An acquaintance recently confided that he now avoids news media, broadcast and printed. Because it is generally so depressing it is adversely affecting his mental health. A constant round of outrageous reports of depressing episodes of inhumanity.
As a long-time member of the Labour Party he is already disillusioned by the Starmer administration. The ready acceptance of gifts of substantial financial worth, while, with seemingly ill-considered haste, snatching the winter fuel allowance from many pensioners who really need it.
He is an example of the contention that though the Labour Party is not, never was and never will be, socialist, there are some with socialist ideas, however inchoate, within it. This friend came with me to hear a Socialist Party speaker in Sheffield. After the meeting he told me that he agreed with the analysis of capitalism put forward and that he was pleased to hear the case for democratic change, rather than revolution through violence too often voiced by Trotskyite and other Leninist groups.
However, he did have a major caveat, the frequently proffered defence of reform. The Tories, then the governing party, were doing increasingly dreadful things to workers and their families. It’s all very well having a principled view of socialism, but the priority is to effect change, however marginal, immediately.
There remains, for him, a strong notion that for all the failings of Labour in government, many clearly outlined by the speaker, nonetheless the welfare state in general and the NHS in particular were a triumph of socialist ideas enacted by the 1945 Attlee government.
So it is that the Labour Party continues to occupy the ‘socialist’ political ground on which even those disaffected continue to stand. The siren song of the Starmer Labour Party consists of one word, CHANGE!
Although that political vessel very quickly ran aground on the economic rocks of capitalist reality (no change there then) this particular crew member, even now, isn’t prepared to abandon ship. He is not alone.
Murderous conflicts
Then there is the Middle East, the Ukrainian attrition, and various other murderous conflicts going on. Yes, the socialist analysis of capitalism may be absolutely correct, but socialism?
A worldwide commonwealth based on the principles of production to freely meet self-defined needs in a moneyless society to which all contribute, also freely, whatever they are able? Even accepting there are frequent instances of people working together and for each other’s benefit, where is there any indication that enough human beings will ever collectively pursue such a course?
These are my friend’s questions, and why he has turned off the news. His mental health is suffering as he desperately tries to hang onto socialist notions that are constantly denied by the dystopian world as it is.
As a socialist I too at times find it difficult to square socialist principles with the evidence of human limitation I witness when I turn the TV news on. He is not alone in wondering why humanity appears so incapable of learning from its history.
Surely Russian military authorities must be aware that the reduction to rubble of Stalingrad not only did not bring victory to the invading army, but rather served as an exemplar of resistance that completely thwarted Nazi imperial ambitions.
Then, four decades later, Russian forces were driven from Afghanistan despite being in nominal occupancy of the country. Such aggression doesn’t subdue but engenders determination to fight back. Why would there be any expectation that Ukraine would be different?
America, for all its technological superiority, was defeated by a force employing the humble bicycle to transport supplies along the Ho Chi Minh trail. And following dreadful loss of life, military and civilian, the two sides then, eventually, became reconciled.
War becomes mythologised and integrated into national ideologies. Remembrance Sunday in the UK has elevated the ‘fallen’ into heroic defenders of freedom, rather than the reality of terrified young men dying in mud, squalor and savagery. When the next instalment of the war to end all wars led to the deliberate bombing of towns and cities this horror became the spirit of the Blitz, supposedly a demonstration of a character unique to the British.
The Middle East is the present martial spectacle. Recently, the BBC carried two reports illustrative of the pervasive twisted logic such conflicts produce. One was an Israeli spokesman insisting that his country is acting in proportionate self-defence. This was followed by an Iranian supreme something or other who was equally insistent that the missiles launched at Israel were a proportionate act of self-defence.
Putin, of course, claims the non-war war was launched against expanding NATO influence and Nazis in Ukraine, an act of self-defence. It would appear that most wars are merely conflicting ‘self-defences’. It seems that it’s always the other side that is the aggressor; most definitely, ‘not us!’
And while this and similar sophistry is spewed out across news media we sit and watch as the appalling death toll, mainly amongst non-combatants, including a horrendous number of children, continues to mount. As mere spectators there is an ever-growing sense of powerlessness. Critical voices raised are all too readily accused of anti-semitism or Islamophobia. But most can only look on and despair, or press the off button on the remote. Such is the source of the impact on my friend’s, and many, many others’, mental health.
Alienating effects
War is the extreme expression of the alienating effects of capitalism. All the financial problems afflicting people, public services failing because they are too expensive to be adequately run and myriad other difficulties people have to deal with that, ultimately arise from the profit imperative.
There is a general awareness that all is most definitely not well, either nationally or internationally. However, a political cognitive dissonance prevents serious engagement with how to treat those widespread ills.
The ‘Christmas Truce’ of 1914 on the Western Front is illustrative of this. Soldiers from both sides laid down their arms, including British imperial troops from India who didn’t have the Christmas imperative for peace on earth. They fraternized openly, defying their high commands, and there emerged a shared realisation that the propaganda that had convinced them of the barbarism of their ‘enemies’ was a lie. Within days they were killing each other again at the behest of their nation states.
Ukrainians and Russians, Israelis and Palestinians similarly have far more in common than might be guessed listening to their comments when interviewed. The ‘other’ remains the barbarian who must be vanquished for the general good. And so the slaughter goes on.
Is it any wonder that mental health problems have become an increasing issue in society? Talking therapies and/or pharmaceuticals may, in some cases, act as first aid. However, there is only one cure, socialism. Unfortunately, at the moment, the ‘patients’ remain reluctant to take it.
Dave Alton
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