Anxiety
Though I am in complete agreement with the assessments and aims expressed in your Declaration of Principles, I do wonder if you have ever considered the possible psychological effects of living in a new, Socialist society. We often read that a working-class pools winner chooses to continue in his wage-slavery (indeed can often become anxious at the thought of guaranteed security). So do you not think that similar undesired effects could result after a transition to Socialism?
Please don’t answer this question simply by referring to the incidence of mental illness in a capitalist society. I think the question is too vital for comparisons.
P. Dodd
London E3
Reply:
This raises the fundamental question of whether conduct and attitudes which may seem an obstruction to Socialism are human nature or human behaviour. Can we all cope with freedom and security?
Human nature is the collective phrase for man’s necessary drives. Basically they are self-preservation—getting food, protection against the elements—and sex. The other item to be added is that men cannot satisfy these demands and survive except in co-operation with other men: our nature is social. Its various manifestations depend on the forms which social organization takes, and the superstructures on the base of society produce complex patterns of behaviour which can be and are mistaken (for the time being, at any rate) for human nature.
A commodity-producing society-capitalism—leads to special emphasis being put on individuality. Thus, present-day consciousness focuses on each person’s self-appreciation : his problems, wants, how the world is through his eyes, and his capacities in comparison with other individuals. It has produced a science dealing with these matters. But, as Marx pointed out: "Society does not consist of individuals, but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand.”
Where does this lead us? It means that in viewing the reaction of the man who is frightened by winning the pools we must look not to human nature but to existing social relations for the reason. A class-divided society conditions everyone. Large numbers of people in the civilized world are convinced, because as members of the working class they have actually been trained along these lines, that they could not manage their lives without being given orders and that getting more than a limited amount of wealth would bring them some kind of distress. All this is human behaviour within capitalism, and there is no reason for projecting it into a classless society.
On the other hand, man’s social nature makes isolation something he fears. It is a fear played upon by a lot of advertizing, and is an obvious element in the pools-winner’s case: will he be alienated from his former associates, would he be able to fit in other surroundings and circles? Any proposed step away from known circumstances invokes the same fear.
Read Marx’s statement, and consider not hypothetical individual cases but the relations within which all individuals will exist in Socialist society. In particular, the ending of class division and the further divisions resulting from it will mean a community will exist. The individual won’t worry about security (his place in society) because that will be the common condition without the comparisons which cause anxiety. We all want to "get on well” with our fellow' men, but in a class society this urge is channelled into impressing them by position and possessions; in Socialism we shall be able to live harmoniously with one another as people.
Two other points. First, Socialists are not persons who have escaped being conditioned by the society we live in today. Class consciousness gives us awareness of it, and that provides the means to envisage a society without it. Second, a sometimes-heard objection to Socialism is that if everyone is secure we shall have a dull eventless world. On the contrary, imagine the flowering of individual abilities now suppressed, and the directing of social resources unfettered for the first time to transforming the world. Socialism means the beginning of history.
Editors.
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