The Bogey Man (1945)

F

rom the March 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

The ruling classes of all time have used in their armoury of weapons the powerful one of leadership. In order that the workers may be prevented from discovering their own strength and power, priests, politicians and teachers have saturated the workers’ minds with awe, fear and reliance upon some great deliverer, spiritual and otherwise. In times of stress, social, economic or political, the workers’ thoughts (skilfully prepared) turn to a “leader” or “saviour.” This mental condition enables the ruling class to canalise the thought-tendencies of the workers away from the emergent growing class concept of events to one of individualist responsibility, all dependent upon a “good” or “bad” leader. Parents having been trained that way themselves, continue on the same lines with their children.

In order to curb the ardent spirits of their unruly progeny, mothers call to their aid their own childhood teachings, and threaten their offspring with fears of a “bogey man.” The ruling class do the same. In the first years of the nineteenth century British capitalism had as its challenger the new youthful capitalism of France, and in order to harness the common people to their war machine, preached fear of the French through the medium of “bogey man” number one—Napoleon. Whilst the common people were dying at Waterloo to prevent “their” country from being stolen, three million acres of “common” land was filched by various enclosure acts. Four years after (August, 1819) the men who had won Waterloo were peacefully assembled in Peter’s Fields, Manchester, listening to orator Hunt, when the Yeomanry charged them, and the subsequent massacre became known as Peterloo. Half a century after (the Peterloo and Waterloo heroes being safely dead) British capitalism was in danger at its Empire gateway in the Mediterranean, so the workers had to be frightened by “bogey man” number two. This was the Czar of Russia, who on behalf of his own ruling class was seeking a warm-water port. The bones of British working men lay bleaching on the Crimean snows in a war waged so that “Russia shall not have Constantinople.” Half a century later we fought a war to see that she should have it. For fifty years after the Crimean war decent sized “bogey men” were scarce, and only practice matches were played against small-timers learning the trade, such as Dinizulu, Charka, Lobengula, the Mahdi, the Mad Mullah, etc., but the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the present century brought us “bogey man” number three—the Boer Kruger. Now here were the ingredients for a “just and righteous” war. We fought it to free the “outlander,” give “equal rights to all whites,” and at the same time collar the gold of the Rand and the diamonds of Kimberley. The net result being—two independent republics lost their “independence,” cheaper Chinese labour introduced into the mines, and a big slice of Africa marked red on the map. The workers of Britain got an extra dose of unemployment, but had laid low “that” bogey man. Another dozen years passed, and “bogey man” number four appeared on the scene. Not a Frenchman, not a Russian, not a Boer, but a German—the Kaiser. Once again the workers, true to their training, determined to lay him low, and fear of the “bogey man” became most pronounced in such questions as “What would you do if the Germans came?” This time there was to be no nonsense. We would make Germany pay and hang the Kaiser. Alas! the workers paid in blood and tears and intensified toil for some and unemployment for millions, and they didn’t even hang the Kaiser; he settled in Doorn, doing well until he went to his hall in Valhalla. Will the workers always fall for a “bogey man,” or will they learn Socialism?

Lew.