Millions of people, young and old. are waiting with baited breath. In October, we had the annual farce of the party conferences, where the rhetoric of failure was spouted from various seaside resorts. Now it is the turn of the great politician in the sky. With Christmas and the New Year almost upon us once again, the Christian god will no doubt be looking towards his (or her) 1.986th successive term of unelected office (this makes Thatcher s ambition pale into insignificance). What might this "god" have in store for us in the coming twelve months? A few more tens of millions of people starving to death as in previous years, because their need is not visible as cash demand in the market? A bit of nuclear conflict, perhaps, to sort out which gang of bosses are world champions?
Of course, it is only fair to point out that this "god" is far less powerful than many of his most prized creations down below. Millions of people persist in keeping well away from church every Sunday. They are not struck down by lightning as a result; they just have a bit longer in bed. But if one of those people decides to stay in bed on a Monday morning as well, they would soon feel the consequences. As a direct outcome of this intimidation by our fellow mortals, thousands of infidels can be seen flocking without fail every Monday morning towards the altars of profit, which have been erected to honour the names and the bank accounts of our earthly bosses.
Once a year, however, things are different. We enter the season of good will. Overcome by an irresistible wave of generosity towards their wage-slaves, employers sometimes even lose all touch with reality and buy their class enemy a meal! And that is the season we all wait for. the time of year when strangers kiss each other in Trafalgar Square (as long as they have drunk themselves into a stupor first).
People will be wrapping up presents, cooking cakes and organising parties. Desperate efforts will be made to over-eat and drink in order to make up for the rest of the year. And then, after weeks of waiting, and with the hang-over still throbbing, it occurs to you that there are just 364 days left . . . till the end of 1986. In the meantime, we can look forward to the Spring and Summer. Having got back from a "package" holiday which seems designed to encourage us to want to get back to work again, we can tell ourselves that it wasn't half bad. and start to look forward to Christmas time again.
This pattern of constantly "looking forward" to a time which will be an improvement on the present moment has its counterpart in looking back on the "good old days", and is deeply ingrained in present- day society. At school, the whole day is made up of waiting for the next bell to ring, bringing 4 o'clock a bit closer. Each time 4 o'clock comes, it brings the end of term one day nearer. This applies as much to most teachers as it does to most school children. And the discipline of school is intended, of course, as a preparation for the regimentation of employment. The cliché is quite right: only outside of the work-place can you say that "your time is your own".
Take, for example, a couple of conversations I overheard recently. Firstly, a woman who had been chatting to a "check-out” assistant (that is. a person forced into the socially pointless task of being an appendage to a cash-register) left the shop with the friendly comment. "Hope your day goes quickly!" Is it not a profound condemnation of what capitalism has done to work that this is the best we can wish for one of our fellow workers?
Then, as we were surfacing slowly from the depths of the Angel tube station in Islington, the lift-attendant whose job is to escort passengers up and down all day, like day-trips to hell which the damned even have to buy tickets for, bewildered the passengers by actually saying something. (They thought he was only supposed to push buttons and throw away their tickets for them.) Looking at his watch, he sighed: "That's another day gone. Maybe one day money will fall from the sky". After a moment's embarrassed silence somebody rather stupidly told the attendant who had made this remark that he would do the same job even if he won the pools, as it was quite interesting by the look of it. Imagine what it would be like to have to stay in one of those lifts after each successive batch of people has rapidly exited, and you will see in what bad taste this joke was made.
The point, however, had once again been made: our daily conditions of work make the majority dread the start and yearn for the end of every day. and likewise of every year. Of course, if there were a genuine community of interests and work were organised democratically, its conditions being arranged by those doing it. then many of the tasks which are today regarded as menial and unpleasant could become a positive pleasure in themselves. Guiding people around stores where they could have access to food and so on (without the hated cash registers existing to ration that access) would become a pleasant task, as would the operation of good transport facilities, including lifts. At the moment, however, the majority are cut off from ownership of industry, agriculture, transport and communications, so that we have little or no say in how our working lives are organised. We are the tools of production rather than its masters, and the only consolation we can seek is to wait for the evening, the weekend, for Christmas . . .
The child who has the honesty to ask why it can't be Christmas all the year round deserves an honest answer. The answer is that if Christmas means a brief rest from the strain and stress, the tensions and pressures which are inflicted on the working class by the rest of the capitalist calendar, then it could indeed be Christmas all the year round.
In the words of the 1911 Socialist Party pamphlet on Socialism and Religion, religion is the "paralysing hand of the dead past upon the living present". Socialism, on the other hand, means the working-class majority taking history into our hands for the first time, and re-organising society on the basis of production to satisfy human needs directly and freely, rather than production to serve the needs of the market, for the profit of a minority. On this basis, and by democratic political action, we can create a real community of interests world-wide, which will show up such ideas as the "public" good expressed through the state to have been mere con-tricks to mask the vicious self-interest of a propertied few.
If we as workers are going to liberate ourselves from the system in which a privileged class own and control the means of human survival, the productive machinery (as well as the means of human destruction), we must first throw off the trammels of religious thought. Religion has always preached submission in one form or another, as it emerged historically at a primitive stage in humanity's mental evolution. Sometimes. sandwiched between Morecambe and Wise and The Poseidon Adventure on Christmas day, Thora Hird suddenly pops up out of nowhere and tells us to remember what it's all in aid of. At first, you get confused and think that she's standing in for Bob Geldof. But let's take up her suggestion, and glance at some of the offensive and authoritarian nonsense which it is all in aid of.
First, we must get out the sack-cloth and ashes, or whatever other perversion takes your fancy, in order to "be clothed with humility" (1 Peter, 5:5). Women in particular must, of course, bear in mind, that as far as the Bible and Christianity are concerned, they are intrinsically inferior beings. The Old Testament pulls no punches either: Exodus 22.18 states that "You shall not permit a sorceress to live". This one statement alone has caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent women during the Middle Ages, to say nothing of the thousands tortured to death over questions of interpretation. (Don't forget, this is all part of "god's plan".) Above all. however, consider the key clause in the Christian "Declaration of Principles":
Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God. and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.(Romans 13: 1.2)
This is a clear blue-print and defence of every murderous dictatorship which has stalked the earth in past and present, and yet there are still those absurd enough to refer to themselves as "Christian socialists" as if this incompatibility between social democracy and the ultimate defence of dictatorship were a minor quibble.
Finally, it seems that the "divinely-inspired" authors of the Bible were not great fans of the pop-charity business. Jesus Christ is supposed to have had a far simpler approach than Geldof to mopping up the poverty and suffering which property has generated for those who do not possess it. His answer to the starving? "Go to the sea and cast a hook, and take the first fish that comes up. and when you open its mouth you will find a silver coin." (Matthew, 17:27). Very handy.
And what is it that we are actually supposed to be celebrating on the 25th? According to Matthew 1:20. a bloke called Joseph got married to a woman called Mary, and found that she had become pregnant, even though her marriage to him personally had not been consummated. He "resolved to divorce her quietly", which would be quite understandable under the circumstances. "But," the story continues, "as he considered this, behold, an angel of the lord appeared to him in a dream . . In other words, in a fit of jealous despair he allowed wishful thinking to convince him that whoever had got his wife pregnant so soon after their wedding was obviously no ordinary guy. in fact he was called "the Holy Spirit" and had a bit of a reputation in the local, so that was that.
It is fitting that the whole Christian religion is based on a dream. This time round, whilst waiting for the Queen's Speech (certainly the highlight of Christmas TV entertainment). why not think about giving up all of these dreams? In fact, we need to get rid of a social system which makes us want to dream the whole time. After all. if we need to dream so much about what things could be like, or were like, or will be like, what does that tell us about what things are like?
Clifford Slapper
1 comment:
You can't go wrong with a bit of Morecambe and Wise.
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