Alison Assiter's Revisiting Universalism (2003)

Book Review from the December 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Revisiting Universalism. By Alison Assiter. Palgrave Macmillan. 2003.

This is a book that re-asserts that there are universal values applicable to all human beings. It is directed against the “post-modernists”, “multi-culturalists” and some feminists, who assert that, on the contrary, there are no universally shared values by which to judge conduct, that any group’s view is as good as any other’s and ought to be respected as such (i.e. not criticised), or, as one wit has put it, “cannibalism is a matter of taste”.

Assiter starts from a materialist position. What all humans share in common, she says, is the basic need for a minimum level of food, clothes and shelter as essential to their physical health:

“(i) All human beings have needs which must be satisfied, if they are to act in any way at all;

(ii) These needs therefore ought to be satisfied, and this is a universally valid ‘ought’”.

Therefore “each one of us has an equal right to have our basic needs satisfied”. At the abstract level at which the argument is being conducted, Socialists can go along with this. But then Assiter extends this by adding that it means that every human being therefore has a “moral obligation” to do what they can to ensure that every other human being has their basic needs met.

This would make the case for socialism (as one among possible actions to try to ensure that every human has their needs met, the only effective one in fact) a moral case whereas we have always argued that socialism is based on interest, class interest to be more precise. It is in the material interest of the working class to have their needs met; these cannot be properly met under capitalism; therefore it is in the interest of the workers to abolish capitalism. So, when we approach our fellow workers, we don’t say “You should be a socialist because you have a moral duty to ensure that the basic needs of all your fellow humans are met”. What we say is: “You should be a socialist because only socialism can assure that your basic needs are met”.

In any event, to say that every human has this moral duty towards all other humans is pointless since ineffective. It would mean that the capitalist class has some moral obligation towards the working class. Tell them that and they’ll laugh in your face. And why should we assume any moral duty to the capitalist class, who exploit us? Not that workers are likely to respond to appeals to a supposed “moral duty”; they will establish socialism out of material self-interest, individual and collective. Socialism is a class issue not a moral issue.

To tell the truth, this book will have little relevance outside the academic world, indeed outside university philosophy departments. Academics are wage-slaves like the rest of us and one of their conditions of employment is “publish or perish”. As a result publishers’ lists are clogged up with books written just for this purpose. Something marginally different about this book is that we get a mention (even if our address is wrongly given).

Assiter, a leading feminist intellectual who was once a Socialist Party member, quotes Slavoj Zizek as writing that

“when the ‘left’ makes its demands ‘for full employment’ ‘retain the welfare state’ ‘full rights for immigrants’ . . . it is bombarding the capitalist state with demands it cannot fulfil. The left, he writes, is ‘playing a game of hysterical provocation, of addressing the Master with a demand it will be impossible for him to meet’”.

And contrasts this with the approach of

“the British SPGB, a political party that has operated in the UK, and elsewhere, since 1904. Members of the SPGB reject Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky as ‘impure’ versions of Marx, and believe that they must argue the socialist case in as many venues as possible, in order to convince a majority of the working class of the veracity of their case. They adopt the strategy of believing that rationality will prevail and that once people see and understand the logic of their case, just like the believer in decision procedure, then those people will convert to their cause and there will be no more capitalism, no more wars and no more wage slavery”.

A bit over-simplified in that we are not trying to “convert” people to our “case” as such, but to convince our fellow workers that it is in their material interest to establish socialism. But perhaps we shouldn’t look a gift-horse in the mouth.

Adam Buick