Pathfinders: The ‘doged’ pursuit of knowledge (2025)

The Pathfinders Column from the June 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

A funny thing about touted scientific breakthroughs is that, just like politicians’ promises, they make a lot of noise at first, but then are apt to quietly fizzle out later when nobody’s looking. So it may have been for the strangely headline-grabbing announcement back in March that a new ‘Dark Energy experiment’ was challenging Einstein’s theory of the universe. Wait, what, they’ve disproved Einstein, you gasp? But no, it’s not quite that big an earthquake. Stargazers at the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) in Arizona’s Kitt Peak National Observatory had found a ‘blip’ in the cosmological measurements that suggested that the mysterious dark energy force supposedly driving the expansion of the universe might have slightly weakened over time. Though the key phrase is ‘might have’, this immediately got everyone terribly excited at the prospect of ‘new physics’ and the possible need to rewrite the cosmological standard model. Years of funded research and potential Nobel prizes glistered like the starry firmament, but cosmologists were quick to point out that this was in no way a certain result and would require vital independent confirmation from other sources, notably Europe’s Euclid space telescope and NASA’s forthcoming Nancy Grace Roman space telescope (tinyurl.com/4sv65khx).

So it may be something and it may be nothing, which is fair enough. But then why did it make such huge headlines, as if it was a genuine discovery? Well, let’s play devil’s advocate for a moment and pretend that we are jaded and cynical observers of capitalism, and ask ourselves what other factors might be at play here. Let’s in particular imagine the following entirely fictitious bit of dialogue: “Trump’s threatening to cut the NASA budget in half!” “Oh shit, we need to big up a breakthrough, pronto!”

Yup, when suddenly you can’t pay your mortgage or bills moments after having a safe and respectable long-term government-funded science career at the National Institutes of Health (proposed to be cut by 37 percent), the National Science Foundation (50+ percent), the Department of Energy (14 percent), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (24 percent), the US Geological Survey (33+ percent), the Department of Agriculture (18 percent), the Environmental Protection Agency (46 percent), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (39 percent), the Forest Service (62 percent), or the innocuous National Endowment for the Humanities, the Institute of Museum and Library Services – funding anthropology and archaeology – and the Marine Mammal Commission – saving the whales – (all 100 percent), you know you’ve been ‘Doged’. And few agencies are being hit harder than NASA, with an eye-watering 53 percent cut (tinyurl.com/3crbp648). Obviously all its Earth science climate projects will be the first to go, as the Drill Baby is not interested in those. But one of the other projects which might also bite the dust is the aforementioned Nancy Grace Roman space telescope, now coincidentally being cited as vital for confirming the Einstein-busting dark energy result (tinyurl.com/hejv2ztr).

It’s not that Trump is anti-science per se. He’s all for science as long as it makes him look good. So he was redneck-hot for the Artemis programme to plant NASA astronauts in MAGA hats back on the moon, especially if they could do it before the Chinese got there. President Bush originally also had a moon programme, called Constellation, that Obama subsequently cancelled, and Trump brought back as Artemis. But here, observers say, NASA was its own worst enemy, by being too institutionalised and cavalier about cost overruns, and using legacy suppliers like Boeing, whose own Starliner vehicle turned out to be an embarrassment (Pathfinders, October 2024). Asked to build a new rocket that could get humans to the moon, NASA simply came up with an adaptation of the previous Constellation-era Ares V rocket, rebranded as the Space Launch System (SLS). Despite this now being the era of cheap and reusable rockets, the SLS is a disappointing and hugely expensive replica of the old single-use Saturn V model. The US is now planning to ‘retire’ the SLS, possibly before it’s even launched, instead looking to private capital in the form of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which is offering to do the same job for around one fortieth of the SLS cost ($100m versus $4bn).

NASA is more than an agency, it’s an icon, with an almost reverential status in US history for putting Neil Armstrong on the moon. Savaging its funding must seem to many like burning your own sacred temple to spite the priests. But it’s also a monument from another age, when private capitalists were not nearly as rich as they are today, and only governments had the resources to fund space programmes. Now, tech bros like Bezos and Musk are doing their own space programmes, and doing them in some ways better than NASA. This is incidentally rather awkward to explain for those people who think ‘socialism’ is the state ownership of industries and that this is somehow an improvement on private capitalism. It’s not. State and private capitalism are as bad as each other, and both exploit workers and give them no real say.

As far as capitalist science is concerned, the goal is generally profit not the pursuit of knowledge. The rich get to decide what it pursues, either directly through their own purse, or indirectly through their complicit governments. Obama’s 2015 Space Act, cravenly endorsed by 43 countries, is widely seen as the new ‘enclosures’ for legalising space mining for profit (tinyurl.com/3va6mkdf). But once workers recognise their true common interest and abolish capitalism, what would happen to these capitalist-era plans to go to the Moon, or Mars? They’ll probably slide right down the global To Do list, below more pressing priorities like sustainable universal nutrition, health and housing, but possibly not off it entirely. The final frontier is always going to fascinate humans. The key difference is, when a socialist world looks up at the night sky, it will look with eyes of wonder, and not with an eye to plunder.

Paddy Shannon

Cooking the Books: Einstein got it right (2025)

The Cooking the Books column from the January 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

For the first issue of Monthly Review in May 1949 Einstein contributed an essay entitled Why Socialism?. He began by explaining that humans are naturally social animals but that the structure of present-day society prevents this from being properly expressed, leading to the ‘crippling of the social consciousness of individuals’, and that ‘the economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the source of the evil’.

He explained the workers’ situation under capitalism:

‘For the sake of simplicity, in the discussion that follows I shall call “workers” all those who do not share in the ownership of the means of production – although this does not quite correspond to the customary use of the term. The owner of the means of production is in a position to purchase the labor power of the worker. By using the means of production, the worker produces new goods which become the property of the capitalist. The essential point about this process is the relation between what the worker produces and what he is paid, both measured in terms of real value. Insofar as the labor contract is “free,” what the worker receives is determined not by the real value of the goods he produces, but by his minimum needs and by the capitalists’ requirements for labor power in relation to the number of workers competing for jobs. It is important to understand that even in theory the payment of the worker is not determined by the value of his product.’

The ideological apologists of capitalism are still trying to refute this as a recent contribution to Mises Wire, entitled ‘Albert Einstein and the Folly of Marxist Sympathies’, shows. The author, Kgatlhiso Darius Leshaba, challenged Einstein’s endorsement above of Marx’s theory of worker exploitation:

‘The first problem we run into is the concept of value. It has been firmly established that economic value isn’t intrinsic, that “The measure of value is entirely subjective in nature.” Value is not transferred somehow from labor to product. In fact, the direction of the imputation of value is exactly the other way around. The economic value of labor is determined by the value of the final product it aids in producing’ (tinyurl.com/bdh7d6je).

Leshaba was quoting Carl Menger (1840-1921), the founder of the so-called Austrian School of economics, who came up with a theory aimed at refuting Marx or, in the words of the Mises Institute, ‘corrected theoretical errors of the old classical school. These errors concerned value theory, and they had sown enough confusion to make the dangerous ideology of Marxism seem more plausible than it really was’ (tinyurl.com/3r7n4wy2).

To say that economic value is ‘entirely subjective’ is to confuse use-value and exchange-value and assumes that production is carried on simply for the use of consumers. Obviously a commodity, as an item of wealth produced to be sold, has to be useful to somebody, otherwise it wouldn’t sell. The demand for it could be said to be ‘subjective’ in the sense that it depends on the buyers’ preferences but this merely explains the pattern of (paying) demand for something. It does not explain the supply.

No firm is going to produce a commodity unless it calculates that the income from selling it will at least (in practice more than) cover the prices of what it had to buy to produce it. So cost of production comes into it and that does not depend on the preferences of consumers. The claim that production costs (including wages) are subjective because their value is derived from being used to produce some consumer good whose value is said to be subjective is just assuming what has to be proved. It doesn’t explain the division of what national income statisticians call ‘added value’ into wages and profits and is not taught these days even in bourgeois economics.

Pathfinders: Bones of Contention (2011)

The Pathfinders Column from the November 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

Bones of Contention

You’ll often find that socialists take a special interest in history and the ancient past. It’s something to do with taking the ‘long view’.  But you don’t have to be a socialist (or 6 years old) to be interested in dinosaurs, and with today’s computer generated images (CGI), it’s all a lot more fun than it ever used to be. The BBC’s new series Planet Dinosaur uses the kind of Hollywood-style special effects that made its 1999 Walking With Dinosaurs such a success. New technology and new discoveries have added hugely to the knowledge about dinosaurs in recent years, and the show’s star attraction will no doubt be the representation of feathered dinosaurs, until very recently the subject of heated controversy.

In the 1999 series too many unqualified assertions were made about dinosaur behaviour which could only have been guesses. This time the BBC has been careful to back up claims with evidence, letting the viewer follow the chain of reasoning, and making proper distinctions between fact and conjecture.

Yet still there’s a propaganda gloss on the scientific process, as if the audience somehow wouldn’t buy the real thing. The obsession with carnivorous monsters, and heavy repetition of words like ‘killer’ and ‘deadly hunter’, seem to assume the audience is on a five-second boredom timer and can only be motivated by blood and guts (ie that we are 6 years old). There is a curious moment when, in magisterial tones, we are informed that the fearsomely spiked tail of a stegosaurus is known as a ‘thagomiser’. What they don’t tell us is that this term started life as a joke by Gary Larson, in whose Far Side cartoon the caveman professor explains to the class that it is named ‘after the late Thag Simmons’. The Smithsonian Institute, having a sense of humour and no prior name of its own, promptly adopted Larson’s term, which is now semi-official. Joke names abound in science, but the BBC seems to disapprove.

What’s even more interesting than feathered dinosaurs is the row that scientists have been having about them. Consider the archaeoraptor debacle. When this fossil turned up from China in 1999, National Geographic reported that it was the missing link between birds and dinosaurs. This elicited a furious response from the Smithsonian which, losing its sense of humour for once, accused the magazine of reaching ‘an all-time low for engaging in sensationalistic, unsubstantiated, tabloid journalism’.  Why were they so upset? First, the link between dinosaurs and birds was at that time highly speculative; second, the article had preceded the scientific paper into print, meaning that according to the rule of precedent the rightful naming of the species had been effectively filched by the magazine; third, a term like ‘proto-feather’ committed the teleological fallacy, as if genes had a sense of predestination; fourth, the fossil had been illegally exported and should not have been touched by any reputable institution anyway.

Embarrassingly, the fossil turned out to be a fake, a fact that National Geographic might have learned if it hadn’t been in such a fever to publish. The story was reported with glee by the creationist lobby, ever desperate to find leverage. Though the dinosaur-bird link has since been established, the real scandal that came to light was not only the rampant trade in illegal and stolen fossils but the large numbers of forgeries that were appearing on the international market, mainly from unregulated China. The trade in fossils continues unabated, to the continued frustration of real knowledge, as much of the traffic is destined for the private collections of the rich and is thus unavailable for study.

You don’t have to be a 6 year old to like dinosaurs, but you do have to be a socialist to understand a world where people will steal and fake old fossils for the sake of a few dollars or yuan.  ‘Archaeoraptor’, by the way, means ‘old robber’.

E=MC3?

It’s something when you go down the pub or the supermarket and everyone’s talking Einstein. But it happened recently after a world headline splash that some CERN physicists had sent some neutrinos on a faster-than-light trip through an Italian mountain. Not that anybody could make any sense of the story, not even the expert commentators. Assuming it wasn’t a mistake, either it was possible to travel faster than light, in which case the standard model of physics was in trouble, or the neutrinos were somehow skipping out the side window of another dimension and back in again, in which case the standard model of physics was still in trouble. Cosmology is in big trouble anyway, as 97 percent of the universe is officially missing (dark matter, dark energy) and large chunks supposedly keep disappearing (dark flow). And the quantum theorists are ready to string themselves up too, not having had a sniff of a decent theory in 30 years. Could life get any worse for physicists? Well, let them take a lesson from socialists. We’re optimists. We look forward to the day when everybody down the pub is talking Marx. That’s when the standard model of capitalism will be in serious trouble.

Finding fault among the fault finders

Where there’s blame there’s a claim, so now they’re prosecuting scientists for not predicting an earthquake (www.nytimes.com/2011/10/04/science/04quake.html). This seems a tad unfair since nobody is suing the bankers for not predicting a global economic disaster, even though they helped cause it.

“No one expected to be told the exact time of the quake”, said one plaintiff, “We just wanted to be warned that we were sitting on a bomb.”

You would have thought that 400 tremors in the previous 6 months would be a sizeable clue, and that only a lit and sparking fuse leading directly up into the rectal cavity could give greater cause for alarm. But you’d be wrong, because the local seismic survey team reported that the risk was still low. This low risk was however translated by local officials into ‘no risk’, a prediction which turned out to be spectacularly wrong, and the writs started landing before the masonry had finished falling. The problem was that people wanted a categorical yes or no statement, and the fact that you can’t expect that kind of answer from a seismologist somehow got lost in the ensuing uproar.

People have strange ideas about science. Half the time they hate it and don’t believe a word of it, the rest of the time they seem to think it is capable of performing miracles. A bit like how people see capitalist politicians, come to think of it. It seems inconceivable that any law court would really convict the scientists, but if they do then presumably we can all start suing the Met Office every time the rain ruins our washing.

Paddy Shannon

The Bomb (1968)

From the April 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Second World War was nearing its end when in August 1945 atom bombs were exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, thus adding further horrors to the crimes of capitalism at war. Like other wars it had supposedly been fought for noble ideals. Rivalries leading to war did not disappear of course and this weapon has taken its place along with more destructive variations in the armouries of the world. Strategy and international diplomacy have been revamped to take them into account.

Much of the development of scientific theory leading up to the atom bomb was done in the period between the two world wars, by scientists from many lands. Classical physicists had held that matter and energy were totally distinct and could neither be created nor destroyed. Then Einstein evolved the theory that one could be destroyed and converted into the other. This was summarised in his equation E=mc², where E is energy, m is mass, c is the velocity of light. Hence the energy released by the destruction of small quantities of matter is very large. Nuclear weapons are practical demonstration of the truth of this proposition. As long as scientific investigation into the nature of matter and the atom showed no prospect of profitable applications, capitalists and their governments were miserly in giving their support. The atom was first split in 1919 and work progressed, until by the late 1930’s it became evident to scientists that applications were possible. Once war was declared they were concerned about their findings being put to military use. In America these experts, some of whom had fled from Nazi tyranny, petitioned the President, demanding a weapons research programme, in order to get a bomb produced before Germany did.

Once convinced, the US government invested lavishly in the equipment and installations required. The problems of turning theoretical propositions into military hardware were enormous. It took the co-operation of the British, Canadian and US governments, an international team of scientists and the expenditure of $2,000 million. By 1942 calculations showed that less than 100 lbs. of uranium 235 or plutonium 239 could be used as explosive material to release energy equivalent to 20,000 tons of T.N.T. Only a minute quantity of either material had been produced at the time. Techniques and equipment for producing them had to be developed. Research was carried out at various universities and the Oak Ridge and Hanford plants were set up to produce fissile material. Work on the weapons started in 1943 at Los Alamos. The project was run as a military operation with maximum security. It was organised in such a way that only a few people knew of the whole scheme, the majority working on individual problems not knowing what their particular items related to.

By the time the first bombs were ready, Germany had been defeated. The menace the scientists had feared was gone. However this did not prevent the US government using the bombs. One of the features of capitalism is the tendency to internationalise production, and this goes for armaments too. No security system, however elaborate it may be, can stop the spread or development of ideas and techniques of production. By 1949 the United States lost its monopoly of the weapon, when Russia exploded its first atom bomb. In the years that followed other nations mastered the techniques. To-date Britain, France and China have become nuclear powers.

In the meantime research teams in America and Russia were kept busy on another project. For some time it had been known that energy was continually being released from the sun by the fusion of hydrogen atoms. This was far greater than the forces liberated by fission of uranium atoms. Work proceeded to try to reproduce this process on earth. The problem involved was that intense heat was needed in order to fuse atoms and the atoms of the lightest element, hydrogen, were best suited to this purpose. The solution was to generate the heat by setting off a fission explosion which would produce the fusion reaction. The United States tested the first bombs of this type in May 1951 and November 1952, followed by Russia in August 1953. This new weapon has had various names — Super, Hydrogen, Thermo-Nuclear. A test in 1954 in which the force of the explosion was estimated to be between 12-14 million tons of T.N.T. showed the danger from radioactive fallout in these experiments. The crew of the Japanese fishing vessel The Lucky Dragon suffered radiation sickness, and one of them died of it, as a result of fallout 90 miles from the test. Testing continued and the largest explosion to-date is estimated at 57 million tons of T.N.T. Again it was impossible to prevent the spread of this weapon. In 1957 Britain exploded an H bomb, China did the same last year and France is getting ready for its own test.

It is as well to note the feelings of one of the scientists', involved as expressed by Teller (known in the USA as the father of the H bomb). ‘Those were days", as Teller later recalled, “filled with a spirit of spontaneous expression, adventure and surprise" — a natural reaction for men engaged in studies in which new knowledge was coming to light. At the same time it is an indictment of present society, that their efforts were efforts directed to producing greater means of destruction. For the few who backed down, jobs were hard to come by. Those who protested did so in vain. They, like their fellow workers in other occupations, are caught in a situation over which they have no control. Another arms race was under way. There were new evils to eradicate and the scientists were led to believe their contributions were of vital interest to them. Like the overwhelming majority of workers their knowledge of the workings of capitalism is minute and they easily succumb to its propaganda.

Two factors have to be kept in mind when considering the possibility of more countries making nuclear weapons. First they must be able to produce the weapon in a compact enough form to be delivered and secondly they must be able to produce or acquire a means of delivering it to the target. Early work in America was concentrated on developing the bomb. But as time went by more effort was directed to producing aircraft, rockets and electronic equipment needed for both defence and attack. States entering the race since then have been faced with the same task and so will any others joining the club.

For nuclear weapons the first requirements are stocks of fissile material and the necessary technology to produce and handle them. One way of achieving this is through setting up nuclear power stations, fuelled by uranium 238, which have the fissile material plutonium 239 as a by-product. A number of countries operate this type of equipment and are in a position to develop fissile weapons if needed. Two of them, India and Israel, have recently been involved in wars and there has been speculation about their intentions. Such countries as Germany, Japan, Italy, Canada and even neutral Sweden and Switzerland must be considered as potential producers of nuclear weapons. Even so tremendous costs are involved. Many countries are now dependent on America and Russia for financial and technical aid and must keep this in mind. Both France and China have been isolated from their former allies since they became nuclear powers.

Before the H-bomb production can take place an A-bomb trigger device must be developed. Moreover this device has so far been fuelled by uranium 235. It is a difficult and expensive process to separate it from uranium 238. It is acknowledged that China has mastered the problem, but France has not been so successful. According to the Sunday Times of 18 June last year “The French are believed to have spent over £300m on their [gaseous diffusion plant] at Pierrelatte and it is still not fully operational". To add to the expense large supplies of electricity are required. It is estimated that America devoted 10 per cent of its generating capacity to this purpose in the second world war. Since these early days, however, an alternative process of separating U235 from U238, centrifugally, has been investigated without success. Recent reports indicate that researchers in Holland have now made a workable centrifuge. This could lead to a cheapening of the operation of up to 90 per cent.

The development of nuclear weapons, long-range aircraft, rockets and electronics has led to radical changes in military thinking. The scientist, equipped with computers, has largely taken over from the old-fashioned military tactician. The world is now the battlefield with potential civilian casualties numbered in tens of millions. Control of the upper atmosphere and space are now as important as control of land and sea routes were in the past.

The situation since the second world war has seen the two super powers, America and Russia, battling for the supremacy of capitalism. The arms race between them has been on a scale that has left the once great powers, Britain and France, far behind. Missiles equipped with nuclear warheads can now be launched from aircraft, the ground, ships and submarines. Artillery, mortar and land mines can now produce nuclear explosions. As the power, variety and number of weapons increase so does the possibility of defending populations and industry decrease. More emphasis is placed on advanced preparation, protecting missiles and command posts so as to enable the combatants to continue the battle amidst the debris. Massive spying operations are required to keep war ministries informed of the enemy's equipment and allow them to plan strategy. America, for instance, made wild estimates of Russia's aircraft strength in the 1950’s as was shown up by the U2 spy flights. The U2 has been succeeded by satellites equipped with cameras able to photograph large areas in great detail and transmit information to ground stations. This has already allowed Russia and America to locate China’s nuclear plants. With electronics playing an increasingly important part in weapon guidance and early warning radar, so the search for information to jam these systems grows. The USN Pueblo was equipped for this type of work and it is claimed that Russia’s notorious trawler fleet is similarly equipped.

Both Russia and America have built up a series of alliances in pursuit of their interests. The most important of them are the Warsaw Pact and NATO, whose essential feature is that the two powers should provide the nuclear weapons. These groupings have proved troublesome as each of the states involved has had its own interests to pursue. Britain and France, with world-wide commitments, have attempted to equip themselves for a world-wide strategic role. France’s force de frappe at the moment cannot reach a target such as Moscow or Washington without its aircraft re-fuelling on route. But these will later be supplemented by missiles and rocket-firing submarines. Britain has suffered many expensive failures in trying to play this world-wide role. It still depends on its obsolescent Victor and Vulcan bombers. Shortly its Polaris submarines will be going into service with missiles capable of hitting any target on earth. While Russia has been more successful in preventing east European states developing nuclear weapons it failed in the case of its former ally, China.

Strategy has been based on being able to deliver a knock-out blow while at the same time defending against one. Though manned aircraft and submarines are still maintained, missiles form the greater part of the strategic forces. America has depended on having more inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBM), but Russia has been catching up recently and also has a superiority in intermediate range ballistic missiles (IRBM). These missiles are kept in underground concrete emplacements, called silos, said to be to protect the missiles for further use. In America they are under the control of the Strategic Air Command (SAC) which has an underground HQ in Nebraska. There are also three aircraft, one of which is constantly in flight, fitted as command posts in case the SAC HQ is put out of action. Similarly there is a special aircraft and a special ship fitted out for the President. The SAC also controls a large number of bombers, some of which are kept on air-borne alert. A vital part of all this is the early-warning radar system, including ground-stations, ships and aircraft. Communication satellites and computers are also part of the equipment. Defence equipment includes fighter aircraft fitted with rockets and ground-to-air missiles, some of which have nuclear warheads. Russia has similar equipment but not on as lavish a scale. It also claims to be capable of putting bombs into orbit around the earth and of later bringing them down on target. It is developing an anti-ballistic missile (ABM) defence system. America has recently decided to invest in similar equipment. These moves have given a new emphasis to the arms race and may be the means of renewed atmospheric nuclear testing by both states.

Some of the strategy is worked out by organisations such as the Rand Corporation in America. Here over a thousand scientists of all types are kept by the US Air Force to work out possible developments in nuclear warfare. Their calculations include how to retaliate after attacks by opponents and how to maintain or revive production in the course of such a war. They juggle with figures of potential deaths running into tens of millions. One thing they do not get round to of course is an analysis of what the conflict is all about and how it can be ended. What the conflict is not over is ideas of how society should be run. Both Russia and America had sufficient in common to be allies in the last world war. Their production is based on the profit motive and it is from this that the conflict between them springs. Success in the competition springing from this mode of production demands the control of exploitable manpower, markets, raw materials and trade routes. In this struggle famine relief, technical and financial aid, military and commercial alliances, all play a part. It will only be brought to an end when the workers who produce the wealth over which the conflict rages take control of the means of production and replace capitalism with Socialism.

Joe Carter

Agriculture in Capitalism and Socialism (2018)

From the January 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

After discussing some possible features of a socialist society, Colin Skelly contrasts how agriculture is carried out in capitalism with how it could be transformed in socialism.

'[The] technological and demographic developments of the last few centuries have created conditions which are here to stay. In relatively densely settled populations with the goods which are indispensable to their continued existence, an extreme division of labor and a highly – centralised productive apparatus are absolutely necessary. The time – which, looking back, seems so idyllic –  is gone forever when individuals or relatively small groups could be completely self-sufficient. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that mankind constitutes even now a planetary community of production and consumption', Albert Einstein ‘Why Socialism?’, Monthly Review, May 1949).

Einstein’s view of socialism as utilising and continuing the ever more extreme division of labour prevalent in capitalist production is a logical one. As Marx pointed out, a major contradiction at the heart of capitalism is that the working class has access to a relatively decreasing proportion of the value produced by their labour (despite often also being absolutely better off materially than preceding generations). It makes complete sense then, that some socialists would see the immediate goal of our global revolution as being to enable the equalisation of the vast productive output of global labour.

Yet contrast Einstein’s view with that of William Morris in his vision of the socialist future, News From Nowhere (told as the story of how the socialist revolution had occurred by the character Old Hammond):

'…he [Old Hammond] had a detailed record of the period of the change to the present state of things, and told us a great deal about it, and especially of that exodus of the people from the town to the country, and the gradual recovery by the town-bred people on one side, and the country-bred people on the other, of those arts of life which they had each lost; which loss, as he told us had at one time gone so far that not only was it impossible to find a carpenter or a smith in a village or a small country town, but that people in such places had even forgotten how to bake bread... He told us also that the townspeople who came into the country used to pick up the agricultural arts by carefully watching the way in which the machines worked, gathering an idea of handicraft from machinery; because at that time almost everything was done by elaborate machines used quite unintelligently by the labourers. On the other hand, the old men amongst the labourers managed to teach the younger ones gradually a little artisanship, such as the use of the saw and the plane, the work of the smithy, and so forth; for once more by that time it was as much as –  or rather, more than –  a man could do to fix an ash pole to a rake by handiwork; so that it would take a machine worth a thousand pounds, a group of workmen, and a half a day's travelling, to do five shillings' worth of work' (Chapter 27, The Upper Waters).

Today, with stories abounding about the displacement of human employment with robots, such a view is highly relevant. Now we in the Socialist Party know that robots will not end our role as wage slaves – we need to do that ourselves – but with the technical possibility of displacing many forms of human labour, how would we choose work in the socialist future? Marx made a distinction between immediate and developed communism in his Critique of the Gotha Programme; socialism as established on day one would not be the same as socialism 5, 10, 20, 50 years later.

Day One

Socialism on Day One would surely involve, to borrow some phrases from Engels, the replacement of the government of persons by the administration of things and the anarchy of production in capitalism by the conscious direction of the processes of production. The working class would be in the driving seat politically and socially meaning that the productive potential of the Earth’s resources combined with human technical potential would be at our collective command. Equality would be established in terms of our individual and collective relation to the means of production. We would be at a point where we no longer worked for money wages but one in which each of us would put in our mental and physical labours to social production and each of us would take out what we need from the surplus of production destined for immediate consumption. To borrow from Marx this time, labour would be given according to the abilities of those giving it and the products of collective labour taken according to individual needs.

But the point of socialism is more than a striving for equality for its own sake. There is much more to socialism than arguments about what will be produced and how it will be distributed. In fact, equality of access to means of production is merely a means to an end, the social and political expression of a deeper need, the need, as Morris expressed it, for our labour to be ‘set free’. Marx was very clear in Capital and elsewhere, that socialism would be the conscious management of production for the first time in human history. It would give us, both as individuals and as a global society, the means to shape our own lives, ‘the pursuit of the universality of needs, capacities, enjoyments, productive powers etc., of individuals, produced in universal exchange.’  Socialism will surely not involve us going to work as normal, not even on Day One. It will surely be about more than having a say in what is produced and taking only what you need. It will involve a massive change in how you work, how you relate to what is produced. Because you wouldn’t have to work. To borrow from Marx yet again, the free development of each of us would allow the free development of all of us. In other words, although compulsion will be removed from work, our new free relation to it will ensure that, in fact, more productive work will happen. Which is why, although Einstein was right that socialism will continue to be ‘a planetary community of production and consumption’ and not a move to self-sufficiency, his vision of a highly centralised world with extreme division of labour is, for this socialist at least, further from what socialism will look like than that of William Morris.

Agriculture under capitalism

So, how might agriculture look in a socialist future? To start, we might contrast in broad strokes what global agriculture in capitalism looks like compared to a reasoned guess at what it might look like in a socialist society. Agriculture in capitalism is one dominated by production of plant and animal crops for sale in a global market in which import and export occur on a massive scale and in which more industrialised countries import food (where obesity is literally a growing problem) and less industrialised countries export food (even where populations may be malnourished). Intensive production is pervasive, trying to squeeze every last bit of plant or animal out of every square metre to the exclusion of all other considerations. Animals destined for meat are kept indoors in the smallest possible unit of space and dosed on antibiotics and given dubious food inputs in order to keep them alive and growing at the optimum rate for the earliest possible harvesting. Mechanisation is constantly developing under pressure of competition, squeezing human labour out of the process of production and making the machinery ever more complex and expensive. Production is finely specialised, individual farms concentrating on a very narrow range of plants or animals to the exclusion of all other crops. Agriculture is ecologically unsustainable, denuding soils of ecological health due to reliance on chemical fertilisers, pesticides and monocultures leading to further negative impacts on biodiversity, soil erosion and human health. Agriculture in capitalism is industrialised and exclusively rural, sharply delineated from urban life. Relationships are dependent – between food importing and exporting countries, between agrochemical companies and growers, between town and country.

Agriculture in socialism, whilst involving the widespread transfer of foodstuffs around the world, would not involve the imbalance between imports and exports that currently reflects global economic imbalance. It is likely that food production in a given geographic area would be planned to maximise the amount and variety available locally and regionally rather than dominated by one crop destined for export. An amount of surplus, perhaps of particular speciality crops, would probably be made available for exporting globally. Production would likely be more extensive than intensive as collective decisions about land use would replace the competitive pressure to maximise per unit yields of a narrow range of crops. The need for the routine dosing of animals grown for meat would disappear with the end of the compulsion to keep them in the smallest possible unit of space with the least inputs. Mixed farming would probably replace monoculture with multiple types of crops, enabling a total larger yield of crops per acre across the year. The drive for mechanisation would continue where dull, monotonous tasks were desired to be eradicated but the increased variety and range of work would make the need for machines that would run with minimal human input across of acres of monoculture a thing of the past.

Mixed farming would remove the need for reliance on chemical fertiliser inputs, replenishing soil fertility with animal wastes and, over time, restoring the ecological health of soils. The need for pesticides would be reduced as a greater range of crops would remove the risk of catastrophic crop failure and greater resilience of total crop yields. In turn, this would allow for a far greater biodiversity on farm land leading to a further drop in reliance on chemical inputs as a more balanced ecology replaced the ecological desert that is monoculture. The economic pressures leading to the rural and urban divide would cease to exist and the distinction between town and country would probably give way to a more balanced use of land, although doubtless population distribution would reflect the physical characteristics and productive potential of the land. Local, small scale and part-time production of food would probably increase because of free access to land alongside larger mixed farms. Interdependent relationships in food production would replace dependence

No one wants to grow in the way that food production is carried out in capitalism. In fact, farmers in capitalism do not want to farm in this way but are compelled to do so under the competitive pressure of the market. Freed from this burden, the range of people engaged in producing food would increase and land use patterns alter drastically. The productive potential of the land combined with the scientific and technical knowledge developed during the course of capitalist production will enable social production on a new economic basis. Consciously planned production, probably at local, regional and global levels, would replace production for the market. This planning would reflect local, regional and global needs but, as importantly, what those engaged in agriculture might want to produce and how they might choose to produce it.

Colin Skelly

Dimmer than a thousand fools (1965)

Book Review from the August 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Talk softly please. I have been engaged in experiments which suggest that the atom can be artificially disintegrated. If it is true, it is of far greater importance than a war."

Thus spoke Ernest Rutherford to a government defence committee towards the end qf 1918. But at that time, Rutherford probably had little inkling of the type of importance his discovery would assume, just where it would lead, and the monstrous use to which it would be put. “The only way I can tell a new idea is really important is the feeling of terror that seizes me,” said Professor Franck of Göttingen University about three years later. It was perhaps a more apt remark, and in this case at least, fully justified.

We all have at least some idea of the horrors of the atom bomb and of the hideous refinements it has undergone since 1945. What is often not appreciated is the fairly long and gradual process leading to its production. It was certainly no sudden affair, a point emphasised in Robert Jungk’s Brighter than a Thousand Suns (Pelican Books 5/-), the third English edition of which appeared last year. He reminds us that much of the important theoretical work took place in the 1920’s in Göttingen with a team of scientists of world-wide origin, but such was the lack of interest shown by the capitalist class in something apparently lacking in commercial or military possibilities, that the' work was done on a shoe-string budget.

Many of the early scientists regarded their work as “pure”—something quite isolated from politics and the everyday functions of society. “Knowledge for the sake of it” might have been a fair summary of their attitude and indeed, even after Hiroshima had demonstrated how palpably false such a notion was, Mr. Jungk recalls there were still some who clung to it.’ For example:

  To him, research for nuclear weapons was just pure higher mathematics, untrammelled by blood, poison and destruction. All that, he said, was none of his business, (p. 14.)

Which goes to show how ignorant and muddled even the most brilliant of men can be when they do not relate what they are doing to the world in which they are doing it. This book is described as “a personal history of the atomic scientists” and as such, is a history of personal failure, failure on the part of every one of them to learn and apply the lessons of society.

They protested on many occasions the independence of science and the universal right of free access to all available data, and then stuck their heads back into the sands again. Their sentiments sounded all very desirable, but quite impossible of achievement in a world of private property relationships. And with the rise of Hitler, this lofty idea was watered down. Some of the German physicists fled abroad to Britain or the U.S.A. and supported one ruling class or another in the line up for the war which was not far off.

It is old news how “that great friend of peace” Einstein, was approached in 1939 by some of these very scientists, and with them, urged the U.S. government to produce an atom bomb as quickly as possible. They thought—mistakenly as it turned out—that Nazi Germany was working rapidly towards the same goal, and that it would be essential for America to win this terrible race to ensure that such a weapon would never be used.

“Isn’t it wonderful,” Gondsmit remarked, “that the Germans have no atom bomb? Now we won’t have to use ours.” The professional soldier's retort shocked Gondsmit, for out of his many years' experience of the military mind, he prophesied: “Of course you understand. Sam, that if we have such a weapon we are going to use it.” (p. 158).

In fact, after the collapse of Germany, the “Manhatten Project” was pressed ahead at a furious pace and the Hiroshima Bomb dropped bang on schedule.

Robert Jungk’s book is worth reading as a masterly survey of events leading up to Hiroshima and for the ten years which followed. He gives evidence which should leave us in no doubt about two things at least. First, that capitalism will pervert and degrade the finest intentions in the pursuit of it’s hideous ends. Second, the futility of the “balance of terror” theory and the support of armaments in the hope .that they will prevent war. After reading this book it is astounding that such a theory still finds favour.

Eddie Critchfield

War as Terrorism (2012)

Book Review from the November 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Just War. by Howard Zinn. Charta, €10.00.

Howard Zinn, who died in 2010, was a radical American activist and writer, author of A People’s History of the United States. This volume contains the text of a talk he gave in Rome in 2005, together with some striking photos by Moises Saman. Its strength lies in a combination of personal remarks and more general reflections.

Appalled by what he knew of fascism, Zinn volunteered for the US Army Air Force in 1943, and flew in bombing missions over continental Europe. But once the war was over he gradually came to question what he had been doing. Accounts of Hiroshima showed what the effects of the atomic bomb had been, and Zinn realised that when he helped to drop napalm on the French town of Royan, he was participating in the killing of children. The Second World War might seem to be the extreme case of a humanitarian war, but however just a war against fascism appeared to be, he and others ‘had become unthinking killers of innocent people’.

The defeat of Hitler and Mussolini did not lead to the end of militarism, as there were now two superpowers with thousands of nuclear weapons. And war, Zinn argues, is but ‘the extreme form of terrorism’. The US attacks in recent years on Iraq and Afghanistan are motivated by a desire to control resources such as oil. So soldiers do not ‘give their lives for their country’: their lives are taken from them, not given, and this is in the service of the government and the rest of the ruling class. Governments use a combination of coercion and propaganda to get workers to fight for them.

Zinn quotes Albert Einstein: ‘Wars will stop when men refuse to fight’. More accurately, wars will stop when people no longer support the social system that gives rise to them and replace it with one where wars are a thing of the past. In this book at least, Zinn has little to say about how this might happen, though he does refer to a world ‘in which national borders are erased and we are truly one human family’.

So, a slim volume but an instructive one.

Paul Bennett

Pathfinders: (Pr x Media) = Funding2 (2016)

The Pathfinders Column from the March 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last month the world woke up to the strange headline that a) gravitational waves had almost certainly probably been detected and that therefore… b) wait for it… c) Einstein was a bit clever and… d) his theory of relativity was almost certainly probably right.

Of course the scientists were ecstatic. They had been trying to find these waves for years, and now that they had, they also potentially had a new way of looking at the universe. Maybe.

So, good job and pats on the back all round, but front-page splash material, really? It was like the Higgs all over again, with journalists and readers alike gamely talking it all up while trying not to look too baffled.

On the face of it, not much had really changed. Einstein's theory of relativity had already been corroborated as far back as 1919, and every scrap of observational data since had only served to confirm it, making it one of the most successful theories in the history of science.

In a sense, this was the least desirable outcome, from the point of view of new physics. And new physics is sorely needed, because at the moment the Standard model doesn't make sense. Relativity and quantum mechanics are like the unstoppable force and the immovable object, and the Standard model has them worryingly in collision. The new discovery does nothing to change that.

Still, it is pretty clever to be able to detect a movement just a thousandth of the width of a proton (though some newspapers mistakenly printed 'atom' instead, which is like confusing a football with a football stadium). And, to add spice, it was one of those cases of serendipitous luck that make science a lot more fun to read about.

But how interested are the public by all this? It's not as if relativity is a subject you often hear discussed down the boozer, although maybe it depends on the boozer. And the booze (how can nothing be made of something, how can you bend time, how can you pack 30 suns into a space the size of a city, how do they even know any of this, why am I seeing two of you...?).

To many people, physics is just an advanced form of trainspotting (they might say the same about radical politics). Why should anyone care about it, when surviving in capitalism is already a full-time job? Trouble is, people feel that they ought to care because the media is making a big song and dance about it (unlike radical politics). And likewise, the media make a fuss because the scientists are making a fuss.

It comes down to a simple equation: PR x Media = Funding. Gone are the days when science was done by balding boffins in potting sheds. Instead it's 'Big Science' using 'Big Data' collected by Big Tools with Bloody Big Budgets. Detectors like the LIGO gravity wave sensors are hooked up in a patchwork process known as interferometry, across continents and sometimes across the world or even across space. That's not cheap. Then there are large colliders like the LHC at CERN, or the International Space Station (the most expensive tool ever built by anybody) or the ITER fusion reactor at Cadarache in France. In these cases the budgets are so big that only governments can afford them, and even then, only if they club together. And governments, as everyone knows, are peculiarly sensitive to the prevailing climate of popularity, not only among the voting populace who think they're paying for all this but also, and more importantly, among the capitalist class who are actually footing the bill.

So science, to get its funding, has become something of a beauty contest, which is why savvy scientists now engage PR firms after, and sometimes before, getting their research peer-reviewed, and why the pressure is on to announce results even before there are any results to announce. Physics, in particular that ethereal branch known as cosmology, scores surprisingly well in this beauty contest, not because it's in any way relevant or accessible to most of us, but because it's full of famous and charismatic stars (no pun intended), it sports some preposterously untestable ideas, and it's swathed in an aura of mysticism that, in the post-religion era, seems satisfyingly profound. Geneticists and chemists just don't have that kind of glamour. Though they tend to produce far more useful science, they are the unlovely infantry grunts doing essentially icky and sticky things with test tubes. Physicists are the dashing flyboys, the Brylcreem theorists who will make the human race race faster and faster, and maybe loop the loop. It's still based in fact, but quasi-fetishised, made to mean more than it seems, and to seem more than it means - science goes to Hollywood.

Still, and as a quid pro quo, new Hollywood sci-fi movies are increasingly expected to be 'scientifically correct'.  Nobody ever expected Flash Gordon to flash a PhD, but the product of a more scientifically-engaged public is a more scientifically-critical audience, so now film-makers simply can't get away with putting sound effects into space battles because everybody knows (yawn) that sound doesn't travel in space. Instead, and in a development few would have predicted, recent films like Gravity, Interstellar or The Martian are promoted, despite the varying silliness of their plots, precisely on the grounds of their devotion to the laws of physics, and criticised precisely where that devotion falls short.

And why not indeed? If only film-makers would apply the same rigorous standards to their history films, perhaps today's voting public would be a bit better informed about the world they live in, how it got that way, and what they should really be angry about. We've had politically correct, and now we've got scientifically correct. Maybe next cinema-goers should be demanding historically correct. And who knows? Unlike the detection of gravitational waves, that could well be a development that ends up rocking everybody's boat.

PJS

Einstein discusses Socialism (1931)

From the January 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

Professor Einstein has submitted to be interviewed by the "New Leader." In their usual extravagance of style, they speak of him as "the maker of an universe"; quoting Bernard Shaw they say “he is one of the eight greatest men in the world, the men who were makers of universes.” Is this the modern method of creating new gods? Are we to blame Einstein and the other seven for all the rottenness in the universe of to-day? After all language should express truth, and there is a wide difference between making a universe and explaining aspects of it.

On the other hand, Einstein cannot be held responsible for the pompous exaggeration of the "New Leader.” Possibly he sees the fraudulent nature of their propaganda, but is unwilling to commit himself to a scientifically reasoned socialism which would shock a ruling class that is daily according him high honours. Charles Darwin found himself similarly placed when his biological theory of evolution made the Adam and Eve story look silly. His concern was the acquirement of knowledge for the human race, and when freethinkers and Christians engaged in an embittered controversy, he covered himself by remarking that the Christian could accept the new explanation of the world and still keep his god, who breathed into a dead world the spirit of evolution that works without further interference on his part.

The parallel between Einstein and Darwin is not quite perfect. In Darwin’s day practically the whole ruling-class was ranged on the side of the clergy and against the freethinkers. If Darwin had expressed sympathy with their outlook he would have been socially ostracised. To-day a party that sometimes calls itself socialist is actually governing the country and the "New Leader" is a weekly organ of the party whose members are carrying on the business of government in the interest of the ruling-class. Consequently Professor Einstein has nothing to fear as a result of association with the Labour Party.

No one, to-day, is afraid to call himself a socialist, because in the minds of most people the name is associated with a government that is, in the capitalist sense, just as respectable, orthodox and even conservative as any of its predecessors.

Consequently there is nothing remarkable in the fact that Einstein finds himself politically in agreement with the Labour Party and the "New Leader," for the Labour Party is not antagonistic to the capitalist system of society.

Professor Einstein agreed to answer certain questions put by a representative of the "New Leader.” The first question was:

"What in your view is likely to be the influence of scientific discovery on social progress?"

His answer was (“New Leader" 7th Nov.): 

"The effect of the progress of science is to liberate human beings from sheer muscular effort and thus to render possible the participation of everyone in the social and intellectual life of the human race." (Our italics.)

Note the cautious phrasing of the portion in italics. Participation is rendered possible, but no suggestion of its becoming a certainty. He did not even tell the "New Leader" that it rests with the working-class to make it a certainty.

The next question, "as to whether or not the influence of scientific discovery would give capitalism a new era of greater stability and power,” failed to draw the Professor, who dexterously intimated “that it was not sufficiently clear what conception of capitalism was in the mind of the questioner."

Evidently the Professor is aware of the confusion that is characteristic of the "New Leader" when it attempts to explain social systems, either present or future. His refusal to be drawn compelled the ”New Leader" to put an alternative question, which reads:

"Whether or not the enormous extension of human power over natural resources is likely to compel the abandonment of concentrated private ownership and control of industrial processes and their substitution by forms of communal ownership and control?"

Einstein’s reply was :

"Science has furnished us with little information on this subject. The experience of history is, however, to the effect that an ever-increasing number of economic organisations have become public property or have been placed under public control. The concentration of large-scale industry which is an economic necessity brings about the imposition of public control."

The “New Leader" heralds this reply as "support for the socialist case for public control of industry,” a glaring example of their confusion over the term socialism. Public control means nationalisation, or collective control by the capitalist class, as we see it in the Post Office. The case for socialism is the case for a system of society where all the means of wealth-production and distribution are owned by the people and controlled democratically by them for their mutual benefit.

The two things socialism and nationalisation are totally different, in complete opposition to each other. To write, therefore, of the socialist case for public control, is like talking of the socialist case for capitalism, which would be just as nonsensical as the administration of capitalist affairs by a socialist government.

It will be seen that Einstein in his reply to the last question confined himself to the economic side of it; concentration is an economic necessity which brings about public control, i.e., a further economic necessity. Capitalism may develop one economic necessity after another indefinitely, but it can never develop socialism which implies a political revolution.

Socialism is unthinkable to the capitalist class, something utterly impracticable and unjustifiable. To a class that has been in possession for generations, the idea of common ownership is abhorrent. To-day they will not even admit the possibility of it. When they are forced to recognise it as an alternative to their own system, they will use all the forces at their disposal to hinder its advance.

Politicians and business men at present prefer, or pretend, to believe with the Labour Party, that socialism means the same thing as nationalisation. But nationalisation is a purely capitalist reform. Its chief object is to equalise the conditions of exploitation for capitalist competitors. Moreover, nationalisation has always been the work of capitalist statesmen and groups. It was not through the demands of the working-class that railways were nationalised in Germany, or the telegraphs and telephones in England, or, in fact, any of the services or industries that are common all over the capitalist world.

The workers gain nothing by nationalisation. Their status is unchanged. The capitalists still control the means of wealth production and guarantee the profits to themselves. They still compel the workers to sell their energy for wages that barely cover the cost of living.

Professor Einstein, in his replies to the "New Leader,” indicated that the tendency was for an ever-increasing number of economic organisations, or industries, to become state controlled. What of it? It does not need to be one of the world’s greatest eight to see actual events or tendencies. Einstein's reputation is very largely built up on the discovery of a theory which neither he nor anyone else has been able to make intelligible to the average man. "The progress of science,” he says, "liberates human beings from sheer muscular effort.” True, but it is liberation from the frying-pan of bewildering competition and endless toil into the flames of a burning desire for a normal life. With the progress of such liberation, instead of "the participation of everyone in the social and intellectual life of the human race,” the numbers tend to become restricted to the parasite class and a group of professional scientists, politicians and other time-servers.

The economic platitudes that Einstein voiced can be left to work themselves out, with or without help from the capitalist class, whom alone they concern. Concentration of industry, huge industrial corporations and nationalisation, while they affect the worker, often adversely, are not his concern. He cannot under capitalism retard or hasten movements that are purely economic. They result from the normal development of the capitalist system.

We say the worker who sells his labour-power continuously is fortunate. He is fortunate compared with the unemployed man. But does the fact of his holding a job make it possible for him to "participate in the social and intellectual life of the human race ”? Not much! He may occasionally wonder what it is like to be free from continuous toil, to have all his wants satisfied and to have the time and means to indulge in the every-day pastimes of the well-to-do. But the sordid nature of his contact with society lies always subconsciously at the back of his mind. Condemned to sell his energy in competition with his fellow workers, seeing himself always as something cheap, one out of millions who are thankful for half a loaf. Society can do without him, there are plenty to take his place. A whim of the overseer, a slump in the market, or a change in the habits of his fellow-workers may turn him into a waster. Capitalist production is carried on for profit, and in the process capitalists care less for the millions of human wasters thrown aside than for the obsolete machinery they are forced to scrap.

Einstein may be the greatest of living scientists. The problem before the working-class may be child's play to him, but he dare not reason out the solution for them. What is more, the "New Leader" did not ask him to do so.

F. Foan

War (1980)

A chapter from Samuel Leight's 1980 book, World Without Wages (Money, Poverty & War)

It is never in the interests of the working class to support war.

Wars are fought over private property and related issues and as long as we live under capitalism the conditions that give rise to war will always exist.

Capitalism is the cause of modern war.

If we were living within a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of society as a whole, war would be non-existent. For socialism is a system which would be world-wide, with no trading, buying and selling, but goods and services would be produced solely for use and not for profit. People would give to society according to their individual ability and take from society according to their needs. Such a society would unite the human race as a social unit, with no economic classes or divisions, or national barriers. The material objective would be: to produce and distribute goods and services in sufficient quantity, and of the finest quality that can be practically obtained, to satisfy the needs of all. In complete contra-distinction to this, capitalism produces international rivalries that are the basic cause of modern war,

War in the modern world has the potential for the destruction of the human race. It could be argued that this will never happen, but it cannot be denied that capitalism has produced atomic warfare, and the potential for total human annihilation does exist. This ever-constant threat of total human destruction, with which we all have to live, is sufficient reason unto itself for the workers of the world to organize for socialism and abolish capitalism—and to acquire the education, knowledge and desire to effect this change as quickly as possible.

The World Socialist Party has a most clear and positive attitude to war. We are opposed to all wars, whether they be major and world-wide, or minor and localized. Our opposition to all war has been consistent from the time of our origins with the establishment of our companion party in England, the Socialist Party of Great Britain, in 1904. We do not oppose war in so ­called peacetime and then change our position when war is declared,jumping on the Band Wagon or flag waving, patriotism, and jingoism. The World Socialist Party, and its companion parties, state that all wars in the modern world are fought over private property issues, markets, trade routes, boundaries, territorial rights, and spheres of influence. Modern war is really an extension of "business under capitalism" carried to an extreme of ultimate violence, when the economic rivalries between the various national sections of the capitalist class can no longer be peacefully resolved or controlled. War is business as usual, but with the added ingredients of the insane and mad slaughter of humanity fighting over the material interests and properties of a minority. The working class, as that section of society that is propertyless in the means of wealth production and distribution, has no interests at stake in supporting any war, at any time, for any reason.

The socialist opposition to war is an opposition distinct from all others. It is not an opposition based upon religious beliefs; and although we are opposed to war on social and humanitarian grounds, our opposition is not limited to a humanitarian approach—it goes much further. The socialist opposition to war results from our analysis and opposition to capitalism; the realization that this system is the cause of war; further, that the working class are living under a system that can never be made to operate in their interests; and that war is inevitable under capitalism, and that the two go hand in hand and should be completely opposed by the workers at all times until they are both finally eliminated, one with the other. 

Wars can be opposed from the wrong political standpoint as far as the working class are concerned. For example, an opposition to the recent Vietnam war can be an opposition which states that it was not in the interests of the United States to have participated. But this is not a socialist opposition to the Vietnam war. For when we talk about the interests of the U.S.A. what does this really mean? The United States, like all capitalist countries, Russia and China included of course, is divided into two main classes - the working class who are the majority, and who are the non-owners of the means of wealth production, and the capitalist class who are the minority that own and control the means of production and distribution. So when one talks about the interests of the United States this is not a true, scientific statement. The United States is a geographic entity classified as such by man. The Government of the United States administrates the capitalist system within the United States, protecting the interests of its own ruling class at home and abroad. Other governments throughout the world, Russia and China included, operate in similar fashion. The people in the United States who were in opposition to the Vietnam war, and who were not socialists, or who did not take a moral, humane, or religious opposition to the war, were in effect stating that the prosecution of the war was not in the interests of the American capitalist class, and this could or could not be an arguable case from the American capitalist class standpoint. But it is not the socialist case in opposition to the Vietnam war. Most of the people that opposed the Vietnam war would not hesitate to support a different war if they considered that there was justification for their support. Because the unfortunate fact remains that the working class do not properly understand how capitalism works and therefore do not appreciate that it is the system itself that breeds and causes war. 

Vietnam, from the United States capitalist viewpoint, had a strategic value as a base of operations for the eastern trade—it was a gateway to Southeast Asia. Furthermore, from an American business standpoint it was a market place, a source for raw materials. Another tragic aspect of the Vietnam conflict was that it afforded United States capitalism an opportunity to test its military technology. This resulted in the wholesale killing of Vietnam workers, peasants, women and children who were destroyed by mass bombing, napalm bombing, and were the victims of chemical spraying of rice fields, and other atrocities. The greatest atrocity became the war itself.

The Mid-East, which for decades has always been either on the verge of conflict or involved in war, is a veritable powder-keg of comparatively small nations spawning opposing interests, with the major powers aligned behind them in positions of antagonisms. The issues at stake are boundary lines, economic conflicts, trade, and oil. 

The Arab/Israeli situation has produced war, perpetual strife, and killing. And the Arab and Israeli working class, just like workers elsewhere, do not understand their true position in society. While socialists have deep and genuine sympathy for all minorities that have been persecuted, and of course much worse, the conditions that give rise to Hitlers, Mussolinis, and let us not forget Franco and Stalin, always exist under capitalism. The so ­called Jewish problem has not been solved with the establishment of Israel. In fact a good case could be made to show that Jews living in Israel are in far greater danger of total elimination than they have ever been before. Atomic warfare, limited to a strike against Israel, could eliminate this small territory with all its population. If this sounds far fetched, remember the horror that was perpetrated against Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This crime against humanity was later rationalized and justified under the humbug of expediency. The Jewish people live in constant fear of war, and the horrible possibility of mass annihilation of the Jews in Israel, through atomic warfare, exists. As far as a home for the Jews is concerned, a Jew living in Israel, in a home with a mortgage on it, can be turned out of his home, should he miss some mortgage payments, in just the same fashion as an American Jew who also is in similar default. And of course this applies to workers the whole world over. 

In 1914 our companion party in England, the Socialist Party of Great Britain, opposed World War I, and in 1939 the World Socialist Party of the United States and all our companion parties opposed World War Il. The World Socialist Party reiterated the message given in 1914 by the S.P.G.B. in its War Manifesto. I quote these words which were given to guide the working class attitude to war and to inspire action to achieve socialism. They were applicable in 1914, in 1939, and they are just as true today:—

"Having no quarrel with the working class of any country, we extend to our Fellow Workers of All Lands the expression of our Good Will and Socialist Fraternity, and Pledge ourselves to work for the overthrow of capitalism and the Triumph of Socialism." 

World War II was caused by the clash of economic interests between the German ruling class and their partners and the various European, English, and American ruling and capitalist class. It was not a fight over ideals, freedoms, or democracy. It was a war fought over material and property issues. The real cause of the war, as is always the case, was camouflaged with high-sounding phrases in order to gain the support of the workers. If the British and American governments were concerned with matters of principle, such as Democracy and Freedom, why would they have had as an ally Russia that harbored a dictatorship equally as harsh and as cruel as the one in Nazi Germany? As a matter of fact, Churchill, in an open letter to the London Times in 1938, praised Hitler, saying:

"Were England to suffer a national disaster I should pray to God to send a man of the strength of mind and will of an Adolf Hitler."

The governments of capitalist countries do not declare and support wars over idealistic stands on questions of democracy or dictatorships, but wars are declared and fought over private property issues. Fascist Spain, under the despotic dictatorship of Franco, was always supported and helped by the Government of the United States. Of course, the United States bases in Spain were very much responsible for this alliance. Where were the ideals of Democracy and Freedom displayed here with the support that Franco Spain for years received from the United States? This support was probably responsible for the long life of the Franco fascist dictatorship. 

When wars are ready to erupt lies, humbug, and hypocrisy are the order of the day. The workers are called on to sacrifice themselves on the false pretext of fighting for freedoms, or for "right" against "wrong," or because the aggressor is at the doorstep. And at that time it is too late to examine the cause of war because the workers are already enmeshed in it—killing and maiming at the behest of their leaders. 

War is not a method that can be used to preserve democracy. Take political inventory today and you will find just as many, perhaps more, countries under military juntas, dictatorships, and countries with little or no democracy, as we had in 1939, when World War Il erupted, supposedly as a fight for Democracy against Dictatorship. 

If the working class can be persuaded to support capitalism in peacetime then they can be persuaded to support their respective ruling classes when war is declared. The time that is ripe for the working class to become socialist is now, when there is no worldwide war. In fact, the working class should have become socialist, abolished capitalism and wars, decades ago, and millions of lives would have been saved. But once a war is declared, the declaration itself presupposes that the capitalist class and their governments know that they will have the support of the workers. Without this support this system could not continue for one second—wars would be impossible to prosecute—they would, of course, be non-existent. The working class are responsible for the production of all wealth under capitalism, and when they are called on to defend the wealth that they have produced, but do not own, they are ready for the supreme sacrifice, under the mistaken belief that they are fighting for ideals. 

For who in his right mind would be prepared to go out and die, or be maimed, for such material things as private property that belongs to a small group in society that function as parasites in peacetime and provocateurs in war? Fellow workers we urge you to wake up while you are still in the land of the living.

I quote from a very famous man who was not a socialist:

"I feel only contempt for those who can take pleasure marching in rank and file to the strains of a band. Surely, such men were given their great brain by mistake; the spinal cord would have amply sufficed. This shameful stain on civilization should be wiped out as soon as possible. Heroism on command, senseless violence and all the loath­some nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism—how passionately I despise them!"

This statement was made by Albert Einstein and was reported March 14, 1962, in the New York Post.

Whenever war is fought, for whatever superficial and false reasons, and whichever side is declared the victor, one side is always, invariably the loser—the world working class.

Samuel Leight

Great Men and greater nonsense (1990)

From the December 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

By and large, socialists have little truck with what is sometimes called the "Great Man Theory of History", much preferring the Materialist Conception of History. Propounded by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, this offers a much more satisfactory explanation of the forces that have shaped and changed human societies since the beginning of written history, which Marx pointed out was the history of private property society. 

It still remains a fact that there are libraries of literature, and hosts of avid readers, concerned with the biographies of men and women whose lives have captured the public imagination for one reason or another, probably because most of us feel our own lives to be lacking in romance or significance and we like to escape from our own humdrum stories into the larger canvases of supposed "larger" lives. 

The largest slice of this literary market is concerned with the enthralling inner secrets of film stars, hitters or kickers of balls, criminals in a variety of fields and the guardians of law and order who have never, "honest, guvnor", fitted-up anyone in their unblemished careers. Now and again there is a blockbuster about a Cromwell or a president, or some scientist, whose lives or discoveries seemed to leave their mark on a changed world. 

Mathematically, it should not be too surprising that, in a species which is as richly and variously talented as humanity and is numbered in multi-millions, there should be the occasional supremely talented individual, just as from week to week there are men and women who win the pools. 

Of course the materialist conception of history acknowledges the different qualities and contributions of individual men, women and groups in the development of society throughout the ages, and socialists would far rather pass an evening in the company of Louis Pasteur and his wife, than share a pint with Heinrich Himmler, Joseph Stalin or Alfred Krupps, but they recognise that the society in which these individuals operated were the greater forces in the equation. 

Apart from anything else, genius or talent is not inheritable. It is unlikely that the grandchildren of Puccini would qualify for lifetime free tickets to La Scala, Milan, and even the descendants of Pavarotti are not too likely to inherit his magical tonsils. But there is one property that even the completely talentless can inherit, and that is private property and the public use of power this entails. This is why humanity has had to suffer the dynastic rule, in politics and industry, of so many Neros and Caligulas. 

Karl Marx and Albert Einstein 

However, back to Great Men. Columbus discovered America and Newton discovered the gravitational forces, though both America and gravity had been there for some time before their "discovery". Nonetheless Columbus and Newton are worthy names in the history books. Karl Marx revealed the nature of the forces that operated to affect the human societies in the political and economic field, and postulated a society where poverty would be abolished along with buying and selling and money. He has been scorned, and ridiculed since for his ideas. 

A more recent Great Man was Albert Einstein, who set the world of physics ablaze with his theory of relativity. Few informed people would deny that Einstein was a twenty-four carat genius. Shortly after other Great Men had ended four years of ordering men to butcher and be butchered, an eclipse of the sun enabled Einstein's postulates to be confirmed. He then became news, as quotable as Garbo or Valentino, and journalists in popular science had a field day. Relativity was a strange concept, but no-one hated Einstein for it. Karl Marx envisaged a society where poverty would be abolished, and a lot of people still hate him for that theory, and we mean hate. Weird. 

Einstein did not confine himself to physics. He also had views on politics and world affairs. When he was interviewed by the world press arriving off some liner or aircraft he would tell them to "never forget to mention that I am a pacifist". He was scathing in his contempt of the military mind, stating that the magnificent human brain was wasted on such who only needed a broomstick for a spine and a place to support their helmets. But genius or no, he had, as we all do, to live in the real world, and that real world had made him a political refugee, as earlier it had Karl Marx. 

In time the developments of that real world led Albert Einstein, genius and avowed pacifist, to pen a letter to the President of the United States, who was also Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, pleading that he set up research into a super-weapon. 

Thus was the Manhattan Project started, Hiroshima devastated and a climate of cold-war fear and fever created that threatened the very survival of all life on planet Earth. Many of the team that built the atomic bomb were, like Einstein, pacifists and some (enough to worry the military mind of Colonel Groves) had "left-wing" views. It is obvious that not only has the Ultimate Weapon which arose as an antidote of the Final Solution failed in its purpose, but that there are still some very nasty political ideas and regimes thriving yet. 

Karl Marx did not appeal to men and women of genius, or leaders. He addressed his message to the working class of the world, as his words show—"Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains, you have a world to win!" 

Marx was not a pacifist. Einstein was. How strange that one led to the possible losing of the world and the other is still hated for pleading for it to be won. Like Einstein, Marx was a man of exceptional talent, but he knew that changing the world would not be the work of exceptional men and women. That is why we emphasise in our Declaration of Principles that "this emancipation must be the work of the working class itself" . We may not be a party of exceptional men and women, but we are a party with an exceptional idea. 

We would like ordinary men and women (and geniuses, too) to read our case, then help us spread it, any ordinary way they can.

Ed Blewitt