Does the SWP have an answer to racism? (1993)

From the December 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

The number of recorded racial attacks, arsons and killings has risen dramatically over the last five years as the economic recession has deepened. Is violent confrontation the answer?

The week after the Unity march was held in October to protest against racism and the BNP, the SWP organised a meeting at the LSE entitled "Why the police protect the Nazis". The speaker was the leading SWP member, Tony Cliff. Anyone attending this meeting to hear anything about why the police protect the Nazis, assuming as the title did that this was the case, would, though, have been very disappointed. The speaker, stupidly or dishonestly, thought that it was enough of an argument to shout to the audience (1) that most police are Nazis and (2) that the police had the constitutional job of supervising the Unity march, so therefore (3) the reason why the police prevented SWP members from burning down the BNP Head Office was that the police were Nazis.

This is what logicians describe as assuming what you are trying to prove. Cliff’s argument was about as strong in its structure as the argument that God is all powerful because created the Universe. Had he been putting this argument about the police being Nazis to an audience on Any Questions or Question Time or on an outdoor platform at Speakers’ Corner, he would have been quite rightly refuted and ridiculed by any cross section of workers.

As it was, Cliff’s audience, many of whom had attended the march, seemed content to wholeheartedly agree with Cliffs rousing oratory. One irony here is that after the contentious report (commissioned by the government from the tobacco magnate Patrick Sheehy) to run the police like a business, many police officers have been wooed by the stringent law and order promises of Tony Blair. Labour’s hopeful Shadow Home Secretary; the result is that come the next general election many coppers will be voting for the same party as the members of the SWP: the Labour Party. It is a point of historical record that at general elections, after lambasting the Labour Party and all its necessary shortcomings, the SWP asks its members to vote for Labour candidates as the election of another Labour government will give workers “an inch more space to manoeuvre" than under the Conservatives.

The Unity march had been organised in the wake of growing racism in Britain and across Europe. The number of recorded racial attacks, arsons and killings has risen dramatically over the last five years as the economic recession has deepened. Workers become desperate and often, ignorantly. look for easily identifiable scapegoats. Racism is thus adopted by them and exploited by those brighter, ruthless politicians who see votes and power in it. The real problem in Tower Hamlets in East London, where Derek Beackon was recently elected as a BNP councillor, is a housing problem.

Respectable racism

It is very important to look at how racism moves from being the nasty neurosis of a few frustrated fanatics and thugs to an idea which thousands of people begin to vote for. The problem in Tower Hamlets is not so much the few skinheads who sell the BNP literature on a Saturday morning — although the threat they pose to local ethnic minorities causes a lot of fear and misery — it is the thousand people with "respectable" appearances who voted BNP in the election and the tens of thousands in Britain who could soon be doing the same thing.

What did the SWP say about this problem at the meeting? What educational and argumentative ammunition did it provide for the eager young radicals who attended to learn about how to persuade fellow workers against racism? The SWP speaker said nothing about such arguments. Absolutely nothing. Instead the 30-minute talk was devoted entirely to repealing the mantra about the police all being Nazis, and to looking at half a dozen ways of using physical force against fascists. His tirade included all the vocabulary of "barricade storming" and the need to use guns against fascist thugs who have knives. Cliff’s argument was befitting of any angry young child who had not yet understood the rôle of ideas in politics.

Fascism personified

He saw fascism as an almost physical entity, a concrete part of society, personified in the small number of identifiable members or officers of the BNP. These people had to be "taken out" (physically deterred from being fascists, by being beaten up or, presumably, killed) and then the problem would be solved. You have to surgically remove the "bad apples". In one of many moments of flamboyant rhetoric he said:

"I'll tell you this. If you have a barrel of good apples but there is in the middle of the good apples one bad apple, the good apples will not make the bad apple good."

What followed from this simplistic and strikingly inappropriate metaphor, is that if the "bad apple" of fascism currently sitting in the middle of society could somehow be surgically removed, then all the good apples would be preserved Although Cliff’s language was riddled with references to force being used against the Nazis, he nowhere articulated with any precision how far his young acolytes should go in the furtherance of their aim to "remove the bad apple". Are the fascists to be simply threatened with baseball bats to relinquish their bigotries; are they to be rounded up and locked away to rot in some secret SWP political prison camps for workers with "the wrong attitude"; or was Cliff recommending that, ultimately, these political incorrigibles should he assassinated?

This meeting, like other SWP meetings I have attended, was rigged. It could not be described as an open, honest meeting designed as a genuine forum for workers to discuss the ideas put by the speaker. The rigging works in this way. The speaker addresses the meeting for half an hour. The chairperson then invites people from the floor for any questions to the speaker or points they wish to raise. Some of these questions, as you might imagine, raise points which are very awkward for the SWP. pointing to inconsistencies in its propaganda, undemocratic features of its organisation or clearly anti-working-class conduct it urges upon its followers. Rather than require the speaker to answer each point from the floor once it has been made (and thus allowing the questioner to come back if they are not satisfied with the speaker's response), the chairperson simply takes all the questions from the floor in sequence without any response from the speaker. When the chairperson thinks enough questions and points have been raised, he or she then invites the speaker to respond to the points collectively. This sinister technique thus permits the speaker to pass over any really troublesome points, damning them with feint response. Such meetings, in the best traditions of authoritarian, deceptive showpieces, give the appearance of being open because questions from the floor are allowed but in reality the questions that the SWP would prefer not to be asked of them in public are deftly avoided by their speakers.

That was exactly what Tony Cliff did at this meeting. One of the first questioners was a young man who identified himself as having been a long-time resident of London’s East End. He said that he could not really see any substantial difference between what Cliff had urged anti fascists to do (i.e., beat up fascists) and what the fascists were doing (beating up anti-fascists and people from ethnic minorities). If what the SWP objected to in fascism was it reliance on force to further its ideas, its bullying, threatening tactics, then surely it was wrong to employ exactly those tactics in opposing the rise of fascism? A few SWP members coughed and shuffled about at this point but Cliff was saved from having to enter into any serious debate with this man because the chairperson moved immediately to the next questioner. When the time did come for Cliff to respond to the six or seven points put to him. he dealt contemptuously with the point from the East Ender. The answer, in a few seconds before hopping on to a more friendly question with a much practised agility, was simply that the force of the anti-fascists was historically justified because (a) the other side started it and (b) the force the the fascists had used before (in the Second World War) and were planning to use again was of such a high order that it would be foolish to try and respond in the realm of ideas.

We were back to the principles of gangsterism. The talk of Robert de Niro playing Al Capone in The Untouchables. "If someone comes for me with fists, I answer with a knife. If he comes with a knife I answer with a gun . . ." Many people in areas like Tower Hamlets are living in desperate poverty. There is a housing crisis. Some people from ethnic minorities do have housing and so ignorant workers are left prey to the idea that if these "immigrants" were ail shipped away then there would be plenty of houses and jobs for "British" workers. What is the best way to argue against this sort of politics? Don’t ask Tony Cliff, he doesn’t seem to know or care. At least if he has any thoughts on these matters he was not disposed to share them with anyone at the SWP meeting. Cliff had other things on his mind and sounded more like Lennox Lewis’s coach than a political thinker.

Burn it down

One of the questions was from a young man from Northern Ireland. He spoke as a member of the SWP and was very keen that the meeting should focus closely on exactly why the SWP activists on the march had been prevented from turning down Upper Wickham Lane in Welling, towards the BNP headquarters "to burn it down". There was momentary unease from some at the meeting whereupon the questioner decided to be more up front: "I mean we might as well be clear about what we w'ere trying to do". He went on to fulminate against the police and how despicably pro-Nazi their conduct was in not permitting reasonable activists like himself to go about their proper civic business with cans of petrol and flame throwers. Clearly, the state was in cahoots with the BNP. Quite who the SWP would turn to for assistance if the BNP threatened to bum down its premises is open to question.

The interesting thing about the contribution of the young frustrated arsonist was that no one sought to dissent from the aim of the march that he avowed. Tony Cliff did not say, for example, in summing up. that the SWP had not formulated any such plan. The chairperson did not publicly proclaim that the questioner was, in fact, speaking for himself alone when ranting on about the need to burn things down. The young firebrand turned out to be the kid who yelled that the Emperor had no clothes on: the naive exposer of truth.

Workers from different cultures and ethnic groups have more in common that that which distinguishes them. They are all living in relative poverty and insecurity while they are systematically robbed by the owners of the means of producing wealth (owners who come from all sorts of racial groups). Racism has not tended to develop in times of economic boom; it flourishes when the going gets particularly tough for workers. With nationalist rhetoric of mainstream politicians, racist ideas being toyed with by Labour and Liberal local councillors, and a land where, for instance, the Minister for Education advocates that the Union Jack be unfurled from every school roof in the land, vicious racism is only one goose-step away.

The arguments against racism must be put on radio phone-in programmes, in local and national newspaper letters columns, in public debates, pubs and and during doorstep canvassing. But the only effective arguments against this ugly and recurrent feature of capitalism are those which are truly socialist. Not those quasi socialist SWP banalities which end with an embarrassed instruction "vote Labour with no illusions" at the next general election. It was a Labour government in 1962 which promulgated Britain’s first piece of explicitly racist legislation. Racism is born from the poverty and nationalistic tensions of capitalism; there is no such thing as a successful campaign against racism within capitalism. That this is so is testified to by the reemergence of racism with all its terrors after it had risen and then fallen in the 1970s. The Anti-Nazi League rather unbelievably claim that racism failed in the 1970s because it was stymied by the might of university students with yellow badges chanting to Clash songs in parks. The truth is that most National Front supporters or potential voters were absorbed into the Conservative Party, specially after Mrs Thatcher assured them all in a speech in 1979 that (a) she would not tolerate our culture being "swamped" by foreigners and (b) that unlike the relatively small and shabby NF, she had the power and real prospect of putting her prejudices into action.

The growth of racism will not be broken with brute force, only bones and hope will become fractured in such a fight. In open public debate, the ignorance and bigotry behind the arguments of racism can be easily exposed, at which point support disperses more quickly than the queue at the door of the surgeon who is exposed as an unqualified impostor with a penchant for learn-as-you-go quackery.

Gary Jay

Blogger's Note:

". . . It was a Labour government in 1962 which promulgated Britain’s first piece of explicitly racist legislation."

I looked for a correction in a later issue of the Socialist Standard, but I couldn't see one. The Labour Party wasn't in government in 1962. The legislation referred to from 1962 was the Commonwealth Immigrants Act which was a piece of legislation which ". . . entailed stringent restrictions on the entry of Commonwealth citizens into the United Kingdom."  The Labour Party in opposition, led by Hugh Gaitskell, opposed the 1962 Act.

What legislation Gary Jay was perhaps thinking of was the Commonwealth Immigrants Act of 1968, which was a piece of legislation passed under Wilson's Labour Government. This was denounced in the pages of the Socialist Standard at the time as piece of racist legislation:

• April 1968: Labour's New Race Law by Adam Buick
• April 1968: 'Prejudice and Pride' by Ivan

Capitalism's code of killing (1993)

From the December 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capitalism has always maintained the mythology of the ’just war’, and the church has always been the leading standard bearer for state-sanctioned murder.

It’s not all that long ago since boys’ adventure stories were about swashbuckling heroes meeting in battle on more-or-less equal terms. Raphael Sabbatini's Captain Blood or Maurice Walsh’s David Gordon were fairly typical of the type: brave men opposing one another with courage and resolution and a determination not to take unfair advantage in battle.

Such romantic nonsense is out of place against the background of modern weaponry that denies the killer the agony of watching his victim die. War was never romantic nor "fair"; individual hand-to-hand combat with pikes, lances or swords must have been hell and the science of gaining an unfair advantage over an opponent, then as now. was known as strategy.

Because war and preparation for war is a permanent feature of capitalism that accounts for massive investments of personnel and finance and because it is an utterly foul business, governments are obliged to "respectabilize” it. Thus, something of the old romanticism prevails in what is offered as history. In every' walk of life, parents, schools, churches, participation in war is elevated in the public consciousness and emotive key words, like bravery, heroism, sacrifice, dedicated, proud and patriotic are part of the lexicon of glorification used to transmute the most utterly debased acts of human savagery into something necessary and noble.

Even the "enemy" is not completely damned lest condemnation provoke interest and enquiry. His leaders can be mad or bad and his courage, dignity and honour can rarely be accepted as on a level with "our boys". Nevertheless, there is a decorum that embellishes the obscenity of war. almost a mystique to lighten the haunting futility of death and this can be extended to the enemy.

Thus, it is expected that "we" and our "enemy" will reciprocate in showing a respect to corpses that must be denied to the living. The Luftwaffe pilot shot down while slaughtering women and children in London, the RAF man show down over Dresden while carrying out Churchill’s plan to kill as many German civilians as possible, the hyped-up John Wayne dropping a 2.000kg bomb on a Baghdad street, the heroes who made history at Hiroshima; if, in death, any of these falls into the hands of "the enemy", then they will be accorded the ritual firing of rifles and blowing of bugles over their graves. The exercise gives dignity to those who work at killing and promotes the notion that they died bravely in pursuit of a noble calling.

Appalling reality

But, in the reality of war. battles are won by the gaining of unfair advantage. Obviously, a completely fair fight could have no winner and it is, thus, imperative to the opposing sides to deceive their opponent and. where possible, to introduce weapons of greater destructive capacity and to amass greater concentrations of men and materials.

Spying, with its underscore of lies, deceit, blackmail and, not infrequently, murder, is a legitimate adjunct of war; striking at the enemy’s homeland and slaughtering innocent civilians demoralizes the enemy, impedes his movement and his production of munitions and is, therefore, condoned on the grounds of saving lives. The watchword in war must be "Victory!", untrammelled and uncompromised by considerations of everyday moral rectitude. The Roman Catholic church articulates the provisions for waging a "just war" and one of these stipulates a favourable chance of winning. In common with other bodies, the churches deplore war but lend their services to succour the participants and, often, to plead with their god for the vanquishing of "the enemy".

It is remarkable that decent people who deplore violence and who might be in the forefront of those demanding stiffer sentences and the return of the death penalty for people engaged in violence are often the most vociferous supporters of armed forces and patriotic aggression. How can any rational human being defend the idea of training great masses of people to kill and arming them with guns, bombs, nuclear weapons and the rest of the obscene array destructive equipment that governments provide for the killing business?

The answer we get from apologists for state violence is that it is made necessary by the nature of our society and the fact that our potential enemies have armed forces. The latter simply acknowledges that the effect lies in the cause — because there are armed forces, we must get armed conflict. Pressed, then, to consider an alternative form of society that will not contain the seeds of conflict, these apologists are usually revealed as the most trenchant defenders of the present system.

But there are other aspects of the killing business that create a real dilemma for the upholders of the political and economic status quo with its competition and built-in propensity for conflict and war. Among these is the problem of political terrorism.

In Northern Ireland, for example, people like Archbishop Eames of the Church of Ireland frequently grab headlines with condemnations of terrorists. There are many other churchmen, politicians and others who echo Eames’s sentiments and we name him only because he is the most forceful and frequent person to condemn violence. Like the others. Eames does not condemn all violence or dissociate his church from bodies established and maintained to excel in the use of the most calculatingly efficient means of inflicting death and injury.

Forthrightly and correctly — he condemns the terrorist who leaves a bomb in a hold-all in a public place; he condemns the gunman and his organization and he argues that such behaviour is anti-Christian and that, despite the claims of loyalist killers, they are not acting for the Protestant community.

But Archbishop Eames has yet to go on record condemning governments for having armed forces, he does not condemn gunmen acting for the state and he is silent when a massive bomb is dropped on a city by a sophisticated flying machine using the most advanced technology to conceal its presence and its purpose, and, of course. Eames does not tell members of the state armed forces that their behaviour is anti-Christian.

Psychological scars

In fact the Archbishop, like his competitor colleagues in the other churches and, indeed, most of those in the forefront of the various well-intentioned peace groups, is not opposed to violence and killing. He may be moved to sadness by the lunacy of human beings killing human beings but he only condemns and disowns such behaviour when it is illegal.

Effectively, this reduces the Christian — and, it must be said, the general — concept of so-called moral reasoning to the politics of the head count and this, in turn, must raise very serious questions about the nature of capitalist democracy and the manipulation of "public opinion" by a minority-controlled public power of persuasion.

The question is particularly crucial for those of us who live in Northern Ireland, where the violence which spawned the ruthless Provisional IRA was initialed by a repressive elected government some twenty-five years ago. Now. with violence an everyday occurrence and selective condemnations ritualized by, among others, the very people whose behaviour and political ambition made it inevitable, the hypocritical utterances of people with a ready recourse to a microphone or TV camera can itself fuel violence.

Random killing

Recently, with an upsurge in the random killing of catholics by groups of loyalists operating under various fine sounding titles, a new strain of hypocrisy has emerged — from Sinn Fein, who articulate the political thinking of the IRA. According to this source, killing people because of their job or their overt political altitudes is a legitimate pursuit. On the other hand, if protestant terrorists, in order to exert political pressure, identify their targets on the basis of perceived religion, that is breaking the rules and must, therefore, be evil.

But is it? If you can departmentalize your thinking of the question you might conclude that killing someone is deplorable but sometimes necessary and proper providing the killing is within the confines of a particular code. But who determines the nature of the code and on what basis is it justified? Who is it says that it is permissible to kill perhaps millions of people in another country with a nuclear bomb because that country, or the authority within it that controls armed force, is threatening "our" markets, trade routes or sources of raw materials but it is wrong to kill people who represent an authority that abuses you or unfairly frustrates your political aspirations?

In the ease of the Provisional IRA, apart from the spurious claim to the democratic succession of Sinn Fein’s 1918 all-Ireland electoral victory, the historical morality of violence is often advanced, it is true, of course, that most states owe their existence and their power to the violence, often illegal violence, by which they were established. The "morality" of that argument is that violence is the justification of violence.

Special condemnation

As for preserving a social condemnation for the random killings carried out by loyalist gunmen, it might be asked by what logic it is permissible to shoot a bricklayer because the only way he can make a living is by selling his skills to "the enemy" but wrong to kill at random in order to frustrate a perceived harmful political design.

This is a part of the maze of contradictions you get into when you accept violence at any level. Nor can the question be resolved legalistically for, in every case, the lawful executive is itself not only an agent, real or potential. of the most ruthless violence but. in its role as what Marx referred to as "the executive committee of the ruling class". "Lawful government" is the constant agent of the many other forms of, frequently obscene, violence perpetrated on the working class.

Condemn all violence

Socialists condemn all wars and all political violence. That might seem a simplistic way of avoiding comparisons and condemnations of one form of violence as opposed to another. But it is not a simplistic formula; it is the inescapable logic of the fact that while members of the working class are pitched against one another in wars and so-called national liberation struggles, working class interests are never at stake.

All wars and violent political struggles arise directly or indirectly out of the competition and conflicts of capitalism though such conflicts are usually filtered through an ideological disguise in order to conceal their nature and as a means of enlisting working-class support.

The only struggle that concerns socialists and should concern the working class is the class struggle — the struggle between those who produce all wealth and own virtually none and those who produce nothing and own virtually everything. That struggle, we hold, can be resolved democratically when we have divested ourselves of the fictions that allow us to be enlisted as killers.

Richard Montague

Letters: LBC (1993)

Letter to the Editors from the December 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

LBC

Dear Editors,

As a great fan of "free" radio stations. I read your "Death of a radio station" article in the October issue with great interest.

What great news it was to hear that LBC has lost their broadcasting licence. I’m overjoyed.

The moronic prattlers at LBC and other licensed radio stations have a damned cheek to start shouting "unfair — disgraceful" when they have found out that the Tory Party they have grovelled round have had happen to them what happens to most of us working-class people — being shit upon (when they lose their licence).

What really annoyed me was when I read in your article that LBC groaned that the Government has no right to say who. and who may not, broadcast. LBC and the "others" didn’t have this view when on Saturday August 19 1989, somewhere in the international waters of the North Sea. Radio Caroline, from the MV Ross Revenge w'as being wrecked — not by gale-force winds but by Dutch and UK government officials, with no doubt the likes of LBC gleefully hearing about the events where DJs on board were assaulted, transmitters violently smashed with sledgehammers and the ship’s record library confiscated. Everything on board that ship was either "stolen" by UK officials or smashed to pieces. We are talking about a vessel being in international waters where the UK authorities had no jurisdiction over.

The likes of LBC were responsible for this raid. They protested (since 1983) that Caroline had no right to broadcast etc etc.

Now LBC — poor dears — are “in the same boat" so-to-speak. Well isn’t that tough.

The ILRs wouldn’t be around if it wasn’t for the likes of Caroline and the ’60s stations that broadcast offshore. Surely everybody has the right to broadcast. The airwaves are just that — air isn’t that free?

"We live in a democratic free society". So says Johnnie and his boys. Well, you could’ve fooled me!

Thanks again for the excellent article. Steve Coleman is certainly on my "wavelength".

Best wishes and thanks for an excellent journal.

Doug Sharrard,

Leicester

Letter: “Emotional Man" (1993)

Letter to the Editors from the December 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Emotional Man"

Dear Editors.

The October editorial headed "Cure for the fascist cancer" while expounding some fundamental truth, also contained the persistent and basic flaw that is always present in the advocation of your arguments. Your editorial stated: "Do those who seek to ban them (BNP) believe that workers are so stupid as to fall for fascist nonsense when it is countered in public by clear and logical opposition?"

The answer unfortunately is yes they can. There is sufficient evidence to show that millions of people are incapable of rational thinking.

The cause is not because people are “stupid" but because they are subject to early emotional experiences that can thwart mature development of their objective capabilities to fully overcome repressed and infantile fears in later adult life.

If this were not the case, the countless numbers who have, over many years, heard the Socialist Party, with its "clear and logical" position, would have not only rejected their own previous views but, at least most, would have joined the SPGB.

On the contrary, the observations are that millions not only flock to and vigorously support reactionary political philosophies, but in addition millions more become obsessively addicted to religious rantings of the most primitive and irrational kind.

While I am in agreement with the Socialist Party in its desire for a truly democratic world community, based on common ownership, I find that its lack of a deeper and more positive understanding of “Emotional Man", as opposed to its fixation on purely "Economic Man", is its weakest essential link.

Human beings — this should be self-evident — are not robots and mechanical, but living organisms of much complexity in their inner emotional life.

Political reactionaries (including fascists) and religious advocates always make their appeal to the irrational in "Emotional Man" that repeatedly and successfully recruits millions in each generation to their ranks. Despite the fact that those millions, as a result, act contrary to their own rational interests.

This constant seeking after substitute strong symbolic parental images, in the form of Gods, leaders and powerful nation states of "Motherland" and "Fatherland", should give a conclusive indication of the infantile and "lack of confidence" evident in the human psyche.

The source is not in his "nature" but in the "nurtured" early emotional experience. "Fascism" is not merely a political attitude but the outward expression of inner conflicts that we are all capable of living under certain anxiety conditions.

The increasing demand for Sado-Masochistic style movies and violent horror "comics" by vast numbers of young people worldwide, as some attempt at release from inner conflict, should be of great concern.

Trends are also observed in the presentation style, over the last twenty years, in the music of the young, behaviour at football events, drug-taking and drinking habits. All are symptomatic of outward and inward drives of destructive aggressive behaviour.

The development of new religious cults shows an increase in the infestation of mysticism, particularly in the young.

The danger is that these tensions can be projected onto reality with "fascist" values. As a guide to the difficulties Socialists face, if we are ever to secure a genuine and lasting democratic society, may I recommend two two works: The Mass Psychology of Fascism by Wilhelm Reich and The Psychopathology of Everyday Life by Sigmund Freud. Until Socialists fully understand and tackle these deep matters, little progress, if any, can be made for a sane society. Failure to recognise this could have the most serious consequences, in this technological age, for the future of our planet.

Lionel M Rich,

London NW6

Reply:

Who says we are fixated on "economic man"? Socialism is about improving all aspects of human life. We even have members who like the ideas of Freud and Reich (though others reject them as unsubstantiated speculations, not to say unscientific nonsense). The point is we all agree that the task of Socialists today is to make more Socialists, by reasoned argument and democratic persuasion. What are you suggesting we do in addition? Organise a campaign of mass psychoanalysis? 

Editors.

Letter: Religion and Birth Control (1993)

Letter to the Editors from the December 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Religion and Birth Control

Dear Editors,

Termination of pregnancy and contraception are very difficult. It is misleading to link the two as the article on religion and birth control did in the October issue.

Contraception enables an individual to control family size and fertility if they wish to make this choice. Termination ends the life of another, although very small, individual.

If people stopped linking termination and contraception then maybe religious leaders would stop linking the two and hopefully realize that contraception is a good thing and that by more people having access to it without all the guilt there would be less terminations, less women dying in back-street clinics, less women becoming worn out at an early age from having many children, less deaths of infants, etc, etc.

The only religious people who will not be convinced by separating the two issues are idiots like the Pope who do not care about the unborn child, because once it is born it is then condemned to a life of poverty and even early death. The Pope and his cronies want to control the sexuality of worshippers and keep women uneducated and producing kids until they wear out.

Most Catholics I know do not agree with termination as the life of a baby is ended, however they nearly all use contraception, thinking that if the Pope cared about babies he would stop condemning contraception and positively encourage it.

It will surprise many with stereotyped views on pro-lifers that most of my religious friends support abortion and my humanist atheist friends are mostly against it.

The only way to stop termination is to make contraception easily available, give all kids a good sex education with an emphasis on equality, relationships, love, safety and respect for each other, an end to poverty, equality and choices regarding jobs and education for girls and women all over the world.

Also it is not just religious cultures that oppress women. Secular Western cultures have sick attitudes to women, on the whole we are just sex objects who must be slim and available for the use of men whenever they demand it. Women in the West are still lumbered with child care, have little choice about careers or staying at home. Capitalism forces us into crappy, underpaid jobs and at the same time we have to hold a family together. We can’t even choose not to go out to work because of capitalism. (And who wants to work for this system anyway?)

So it is not just the fundamentalists of the Vatican, Iran and the American Bible Belt who oppress women.

Ali Browning,

Bradford

SPGB Meetings (1993)

Party News from the December 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

An audio recording of Kerima Mohideen's talk on Rudyard Kipling's Kim is available at the following link.

Other “Huns” and Other Louvains. (1914)

From the December 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

I.—The Belgians on the Congo.

The two faces of the capitalist have been exposed in these pages times out of number, and in various forms. Once again this dual personage has become clearly visible to the merest observer under another set of circumstances.

We have of late heard the squalling of the Belgian capitalists and the officials of the Belgian State. So shocked and horrified were these tender people at the way in which the “brutal Germans” trod upon their sacred soil and destroyed some of their towns, that a deputation was sent to proclaim this sacrilege to the world, with a view to persuading the neutral powers to come to their assistance.

But the Socialist remembers that these capitalists wailing over their wrecked property and pretending to be so concerned about the poor Belgian workers who are being driven from their homes, are the same capitalists who, through their agents, ransacked scores of villages and towns, shot and killed thousands of men, women, and children who had never raised even a finger against them.

Before describing these barbarities it would perhaps be as well to briefly sketch the events that led up to them. If the reader wishes them elaborated he should read “Red Rubber,” by E. D. Morel, to which book, together with White Paper, Africa, No. 1, 1904 (Cd 1933, 8½d.), the writer is indebted for the following information.

In the sixties and seventies of last century the great commercial countries saw enormous possibilities in the creation of new markets, arising out of notable discoveries by explorers in Central Africa, and each wished to acquire as large an outlet as possible for their own manufactures. The scramble commenced.

The discovery of the Congo Basin by Stanley was the most significant of all, and in this direction the late King Leopold II turned his attention. Having previously juggled successfully with Suez Canal and other shares, he had amassed a considerable fortune. He sent several investigating expeditions, consisting mostly of Englishmen and Germans (how strange !) assuring the world that his intentions were purely scientific and severely disinterested. To carry on this work Leopold formed a company styled “The International African Association.”

This bloody and astute king capitalist played his cards like an expert. He became a member of the Aborigines Protection Society, and promised to support lavishly the missionary societies of England and America. He captured the British Chambers of Commerce by declaring that if the commercial communities supported his proposals the Congo trade would be open to them and would be exempt from all fiscal restrictions.

After a time the various powers became uneasy and jealous as to who should control this vast and rich land. Certain suggestions were considered with a view to placing it under international control. Then on the suggestion of the Portuguese it was decided to recognise the sovereignty of Portugal on both banks of the river up to a certain limit inland, to declare the river open to the world, and to place it under an Anglo Portuguese Navigation Commission to which the accession of the other Great Powers would be welcome. After introducing clauses protecting traders against exaggerated tariffs, and for the protection of the natives (!), etc., the treaty was signed.

But Leopold had not been playing to the gallery for nothing, and immediately the treaty was denounced by the British Chambers of Commerce and the philanthropic societies. The British Government was accused of betraying national interests, and the Portuguese Government was accused by its bosses of a similar crime. France, encouraged by the clamour, became resolutely hostile, and Bismarck, on behalf of Germany, kicked. Belgium was now in an unique position, and received the reluctant support of the British Government, with a proviso to secure freedom of trade, etc. Bismarck’s proposal of an International Conference was assented to, and was opened “in the name of God,” on Nov. 25, 1884.

Fourteen powers were represented, and their first consideration was for the welfare of the natives ! Such was the slimy cant and hypocrisy that we are told “the delegates, figuratively speaking, fell upon each other’s necks and wept with emotion.” They placed the Congo Basin in the hands of Leopold’s company. Articles were signed to ensure the utmost freedom to all capitalists, and for the preservation of the natives, the suppression of slavery and the slave trade, and “the protection of all . . . institutions which aim at instructing the natives and bringing home to them the blessings of civilisation.” We shall see, presently, what these “blessings of civilisation” were.

On August 1st, 1885, Leopold notified the signatory Powers that the International African Association would henceforth be known as the Congo Free State, with himself as sovereign of that “State.” Almost immediately followed a decree claiming all vacant lands as the property of the State. Another decree limited the rights of the native to the area upon which his hut was built, whilst another prohibited the hunting of the elephant “throughout the whole of the State’s territory” (three-fourths of which had never been trodden by a white man). Then they commenced recruiting an army of the most savage tribes. These natives could either volunteer or were taken in raids. For every recruit of the latter order the State officer obtained a bonus according to the physical fitness of his captive. Male children were also taken and drafted to military instruction camps to be made soldiers in due course. Having secured and trained sufficient recruits they set out with a mandate from Christendom to exterminate the Arabs, who had up to then been trading with the natives. Their object was to obtain the vast stores of ivory and rubber in the Arabs’ possession and to capture their markets. This accomplished, everything was clear for Leopold and his thieves’ gang to commence business.

On Sept. 21st 1891 a secret decree was issued to the State officials in Africa, stating that it was the paramount duty of the Congo Free State to raise revenue, and “to take urgent and necessary measures to secure for the State the dominal fruits, notably ivory and rubber.” Other regulations followed, which forbade the natives selling rubber or ivory to European merchants, and threatened the latter with prosecution if they bought these articles from the natives.

The merchants protested, and Leopold defined the position. Everything, he told them, belonged to the State—the land and the produce thereof. The natives were tenants upon State property. If they interfered with that property they were poachers ; and whoever abetted them were poachers, receivers of stolen goods, and violators of the law. How simple and concise !

Other secret documents were dispatched to the Governor-General baiting him to do his utmost to obtain the produce from the natives, “sparing no means.” A sliding scale was fixed by which officials were paid. The less it cost to obtain the goods the greater the bonus ; the more it cost to get the goods the less for the official. In other words, the less the native got for his ivory and rubber the larger the official’s commission and the more for the thieves on top !

One can pretty well guess the nature of the orders of tha Governor to his subordinates, and of the subordinates to their subordinates. Here is a typical one from Commandant Verstracten to the officials in charge of stations in the Rubi Welle district :

“I have the honour to inform you that from Jan. 1st 1899, you must succeed in furnishing 4,000 Kilos of rubber every month. To this effect I give you carte blanche. You have, therefore, two months in which to work your people. Employ gentleness at first, and if they persist in not accepting the imposition of the State, employ force of arms.”

Here is an extract from another :

“Decidedly these people of Inoryo are a bad lot. They have just cut some rubber vines at Huli. We must fight them until their absolute submission is obtained, or their complete extermination.”

Under this system £13,715,664 worth of raw produce was forced out of the Congo natives during the seven years preceding 1906 by the hirelings of this royal member of the Aborigines Protection Society and his confederates.

Let us now see how the rubber was acquired under the stimulus of bonuses and force. The information is furnished by Belgian and French, traders (who, no doubt, felt sore at being outdone by the State monopoly), and travellers and missionaries. The most brutal act of the “German Huns” sinks into insignificance compared with some of them.

The procedure was by levying a tax on the villages and towns payable in kind, and State soldiers would be sent to demand payment—so much ivory or rubber as well as food stuffs—every week or month as the case might be. But let the eye witness describe. The following is au extract from a letter written as early as 1892 by a resident of Likini.

“The frequent wars upon the natives undertaken without any cause by the State soldiers sent, out to get rubber and ivory, are depopulating the country. The soldiers find that the quickest and cheapest method is to raid villages, seize prisoners, and have them redeemed against ivory, etc. . . . Each agent of the State receives 1,000 fr. commission per] ton of ivory, and 175 fr. per ton of rubber.”

This, the reader will notice, was about a year after the decree urging the officials to secure the “dominal fruits.” The bloody events that followed have never been surpassed. The following is from the diary of E. J. Glave, an “independent English traveller” who crossed the Congo in 1894-5. It appeared in the “Century Magazine” in 1896.

“Up the Ikelemba away to Lake Mantumba the State is perpetrating its fiendish policy in order to obtain profit. War has been waged all through the district of the Equator, and thousands of people have been killed. Many women and children were taken, and twenty-one heads were brought to Stanley Falls, and have been used by Captain Rom as a decoration round a flower bed in front of his house.”

The following piece of information was given to the British Consul, Roger Casement, and is quoted in his report (p. 43.)

“Each time the corporal goes out to get rubber, cartridges are given to him. He must bring back all not used ; and for every one used he must bring back a right hand. . . . Sometimes they shot a cartridge at an animal in hunting ; they then cut off a hand from a living man. … In six months, on the Momboyo River they had used 6,000 cartridges, which means that 6,000 people are killed or mutilated. It means more than 6,000, for the soldiers kill children with the butt of their guns.”

If a soldier returned to his station without a sufficient number of hands to make up for the rubber he had not brought, he was shot by his superiors. A native corporal described how in one day he had brought 160 hands home to his officer and they were thrown into the river. Another individual testifies to a village (Katoro) being attacked. Many were killed, including women and children. The heads were cut off and taken to the officer in charge, who sent men back for the hands also, and these were pierced and strung and dried over the camp fire. On another occasion a large town was attacked ; hands and heads cut off and taken to the officer. The witness said : “I shall never forget the sickening sight of deep baskets of human heads.”

According to Roger Casement many had their ears cut off ; also the native soldier, after being told “You kill only women ; you cannot kill men,” would mutilate the bodies and carry the sexual organs to the officer. In fact, in the Mongalla massacre of 1899 the agents confessed to ordering sexual mutilation. Consul Casement says that “this was not a native practice, but the deliberate act of soldiers of an European administration . . . and that in committing these acts they were but obeying the positive orders of their superiors.”

In some cases when protests were made to the Congo Courts a mock trial ensued. Lacroix, one of the agents in the Mongalla region was thus held up, and he confessed to having been instructed by his superiors to attack a certain village for shortage of rubber, and to having killed in his raid many women and children. He said:

“I am going to appear before the judge for having killed 160 men, cut off 60 hands ; for having crucified women and children, for having mutilated many men and hung their sexual remains on the village fence.”

Terms of imprisonment were inflicted, but were never served. Why ? Because “they had acted on instruction.”

The Congo Free State is split up into several “Companies” or “Trusts,” each occupying a specific area. One named “The King” was worked in the interest of Leopold’s private purse. Other portions were handed over for stewardship to financiers, “personal friends and officials of his European Court,” etc. In the “Companies” the King or the State usually held half the shares. One is named the Anglo-Belgian India Rubber Company. In six years this company, with the aid of the State soldiers, made a nett profit of £720,000 out of the rubber slave trade on a paid-up capital of £9,280 ! Thus each share of a paid up value of £4 6s. 6d. has received £335 in the same time. King Leopold held 1,000 of these shares.

However, it seems quite clear that, although the Belgian capitalists, backed by the arms of the State, had a big hand in this dirty business, there was along with them the international gang of plunderers. If this were not so, why was it that, although the evidence of these devilish horrors was before the Governments of America, Italy, France, Portugal, Germany, and the rest of them for years, they did not move to stop them ? Why was it that for six years the British Government was continually having reports of atrocious maladministration on the Congo and yet refused to move ? Why, indeed, did it absolutely suppress these reports—which it has never yet made public? Sir Henry Johnston, who has travelled a good deal in that direction, is evidently in the know. He says : “If there have been bad Belgians on the Congo, there have been bad Englishmen, ruthless Frenchmen, pitiless Swedes, cruel Danes, unscrupulous Italians.” (See preface to Morel’s “Red Rubber,”)

At any rate, how do these brutalities practised by Belgian bullies upon a defenceless people whose country they had invaded compare with the German atrocities of to-day ?

I am not attempting to defend German autocrats, but merely to make it plain that it is nothing but sheer hypocrisy for the Allies to point an accusing finger at Germany, for there is not one of them but has been guilty of deeds of brutality every whit as appalling as has been charged, not to say proved, against the German butchers. With the Belgian workers the sympathy of all Socialists must lie, but suffering is no new thing to them, any more than it is to the workers of other countries. And if their pains and travail contribute to their political enlightenment, then they will not have suffered in vain.

J. W. Pyle

The Forum: “Directive Ability” and Other Bogeys. (1914)

Letter to the Editors from the December 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

[To the Editor]

Sir,—Referring to your front page article, “The Capitalists’ Directive Ability,” in the “Standard” dated July, 1914, I respectfully beg to ask if you will make clear to me a few points on that subject. According to the above article your contention is : there is no such thing as directive ability among the capitalist class. Assuming that to be true, then it is essential there is no such thing as directive ability among the working class; in short, there is no such thing in existence.

Now I ask you what is genius? Herbert Kaufmann says : “Genius is a birthright” (“Reynolds,” July 5th, 1914). In my dictionary, I read, “Genius: a man endowed with superior faculties.” Now is it a fact that we mortals (both capitalist and slave) are born, each one different in calibre and disposition to the other? If you answer in the affirmative then you must admit that one individual can be born with superior mental faculties to his brother. There are men of the capitalist class who are certainly very clever, possibly through the splendid education their wealth enables them to procure, but there are also many men of that class who are confirmed imbeciles.

On the other hand, we have men of the working class who, through their own exertions, work their way to fame and fortune, while others, with an indolent disposition—certainly born in them—live to be led by the individual of sharper mental faculties. The reason I have quoted both classes is to disprove the theory that environment or condition make any difference. To make my meaning more clear I will deal with a few cases of what I consider come under the heading of directive ability.

I am very fond of chess, and though I am considered good, I am perfectly sure I should never make a “Dr. Lasker” or a “Capablanca.” These eminent players were, I firmly believe, born with a natural aptitude for the game.

Then again, we have that famous composer, Guiseppe Verdi, who, though a poor man in his youth, became Italy’s favourite composer.

Now I venture to say that few men still living have a theoretical knowledge of music equal to the well known Major A. J. Stretton, M.V.O., R.M.S.M. Yet I think you will agree with me, with all due respect to Major Stretton, it is impossible for him to conceive beautiful ideas of melody equal to those of Verdi.

There are many instances which I could go on quoting. Take, for instance, our public schools. Are the scholars equally clever at drawing, arithmetic, and mechanics ? No ! one may develop into an eminent artist, the other into a brilliant mathematician, and where is the school without its “dunce” ?

All this seems to show very clearly that genius does exist, and though, as you point out in your article, Lipton or Rockefeller may now be tyrants of the first water—which is evidently true—they must (unless they inherited their wealth) in the first place have possessed ”Directive Ability.” 

Richard Sharman

——————————————

Our critic’s letter is rather confused and misses the whole point at issue. The question, in reality, is not whether “directive ability” exists but, if it exists, who exercises it.

If our view is correct (and our friend has not denied it) that all the work of society, from the obtaining of the raw materials of production to the distribution of the finished articles to the consumers, is performed by wage workers, from the “unskilled” dock labourer to the highly skilled scientist, from the office boy to the manager, then obviously there is no room in production for the capitalist, and he is merely a parasite. His function is simply to hold shares or titles to a certain amount of profit ; but he is in no way instrumental in the actual turning out of wealth. And it is with the production and distribution of wealth that we are concerned.

This is the position laid down in the article criticised, and our opponent has not attempted to deal with our argument.

And now for the few isolated points or misconceptions of our opponent.

He sets out in the following confused and unscientific manner “according to … your contention . . . there is no such thing as Directive Ability among the capitalists ;” then comes an unwarrantable assumption: “Then it is essential, there is no such thing as Directive Ability among the working class, in short, there is no such thing in existence.” Why ? No reason is given.

What “Directive Ability” actually is seems to be shrouded in mystery. It is the name given to something that is supposed to organise industry. In reality, however, modern industry is like a vast mechanism in which all the parts are interdependent and of equal importance. The ignorant, superficial and superstitious, unable to clear the cobwebs from their cloudy brains, do not see the natural interdependence of every cog in the wheel and have to imagine a mysterious master mind, like the god of the theologians, keeping everything in order.

Socialists agree that men are born with different faculties, but we contend that only under a system where economic security for all exists will it be possible for all to exercise these varying faculties to the best advantage. No matter what his faculties may be, the child of the working class has to find a job. He cannot pick and choose his job, but must take one of the first to hand, and from that day to the end of his life the continual struggle with poverty leaves him scant time to employ his faculties in. directions that satisfy him, leaving out of sight the fact that the degrading and brutalising conditions that surround his childhood tend to strangle his finer feelings at birth.

Among the millions of workers very few ever “work their way to fame and fortune”; the vast majority work their way to early graves instead. Here and there, perhaps, one may have the good luck to struggle into a position of comparative security, but they who do so possess the particular faculties necessary for money making : the faculty to lie unblushingly, to work little children till they become almost imbeciles, and to take no thought at all for the much vaunted sanctity of womanhood and the family hearth. Our critic instances Rockefeller and Lipton who have made their own (!) fortunes. If he digs a little deeper and sees how they made their beginnings he will obtain ample proof of the truth of our remarks. The facts recorded in the article in question are in themselves sufficient to damn the characters of both the honorable gentlemen. We may also point out that both Rockefeller and Lipton started at a time when conditions favoured their undertakings. The large industries were just coming into being.

The remark that environment and conditions make no difference to individuals is obviously absurd. For example, why are the inhabitants of Equatorial regions indolent while the inhabitants of Temperate regions are energetic ? Is not the outlook on life of a coast tribe different to that of an inland tribe ? But take the references quoted. Where would Capablanca be were it not for the development of the science of chess, and Verdi but for the development of the science of constructing musical instruments and in musical technique ? Probably in the same position as the embryonic landscape painter, born in the slums of some great city, never seeing the beauties of nature, but sweating his life away in a modern factory. Myriads of potential Verdis die every year unknown and unheard of.

Regarding the existence of dunces in schools that can safely be put to the credit of the capitalist method of educating the young, which makes no allowance for the natural curiosity and aptitude of children.

Apparently, judging from our critic’s remarks, he considers genius and “directive ability” much the same thing. A glance through history will show that the fate of the genius has been anything but similar to that of the alleged possessor of directive ability. We will give a few instances in support of our contention.

James Thomson (author of “The City of Dreadful Night”), one of the finest of poets, was in early life a book-seller’s hack, after which he spent his nights on the Thames Embankment, dying in poor circumstances from a disease brought on by hardship. Henrich Heine, the leading lyrical poet of Germany and an incomparable essayist, had a perpetual struggle for existence. Herbert Spencer, the Synthetic Philosopher, could only carry through his great work by the subscriptions of friends. Lavoisier, the father of modern chemistry, had to accept a position as tax farmer in order to obtain funds to carry on his experiments. Linnaeus, the father of modern botany, had to work his way to the Universities of Lund and Uppsala, living on £8 a year, and making his own boots from the bark of trees. Fortunately for him he attracted the notice of a man with similar tastes who made his future life comparatively smooth, otherwise the famous classification of the animal and vegetable world might never have been attached to his name. John Kay, the inventor of the “fly shuttle,” one of the most important inventions ever made in the loom, was beggared by the costs of litigation owing to the unblushing infringements of his patents by the capitalists of his day. He starved to death in France, in spite of the fact that his brain teemed with schemes for the improvement of industrial machinery. Joseph Marie Jacquard, the inventor of the famous silk-weaving loom, had to sacrifice everything he possessed to carry on his experiments. He was unsuccessful, became a labourer, then a soldier. It was not until he was fifty years of age that the fame of his invention became public. Inigo Jones, the great architect, was born in poor circumstances, and would never have been heard of had he not attracted the attention of the third Earl of Pembroke, who sent him to Italy to study. And lastly, Karl Marx, admitted by his most bitter opponents to have been ons of greatest minds that ever applied themselves to Sociology, spent nearly the whole of his life in the direst poverty, sometimes being without a crust of bread in the house. There is just one further instance that the present European conflict calls to mind. General Shrapnel, the inventor of the explosive that has done such terrible execution, was an English officer and (according to the “News of the World,” 18.10.14) died in 1842 a poor and bitter old man. The Government never repaid him the money he spent on his experiments. Wellington stated that the most important battle of the Peninsular War, and even Waterloo itself, were won by the aid of shrapnel.

In conclusion, when the economic problem is solved for all men and we no longer crawl along on our bellies, the innumerable splendid minds that abound will no longer be stifled, but will be given the opportunity to develop to their fullest extent.

G. McC.

The old old story. (1914)

From the December 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

The B.S.P., keeping up its reputation of madness, has recently issued to its members and friends a circular entitled: “A Call to Vigorous Effort,” and with it a letter—begging subscriptions for carrying on a National Winter Campaign, to stir up public opinion in order to obtain from the master class “stepping stones to Social Democracy.”

In the letter, which is dated Nov. 4th, it states that: “In a matter of ten weeks, more progress has been made in the direction of Socialist legislation than during the previous ten years.” From this it would seem that if the war continues as long as some of the half-penny daily “military experts” inform us it will, Socialism will have become an accomplished fact !

Go ahead, then, B.S.P.! Go ahead !

—–O—–

But, as usual, the B.S.P. puts the noose round its own neck, for when we turn to the “Call” we find that it endeavours to describe what actually has taken place, and what the B.S.P. calls in its letter, “progress towards Socialist legislation.” It says: “The Government, which promised that the real producers and defenders of the United Kingdom should receive fair treatment, and that their dependents should be fully cared for, is breaking every pledge it made.” By the way, who produced the United Kingdom ? “Cumbersome and unworkable machinery has been set up in order to evade responsibility ; doles have been cut down below the slow starvation limits; the workers in distress are being left to the tender mercies of the ‘charitable rich’ . . . capitalists have taken advantage of Government subsidies, Government guarantees and Government protection to increase their profits.” Progress ! Socialist legislation !

—–O—–

Perhaps we are just getting to it. Further it reads : “Public opinion must be stirred to follow actively on the lines of National Control of Railways, National Fixation of Prices, and National Insurance of Shipping already secured.”

So far as the control of railways and the insurance of shipping goes, we venture to assert that the majority of capitalists in other industries would be only too pleased to have their profits guaranteed and secured in a similar manner. That the B.S.P. jubilates over this action only goes to prove what we have always maintained, viz., that, like the other pseudo-Socialist bodies, it is composed either of misguided mortals or deliberate frauds deluding their fellows in the interest of the capitalist class.

The Government has not fixed prices, nor can it do so. All it has done is to state a price arranged beforehand with the capitalists beyond which certain commodities must not be sold. And here again the Government took particular care that profits were not in any way reduced. It was officially stated that these prices allowed “a good profit both for the wholesale merchant and the retailer” ; and when the representatives of capitalists talk about “a good proft” they usually mean what they say. Far from the prices being fixed, they have fluctuated even more than at ordintry times. Take sugar, for instance; the maximum price has been bobbing up and down all the time, 4½d., 3¾d., 4¼d., 3¾d. and so on. And don’t forget it that in most cases out of ten the dealers charged the maximum.

—–O—–

The S.L.P. is also in a bad way. So bad that the editor of their official organ has to warn its readers not to understand any of the articles therein as expressing the Party’s attitude or view regarding the war. This, mark you, after the war has been in progress for three months ! In fact, he admits that he does not know what the official view is ! One of its contributors, presumably a member of the Party, says “The S.L.P.—let us admit it freely—has been taken by storm, though not so disastrously as other parties. . . . What policy does the S.L.P. follow with respect to this war ? We don’t know. We are disunited. We are groping for a lead at the present time.”

Lead kindly light !

J. W. Pyle

Unscientific emotionalism. (1914)

From the December 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

The widespread misery of workers in modern times has brought forward two main classes of people claiming to hold the remedy for the social evil. On the one side you have those who, horrified at the miserable conditions everywhere, preach brotherly love, a return to Feudalism, and similar things as a solution for the problem; on the other hand you have the scientific Socialists who, studying societies from the point of view of modern science, regard them as undergoing a process of growth and decay. Thus, instead of attacking the superficial relations in society, the Socialists concern themselves with the centre, the pivot on which the system turns, i.e., the method of producing and distributing wealth, the relation between the masters and the workers, because from this relation springs all the other relations that appear so prominently and make such a show.

Socialists recognise that the technical development (development of the tools) in society has made it possible for small groups to operate large masses of machinery and turn out vast quantities of wealth with a small expenditure of energy ; and that these powerful means of production, if commonly owned, could be economically used for the turning out of only just that amount of wealth required for the needs of all the members of society, and to provide the necessary new means of production for the future. This would necessitate a comparatively insignificant expenditure of energy on the part of each, and leave a great deal of leisure for the cultivation of Science, Art, and so on.

The private ownership of wealth is not only uneconomical, but, owing to the fact that the ruling idea is the enriching of the owners regardless of the consequences to the rest, so soon as the wealth of the owners does not continue to increase, production slackens down, even though this slackening down is the cause of untold misery among the workers. When the ruling idea will be the comfort of all, production will be regulated accordingly.

This view of the “social question” has been forced into the minds of Socialists by the every¬day facts of working-class life which they meet when performing their particular functions in the various industries of the world.

When our method of reasoning is applied back through history, we find that man’s thoughts have always been governed by his inherited notions and the material conditions surrounding him ; and as these conditions have centred around the obtaining of food, clothing, and shelter, so at each period of social history the more or less clear relations that were built up on this basis (the particular relations that existed at the particular time, between the various producers and distributors, of the social wealth) have been reflected in the mind in a correspondingly more or less clear manner. After the break up of the early tribal communities society was split into various classes, and history since then has been the record of the struggles of each class in its turn to control society for its own advantage. When the progress of the method of producing wealth had reached a certain point the class in society that was taking the principal part in production, found the old laws (that were suitable to the existing governing class) placed a restriction on their further development. The problem of the removal of all these restrictions therefore constantly occupies them, and it is then forced home to their minds that the only solution to the problem of the removal of these restrictions is the control of society by themselves, and the alteration of existing laws to suit the new conditions. Just as at present the spectacle of the workers doing all the work of the world forces home to the minds of men the Socialist view that, if the workers produce and distribute all the wealth of society they therefore should own it, and reap the benefit of their work themselves, instead of supporting a group of idlers and good-for-nothings. The solution of the problem is constrained within the problem itself. “Therefore mankind always takes up only such problems as it can solve” (Marx).

This matter of fact view of the question is not palatable to the “Red Revolutionists,” who like a great deal of noise (“Full of sound and fury, signifying—nothing”) ; and the soft-hearted and soft-headed, who think the problem can be solved by reverting to antiquated, out of date societies, and whose views of brotherly love cause them to raise their hands in pious horror at the misery they see among workers, and—thank God for his loving kindness in not placing them in a similar position.

The thinking human mind reasons from particular facts to general conclusions. That is to say, we form in our minds abstract pictures drawn from practical experience. The thinking faculty is an instrument for separating the world of things into groups and sub groups, according to likenesses and differences, in order to gain as complete a picture of the world as possible. For instance, the general picture we have in our minds of a horse (the idea of a horse) is derived from practical experiences of different kinds and colours of horses. Abstract ideas of all kinds are produced in the same way, by everyday experience. The difference between the scientific and the unscientific (who are typified by the emotionalists) is that the former recognise this fact and act upon their knowledge, while the latter (owing to the fact that this reasoning is done partly subconsciously in ordinary affairs) imagine the general conclusions existed first and from all time—that the “Idea” is the thing par excellence. The Socialists reason from the practical affairs of everyday life to general conclusions, while the emotionalists set out with a plan formed in accordance with certain abstract ideas true for all time (!) without taking account of the historical development of society. They try to organise society according to the Idea instead of recognising that the shape their particular ideas take has been formed by society.

The emotionalists and their followers play upon those latent ideas of equality that have lain dormant in the minds of human beings since tribal communism disappeared. Thousands of years of life under this form of society fixed in the mind of man these views of equality, and the development that followed, through Patriarchalism, Feudalism, and Capitalism, although it has driven these ideas into the background, has not eradicated them. During periods of revolution these equalitarian views are used as a bait to entice the mass of the oppressed to the side of the particular class that is struggling for supremacy. During the French Revolution these ideas gave the rising commercial class the slogan with which to arouse the down-trodden serfs to assist them in their battle. Their much-vaunted pleas for equality, however, were afterwards shewn to be the equal right to oppress, the freedom of capitalist enterprise from Feudal bonds, and the liberty of the wage workers to starve.

The emotional school, who come forth with their battle-cry of freedom and equality, are merely reproducing the old ideas of primitive tribal equality, instead of examining the constitution of present society and its historical tendencies, and thus arriving at the correct scientific standpoint. The introduction of private property broke up the old societies ; with the abolition of private property, therefore, and the advent of Socialism, these ideas of equality will again have a chance to appear on the stage—but in fact, and not merely in imagination, and in a much higher form than in the ancient societies, owing to the marvellous development in the control of natural forces, or rather, the knowledge of nature’s laws, that has taken place since those societies broke up.

The forerunners of scientific Socialism : Fourier, St. Simon, and Robert Owen—the first who attempted a scientific explanation of social problems—failed in their constructive efforts, and gave merely Utopian solutions, because (as Engels has so clearly shewn in “Socialism, Utopian and Scientific”) society had not yet advanced to that stage when it could exhibit its historical tendency, machinery being in its infancy, and steam not having yet shown its potencies for revolutionising production.

Once our way of looking at the matter (reasoning from facts and not fantasies) is recognised by the workers, they will no longer be prey for the supporters of capitalism with their metaphysical notions, but will see that there is only one hell about which to worry and that is the hell in reality, the hell of capitalist production in which the wealth producers of the world already find themselves.

Those who adopt the sentimental attitude are of all types, and their views generally are of a very noisy character. The individuals of the Industrial Workers of the World, the Anarchist, the Syndicalist, the “Daily Herald” League (or Leagues !), and similar varieties, believe that the Social Revolution will come along to-morrow or the day after, if you will only kick up a row and run your nose up against police batons, bullets, maxim guns, and such “harmless” instruments of coercion. Others follow the showy method in other directions, as, for instance, the Party that at present goes under the name of the British Socialist Party. This party, not making a great show of numbers, followed the method of changing its name, thinking to emulate the proceedings of a conjuror. This same party recently came to the conclusion (after the failure of its policy of “Swell the ranks and never mind who enters ! Let ’em all come, Syndicalists, Political Actionists, Anarchists, and any old rubbish, what matters so long as we get a crowd”) that they had better consider the advisability of joining the Labour Party (very sound conclusion !) whom they have been denouncing for so many years.

Thus do the emotionalists gain a following and safely pilot them over to the enemy.

As for us who are members of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, our ranks may not appear to grow so fast, we do not lay out our stock in fantastic and alluring drapery, but we deal with the hard facts of working-class life from the scientific standpoint banded down to us by previous workers in the same field. We know that in spite of the apparent slowness of our growth, underneath the surface our work is creating among the members of our class, the working class, a growing knowledge of their position in society, and the line along which to act to achieve their freedom. Only those who build, as we do, on the solid rock, can expect the edifice to stand. Those who build on sand will see their work continually obliterated. In any case we have every reason to be satisfied with, our work up to the present, and that knowledge,, combined with the spectacle of the continual downfalls (the re-actionary attitude of all the self-styled “Revolutionaries” on the present capitalist war in Europe is the latest manifestation) of those who sneer at our attitude, will nerve us to still greater exertions in the future.

“For while the tired waves vainly breaking,

Seem here no painful inch to gain,

Far back, through creeks and inlets making,

Comes silent flooding in the main.

“And not by Eastern windows only,

When daylight comes, comes in the light ;

In front, the sun climbs slow, how slowly,

But Westward, look, the land is bright !”

G. McC.

Blogger's Notes:

'G.Mc.' was Gilbert McClatchie. For the majority of his writing life in the Standard he used 'Gilmac' as his pen-name, but like his close comrade, Edgar Hardcastle, ('H.' in the Standard), he didn't not settle on his better known pen-name for a couple of years.

The poem quoted at the end of this article is 'Say Not the Struggle Naught Availeth' by Arthur Hugh Clough. It must have been a popular poem in socialist circles in the early days of the SPGB, as this is not the first time I've seen it quoted in the Standard. See here and here.

S.P.G.B. Lecture List For December. (1914)

Party News from the December 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard