Artists and Potboilers. A Chapter on the Incentive of Gain. (1916)

From the August 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

Let Us Forget !

Little apology is needed for the scanty mention of the European War in this chapter. In the contest every kind of cannon has now been used ; every variety of dismemberment and death been suffered ; the whole thing is now grown monotonous and dull. When the French plains and the Flemish fields, the hills of Russia and the hills of Italy have been sufficiently dunged with rotten death to please the masters, the fighting nations will see that, far from any good coming to them from the bloodshed, it has resulted in a silly national division of the workers, which is not good, nor anywhere near good.

Let people for a moment forget all the ephemeral “Commissions,” “Reports,” “Investigations,” “Leading Articles,” ”Booklets, and “Volumes” that are born of the war, and turn to matters of permanent interest ; let people turn from the Newspapers to the Classic Books, from Cannon to Galleries, and they will see that the old delicate dramas, the fine new stuff, the sweetness of the masters in painting of Spain and France and Italy, the sunny Dutch work, the pallid Japanese, all the singular inspiration of China, the philosophy of Germany, all do, not merely at one time or another, but all times, peace or war, show the harmony of talents and disclose the comradeship of genius. The greatest of all nations are brotherly, and their fraternal work will help to bring peace permanently at last on earth : it will not be done with siege-guns, no matter how massive they be nor what powder they spittle. All Art nourishes the spirit of revolution ; against the shape and cut of a book or chair or house as Morris did ; against the shape or cut of the earth, as in Shelley.

Our masters know this and have in all ages endeavoured to alter the vital secular character of Art into a something vapid and servile ; it must be changed, they said, from the passionate and wayward to the didactic and mechanical : they spoke with tongues of fire and their syllables were prisons. Artists were driven into all kinds of occupations quite alien to them : chiselling ships and barrels of muskets, allegories, chapel-altars. Samaritans, Virgin Man’s, colouring monasteries, till a daring Italian boy of the thirteenth century started dreaming by his flock on the hills of Padua, and in the end found that the sight of his pregnant ewes was quite as inspiring as a pregnant Virgin. A new, self-reliant epoch commenced for Art, and the masters’ fires, prisons, and titles since then have only scared the unsound, bribed the less keen and valuable, and filled the archives Paying of Art with chronicles of sorrow.

Paying the Price.

Whether they be ancient or modern, whether they be Russian novelists, Dutch or French landscapists or English poets, they have prepared, and must prepare, in youth, for a life of affliction and a ceremonious funereal ; must have thought, must now think, that if the funeral ostentation is forgotten or neglected, posterity will, with bronze busts and posthumous marble, compensate them for the dismal doom they suffered and the misery they endured.

Marvellous boys like Chatterton, are not prepared to suffer the fate that the stupid and mercenary arrange ; rather than a piecemeal death they end it all at once with a little acid. They think the worst acid better than the best editor. Some live on and fight. For this crime Dostoievsky is, in Russia, sentenced to death. The sentence is afterwards mitigated ; instead of death he is sent to Siberia (which he named the House of the Dead) for ten years. Out of Norfolk we get a hard instance. Old Crome, “the glory of the English landscape school” as he is now called by preface writers, was set on coach painting in Norwich. In the evenings and on Saturday afternoons, when he was not lining spokes and yellowing wheels, he did, in oils, the moons over Norfolk pastures, over massive scalloped cows ; shipping by the riversides he did after the manner of Hobbema, and Mousehold Heath with its chalk pits, donkeys, characteristic mills, as only Crome could—the lot to be sold for not many shillings. That picture of his in the London National Gallery was once divided in two and the the halves, when separately sold, brought him four guineas. It is very hard when a Preface Writer cannot say an artist’s unhappiness is due to a girl. Gainsborough, too, had to leave his “Market Carts,” his “Stricken Oaks,” his “Pools,” his “Sunsets over Devonshire Moors,” and for his pence, with his oils, flatter the fussy Duchess and the soft Earl.

The Martyrdom of Genius.

Also there was a Dutch painter born in a windmill some few hundreds of years ago Rembrandt van Ryn. He put his hand to the pallette and passed many a terrible day, for he did as his genius dictated. The feudal owners of much of the Dutch wealth did not like his Rabbis and washerwomen and singular mills and did not buy them. He was in the end driven from his Amsterdam shanty ; he took his wife, children, and paints from house to hovel and then along to humbler hovel. His name is now highest on the auction-room price list.

Last century a sad French boy worked a plough in Normandy. Until he was twenty, in his little leisure, he did, with charcoal only, snatches of beautiful country or the raw-boned, decrepit Frenchmen on the neighbouring’ farms. Eventually this mighty ploughman lived in Barbizon, a sad, colourless village jostled by massive, dark woods. He did then, as Rembrandt in Holland, follow where his talent of sorrow led. The Frenchman’s end was similar to the Dutchman’s. If joy isn’t yet, persecution is international. No one for many years would buy his “Dung Spreaders,” his “Peasants Reposing,” his “Potato Diggers”; so his suffering was distinctly hard, even in the catalogue of the hardships of artists. “My wife will be confined next month and there is nothing in the house. I do not know where to get my month’s rent” he wrote to Theodore Rousseau. He was found without fire or food. He was praised a little in the Press, but critics “Charm ache with air and agony with words.” Christy’s and Agnew’s know the man—they have lately sold one of his six-inch by five canvasses, of a “Shepherdess knitting,” for a thousand guineas. He painted “The Gleaners” and “The Angelas”—his name is immortal, Jean Francois Millet.

An Odious Comparison.

Under capitalism the man with colour schemes is no match in the market for the man with financial schemes : it is the nightingale against the vulture.

I could give instance after instance of the sorrow and pain which the talented in an enslaved community must endure if they watch or listen to the loveliness of the earth and then in any way tell it to others. The good men will cross the world, and, while a masterful class holds factory and field, while the democracy is content to be put off with an education, incomplete, suitable for commerce and nothing more, they must go without encouragement from the mass, without money from the opulent ; their telescopes will be broken in two, they will be sent, starved and pale, to their pallettes, and in rags to their violins.

But where in this record does the incentive of gain crop up ? If, as the merry masters say, it is for gain the best and the worst work, why do not the greatest leave their permanent, sincere work (which leaves them lean) and win gold with the transitory, the false, and the easily understood ? To hear our rulers speak one would think the poet sings because he wants butcher’s meat and wholemeal bread. He sings for nothing of the kind. He sings, as he draws breath, naturally, and he would die if he did not. It is idiocy to think he sings because it is hard to live, because engines and lands are privately owned, and would cease to sing to a wider world under Socialism. It is impertinence to say he sings at the bidding of silver and gold magnates and wouldn’t sing to a supreme democracy. As long as skies are blue and hills are green he will compose, whether dividends change or do not, whether money is or is not, whether the world listens or does not.

That, too, is the secret of the strength of the influence of minorities.

One Word about Potboilers.

One word about potboilers : we must never let them take up too much time. The artist is only hard hit when he stands tenaciously by his ideals. Some are, however, forced into apostacy or monotony, endeavour to repeat old masters, not because they are born rogues, not through any natural or youthful desire to emulate what is glorious, but because potboilers pay better. So we have a houseful of Academicians like La Thangue, with his geese, puddles, and red-hot, boozy-looking suns, his grizzly stacks with one star out beside a skinny, stippled moon ; a host of others doing silly, whitish Samaritans on shivering rags in a somewhat English, damp Egypt ; Leader who decorates Devonshire property with honeysuckle, spin and span labourers, Flaxman china, best food, best wives, best children. It will not profit us much to consider the yellow lies and pink apostacy of the other fellows who settle or pervert the national learning or taste in art. I need only say that a literate democracy would not have repetitions of dead masters, being familiar with the originals ; being atheistic, would not care whether the pallid Nazarene was in Egypt or out of it; being intimate with the fields would detest Leader’s landscape puddings. Under Socialism we will with our schools banish ignorance, with our Science banish Paradise, with our Art banish Academy sunsets and in consequence banish Academicians.

The work of the potboilers is made to be understood : it is fitted for dronish intellects ; it prospers under the hand of the aristocrat. On the other hand the work of the artist is always bewildering to the characterless slaves of his own particular generation and becomes the wonderment and delight of a remote posterity. But through illiteracy, which the Board Schools of the masters are instrumental in perpetuating, the worker takes small interest in Art. By cunning he is deprived of intellectual health and liberty, as he is of bodily entertainment and rest ; he is separated from Beethoven and Corot as from his loom and meadow.

It will be seen from the few illustrations I have given that while a few millions master the wonders and riches of the earth, the pictures, like the plough, the beautiful and the useful, will be the property of those who have too much gut to be satisfied with food and too little brain to be edified with Art.

The poem like the engine, the landscape picture like the land, to do good must be freely held by the democracy. To get this we must, by the unity of the workers of the world, destroy the tyranny of those who have not enough intelligence to produce any music nor sufficient diligence to sow wheat. Socialism means the ownership, by the community, of all society’s vital machines and land, and a redistribution, in consequence, of that possession, of books, pencils, and violins. With these things, and the life-long love of comrades, we will become the most splendid race the sun ever shone upon.

H. M. M.

This Month's Quotation: George Bernard Shaw (1937)

The Front Page quote from the August 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Let as therefore dismiss the fear that persons of exceptional ability need special inducements to exercise that ability to the utmost."

G. B. Shaw

This Month's Quotation

The quotation in the panel on the front page is from Shaw's "Intelligent Women's Guide to Socialism, Capitalism, Sovietism and Fascism," Pelican Books Edition, P. 322.

Blogger's Note:

The Shaw book quoted from was reviewed in the August 1937 Socialist Standard by Edgar Hardcastle.

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.

In Defence of Property. (1907)

Book Review from the March 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Socialism: Its Fallacies and Dangers.” A collection of papers edited by Frederick Millar. Published by Watts & Co. for the “Liberty and Property Defence League.”

“Let us jealously watch the encroachments of the State, and never suffer it to become more than a watchdog.” Such appears to be the political doctrine of the band of belated individualists who are responsible for this book, for they include and condemn under the name of Socialism practically all State activity other than that of the mere policeman. Since, however, the propertied class has in its own interests been compelled to add to the State many other functions than that of the “watch-dog,” it is hardly necessary to consider the question at issue as being individualism versus collectivism at all, but rather as being—the class which lives by labour versus the class which lives by ownership, and whether those who produce should not own and control the product.

To those who seek a clear and useful criticism of Socialist principles the book under review will be disappointing. The facts of industrial evolution are not appreciated. The significance of the huge company and combine, where great and complicated branches of industry are run by hireling workers for absentee shareholders, is not taken into account. Nor is it recognised that industry is developing to the point at which the workers’ choice lies only between the oppressive collectivism of the trust or capitalist State for the profit of a few, and the collectivism of democracy for the benefit of all united in producing. The writers place themselves athwart the economic trend, and though as modern Mrs. Partingtons they may be excellent at a slop or a puddle, yet, trundle their mops as they will, they can hardly succeed in checking the rising Atlantic of economic development.

That there are misrepresentations is to be expected from such a source. Thus on page 17 we meet our old and hoary friend, “Sharing Out,” Socialism being referred to as the “confiscation and division of the national income.” It is also stated that Socialists “maintain that if a man lives in the house of another man, it is an extortion to ask him to pay a rent.” But the scientific Socialist knows that, apart from what is called economic rent, house rent is but the price of a commodity that, like every other commodity, tends to exchange at its value, which already includes its proportion of unpaid labour. The Socialist, therefore, holds that the robbery of the worker really takes place in the factory, not on the market.

Those who go into the highways and byways facing the opposition and abuse of the ignorant and the interested, and who, in their championship of the workers against oppression and robbery, brave the malice and persecution of the defenders of property, are told on page 24 that “The root of Socialism is cowardice. Here is the real source of the whole movement. It is the whine and the dream of the weaklings’ base fear of rivalry, of competition. It is the duty of real men to circumvent and defeat, by war if necessary, by invasion if necessary, by conquest if necessary, by extermination if necessary, the despicable effeminacy of creatures unworthy of the name of men, because they fear to carry on the competitive struggle in which the true life of manhood consists. The Socialist movement is popular because it appeals to these numerous creatures ; panders to their baseness ; promises them what they would be ashamed to desire or seek if they were men.”

Socialism and the Family.

Next comes the war-cry of the pro-property hypocrite,—”Socialism means the abolition of family life.” On this subject the defenders of that class whose heroes fill the divorce courts and whose morals are said to be “of the poultry yard,” have only vague innuendo and misrepresentation to offer. But what are the simple facts ? The family life of the workers is being destroyed by capitalism through the man, wife and child being forced into the factory to earn the daily bread; and where the home life remains it too often spells brutalising drudgery and ill-temper, owing to the poverty of the wage earner and the great waste of labour entailed by the individual household. The tremendous saving in drudgery that the co-operative household under Socialism will allow, the improvement in comfort, health, and happiness that it will bring, leave no room for doubt regarding the future of the home, while should any prefer the greater labour and discomfort of the old style, they would certainly be allowed to please themselves.

But what of the relations of men and women ? The Socialist knows that the methods of obtaining the material living, and the social order essential thereto, form the foundations of the moral and intellectual life of the time; and that with the changing economic foundation, not only must the relations of individuals to each other change, but their ideas also. The history of family life affords a striking example of this. As Prof. Jenks points out, permanent marriage had its origin in patriarchal society, and was due to no improvement in morality, but to the necessities of the pastoral pursuits of the man, and to his desire to secure for himself exclusively the labour of the woman and her offspring. The wife was bought or captured, and the children were valuable articles of merchandise. The very word “family” is derived from an old Italian word, famel, meaning a slave.

From its origin in the institution of property the marriage relationship has reflected the changing needs of property. Children are no longer chattels or assets in the old sense ; they are “encumbrances,” and paterfamilias’ former power of life and death over his household is now restricted to very meagre dimensions. The present marriage contract expresses the needs of the economic dependence of women and children on the man, and becomes an instrument for the control and transmission of property. Mutual affection is quite subordinated to questions of property and income, with the consequent outcrop of hypocrisy, adultery, and unhappiness. While on the one hand the number of men who do not marry is made greater by the insecurity of their lot, on the other hand the number of women who sell themselves on the streets is increased by the inability of many to obtain otherwise even the bare necessaries of life.

But when socialisation ends the reign of capitalist property and insecurity, when woman has economic equality with man, and the fear for the children’s future is ended by communal life, then the relationship between the sexes ceases to be a property one and becomes human ; and who can doubt that modern forms must alter with such change of circumstances, and that the matrimonial market and property contract, with the buying and selling of cohabitation for title and income, must, together with the corollaries of prostitution and domestic misery, become mere memories of a dark past. Who can doubt that the relations between man and woman, when freed of the demoralising influence of economic inequality and vicious social surroundings, will be healthier and purer than ever before being based no longer on a property transaction or economic compulsion, but upon mutual affection. Yet we are told, among much other nonsense on page 29 of the book under review, that under Socialism “the union of men and women would be an affair of the State, not of mutual regard” !

The Intellectual Few.

On page 54 the reader is told, “the more the origin of wealth is enquired into, the more clearly will the truth appear that wealth is caused by the intelligence of the few, as distinguished from the labour of the many.” Now even if this were so it would not bear the inference that the propertied class are the intellectual few reaping the reward of their intellectual labour, for the wealth of the few is accumulated from the purchase and exploitation of both “manual” and “intellectual” workers. But what is the truth regarding the wonderful inventions and improvements which have occurred in industrial processes ? Have a series of supermen arisen to produce at each stroke a great wage-saving improvement ? Herbert Spencer himself has exploded the “great man” theory, and has shown that the great man is the product of his age, whilst the history of industry shows that nearly all improvements have been the result of an accumulation of small inventions which up to a certain point were ignored or despised, in spite of their possibilities, because they were not immediately cheaper to work than the older methods. But a last slight improvement, based upon and supplementing the labour of those who had gone before, rendered the new process more profitable than the former methods, and rapidly the features of that industry became transformed. In 1857, Hodge, before a Commission said : “Present spinning machinery is supposed to be a compound of about 800 inventions. The present carding machinery is a compound of about 60 patents.”

And those who wrought these improvements, were they rewarded ? And were they members of our amazingly intellectual ruling class ? They were, indeed, rawly rewarded, while it is almost entirely from men of the working class that the leading inventions have come. J. Burnley, in “The Story of British Trade and Industry,” says, “It is a notable fact that the leading inventors of the latter half of the eighteenth century were of the artizan class—humble workers who, in their cottages and little improvised workshops, quietly worked out the mechanical problems which achieved so much for the world, if not for themselves.”

John Kay, after inventing the fly shuttle, died a pauper at the end of a few years of ineffectual struggle. Wyatt, who after three years of close effort produced a machine which “spun the first thread of cotton ever produced without the intervention of human fingers,” was poor, and allied himself with Lewis Paul, of Birmingham, who promised to finance the invention. Wyatt, however, never benefited by it, for nothing came of the idea until Arkwright revised it at a later date. Another poor inventor, Crompton, set himself to combine the spinning jenny and the water frame. It took him five years of secret experiment, but he eventually succeeded and for a while quietly used his improvement in his own work. Crompton, however, was asked how he managed to spin such fine yarn ; he then let the manufacturers into the secret on their subscribing about £50. The firm of which Sir Robert Peel, the grandfather of the statesman, was principal, were the first to make big profits out of the invention, making their machines after Crompton’s model. Soon millions of the spindles were working, but Crompton died a few years later in extreme poverty. Such is, indeed, the usual answer of capitalist practice to capitalist theory. The brains of the workers are picked, and their bodily strength exhausted, in order to increase the wealth of those who own the means of living.

The whole argument that “wealth is due to the intelligence of the few” is, in reality, nonsensical. There is no intellectual labour without some degree of manual labour, and no manual labour, however mechanical, that does not imply intellectual labour also. The marketable wealth of the world is not produced otherwise than by labour, intellectual and manual; yet the fact remains that it is a non-producing class who, by their ownership of the means whereby wealth is created, and by their control of political power, are enabled to compel the people to carry on production for them, and to hand over to them all the enormous surplus that remains when the bare necessities of the producers have been grudgingly provided for.

And it is in defence of the title of this owning class to the wealth created by others, that the book under review is published. Well does the League that is responsible for the book deserve to be called, as it is by many working men, the Liberty to Rob Defence League.

F. C.Watts

Blogger's Note:

There isn't a lot of information about Frederick Millar on the net, but he does get a few mentions in Edward Bristow's 1975 article, 'The Liberty and Property Defence League and Individualism', which was published in The Historical Journal.

The Genesis of the “Great Man”. (1917)

From the June 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the most commonly held of the many erroneous, and therefore misleading, theories regarding history and the movements of human society is that which frequently goes by the name of the “Great Man Theory.” From its point of view those individuals who achieve prominence in any event or movement are the prime factors and forces behind it, and the real social forces which underlie them are entirely unappreciated. Thus the personality of Napoleon is looked upon as the cause of the wars associated with his name, Wat Tyler is regarded as the author of the Peasants’ Revolt, the evolution theory is thought to be due to the genius of men like Spencer and Darwin, Karl Marx is credited with being the generator of modern Socialism, and to Cecil Rhodes is attributed the Cape to Cairo Railway.

The influence of this theory upon the working class is baneful because under it many are deluded into looking to “leaders” and “intellectuals,” instead of to themselves, for their salvation, while some are led to embrace the vagaries and absurdities of Anarchism. It is quite easy to see that political assasination must appear a really sound and sensible procedure to those who, holding this point of view, wish to abolish social evils. Experience, however, shows that such action rarely, if ever, has the desired effect. And why ? Because the social conditions obtaining at any time are not dependent upon the existence of any individual, however prominent, but are decreed by the material conditions under which men live. So long as these remain unchanged, so long will the resultant social forms remain, and they will not be appreciably affected by the removal of any individual whatever.

To say this is not, of course, to deny the existence of great men, for to do so would be just as foolish as going to the other extreme. Every “great man” is the outcome of two main factors. One is biological and internal. No one will deny that the mental or physical capacity of an Alexander or an Aristotle, a Marx, a Darwin or a Napoleon, is vastly superior to that of the majority of men. The case is one of variations like unto those which occur in all living creatures. But this capacity alone is not sufficient to make a “great man.” Charles Peace would never be included among such, yet his genius was probably as pronounced as that of many who would be so designated.

This brings us to the second factor: the historical and external one. Every person is born into surroundings or environment conditions which have grown out of different preceding conditions, this movement itself being part of a continuous process of change and growth.

We may broadly classify the changing forms of environment into three mutually pervading and interdependent divisions or phases, material, social, and intellectual. That these are interlinked is easily shown when it is remembered that societies are forms of group relationships between material things, e.g., human beings ; that all ideas are based upon the perception of material phenomena and the relations between them, through the medium of the sense organs and the nervous system, themselves material in structure ; that the mind perceives among other things social conditions, and that ideas can aid in bringing about both social changes and fresh material things into existence.

But that the above classification is justifiable and useful enough can be shown by contrasting two different environments in their several phases. In England about the twelfth century the face of the country presented an aspect very different in many respects to its present one. Great belts of virgin forest and open fen remained of the great primaeval wild. There existed nothing of the network of hedges which to-day cuts up the country like a monster chess board. Wild animals were much more varied and plentiful. The towns were small and few and far between. There were no railways, few roads, and few brick buildings.

Social relations were just as different. There were practically no wage-workers. A large serf population existed—men unable to leave the village of their birth ; conditionally holding land and rendering compulsory service to a lord. The prices of merchandise were regulated largely by Guild associations and not by competition as to-day. In the intellectual field the contrast is just as marked. The majority of the population were then unable to read or write. Everyone, aristocrat or peasant, was deeply superstitious, believing in personal gods, devils, saints, and witches. Little or nothing was known of natural laws. There was no geology, no biology, nothing of the modern conception of universal evolution, and no social science. Religion dominated men’s theories, science was embryonic.

Returning now, after this digression, to “great men,” it is evident that everyone’s activities are moulded by the conditions of the age. No one, however clever, can transcend the possibilities of his time. Even the most profound thinkers and men of action must use the material to hand and must build upon the past labours of others. It is this inheritance of the accumulated experience of mankind’s past, in each generation, which makes all cultural and social progress possible. Were it possible for a child of highly civilised parents to develop in isolation amid natural surroundings, it would grow up not only illiterate but almost speechless, and with intelligence woefully stunted from lack of opportunity to develop it.

Real greatness consists of making the most of the material available, in reaching to the very outposts of the possible, in seeing things only just perceptible and hidden from the commonality of men.

The conditions for Darwin’s “Origin of Species” were laid before a line of it was penned. Darwin was obviously dependent upon the developed arts of writing and printing, on tho orderly classification of living things such as had been performed by Linnaeus. In his dedication to the “Voyage of the Beagle” Darwin pays a tribute to Lyell’s “Principles of Geology” as forming an essential preliminary to all his works. The point is clinched when it is remembered how many minds independently approached the theory of natural selection about the same time (see the historical note to the “Origin”), and it is well known how tho eminent naturalist, A. Russel Wallace, came to identical conclusions on his own accord.

The same phenomenon is apparent right through the history of science. Marius, Jansen, and Lippershey simultaneously invented the telescope. Both Adams and Leverrier discovered Neptune. Marx, Engels, and Morgan, by different routes, reached “Historical Materialism.” After decades of failures, Peary, Amundsen, and Scott reached the earth’s poles within a very brief period of each other. The recent development of aviation is equally instructive.

In political or social movements generally, conditions are somewhat different, for the action once taken, it cannot as a rule be repeated, and verification such as that possible in intellectual evolution is here impossible. But a little examination will always reveal the conditions prepared before any movement is realised. Alexander’s empire was made possible by the weakened and disorganised state of the older Greek powers, due to internal corruption and the ravages of the Peloponnesian War, together with the rotten organisation of the Persian empire already revealed by the notorious retreat of “the ten thousand.” The Macedonian spear and the efficient phalanx military formation were the deciding forces and Alexander the pinnacle of a whole system of favourable conditions. In like manner Napoleon as Emperor without the French Revolution as a preparation is quite unthinkable.

In conclusion it may be mentioned that there are always sufficient men of genius to satisfy all requirements. A “great man” never fails to sprout when the environment is favourable. Scores of men with the internal potentialities of greatness must be “wasted” by their labours being suffocated in unfruitful channels. In a sentence, we find that the greatest of men are the creatures and not the creators of their age.

H.

Does capitalism reward inventive genius? (1927)

From the June 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

The recent celebrations held in Lancashire to commemorate the memory of Samuel Crompton, a Bolton weaver and inventor, who died 100 years ago, call to mind a question often asked of the Socialist. How about the inventor under Socialism?

Ironical as it may seem, it is such inquiry that throws a lurid light upon the treatment that Capitalism has meted out to genius and ability. When this is understood, the position of all under Socialism will present no difficulty. We do not claim that exceptional ability can exist apart from the social conditions which give it birth. We propose to show that it is those who can exploit such ability to-day who reap the reward which the labour of others makes possible. Without the discoveries in the remote past of such now apparently simple things as the wheel, the lever, the ratchet, all the machinery of to-day would be unthinkable. Without the skill and dexterity of the workers, past and present, all the inventive genius ever born would have remained sterile. The cotton industry of to-day is one to which a number of fundamental inventions have been applied during the last century. Their application, with its operatives, has increased its productivity far beyond the effective demands of the world’s markets, but under the present system these operatives live in poverty and suffer years of short-time working through their very productivity. What insanity ! And what of those who did so much to make such output possible. One of these was John Kay, inventor of the “Fly Shuttle,” one of the most important inventions made toward the improvement of the loom. He was a man of whom it was said he invented “everything.” But his ideas were shamelessly stolen, and he died in poverty and obscurity somewhere in France. Another, James Hargreaves, saw a spinning wheel overturned which caused him to reflect upon certain improvements. He invented a machine as a result of which 20 to 30 spindles could be attended by one person. He died in Nottingham Workhouse. Richard Arkwright invented the water-frame. He appears to be one of the few who gained financial reward, yet, strange he is one about whom there are doubts as to his originality. He was assisted by Kay, who declared “the water-frame was no device of Arkwright’s,” but of another obscure individual. Whether this was true or not he, like others, had to contest his patent rights, and had at one time as many as nine law-suits going. Samuel Crompton invented the “mule,” a combination of Hargreaves spinning jenny and Arkwright’s water-frame, which, with Watts’ steam-engine revolutionised the cotton industry. He was a man of gentle and sensitive nature, made a violin, taught himself to play, and earned eighteen-pence a night in a Bolton theatre while working in his spare time on his invention. His machine was such that any mechanic who saw its finished condition could carry away its leading features ; crowds gathered round his house, and he was often afraid to go out lest it was stolen. A few months, he says,

“Reduced me to the cruel necessity of destroying my machine altogether, or giving it up to the public. To destroy it I could not think of, to give up that for which I had laboured so long was cruel. I had no patent, nor the means of purchasing one. In preference to destroying it I gave it to the public.” (National Dictionary of Biographies, Vol. XIII.)

For using his invention, 80 firms and independent manufacturers gave him a document possessing no legal validity, in which they agreed to pay him certain sums. As a result, he received the handsome reward of £67. Sir Robert Peel offered him a partnership, but he declined. Like so many of his type, he possessed little business acumen. Making fortunes possible for others, he reaped little or no pecuniary reward himself, and died in poverty, embittered with his experiences. A like fate has awaited in the past composers, artists, scientists, poets, writers, public performers, etc. It is the Capitalist reward and fitting tribute to a rotten system. Mankind will ever crave to approbation of his fellow-man. When, with the coming of Socialism, security and a full life is made possible for all, those who show exceptional ability will not need to give of their talent to serve the profit of the idle few, but will add to the comfort of the whole race —whose best interests will be identical with their own.

W. E. MacHaffie

The capitalist and his case. (1925)

From the April 1925 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist argues that in the typical capitalist industry of the twentieth century, the proprietor or proprietors have degenerated into mere receivers of dividends, and are therefore no longer a necessary part of the organisation for producing and distributing wealth. This does not involve any condemnation on “moral” grounds either of the system or of the capitalist class, nor does it prevent us from recognising the great historical role played in the past by the revolutionary capitalists when they struggled to clear Europe of the encumbrance of decrepit Feudalism. But the capitalists, like their Feudal predecessors, have overstayed their welcome, and the duty falls upon the workers of preparing for further progress by removing the encumbrances of this age and generation.

There is no lack of capitalist apologists willing, and in their own opinion able, to justify the system and the privileged position of those who benefit by it. Let us then examine some of the more familiar arguments.

First of all, there are those who tell us that the capitalist works just like any member of the working class and that his income is as much “earned” as are the worker’s wages. If this were true, it would not justify the enormous inequality between the one income and the other, and would not explain how it is that the capitalist is frequently able to live in luxury and yet increase his wealth, while the worker has barely sufficient to live in modest comfort and can usually save nothing at all. In fact, it is not true, except in small concerns and in certain unimportant industries, where the small concern still holds its own. In large-scale industry the shareholder does not work. The ordinary shareholder is not even permitted by law to interfere in the conduct of the limited company in which he invests his money. No one would be more surprised than the investor in railway stock if it were suggested to him that he take his turn along with porters or cleaners on the line. He probably knows and desires to know nothing about the unpleasant processes associated with the running of “his” business. It is absurd on the face of it to suppose that investments made thousands of miles away from the residence of the investor, yield an income because of the work done by the investor. When financial failures and frauds bring into court such men as Bevan, of the City Equitable, no surprise is felt when a managing director declares that he is ignorant of managerial duties and pays someone else—a member of the working class—to perform them in his name. This brings us to a special type of work concerned with organising production. Our apologist says that, while it may be true the capitalists do not nowadays actually work alongside their employees, they still provide the brains and directive ability.

This claim is, of course, as false as the other. Granted that some men have organising powers approaching genius, and that some of these men happen to belong to the employing class, it is a sheer physical impossibility for, say, the late Hugo Stinnes to organise and direct literally hundreds, of concerns of the most varied nature operating in all parts of Central Europe and with world interconnections employing a million and a half hands. To master all the technical processes of one of the industries would more than tax the powers of any man. Moreover, if so much depended on the brains of the proprietor, his removal by death would—but does not—bring chaos. It does not, because salaried officials (members of the working class) can and do master the specialised work of direction just as they do any other trade. So plain is this that one of the most noted defenders of capitalism, the Austrian economist, Bohm-Bawerk, readily admits it. In his “Capital and Interest” (Macmillan, 1890, page 1) he writes about interest on invested money in the following terms :—

  “It owes its existence to no personal activity of the capitalist and flows in to him even where he has not moved a finger in its making.”

He further asked, but never answered, the question, 

  “Whence and why does the capitalist without personally exerting himself obtain this endless flow of wealth?”

When it is argued that the capitalist owes his superior position to his superior brains, we would also like to ask one question : If it is his brains and not his property which make him privileged, and in view of the fact that his brains will remain at his service, why does the property owner so strenuously resist attempts to take his property from him? The apologist often assures us that even under Socialism we could not keep the brainy capitalist down in the ranks of the common herd, but his determination not to take the risk gives the lie to his words. A recent illustration will help to drive home the absurdity of this position. A New Yorker named Suydam was left 50,000 dollars by his father fifty years ago. Last year he died worth 1,000,000 dollars, and for the whole fifty years Mr. Suydam lived in a lunatic asylum, mentally unable to direct his own or anyone else’s affairs. Whence then this increase of 950,000 dollars? Labour, directive ability, of course. But whose labour and whose directive ability? Not Mr. Suydam’s, but those of the workers employed in concerns in which Suydam, Senior, had invested the money.

Then we are told that the capitalist “saves,” and thus makes future production possible. In answer, we cannot do better than quote Sir W. Ashley, a Conservative historian and economist of note :—

  “Senior, in 1835, introduced the term “abstinence,” as more fitly expressing the source of capital. . . . He characterised abstinence as implying “self-denial,” and declared that “to abstain from the enjoyment which is in our power” is “among the most painful exertions of the human will.” Phrases like these have occasioned no little mirth; it is hard to discover self-denial or parsimony as the world understands those words, in the processes by which modern capital is most largely accumulated.”—(Economic Organisation of England, p. 157.)

Under Socialism provision would naturally be made by society as a whole for future developments of plant, etc., instead of, as now, handsomely rewarding a favoured few because they cannot consume or waste the whole of the proceeds of their robbery of the wealth producers.

The greatest and most impudent stand-by of the capitalist economist is the “risk,” which needs to be paid for. The very real risks from industrial accident run by miners, and railwaymen and others count for nothing in this argument. They were in the past permitted to occur without any penalty for negligence or liability for compensation resting on the employer, until it was found that this was really an expensive method, despite its appearance of cheapness. Throw-outs on the industrial scrap heap simply became burdens on the Poor Law, and in the long run prevention was cheaper than indifference. Thus do our masters make a virtue of their meanness and boast of their humanity when their pocket induces some capitalist reform. But the capitalist is supposed to run the risk of losing his capital, and this is said to justify his being paid his profits. Now what is the basis of this argument? The Socialist replies that it is merely a man-made law which protects capitalist private property, and we propose, of course, to terminate such laws when we control the machinery of government. The capitalist, on the other hand, says, or at least believes, that we are here concerned with some law or vital principle of nature in accordance with which risks are rewarded. This is nonsense. The man who jumps off Waterloo Bridge runs the risk of being drowned. Does he for that reason anticipate being rewarded by Nature? If he selected the Monument he would run the risk (so great as to be almost certainty) of breaking his neck. Would he expect some compensation commensurate with the risk? And to come nearer to the actual conditions of industry, compare two possessors of £10,000; one of whom invests his money in some safe stock, Government Loan, for instance, while the other keeps his at home. The latter would run great risk from burglary, while the former would run no appreciable risk of loss at all. Yet at the end of a year the man who risked nothing would be wealthier by the amount of the interest, and the man who risked much would be no better off. Capitalist practice disposes of the risk theory.

We are also told that the capitalist advances capital to the worker over the period which passes before the product of the latter’s labour is completed, and thus the capitalist aids production and earns his reward. But here again capitalist usage refutes the argument. It is customary for weekly, monthly and even many yearly contracts to be so framed that the workers do not receive their pay until after they have put in their agreed amount of work. In truth then it is the worker who advances his service to his employer. And, moreover, how does the capitalist himself live in the meantime, except on the food, clothing, etc., produced by the labour of other workers?

A defence of private property of which we still occasionally hear is that it is a “Divine” institution and must not be touched. We might be more ready to believe that those who use this, do so sincerely, if they demonstrated their confidence in their “omnipotent God” by trusting him to look after his own. Instead they behave just like any non-believer and employ policemen, soldiers and sailors to protect their property for them. We are compelled therefore to assume that this relic of a day when religious “dope” was more effective than now, is intended to deceive the unwary.

A whole tribe of defenders of private property concentrate on the alleged social virtues which with culture and learning are the monopoly of a leisured ruling class. The argument fails for three reasons, if for no others. In the first place the monotonous series of disclosures in the law courts of the filthy intrigues and low standards of the “upper ten” do not bear out the assumption that leisure to cultivate necessarily results in cultivation of social virtues. In the second place neither learning nor artistic achievement and appreciation are by any means confined to the wealthy, in spite of certain decided advantages they enjoy. And lastly there is no such thing as an hereditary and exclusive ruling class. Every revolution in industrial processes brings some new section of property owner to the fore and the blue-blooded and effete aristocrat of one century is invariably the descendant at a few removes of the upstart new-rich of the century before. What education and surroundings can do for the few we propose to make possible for the many.

These and other futilities produced by the profound thought of professors of economics are the kind of thing they offer in the name of economic science. The stagnation of economic thought is due largely to the necessity felt by university lecturers of pleasing those, whether Governments or private companies, who endow these “educational” establishments. The stagnation was foreseen by Marx, whose work they all agree to decry (the only thing they can agree upon), and their capitalist bias was admitted in a letter to “The Times" (March 11th) by E. J. P. Benn, a publisher of economic works. He writes of Cannan, Mallock, H. D. Henderson, etc., as “writers whose object is the defence . . . of the existing order of things.”

Their inability is well illustrated by the consequences of the recent war. All the economists of Allied and Central powers were quite unable to forecast in even the most elementary way the effect of war on prices, production, currency and trade. Even now, seven years after the Peace, when the gold standard is returning to Europe, they still have not made up their minds whether it was ever necessary to depart from it. They have not even been able to agree on an explanation for the rise of prices. The capitalists who imagine that social progress will cease at the strange medley of commands issuing from the professors are in truth relying on a broken reed.

Edgar Hardcastle

A professor on the equality of opportunity. (1923)

From the October 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard 

  “What are the great poetical names of the last hundred years or so? Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, Landor, Keats, Tennyson, Browning, Arnold, Morris, Rossetti, Swinburne—we may stop there. Of these all but Keats, Browning and Rossetti were university men; and of these three Keats, who died young, cut off in his prime, was the only one not fairly well-to-do. It may seem a brutal thing to say, and it is a sad thing to say; but, as a matter of hard fact, the theory that poetical genius bloweth where it listeth, and equally in poor and rich, holds little truth. As a matter of hard fact nine out of those twelve were university men, which means that somehow or other they procured the means to get the best education England can give. As a matter of hard fact of the remaining three you know that Browning was well-to-do, and I challenge you that, if he had not been well-to-do, he would no more have attained to writing “Saul” or the “Ring and the Book,” than Ruskin would have attained to writing “Modern Painters,” if his father had not dealt prosperously in business. Rossetti had a small private income ; and, moreover, he painted. There remains but Keats, whom Atropos slew young, as he slew John Clare in a madhouse, and James Thompson by the laudanum he took to drug disappointment. These are dreadful facts, but let us face them. It is—however dishonouring to us as a nation—certain that by some fault in our commonwealth the poor poet has not in these days, nor has bad for two hundred years, a dog’s chance. Believe me—and I have spent a great part of the last ten years in watching some 320 Elementary Schools —we may prate of democracy, but actually a poor child in England has little more hope than had the son of an Athenian slave to be emancipated into that intellectual freedom of which great writings are born.”

(Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, “On the Art of Writing,” page 33, 1923 Edition.)

The only way. (1923)

From the June 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Surely you don’t believe everything you read !” is a phrase often hurled at the Socialist when he uses some written evidence to support an argument. The answer is : “No, especially when it comes from the daily press !” But although newspaper reports must be accepted guardedly, yet confessions as to the iniquities of the present social order (which prove useful in the hands of the Socialist in the case against Capitalism) are made from time to time by the Capitalist press.

Is there ever an argument more frequently put forward against the practicability of the Socialist theory than the one of “lack of incentive?” Our comrade who debated at the Leyton Town Hall last March with Mr. A. E. Newbould, ex-Liberal M.P. for West Leyton, met with the same worn out, exploded objection, viz. : That Socialism would destroy all incentive to work and invention. Of course, there was no difficulty in bringing evidence forward to smash the argument to smithereens. There never is, or was any trouble to FIND evidence as to the treatment meted out to the workers (inventors included) under Capitalism; the only drawback is that the evidence cannot be enumerated in the time or space available. In other words the answer’s a book.

The question “How would you compensate those with inventive genius under Socialism?” is usually asked with much concern, and, when the Socialist answers that each individual will give of his best to society, and receive in return the best that society can produce, the anti-Socialist is not satisfied. Neither is the Socialist satisfied—until he has asked : “How are inventors treated under Capitalism?” This is where the evidence comes in, and this is where the daily press comes in, for out of their own mouths ye shall condemn them—or words to that effect. The Daily News (28/4/23) gives one more instance to add to the long list of starving inventors, who have found that mere brains don’t stand an earthly when up against the all-powerful quid or the mighty dollar. We are informed by the Daily News correspondent that Joseph Tall, now an old man of 72 :

  “took out the first patent in this or any other country for a method of reinforcing concrete in order to render it suitable for building.”

and that :

  “The records at the Patent Office show that during the subsequent decade he added over a score more patents covering the whole field of concrete construction.”

That’s what Joseph Tall did. This is what he got:

  “A few years before the Great War of 1914 the same Joseph Tall was tramping England in search of work. For five nights he slept out with the human wreckage on the Thames Embankment.”

And this is why he got it:

  “He struck me,” continued the writer, “as the sort of man who would know, by instinct, as it were, all about machinery and materials, and nothing’ at all about finance. It is a common failing with inventors.”

In other words, this man only had the “ability” to do useful work. He didn’t know anything about the dirty, low-down tricks necessary to “get on.” He didn’t know that the owners of wealth don’t intend to let any of that wealth slip from their grasp just because somebody else happens to have brains. He didn’t know that the Capitalists weren’t going to let him use their materials to work out his ideas, or interfere with their source of profit. Of course, he didn’t; he was only an inventor ! Again we read:

   “All his patents were of no use without capital, and he had to fight the brick ring. By the time he was thirty his patents were beginning to lapse one after another.”

All wealth, including the material which Joseph Tall wanted to work out his ideas with is owned by the Capitalist Class, and it is only with their consent that these materials can be used, no matter how marvellous may be the discoveries of the specially talented. Joseph Tall’s new introductions did not appeal to the brick ring, so the fact that he had patented his inventions did not matter. The Capitalists could afford to wait, and the patent rights would soon begin to expire. How simple ! Talk about inventors going the usual way—THE ONLY WAY would be more correct.

Wilkie.

Hero Worship: A Conversation With a Visitor from Mars. (Part 7) (1928)

From the June 1928 issue of the Socialist Standard

(Continued from May Issue.)

“I trust your question is not actuated by Martian impishness,” I smiled, “but it is easily answered. As a socialist, my friend, I subordinate the influence of any one person to the mode of production prevalent in society, but I am not insensible to the fact that men obviously differ in ability and talents. I do not deny that Newton had a great brain, or that Beethoven was a musical genius, and I endeavour to appreciate their work—the heritage not merely of these isolated individuals, but of the influences and reactions of the society in which they lived. The healthy thing to do is not to idolise these men and prostrate oneself before them in awe, but to take the trouble to hear what they have to offer, build up upon it, and recognise (as a fellow being, not as a superstitious slave) the fact that they have given of their best to mankind. As Alexander Pope says, ‘The fool admires, the man of sense approves.’ "

“And now, Marty, I must try to outline to you the effects of ‘hero-worship’ on human history, but time and the very magnitude of the subject compel me to be as brief in my descriptions as an English summer.

“Early in my remarks I mentioned the ‘witch-doctor’ or ‘medicine-man’ of primitive societies, and left you to draw the obvious inference that this individual affords the earliest example in recorded history of a ‘hero.’ To the savage mind, my friend, all objects that are strange, powerful, vast or invisible arouse feelings of awe and dread, and are thought worthy of veneration. Sooner or later, however, there arise men who are capable of relegating natural happenings to natural causes, and these men, alone in this knowledge, are able to take advantage of the ignorance and superstition of the tribesmen in order to obtain for themselves power, wealth and comfort. Originally working among his own circle of friends (distributing charms against ‘evil’ or personal enemies, and love potions, etc.), the witch-doctor—known to various tribes as the Mulgarrodock, Shaman, Biraack, Bodio, Nepu, etc.—develops into an important functionary, who administers ‘magical’ rites for the supposed benefit of the community. You will readily believe, Marty, that when this stage has been reached, the position becomes one of extreme danger to the holder, and only the wily impostor, experienced in the arts of trickery and fraud, utterly unscrupulous and ruthless, is able to keep the confidence of the tribe in his power to avert ‘evil,’ to bring rain or sunshine, or to act as mediator between the tribesmen and their gods,”

W. J.

(To be continued.)

Pathfinders:Thinking Outside the Pox (2010)

The Pathfinders Column from the May 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Thinking Outside the Pox

The debate continues among Londoners about what to put on the famous Trafalgar Square ‘fourth plinth’ which has so far hosted a wide range of wacky installations and whose present incumbent, a statue of a certain KR Park, will elicit from most people the question ‘Who?’ Now the British Medical Journal has weighed in with an editorial backing the campaign of the Edward Jenner Museum to have his statue parked in what is apparently the fourth most visited tourist attraction on Earth. For those with no interest in the history of science, and who don’t do pub quizzes, Edward Jenner is acclaimed worldwide as the man who invented the vaccination against smallpox, a disease which has probably killed and maimed more people than all the wars of history combined.

The BMJ makes a good case too. It is now 30 years since the World Health Organisation formally announced that smallpox was extinct in the wild. Jenner arguably saved more lives than any other single human being, yet most statues are of professional killers with aristocratic titles and the status of war heroes. It would also be cheap to do, as unlike the Battle of Britain chief cited above, the statue would not cost £100,000 to make because it already exists. Indeed this is the whole point. It was in Trafalgar Square, but was booted out of the square by Jenner-haters and dumped in Kensington Gardens. (‘Put Edward Jenner’s statue back in Trafalgar Square’, BMJ, 25 March).

The question why is an interesting one. It turns out that, far from being grateful, a gaggle of vested interests, petty jealousies and wild-eyed ‘anti-vaccinationists’ led a concerted campaign to discredit the greatest discovery in medical science up to that date. To our modern gaze this seems completely bonkers until we remember the MMR affair, and the fact that some people are quicker to believe a Sun editorial than the considered views of the scientific mainstream. There was also intense religious opposition to the Devil’s work of being infected by ‘bestial pus’, and this also seems somewhat hard to credit until we recall how polio, on the verge of being wiped out like smallpox, has instead resurged in a dozen countries because local imams went around telling parents that the vaccine was a CIA drug to make their daughters sterile. And let us not forget the Pope’s own heroic efforts to persuade Africans that condoms can lead to the spread of AIDS.

Another interesting aspect to the story is that were Edward Jenner working today he would undoubtedly be arrested, prosecuted and vilified for recklessly exposing children to health risks and attempting to cover up at least one child death resulting from his experiments. Back in the 1790s they had a spirited, hands-on approach to experimentation (anyone they could get their hands on). Those who continue to oppose all animal experimentation today might like to ask themselves whether they would be prepared, as Jenner did, to try out new unproven treatments on their own son.

A third aspect is that Jenner arguably got the credit for somebody else’s discovery, in this case the Dorset farmer Benjamin Jesty, who had successfully used the technique 20 years earlier in 1774. Jenner supposedly didn’t know about this earlier work, but this seems unlikely given that there were at least 5 other people besides Jesty who had already successfully used cowpox vaccine to achieve smallpox immunity, and given that the technique was common knowledge among many farmers who did know about Jesty and who regularly and deliberately exposed their families to cowpox. However, Jenner published and they didn’t, or more probably, Jenner published and they couldn’t. Jenner, after all, was a member of the Royal Society with powerful friends and the Dorset farmers were just Dorset farmers. So we won’t be seeing any statues of them in Trafalgar Square. Even today there are complaints that ‘outsiders’ are prevented from getting published recognition and have to watch their discoveries being ‘discovered’ by somebody else (for instance here: ‘Should volunteer amateurs get credit in the scientific community for the discoveries they make?’, Dead Link, 23 March). Science is a collaborative business, and giving credit where it’s due is not always straightforward, but the real problem is that science in capitalism is overwhelmingly elitist and hierarchical, so that not only do you not get on, or in, if your face doesn’t fit, neither do your ideas. Of all the challenges facing science, its failure to address the limitations of its own capitalist structure forms its biggest blind spot.

South Talpatti

Farewell forever, South Talpatti, a small island off the coast of Bangladesh which has sunk beneath the rising waves. Unlike the Maldives, where the government meets underwater and the walk to the beach is getting steadily shorter, nobody lived there and almost nobody knew it even existed, so perhaps it’s no great loss. It was never more than six feet above sea level anyway but, incredibly, capitalist national governments still argued about who ‘owned’ it, and India even sent warships to ‘protect’ it (‘Disputed Bay of Bengal island ‘vanishes’ say scientists’, BBC Online, 24 March). this illustrates somewhat elegantly the inherent stupidity of capitalist concepts of ownership, summed up in a memorable remark in the film Crocodile Dundee: ‘the aborigines say that people fighting over who owns the land is like fleas fighting over who owns the dog’.

Mental illness in a sick society (1996)

John Ogdon

Theatre Review from the April 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

Virtuoso by William Humble (Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich and 
touring)

Socialists are not Utopians. Whilst we seek to change society so that it operates in the interests of all the people of the world and not just a small minority of capitalists, we recognise that a socialist society will still face daunting problems and challenges, some of which at present might seem insoluble.

One such challenge is mental health and, at the extreme, madness. We rightly talk of “the sick society” and there can be little doubt that the vast majority of the psychoses and neuroses which are the common experience of so many people today are associated, directly or indirectly, with the stresses and strains, the poverty and insecurity, of capitalism. People are sick, both physically and mentally, because the good health of the population must never be allowed to get in the way of the exploitation of the working class and the endless pursuit of yet more profit. In deference to profit children go hungry, old people go cold, and the unemployed eke out a chilling existence denied the essentials of life. Even the lucky ones (sic), the employed, must work harder, for longer hours and sometimes less pay in real terms, with the ever-present threat of re-structuring, voluntary redundancy, or some other euphemism for unemployment hanging over them. No wonder capitalism drives some people mad.

But beyond the victims of callous capitalism there remain those few whose illnesses seem, at least at first sight, unrelated to the world in which they live. The concert pianist, John Ogdon, was one such person. In Virtuoso, a new play by William Humble the onset, nature and treatment of his mental illness—and its impact on those around him—is sensitively and enthrallingly explored.

By any standard Ogdon was an exceptional pianist: a performer of such power and vision as arguable to warrant the label genius. Perhaps significantly his father, a teacher of English, also suffered a period of mental illness and wrote about his experiences in a book intriguingly entitled How I Became Sane. Ogdon recognising the onset of his own illness—and both threatened and encouraged by his father’s example—asks his wife after one temporary derangement "Would you be so kind as to get me a psychiatrist, please?” It is a poignant moment.

Ogdon the astonishing is counterbalanced with Ogdon the man. The latter childlike in his dependency: unsophisticated in his choice of a wimpy and milkshake in preference to lunch in an exclusive restaurant; warm and tolerant in his appreciation of music—comparing a song by Herman’s Hermits with an aria by Mozart, and toe-tapping an accompaniment to the Modern Jazz Quartet

And psychiatrists. How do they seek to understand the causes of mental illness and set about its amelioration? The limits of an overly empirical approach—one which sees human beings in reductionist terms, and imagines us little more than a complex set of stimuli and responses—are obvious. Whilst capitalist methods of production often see people as mere automatons, human beings are far too complex for their natures to be trivialised in such a monstrous way. It is only when the particularities of Ogdon’s experiences, both past and present, are shrewdly and painstakingly examined, that the possible causes of his trauma become mistily apparent, and likely treatments begin to take shape. In recognising Ogdon’s uniqueness and respecting his worth as a human being—never mind a concert pianist—the play strikes a blow for the warm, dignified way in which all people will be valued in a socialist society.

And at the heart of it all are Ogdon's singular gifts. Is it the case that genius is akin to madness? Perhaps not, but faced with the choice of returning Ogdon to sanity at the cost of losing his pianistic gifts, what should be done? The psychiatrists vote for person rather than performer— an indefensible position in a capitalist society—whilst hoping that their treatment will invalidate having to choose; and in spite of the sounds of Ogdon the performer magnificently assailing our ears with the music Rachmaninoff, Beethoven and Liszt.

Virtuoso is a warm, intelligent play, adeptly played and presented by gifted performers, designers and production staff. In the central role Oliver Ford Davies plays Ogdon with such revealing and touching honesty and integrity as almost to make you believe that he is John Ogdon. It would be difficult not to be moved by Ogdon’s plight and cheered by his recovery. Perhaps we may now have a play about the tens of thousands of ordinary people, no less worthy, whose mental illness is more simply explained—as victims of callous capitalism.

Michael Gill

The Reward of Genius. (1924)

From the January 1924 issue of the Socialist Standard

  "New York, Saturday. — Johannes Sophus Gelert, the famous sculptor, attempted to commit suicide at the Danish Home for the Aged. He slashed his throat with a razor, but will probably recover."
  "He is without friends and practically penniless, and owing to creeping paralysis was unable to continue working.  — Reuter."

Capitalism's Admirable Crichtons (1920)

From the August 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of J. M. Barrie’s immortal plays portrays the butler who by sheer force of superior mentality and ability assumed leadership over his aristocratic employers when shipwrecked on a desert island. The position is intended to be a more or less fanciful one, but in reality present day society teems with examples of the repression of great minds by the mediocre-minded few. Many of us in even our small circles can point to one or two acquaintances who can find no outlet for really brilliant intelligences, and who are forced by stress of economic circumstance to spend their lives in uncongenial work and uninspiring environment. History has many cases to show of genius which has been discovered too late, of great minds that have been starved of opportunity. Men and women who, even under adverse conditions, managed to leave something behind that humanity is the better for, have in countless cases died of want and hopeless despair. The painting that might fetch a small fortune at Christie’s to-day perhaps was sold by the artist for the price of a loaf of bread. The machine that may make a modern Croesus was invented by one whose life was one long struggle against penury and who died, as he had lived, in obscurity.

Many more must there be who have no opportunity of bringing into the light ideas that would stamp them as being more than ordinary men. Who could expect a man to come back, after a long day’s toil, to a miserable hovel, surrounded by those scenes and noises which are so great a part of the worker’s environment, and to sit down and compose beautiful music, or paint a masterpiece, or write a treatise that should make history ?

All that matters to-day is the ability to make a profit—if that be ability. Very few employers are more intelligent than some of their own machine-minders, but the fact that the machines belong to them and not to the minders is sufficient to obtain for them the comfort and luxury that the latter and their families are not even able to dream of. Even their vaunted “directive ability” is vested in managers and foremen. We had the case recently of an American millionaire who made a fortune while in the madhouse! He, like the rest of his class, could not help it. It requires practically no effort on their part. That is the irony of it all. If ability counted they would not be in the position they are in. The working class invent machinery, they work machinery, they pay their own meagre wages, and hand the surplus to the employers. There is not an operation from the loading of a trolley to the cashing of a cheque that is not performed by a member of the working class.

The position, however, never seems to strike the workers themselves. If a man is a good workman and boasts about it he will compare himself with his neighbour, but never with his employer. In the same way he is familiar with and deferential to names like Rothschild and Rockefeller, but of Faraday and Pasteur, who have benefited society almost as much as the first-named have harmed it, he has not the faintest notion.

It is true of capitalism more than of any other system of society that the good in men does not pay so much as the bad. It is more to the advantage of doctors to pander to the fanciful notions of old dowagers with well-lined purses than it is for them to devote their lives to endeavouring to cure some dread disease. It is useless for a man to invent something that would make workmen in a particularly dangerous occupation safer if it would mean adding to the employer’s establishment expenses.

Only under Socialism will every man find it to his advantage to give of his best, since it will be the community that will benefit and not the the pockets of the few. The machine that will run will not throw men out of work as at present, but will, as it should, reduce the hours of labour. Scientists will not experiment with poison gases and explosives, but will use their knowledge in protecting the human race and bringing health and strength to those that lack it. And what is more, the man in the street, the common worker, instead of being any longer the slave of toil, with only “a soul to be damned, a body to be kicked,” will become a responsible member of society with a right to all that the world has to offer and with no man to say him nay.

Stanley H. Steele