply a word for the process of development. It does not imply purpose, or intention. For instance, the Mauretania has evolved from the dug-out canoe, but the prehistoric contrivers of the dug-out had not the remotest conception of the liner. The words you are reading are connected with the marks on the clay bricks of Babylon, but neither Nebuchadnezzar nor his dusky subjects could have seen the printing press in futurity. The Rolls-Royce has evolved from the ox-cart, the tractor-plough from the digging stick, the sky-scraper from the mud-hut, but none of those at the dawn of things had the fragment of an idea of latter-day developments. It was not until comparatively recently that evolution became a mental concept and that mankind realised its possibilities.
The working of evolution has been blind. In mankind Nature becomes conscious and aware of the forces of development. Man applies the methods of science to his own development and the development of his Institution. No longer is he at the mercy of blind forces. He is learning to tame them and use them for his own definite advancement. Wild beasts, famine and pestilence do not play the part they did in human affairs. Every year sees them more under control. The greatest problems man has to face are those arising from his living in huge communities. These communities have arisen in traceable progression, from the collection of mud-huts on the banks of a river to the intricate community of a hundred thousand towns and a hundred million people. But the allied questions of feeding, clothing and sheltering humanity have been treated in a haphazard fashion under civilisations dependent upon trading. Being fortuitous and haphazard, it has had the unscientific results one would expect. In one section of the community too many clothes, in another too few; one section glutted with food to satiety, another on the brink of starvation or living on inferior food and substitutes ; one section with huge houses, well built, well lighted and well furnished ; the other with inadequate shelters, poorly built, meagrely lighted and furnished with rubbish. At one place you will find thousands of hungry people, whilst food is being wilfully destroyed at another. You will find thousands of people contracting rheumatism through lack of proper foot covering, whilst makers of boots are unable to make them; because—crowning absurdity—because they have made too many for the market.
The needs of the community are neither ascertained nor met in any really scientific way. One ruling principle dominates society—the making of profit. When everybody wants something, that is called demand. Numbers of individuals in the hope of making a profit, rush forward with their goods; that is called supply. The rival suppliers try to overreach and ruin each other; they try to monopolise as much of the demand as they can; they waste huge sums in what is called advertising; they drive their workers to produce the greatest possible wealth, in the shortest possible time. Then suddenly it is found that they have produced too much, and those who have made the wealth are rewarded with unemployment and semi-starvation.
There are people who say this method of feeding, clothing and sheltering ourselves, this hapless, planless, mad scramble to make need and supply balance, is the best humanity has discovered. You will usually find such people occupy a fortunate position in society. It would be odd to find them decrying a system which yielded them a very happy life. But there are others who say that now mankind has achieved an understanding of evolution, he can organise his community upon a scientific basis, and one wherein poverty can be unknown. He has no need to leave his present community and proceed to some desolate, primitive country and start building huge machines in the wilderness. Nothing would result from that, but a heap of rust and a few skeletons. No ! he is to take the civilization he has built, and reorganize it upon a basis of communal ownership. He is to abolish the out-of-date cumbrous and unscientific custom of individuals or groups owning communal necessities. Without food we starve; without clothing we shiver; without shelter we become diseased and die; and yet there are people who say these human essentials are best provided by those whose sole motive is their own enrichment. Sounds a bit mad, doesn’t it! How future schoolchildren will smile, and wonder if it was really true. It will seem so obvious to them that the communal necessities should be communally owned. And to think that we can do it, whenever we like; whenever, that is, the working class organises itself to consciously .remould human society on the lines described in our Object.
W. T. Hopley
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