The position of the I.L.P. A parallel and a moral (1910)

From the December 1910 issue of the Socialist Standard

The means by which the defenders of an established order seek to retain supremacy and resist progress are always interesting, not merely from an abstract point of view, but also because of the valuable lessons which can be learned by a thoughtful observer, and applied with advantage in the future. Such a case occurred when the theory of Natural Selection, so intimately associated with the name of Darwin, burst like a thunderclap over the old ideas of a special creation, with each human individual, as distinct from the lower animals, endowed with a “soul” or “spirit”. These modern notions were met on the one hand with a conspiracy of silence, on the other with a venomous outpouring of abuse. But, of course, neither method proved to be any great barrier to the progress of an idea that was bound to grow and spread, by reason of its intrinsic truth and logic. The more astute, though less honest, apostles of ignorance were not slow to realise this, and in consequence they adopted a new method of combating the truth. We are now generally told that there is no real or necessary conflict between science and superstition, or, as it is phrased, between evolution and religion. Science is now invested with clerical garb where formerly it was reviled. By such means do the clergy desire to prevent its real significance being known, and to prolong the life of their creed and therefore the term of their occupation.

The essential features of the reception given to the above mentioned idea are also common to the attitude adopted toward the theories in which we are more immediately concerned. I refer to the principles upon which the Socialist takes his stand. The starting point is as follows:

The way in which wealth is produced and distributed in every social system determines the ideas of the people; in other words, material conditions dominate and form the basis of all the legal, ethical, moral and religious superstructure of society.

In modern society there are two distinct classes, namely, the producers and the possessors. The material interest of the possessing class lies in the direction of more profit, which means more poverty and greater hardship for the producers. The interest of the workers is, of course, against this, and lies in getting all the wealth it produces. Such is the position to-day, and we cannot ignore it. The ideas and aspirations of the master class are rooted in their class privilege — they will not abdicate their favoured position. Their legal and moral codes seek to justify their position as robbers. The man or the party that advises the workers to support capitalist candidates or parties under any circumstances is an enemy of the working class. It is our duty to keep the class issue clear. Either you must engage in the struggle against the capitalist system or else actively or passively support the ruling class. With its cause lying in the private property basis of society, the class struggle cannot be suspended, but must be waged with increasing bitterness until the capitalist class are overthrown and classes cease to exist. We do not cloak these facts, but make their clear presentment to our fellow-workingmen the very first object of our propagandist endeavours.

Realising the dangerous character of these revolutionary theories, the master class and their henchmen first endeavour to keep the working class in ignorance by such clumsy methods as the exiling or imprisoning of men (such as Marx) who discovered and first stated these facts, and by the suppression of their works and the harrying of those who openly accept their ideas. Finding the futility of such a course, they take a lesson from the Church, and resort to the boycott. In this the capitalist class in this country found a useful ally in the Independent Labour Party, and later in the Labour Party. The I.L.P. (as also the L.P.) at its inception completely ignored the fundamentals of working-class organisation, thus playing directly into the masters’ hands. This party, with whom popularity and Parliamentary seats appear to be the only measure of success, is bound in order to maintain its success, to preach and support anti-working-class nostrums which have been popularised by capitalist agencies. An ever-growing number of the working class have pointed out the futility of dropping revolutionary principles for votes and fighting elections on election cries kindly provided by the Liberal party, and specially designed to serve capitalist interests. Naturally enough, the labour leaders have been annoyed at these irreconcilable notions, and when they could not ignore them they have indulged in violent denunciations of the principle of the class struggle and everything connected with it.

After the International  Conference at Amsterdam Mr. J. Bruce Glasier, a prominent I.L.P.er, distinguished himself in this direction with the following (Labour Leader, 26.8.04): “The Class War dogma is a reactionary and whiggish precept certain to lead the movement away from the real aims of Socialism”. On another occasion Mr. Keir Hardie showed his “love” for the materialist class-war basis of Socialism by stating that if Socialism was to be achieved on these lines nothing would be changed, except for the worse, adding that it would be “a merely glorified animalism, dangerously akin to bestiality” (Labour Leader, 17.8.01). This sentiment, of course, is merely a variation of the old “religious” wheeze that everything materialistic is inexpressibly vile.

Another instance (out of many) of specific denial of the Socialist principle of the class struggle is contained in The New Theology and the Social Movement, a pamphlet issued by the I.L.P. Publication Department. The brochure is a report of the first I.L.P. meeting the Rev. R.J. Campbell addressed (Hope Hall, Liverpool, March 25, 1907). Mr. J. Ramsay MacDonald, Labour M.P., wrote regretting his inability to attend and added: “Mr. Campbell’s adherence to the principles of our party is one more proof that we do not appeal to narrow class interests or prejudices, but that we aim at a state of society which commends itself to conscientious and rational people irrespective altogether of social status”. This childishly Utopian notion of a perfect society commending itself to all “conscientious and rational” people becomes merely laughable when tested by the historical fact that no ruling class has ever willingly relinquished its power, no matter how “good” or “rational” such a course might have been.

But in spite of this Keir Hardie specifically endorsed MacDonald’s effusion. “As MacDonald says” he declared, “his (Campbell’s) presence here is one more proof that the Socialism of the I.L.P. is no narrow class movement. It is a great principle which we invite all classes to come into and help to realise”. This is the sort of stuff Hardie ladled out in the name of the I.L.P. as an antidote to Marxian principles, and, be it noted, none of these statements have ever been repudiated or even objected to by his party. In fact, in I.L.P. leaflet Nº 5, ironically called “A Statement of Principles”, the same position is taken up. We are told that the party does not make war upon a class but considers a man’s convictions and not his social status, thus making it plain that they consider the two things entirely separate instead of, as the Marxian philosophy shows, vitally connected.

Considerations of space prevent me quoting further evidence of the opposition of the I.L.P. to Marxian tenets. Sufficient however, has, I believe, been written to prove beyond all doubt the hostile and anti-working-class attitude of the Labourites.

It is becoming increasingly evident that after all neither Utopian day-dreams nor sentimental piffle have much effect upon the steady progress of the Socialist idea. With the deplorable results to the labour “leaders” themselves consequent on the workers embracing the new philosophy, ever before their eyes, the more astute of them have fallen back to their last ditch. The time has gone by when it was profitable to repudiate Marx, and now the wirepullers of the “Labour” movement shift their ground and affirm that the Labour Party is based upon his teaching.

In view of this insidious move it is more than ever necessary for us to point out what position the labour “leaders” and the organisations they dominate have occupied on this question. Let any of these “latter-day Marxists” show, if they can, how a Marxian party could be guilty of such anti-Marxian pronouncements as those quoted above.

It is peculiar that it should have been left to Keir Hardie, who has so vehemently denounced the principle of the class struggle in the past, to introduce the new methods and pose as a Marxist. Yet, relying on the proverbially short memory of the British working class, he has not shirked the task. In My Confession of Faith in the Labour Alliance, a pamphlet issued just after the Edinburgh conference of the I.L.P., Mr. Keir Hardie, among other curious statements, makes the following assertion: “The Labour Party is the only expression of orthodox Marxian Socialism in Great Britain”.

Unfortunately for Mr. Hardie and his gang of political brigands, he neglected, when perpetrating this foul lie, to give his confederates the cue, with the result that some amusing complications have arisen. Father should have said “turn”, for the sake of harmony. As it is some of the party are still declaring that Marx was the last of the Utopians, while others, more up-to-date, are repeating Hardie’s prevarications. For instance, after the latter had discovered that they were a class party, Mr. J. Ramsay MacDonald, of the “Brunner Bill” fame, wrote in the Labour Leader of May 21st, 1909: “The Socialist movement knows no class but is drawn from all classes”, and clinched the matter thus: “So I can sum up, the Labour Party is not a class but a community party”.

What a spectacle of contradiction and confusion! Here are two men with unrivalled opportunity of knowing what the Labour Party really does stand for, flatly contradicting each other on the very basis of their movement. If the leaders are so divided on root principles it may be left to the reader’s imagination to determine what state of mind the “rank-and-file” of the party must be in.

The most important point, however, is just that the labour “leaders” have in the past first ignored and then opposed the theories of Marx. Only recently have they attempted to “revise” these great scientific truths. The “revising” process is merely an endeavour to emasculate the Socialist doctrine, to rob Marx’s terms of their meaning and so make them fit in with the confusing and contradictory propaganda of the Labour Party.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the new plan has already caught on. The official organ of the I.L.P. for September 9th last tells us that no one can have a complete knowledge of Socialism unless he is acquainted with the theories of Marx. Incidentally it has taken them seventeen years as a party to find this out. But they go on to say that Marx’s work belongs to the pioneer stage and requires some restatement. In this way they seek to impose upon the credulity of those of their readers who do not know that Marx’s work was the laying bare of the economic foundation of society – which remains the same now as when his labour was accomplished. Consequently they do not suggest a study of Marx’s works, but advise the perusal of a pamphlet written by a pseudo-Marxist of the Labour Party type, who can be depended upon to suppress awkward truths and distort inconvenient theories.

It is not my special purpose here to show that the class struggle has nothing in common with licensing bills, capitalist budgets, Free Church councils and P.S.A.’s, even were it necessary to do so; but I shall be satisfied if I enable my readers to see through the shame enthusiasm of the Labour “leaders” for their perverted Marxism. Just as the clergy opposed the theory of evolution until its progress made it imperative to smother it with embraces, so too the changed attitude of Hardie and his gang toward the principle of the class struggle is forced on them by the rapid spreading of the idea among the working class. Hence it is a hopeful sign, signifying that the Labour tricksters are being forced into their last resource.

When the facts are known, the insincerity and double-dealing of the Labour “leaders” are plain. It is not surprising that their fight against progress runs on parallel lines to that of the clergy for they have much in common. Both are the servile tools of the capitalist class, and their function is to mislead the workers and so postpone the day of reckoning – hence the Socialist Party spare no pains to effect their exposure.

R. Fox

The Socialist Case — Part 2 (1960)

From the November 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 1

The superstructure of society today, after many years of development, has reached a high stage of efficiency. It is the direct outcome of the economic foundation of society, the capitalist mode of production, and functions almost exclusively in its interests. This does not appear to be self-evident unless one examines the basic factors of the organisation of society.

We are constantly being told that our “great and good” men are earnestly striving to bring about changes in which all will benefit considerably. Social morality, legality in its civil and criminal aspects, and politics, are features of this superstructure and are held to be eternally good and true. The machinery of government, the armed forces and police are allegedly neutral and impartial and are claimed to regulate the affairs of society on the highest principles of “justice.”

We Socialists do not accept that point of view. We see in this whole structure the capitalist class organised as the ruling class. This state machinery with its attachments does not stand on the sidelines. The maintaining of law and order, the advocacy of this morality, the dispensing of “justice," and the politics pursued, are all definitely capitalistic in character and are intended to enhance, preserve and maintain the system in the interests of the class who own. The channels of education are controlled and the class of. education is designed to maintain the fallacy that this is the best of all possible forms of social organisation. Add to this the general propaganda of the press, radio and pulpit and we have a formidable array. This deception has been carried on for a long, long time, but Socialists are not taken in by it.

Furthermore, a constantly growing and larger number of people are also realising the truth that social systems must also change. The so-called virtues, in workers only, of meekness, humility and servility, are receding to a greater extent. The surface appearance of capitalist society seems to indicate that the commercial transactions of men are. in all cases, strictly honest. No one apparently takes advantage of another. People go to their bakers, butchers, tailors, etc., select their merchandise, pay and depart, each in most cases pleased with the transaction. Money, which is the universal or social form of value, is paid in exchange for an equal quantity value in some commodity. It appears that in all cases everyone has had a fair exchange and generally speaking this is true. The error arises in the claim that the worker who sells his labour power gets the full value of his labour. To repeat—he does not and cannot get the value of his labour. Labour power is a unique commodity, the sole commodity which can produce more than it itself consumes. The worker in fact gets the value of this labour power, but produces probably twice that amount, one-half of which total is profit to the capitalist.

Profit is the keystone of capitalism. The capitalist mode of production, commodity production, creates the basic social relationships of capital and value. These relationships arise directly out of man's productive circumstances. They are social phenomena particular to the present mode of productive activity. In the industrial field the capitalist—an owner, but non-producer—meets the worker, a non-owner who has only his labour power to sell. Here the sale of labour power takes place. The worker, having received his wages, becomes a buyer of the goods required, but which are owned by and in possession of the capitalist. This cycle keeps on repeating itself and is exclusive to commodity production.

Buying and selling, or, in other words, value relationships, are social relationships concerning the sale or exchange of commodities or things. Money is the social, or material form of value and. whatever the need may be. this need is almost certain to be provided for cash. This capital relationship — employer and employee, and value relationship—buyer and seller, are specially evolved to wring rent, profit and interest out of the sweat and toil of the working-class. From our Socialist point of view they can never do anything else and should be abolished forthwith. The State machinery with its armed forces and police functions mainly to protect the private property institution and secure its continuity.

Man has travelled a long, long way since his simian ancestors, but there is one aspect which it is relevant and important to mention. It has taken him countless thousands of years to learn and train his brain to think. But he has succeeded and the highest product of nature, the mind, has been developed from his lowly and comparatively speaking, non-thinking ancestors. In this regard man stands unique in the field of intellectual attainment. He alone among all the animals is capable of thinking abstractly. A fundamental distinction is his ability to accumulate and organise knowledge and utilise it to change and improve his living conditions and his environments.

This basic distinction has created an unbridgeable gulf between him and the other animals. The problems arising from the material conditions of his life in the past were eventually understood and solved. We are certain that he is capable of understanding and eventually solving the social and other problems of the present and future. Because of this we are firmly convinced that a majority of the working-class will eventually consciously deal with the social re-organisation of society.

The social solution is in itself very simple. Much of our time is devoted to argument arising expressly from the complexities of aspects of capitalism we have already mentioned—money, banking, etc. The major question is—can mankind produce sufficient food, clothing, houses, cultural and recreational requirements to meet its needs? The answer is “ Yes’’—positively an abundance. Society’s capacity to produce is limited only by the extent of the productive equipment, raw materials and available labour.. At today’s stage of development it is more than sufficient. Once freed from the restrictions of private property, society can solve its problems in an amazingly short time. When this structure of private property is removed there is nothing to prevent the available productive machinery from being used to the fullest extent for the sole purpose of satisfying human needs.

The overwhelming majority of each generation are doomed from birth. They are condemned to a life of hard work, drudgery, poverty and slums. At any given period in the life of society only a definite amount of unskilled, semi-skilled and skilled jobs are available. In this great industrial organisation this number may vary slightly from time to time. But it does mean that approximately 85 per cent. of the total population are unable to radically improve their lot. The grandiose schemes and plans of youthful ambition are doomed from birth. In addition, at the moment we stand in constant fear of the outbreak of a third World War with its devastating atomic weapons. The future is indeed, “prosperous, happy and bright.”

The abolition of capitalism is therefore, a proposal which merits your determined and serious immediate attention. The reorganisation of society on a Socialist basis is the only solution and, as the S.P.G.B. is the only Socialist Party, it demands your active support in our task of Socialist propaganda. This task of abolishing capitalism is the historic mission of the working class. It requires the conscious and determined action of a majority of workers and for practical purposes is their exclusive job. Capitalism presents the best of all worlds to the ruling class and their hirelings. They are not therefore likely to approve or assist in effecting any social change which involves its abolition.

In order to transform existing society into a Socialist society, the working class must organise themselves politically on the basis of a majority who understand and desire to bring about Socialism. When they reach this stage of social consciousness they, the workers, will establish their political supremacy, take control of the machinery of government and effect the social re-organisation of society. To develop this class-consciousness is the immediate job of the S.P.G.B. Our propaganda activities in this direction are very limited both physically and financially.

If you believe that a system of society wherein human need and not profit should be the object of production; that the economic and social equality of man should prevail; and that from each according to his ability and to each according to needs should be a first principle: then let’s have your support. The measure of your sincerity and determination is your physical and financial aid to us.

John Higgins

[Concluded]

Social reality and social revolution (1986)

From the August 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Whenever workers endeavour to gain a few extra crumbs from the cake they themselves bake the capitalist class and its apologists remind them of the need to be realistic. By which they do not mean that workers should acquaint themselves with Marxian economics and the workings of the class struggle but rather that the employee class should accept less today in exchange for a promise of a share in Utopia tomorrow. In the meantime the working class have to endure the deprivation of their inferior social position, while the capitalist class can continue to enjoy their parasitic privileges derived from profit, interest and rent.

The only problem with the capitalist Utopia of tomorrow is that the closer it gets, the more it resembles the capitalist nightmare of the present. Just like the Christian fairy stories of life after death for those who accept hell on earth, so the economic gurus and assorted media hacks try to convince us that their masters’ fantasies have some basis in reality; prosperity is round the corner. Just be patient. King Capital has only reigned for three centuries. All we have to do is wait a little longer and as if by magic, all social evils will vanish. Magic is the appropriate word; it is probably the greatest con-trick in history.

Capitalism is not the only social system through which human evolution has passed. Before private property relationships evolved the hunter-gatherer groups practised a form of primitive communism. Society was organised on this basis for about 40.000 years. As people discovered new ways of living such as farming in settled communities so the communistic social relationships became a fetter to further development. Economic necessity produced the change to private ownership initially taking the form of chattel slavery, then feudalism and finally capitalism. Capitalism has not always been with us and there is no reason to assume it will be. Human society is constantly changing — at times slowly but at others open revolution occurs, as in the capitalist revolutions of 1789 in France and of 1917 in Russia.

But why do societies undergo changes? The realists might explain change by reference to the supernatural (God's will) or the superhuman (the Great Man theory). Socialists look at history in terms of cause and effect. In order to survive men and women must produce and distribute the necessities of life; food, clothing, shelter and so on. Consequently the most important aspect of social organisation is concerned with the ways in which the production and distribution of wealth is arranged.

As Marx wrote in The German Ideology:

We set out from real, active men. and on the basis of their real-life process we demonstrate the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life-process. The phantoms formed in the human brain are also, necessarily. sublimates of their material life-process, which is empirically verifiable and bound to material premises. Morality. religion, metaphysics, all the rest of ideology and their corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the semblance of independence They have no history, no development; but men. developing their material production and material intercourse, alter, along with their real existence, their thinking and the products of their thinking. Life is not determined by consciousness. but consciousness by life.

In other words history is concerned with the development of material production and its effects on other aspects of human society. As the methods of production change they come into conflict with the existing social relationships — a contradiction that can only be resolved by revolution.

In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or - this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms — with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure. In studying such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious. artistic or philosophic in short ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. 

(Karl Marx: Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Lawrence & Wishart. pp.20-21.)

The key to understanding any social system is that the economic foundation of society is the basis on which the intellectual superstructure is built; changes in the former lead inevitably to changes in the latter. This does not deny the influence of ideas on history. but analyses the source of these ideas.

Capitalism is a social system based on the private or state ownership of the means of producing and distributing wealth. The riches of society are monopolised by a parasitical minority; the capitalist class. In contrast the majority working class who produce all the wealth of society have no stake in capitalism. As the means of life are owned by the capitalists, the working class must sell theirmental and physical energies to the capitalists in exchange for a wage or salary. In return the capitalists employ the labour of the wealth producing class in the process of producing and distributing goods and services in the form of commodities. They do this not out of any philanthropic concern for the workers, but with the intention of selling the products on the market at a profit.

Surplus-value does not originate from any special or superior qualities on the part of the capitalists; since labour is the only source of wealth (other than nature) then it follows that it must be the source of the proportion of that wealth which is appropriated by the capitalist class as surplus-value. This is only possible because workers are capable of producing new values in the production process in excess of what is required for the reproduction of their ability to work. Like all other commodities the price that this ability to work (labour-power) can command in the market is determined by what is needed to produce and reproduce it. which means workers are paid as much as they need to go on living.

A class struggle is an inevitable result of the division between those who produce but do not own and those who own and do not produce. Each class tries to increase its share of the socially produced wealth at the expense of the other. The class conflict is institutionalised with the use of trade unions on one side and employers' federations such as the CBI on the other. Generally workers are more successful in periods of boom when the employers seek to avoid interruptions in production. Conversely, during trade depressions workers have to accept less or face the dole, as competition for employment tends to reduce wages and salaries. Necessary though this struggle is. it can never change the inherent nature of capitalism. The ruling class remains and through the state it controls the police, the armed forces and the judiciary; all of which can be deployed in the class struggle.

Production under capitalism is anarchic, as the profit requirement must be placed before the needs of the majority. Capitalism does not exist to serve human need; if the state of the market dictates that goods cannot be sold at a profit production is curtailed, workers sacked and stocks destroyed. That is why tens of millions of human beings starve to death every year, while farmers are subsidised not to produce food and food is accumulated in storage mountains. Alongside over-production for the market there is under-production for human need.

This basic contradiction has remained despite reformist attempts to eradicate working class social problems. They have failed as they address effects rather than the cause: commodity production. Capitalist parties of left, right and centre all claim they can control capitalism; history proves otherwise. Numerous governments have introduced legislation to solve problems such as inadequate housing, unemployment, pollution and racism. Yet all these problems stubbornly remain. Over the last one hundred years politicians, whether sincere or opportunist, have promised us the world; they have delivered today's horror story.

Socialists are not cynics, sneering at the efforts of reformists and offering no solutions of our own. Unlike the reformists, the SPGB and its companion parties abroad do not make promises of Utopia. Indeed we make no promises at all. The social relationships of capitalism must be replaced with those of socialism. Private and state ownership will give way to common ownership and democratic control of the world's resources. Access to wealth will be on the basis of self-determined need and individuals will contribute to society according to their ability. Commodity production with its absurd mechanisms of buying and selling will be confined to the history books.

Socialism will not create itself, nor can it be established by a vanguard. The inhabitants of a society of democratic participation will necessarily have reached a level of consciousness capable of administering it. Socialism presupposes socialist consciousness on the part of the majority, before the revolution. The socialist majority will be able to use bourgeois parliaments and congresses to capture political power and convert the private property relationships into those of common ownership and thereby abolish the state. The great task which confronts the working class is to organise consciously, politically, and democratically throughout the globe so that a speedy end may be wrought to the system which denies us access to the full benefits of modern technology and of the world s resources.

Malcolm Prangell

Letter: Is Society an Organism ? (1907)

Letter to the Editors from the January 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Comrade,

I have to thank Mr. F. C. Watts for his clear and courteous reply to my query, “Is Society an Organism?” but I regret to say he has told me nothing I did not know before. The evidence which convinces him has so far had no weight with me, and even were the reasons I gave in my last letter the only ones I could urge against the affirmative position, I should still be unconvinced. I do not here assert positively that Society is not an organism; I merely say that so far I have failed to find sufficient evidence to warrant the statement.

I will as brielly as possible review Mr. Watts’ reply.

In answer to my proposition that “human society to be an organism must be as complex and contain the same organic parts as its individual members,” Mr. Watts refers to the human body. He says : “each individual cell does not reproduce the same complexity, nor does it contain the same organic parts, as the human body in its entirety,”

These words are mostly given in italics, Mr. Watts clinching the matter with “Obviously, then, Mr. Wright is wrong.” Considering that he has clearly supported my proposition, the last quoted sentence looks decidedly funny.

My argument was from the entire organism to the cell; Mr. Watts replies by arguing from the cell to the entire organism. My proposition states in effect that the whole is greater than a part; Mr. Watts replies that a part is not so great as the whole. I said in effect that man must be at least as complex as his liver; Mr. Watts replies that a man’s liver is not so complex as man himself.

Thus we reach the same conclusion, though Mr. Watts appears to be unconscious of the fact. That conclusion is that, man as an entire organism is at least as complex and contains the same organic parts as his individual members. This it would seem is self-evident; at all events, it is a characteristic common to all organisms with which I am acquainted ; yet when I wish to apply the test to Society, as an organism, Mr. Watts assures me I am off my base. If he knows of an organism which is less complex and contains less than its own peculiar organic parts, will he kindly trot it out.

Again Mr. Watts : “though the highest types of human society may be indefinite as compared with the human body, yet they are much more definite than many low forms of organic life.”

That is to say, that while individual cells of the human body go to form the complex and and definite organism, man ; this organism, when in its turn, it stands as an individual cell to another, and presumably, a far mightier organism, can only produce one less definite than itself.

This seems to give a double-handed twist to the statement that the whole is greater than a part, and also appears to be an inversion of the law of evolution.

What I said in reference to the brain, heart, and lungs of Society was based upon the above proposition, and it still appears to me that if Society is an organism, formed by the association of men, it should stand as far above them in organic structure as men do above their individual cells. If it does this, let us have proof ; no theological stretching to make fancy fit with fact, but facts all the way up.

It is all very well to say that “the way Society developes depends upon its own peculiar conditions, internal and external,” but Society, as an organism, can have no conditions which are not common to its individual parts, and both being in organic relationship, they must be similarly affected by these conditions, though, perhaps, in varying degree. If a man is subject to certain conditions, surely it follows that his individual members or cells are subject to the same conditions. Society, therefore, can have no conditions apart from its component cells.

Mr. Watts, in common with many others, appears to regard Society as a huge, indefinite abstraction ; an organism possessing neither an organic nor a stimulating impulse ; a dead chunk of intangibility; something apart from, and independent of man.

Mr. Watts asserts, with others, “that the social organism . . . adapts itself to the changes in its environment.”

Is there any essential factor in human society, except man, which can adapt itself to changes in its environment ? Does Society, then, mean man in the mass, and nothing else ? If so, then truly, Society, that is, man, can adapt itself to changes in its environment. But is that what Mr. Watts means ? If not, what does he mean ?

If the term “Society” covers man and his environment, then surely it is absurd to say that Society can adapt itself to changes in Society, for that would be equivalent to saying environment can adapt itself to changes in environment.

In my letter I asked, “Where in nature may be found the animal organism in which, say, one third part doing no useful work in the economy of that organism, grows sleek and fat and is able to keep the other two-thirds, which do all the necessary work, unnourished and undeveloped ?”

In his reply Mr. Watts quotes a hive of bees. I asked for an organism, he gives me a colony of organisms, which is extremely liberal of him. But even then, the analogy is not sound. In human society the drones hold and control the means of life ; in a hive of bees they do not. In bee society the drones perform a useful function ; in human society they do not. There are other points of dissimilarity, but I cannot dwell upon them now.

I think Mr. Watts rather unkind when he refers to me as being “professedly revolutionary.” While the majority of the present members of the S.P. were enthusiastically working for the S.D.F., with its long, palliative programme, I stood outside, and told every member with whom I came in contact that palliatives should have no place on the programme of a revolutionary Socialist party.

One of the prominent members of the P. and D. Branch, who is now an active member of the Peckham Branch of the S.P., spent some time in proving—to his, not my satisfaction—that the position I held was illogical. Though now holding the view I then expounded, he has never yet apologised.

When I first realised that the revolutionary position was the right one, I believe, though I am not absolutely certain, that there was not a Socialist organisation in existence without a palliative programme. Subject to the above qualification, therefore, I claim, at least, so far as organisations are concerned, to have been in thought, though unfortunately not in action, the first revolutionary Socialist in the world. Selah !

As I am very busy and as doubtless your space is as valuable as ever, I cannot now touch upon the other points raised by Mr. Watts. Still asking for logical evidence that Society is an organism, I will conclude by wishing the party every success during the coming year.

Yours fraternally, 

H. Philpott Wright.

Is Society an Organism ? (1906)

From the December 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

The question of Socialist policy is raised in a new manner by Mr. Philpott Wright in a letter which appeared in the last issue of this journal. He, it appears, does not agree that Society is an organism, and even asserts that should Society be found to be an organism in fact, then the policy of the revolutionary Socialist must in consequence be wrong. Now, Mr. Wright’s attitude, as I shall endeavour to show, is based on several curious misapprehensions both of the nature of Society and of the essentials of an organism.

An organism defined.

In the first place, in order to decide whether Society is an organism or not, it is necessary to know the essential characteristics of an organism, and the following, I think, fairly defines them. To be an organism, Society must grow, that is, combine external material with its own substance; it must also have some degree of involuntary, necessary, interdependence or cohesion between its essential parts or mass ; it must possess incipient or advanced differentiation of function between its parts ; and, above all, it must possess the quality of life, or change and development due to the influence of its environment and to the reaction of its own expansive energy, in other words, it must possess the faculty of the “adjustment of the internal relations to external relations.”

The social organism fulfils all these requirements, and though the highest types of human Society may be indefinite as compared with the human body, yet they are much more definite than many low forms of organic life. To enumerate briefly Society’s organic attributes, we find that individuals in Society are necessarily and involuntarily interdependent, for shelter, for defence, and for food; indeed, without this organic interdependence, modern aggregations, from the savage pack to civilised society, would be utterly unable to exist in the land they now occupy. We find that differentiation of function, itself mainly involuntary, is represented by the highly complex division of labour which has grown up in the production of the necessaries of life. Class division and class rule are, in their inception, also the outcome of this division of labour ; in the earlier stages chiefly to provide the necessary stability, order, and military defence, demanded by the continued production of the material necessities of life ; in later stages to provide also the political or social order essential to the expansion and development of the prevailing methods of producing wealth. The social organism, we find, also lives and grows, it increases in size and complexity, it adapts itself to the changes in its environment, to the altered conditions resulting from its increasing size and growing needs, and to the influence of other social organisms. Society, then, is undoubtedly an organism.

The confirmation of authority.

Mr. Wright, however, makes the astonishing statement that he has ”studied the subject for some years” and has “been unable to find an atom of evidence to prove that Society is an organism.” He also asks “how can Society be said to even resemble an organism ?” Herbert Spencer’s work in this connection is too voluminous to be detailed here, but summaries of his conclusions are reproduced in even elementary handbooks which no genuine student could ignore. Space forbids the quotation of the whole of Professor Hudson’s summary of Spencer’s parallelisms between individual and social organisms, but for Mr. Wright’s benefit I epitomise the main points.

Both societies and individual organisms insensibly augment in mass, and assume during growth a continually increasing complexity of structure. In the early stages of a society as in an undeveloped individual organism, there is scarcely any mutual dependence of parts, and both gradually acquire a mutual dependence that becomes at last so great that the life of each part is made possible only by the life and activity of the rest. In each also, the life and development of the whole organism are independent of, and far more prolonged than, the life and development of any of its component units, who severally are born, grow, reproduce and die, whilst the body politic composed of them survives many generations, increasing in mass, completeness of structure, and functional activity.

Herbert Spencer and others have so firmly established the fact of the organic nature of Society that one is surprised to find it brought into question. Indeed, to deny that Society is an organism is to fall back upon the exploded ideas of the physiocrats, of Locke, and Rousseau, who regarded Society as a voluntary association founded upon a purely imaginary “state of nature.”

The misunderstanding of the nature of an organism under which Mr. Wright labours, is made plain when he says: “human society to be an organism must be as complex and contain the same organic parts as its individual members.” To take only the type of organism recognised in his letter, the human body, that is entirely composed of cells. It is indeed a colony of cells which have in the course of evolution attained their present functional differentiation. Each individual cell does not reproduce the same complexity, nor does it contain the same organic parts, as the human body in its entirety. Obviously, then, Mr. Wright is wrong. The assumption that the structure of an organism as a whole must be reproduced in its every unit crops out again in his query : “Where in Society can you point and say, there are the brains, there are the lungs, and there is the heart of Society.” Apparently he refuses to believe that Society is an organism because he cannot see its feet !

Unwarrantable assumption.

From one unwarranted assumption Mr. Wright is led to another, for he assumes that the necessary episodes in the development of the individual human being must be literally reproduced in the social organism in the form of motherhood, rearing of the “baby society,” etc. That the material basis of the new social form must be completely developed or prepared under the old social order itself, was clearly shown in the long quotation from Marx given by T. A. Jackson in a previous controversy. But it is, above all, evident that while all organisms conform to fundamental evolutionary laws, yet each particular organism has also its own lines of development due to its own peculiar conditions. Hence the development of the social organism will not necessarily proceed on all fours with the development of any individual organism whatsoever. The way Society developes depends upon its own peculiar conditions, internal and external.

In view of these facts the whole of Mr. Wright’s argument falls to the ground, for he has assumed that Society, if an organism, must develope in the same way as the human body; when he should instead have studied the peculiar nature of the social organism, and from an examination of its economics and history have traced the laws of development peculiar to it. The question as to whether the reformer or the Socialist is right in his policy does not depend upon Mr. Wright’s conception of an organism at all, but upon whether the position of the revolutionary Socialist is, or is not, in accord with the facts of Society’s growth and structure. If the Socialist analysis of Society and History is correct, then, whether Society be called an organism or a plum pudding makes not the slightest difference in the result.

Though professedly revolutionary, Mr.Wright informs us (in italics) that “a new society has never been born in the whole recorded history of civilisation.” It is a moot point whether that is meant simply as a play upon the word “born,” or whether it is intended to convey the absurdity that only one form of political society has ever existed, and that (to adapt Mr. Wright’s metaphor) the French Republic, for instance, is but the society of Louis XVI “with its moustache waxed.” If he does not mean this, if he means by “society” in this case not solely the political and legal superstructure but the whole social organism, and that no new social organism has arisen during historic times, then he might have saved himself the trouble of writing, for every Socialist knows that in each case the various stages of the ever-changing methods of production, and the political revolutions to which their changes have given rise, and the new forms of exploitation and political societies of which these revolutions have been the starting points, have been episodes in the life history of one and the same social organism.

The argument amplified.

The inevitable double use of the word “Society” is, perhaps, the cause of confusion, for like many another word it has more than one meaning. In one sense it stands for the social organism in its entirety, in another it means solely the political and judicial superstructure as distinct from the gradually changing economic basis. The distinction may be made clear by a very homely illustration. The social organism may be compared with the common lobster in its outer skeleton or shell, while Society in the political sense may be likened to the shell alone, A useful function is performed by the shell in the life of the lobster, but as the animal grows the shell gradually becomes unsuited to it and impedes its further development. Now the shell, having outlived its usefulness, is shed so that the animal may continue to grow, and the new shell which is formed is suited to the next stage in the animal’s development. This casting of the shell occurs as often as the growth of the lobster requires it, and literally fulfils Mr. Wright’s demand for an organism which “kills off its organic parts and still waxes stronger and stronger.”

Society in the narrower sense is, then, the political and legal superstructure or shell of the social organism transformed or created by the class whose political control has been necessitated by the conditions of production of the material livelihood. Owing to the continuous development of the methods of wealth production and the changed social relationships thereby caused, the ruling class and the social order they have formed are gradually turned from forms of development of the economic forces into hindrances or fetters. At length economic conditions develope so far under the old society that they are ripe for, and necessitate, the change; then ensues a period of revolution, and the ruling class, having become functionless or worse, must give way to new control and interests in harmony with the new economic conditions and the further development of Society as a whole. This seizure of political power by a hitherto oppressed class is a revolution whether accomplished peaceably or the reverse, and sooner or later the whole political and legal superstructure, and the old property relations, undergo a transformation into a social order in harmony with the now paramount interests and conditions. A new society is born, and a further stage in the development of the productive forces is rendered possible by the destruction of the old legal and social forms which hindered their expansion and full use.

Manifestations of organic growth.

It being the nature of men and classes to cling to privilege and power until compelled to abandon them, it is evident that the class struggle is engendered by the very nature of the social organism, just as truly as the struggle of the crustacean to free himself from his outgrown shell is imposed by the laws of his organic being. Mr. Wright, therefore, is in error in supposing that the existence of internecine strife negates the social organism. No organism is entirely free from internal strife, but the higher in the scale of organisation and the healthier the organism, the more does strife become subordinate to the welfare of the whole.

In the wonderful social organism of the hive bee, which presents several striking analogies with humanity, we see a state of things very similar to that which Mr. Wright describes as a “monstrosity seen only in nightmares.” We see the working bees overworked, emaciated, and dying in hundreds in the struggle for existence. We see the drones, fat, and lazy, and fed by the workers. The function of the drones is to fertilise the queen bee, and their numbers and the food they consume are out of proportion to their usefulness, Until their function has been fulfilled, however, the gluttonous drones are tolerated ; but soon after the queen bee has been fertilised, at a period after the function of the drones has been fulfilled, the working bees drive out or exterminate the drones who have become functionless and unnecessary.

Mr. Wright attaches too much importance to the idea that evolution is solely a continuous and equable process. Herbert Spencer has, in his “Law of the Rhythm of Motion,” demonstrated the universal ebb and flow of life, and Professor De Vries, at Hamburg, pointed out that “plant and animal species remain for a long time unchanged ; some finally disappear, when they have become old and unfit for the conditions of life, which have in the meantime altered. Others are more successful, and, to use his very expression, ‘explode’ and give life to numerous new forms, of which some assert themselves and multiply, and others, which are unfit for the conditions of life, disappear.” Again, Professor Darwin, in his Presidential address to the British Association last year, stated that, “the physicist, like the biologist and the historian, watched the effect of slowly varying external conditions, he saw the quality of persistence or stability gradually decaying until it vanished, when there ensued what was in politics called a revolution.” He added that in biology they should “expect to find slight continuous changes occurring during a long period of time, followed by a somewhat sudden transformation into a new species, or by rapid extinction.”

The Revolutionary method justified.

The phenomenon of metamorphosis, the many examples of sudden change of method function which abound in nature, together with the opinion of many scientists, all show that revolution is part and parcel of the evolutionary process. But it should be borne in mind that in the natural sciences as well as is sociology, the period of more than usually rapid change that is called revolution, is in general primarily a change of function rather than a change of structure. Kautsky’s illustration of the birth of a child is intended to make that clear. This fact, together with the necessity for the revolutionary method in working-class politics, may be shown by an illustration drawn from Society itself.

The huge and complex machinery and methods of production which constitute a great trust can only be the outcome of a prolonged evolution or growth, but the huge trust itself may most easily be made to minister to the well-being of those who were formerly exploited by it, by it being taken over by the people at one blow. The idea of the trust being socialised piecemeal and gradually, item by item, is preposterous. With the socialisation of the trust, then, there occurs only a slight change in structure—but an entire change of function. But that is not all. Before this can occur, in order that the taking over by Society of the trust may really change its function from a means of profit to the capitalist into a means of well-being to the workers, it is necessary that Society be identified, not with the exploiters, but with wealth producers. Hence the necessity for the social revolution before all things, for only when the political power has been wrested from the now useless capitalist class can the political machinery and the economic forces developed under capitalism be transformed in function from instruments of exploitation and oppression into the means of life and happiness of a people.

I would like to have gone further, and to have shown how the nature and fuller development of the vast associated methods of production of to-day necessitate social organisation and democratic control, and how the great power of social production must render the existence of any functional governing class henceforth unnecessary by the liberation of the mass of mankind from the greater part of the toil of production; and how the great power of social production must render the existence of any functional governing class henceforth unnecessary by the liberation of the mass of mankind from the greater part of the toil of production; and how also the social organism with the attainment of Socialism approaches that stage of unity and organised directive intelligence and power which may fairly be called the attainment of social consciousness. But, like Mr. Wright, I am constrained to apologise for the length of my epistle, which already has far exceeded the modest limits I had at first assigned to it. Sufficient has, I think, been said to show at all events, that Mr. Wright’s objections to the reality of the organic nature of Society do not hold, being based on mistaken ideas of the essentials of an organism and of the nature of Society.

F. C. Watts

Transgender issues and capitalism (2022)

From the December 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

There’s an issue causing much aggravation in the UK, the ‘issue’ of transgender people. You will find it in parliament and being talked about in all corners of the country. So, what do transgender people and their supporters argue? Many put a soft-left liberal case against discrimination and for tolerance but there is also a ‘gender socialist’ theory, based on a part of Marx’s analysis of society. This part of Marx’s theory to is found in the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, where Marx divided society into two parts, the base and superstructure; the base is the economic mode of production that creates and informs the superstructure of a society, while the latter is the social, legal and political apparatus that reinforces the mode of production while also influencing it; the base makes and changes the superstructure but the superstructure can also react on the base.

Analysis of prior modes of production and the many superstructural features arising from them implies that Marx’s theory was correct: settled agriculture created patriarchy, feudalism created the divine right of kings and capitalism created individualism. None of those societies existed in isolation from one another, and every mode of production so far has retained elements of the society that it displaced. These may be primarily cosmetic features, such as the UK’s constitutional monarchy, or they may be more deeply systemic, such as patriarchy. Capitalism too has incorporated superstructural features from prior societies, and just like all prior societies, it may be incapable of ending these features, indeed it may intensify them. Patriarchy has retained its power under capitalism with 88 percent of billionaires being men and 19 CEOs being men for every 1 woman; this isn’t said to beg for female representation under capitalism but rather to show that capitalism perpetuates male-dominated societies just as the systems before it did.

Gender Theory

Patriarchy is not the only legacy that capitalism retains. Gender is one such legacy, an ancient and foundational idea which we’ve built cultural concepts on and around. Placing these concepts on top of sex started before we can even remember. And capitalist institutions continue this extended delusion because they significantly rely on, and so encourage, gender’s continued existence for the sake of economic sustainability. Under capitalism, gender is informed by the roles we undertake to produce the next generation of workers, this is called reproductive labour. These roles can be anything from the actual act of reproduction to childcare and education; femininity under capitalism has historically been defined by the performance of the role of the primary caregiver to children, while masculinity has been defined by performing the role of both provider and protector. Capitalist gender lazily assigns people these gender roles in part due to its own apathy towards ending these prejudices but also to make working-class people enforce their own oppression under the threat of being considered unfeminine or unmasculine and thus being rejected by the mainstream culture of capitalist society. The effect of this is two-fold, to provide identity and to create the next generation of workers for the capitalist machine. Gender forces an identity on every person, which it attempts to justify by basing itself upon biological sex while imposing cultural roles and expectations that have nothing to do with genitals, chromosomes or anything remotely biological. Gender is based rather loosely on semi-plausible and simplified abstractions, i.e, men are the providers because they are stronger and women stay at home because they are less strong. This is inaccurate for several reasons: some women are stronger than some men, not all work is based on strength especially in the modern world, there’s no evidence that women are naturally more able than men to raise children but rather that they’re schooled into parenthood, and many more beyond those. Most gender roles are learned, forced onto young children so that they’re efficient at producing and being members of the workforce. It would be more logical, efficient and empathetic to the human race as a whole to liberate ourselves from these roles and simply fulfil the roles which we wish to.

Transgender people revolt

Many binary transgender people (those who transition from male to female or vice versa) often seem to not challenge capitalist gender at all but rather perform its stereotypical features aggressively to make themselves the gender they identify as. While on the surface this seems correct, trans people don’t perform gender stereotypes to become the gender they identify as (no trans man believes that trousers make them a boy); rather they perform the stereotypes in order to be seen by capitalist society as the gender they identify as and to protect themselves from the discrimination and violence they might face if they don’t fully ‘pass’ (succeed in being perceived) as that gender. A person who is willing to cross the lines of socially-conditioned gender, regardless of reproductive ability and conditioning into parenthood, is revolting against ideas of womanhood and manhood as defined by involvement in reproductive labour; the transgender person undertakes the same act of revolt as the lesbians and gays of the 1960s who refused to participate in traditional reproductive labour and the women’s liberation movements who refused to define themselves by their ability to reproduce.

But capitalism, as always, sets people against each other rather than acts for the good of humanity. We can see the backlash against the increased awareness of socially-constructed gender through the October 2021 BBC article ‘We’re being pressured into sex by some trans women’ by Catherine Lowbridge. This article was an attack on trans women, claiming that the alleged actions of a few trans women could be seen as representative of all trans women, based on a study conducted by a dubious group with only 80 online participants (Get the L out, Lesbians at Ground Zero), providing merely anecdotal evidence and including the opinions of Lily Cade, an accused rapist, who would go on to use the attention she got from the article to publish a manifesto calling for the lynching of trans women (www.them.us/story/lily-cade-violence-terfs-bbc). In the article (which the BBC has since changed) the writer cited Lily Cade without mentioning that she is an accused rapist (despite being told this by a transgender activist), skims over the unreliable nature of the study and claims not to have talked to a transgender person for an alternative viewpoint. This biased piece of propaganda from the BBC betrays the prejudice in capitalist society against those who attempt to change its superstructure in this way and the fear that this may disrupt and change capitalism.

Every socialist who understands the composition of society should expose and oppose such prejudice, armed with the knowledge that changing just the superstructure would merely be soft-left liberalism, and that changing just the base, without disrupting prior ways of thinking, would not work; a socialist society with a capitalist mindset would collapse in on itself. Socialists are liberationists, liberationists from capitalist ideas of race, gender and sexuality because liberation is incompatible with capitalism as a system and, of course, liberationists should be socialists, to free themselves from wage slavery, gender prejudices and state power.

SHERIFF

Material World: Insurance: a branch of the betting industry (2023)

The Material World Column from the November 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

It may seem oddly Monty Python-esque, but insurance agents have become significant players in the Russo/Ukrainian war. In August it was reported that: ‘Insurance companies have notified charterers of ships operating in Russia’s Black Sea ports of an increase in additional payments known as “war risk premiums”’ (tinyurl.com/4p5rwap9). According to the same report, this could take the cost of an insurance premium for one oil tanker to over $1 million. At the same time, Ukraine was negotiating with insurers to cover its grain shipments through the Black Sea: ‘Insurers and a local state-owned bank would share the risk, the Financial Times reported, with the public portion of the risk backed by Ukraine’s state road fund’ (tinyurl.com/muy64jp8).

Insurance is essential for doing business, especially in a war zone, as the capitalists seek to share the risk of doing business there (and other capitalists try to profit from that risk, taking a share of the surplus value generated through the business in exchange for covering it). In fact, the insurance industry is a branch of the gambling industry. You go up to the insurance broker, and say you want to place a bet that your house will burn down this week, and they bet it won’t.

Of course, they’re not insane, so part of the terms of the bet includes the precise circumstances in which they will pay out, and the steps they expect you to take to avoid a fire starting. Unlike a bet on the horses, though, there is a focus on trying to ensure that the bet would cover the entire cost of replacing the house: that is, the focus is on the property as a value expressed in money.

All societies need a surplus in case of emergency or accident, but capitalism is unique in using a universal equivalent in the form of money. Unlike, say, a granary full of grain, an insurance fund can be infinitely subdivided, so the risk of accident can be spread very far, with insurance firms able to sell slivers of their bets to multiple cash holders, so that no one individual or firm is entirely exposed to all of the risk. They make their profits as a cut of surplus value, matching the perceived risk of having to pay out to how much they can demand as a premium (stake) from the person they are insuring. Their business model is for their customers to compare the cost of borrowing to recover losses, or having enough savings on hand to pay for the losses themselves, with the cost of paying for a premium.

As such, insurance functions as an expression of collective capital. The decisions about whether activities can or cannot be insured (and the terms on which they can be insured), structures economic activity in very great detail. It limits the rights of individual property holders to behave entirely as they wish with their wealth. Firms wishing to offer contracts for goods and services routinely ask for insurance cover as part of their terms and conditions, so it becomes very difficult for any substantial capital to operate in business without accepting the terms on which insurance may be purchased.

This is worth bearing in mind for the fantasies of so-called anarcho-capitalists, for whom insurance and charity could free everyone from ‘the state’: they’d soon find themselves confronting the same costs and regulations as the state imposes because they are a part of industrial society and capitalism itself, not mere creations of the state.

An example of this is the key role insurance played in enabling the slave trade. Investors required insurance before they would undertake the highly profitable, but risky, business of capturing and enslaving human beings. They could even get insurance against slave revolt (the analogy was that revolts – and their suppression – was like when animals aboard ship stampede in a storm). One of the most notorious incidents of the slave trade, The Zong Massacre, in which the captain of the slave ship Zong tried to enact an insurance fiddle by murdering his human cargo (on which, running low on water, he was facing a loss) in order to claim that insurance value. The insurers objected, and this led to a series of court cases: which affirmed that it was legal to murder enslaved human cargo, but in this particular instance, the captain of the Zong was at fault for navigational errors.

This is, it’s worth mentioning in passing, a useful example of the notion of base and superstructure which Marx and Engels introduced in their book The German Ideology. The insurance industry is part of the superstructure built on the base of material practices of capitalism, but it remains essential and instrumental in enabling those activities to continue. That insurers would provide the means to enable a despicable trade is no surprise, because they were in the business of taking bets to try and make a profit for their investors, but at the same time, their activity influenced the shape of how that horrific trade was carried out.

The influence of insurers will come to be seen in the coming years in discussions about global warming and the climate emergency. The devastating wildfires on Maui have caused an astronomical cost, as the New York Times reports (tinyurl.com/4p22tsz3), as much as $4-$6 billion in potential claims for destroyed residences. So much that ‘private insurers, already grappling with the costs of climate-related disasters in California and Florida, are also reassessing a home insurance market they had long considered both predictable and profitable, and whether they should charge residents of Hawaii higher rates.’

Aside from raising premiums (or just leaving the market altogether), insurance firms will begin to press politicians to take steps to limit their risks, and just as they demand terms from those they insure to protect their bets, so too will they demand the state step in collectively to protect their interests. This may well manifest as a dispute between insurers (as representatives of finance capital generally) against industrial capitalists who will bridle at their restrictions.

Pik Smeet

Marx’s View of Man (1967)

From the October 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

The principles of the Socialist Party of Gt. Britain and of its Companion Parties abroad are based on the main theories of Karl Marx, social revolutionary writer of the mid-nineteenth century. One of the criticisms often levelled against Marx is that ‘he puts too much emphasis on the material aspect of man and not enough on the spiritual and moral side’.

Materialism is the doctrine that says that nothing exists but matter and its movements and modification. To enlarge on this, we may say for example that the human brain is a highly developed form of matter and that the mind is the sum total of its activities. Through his brain and his senses man perceives certain conditions in the world around him; conditions that make up the environment in which he lives. He then interprets these conditions. His ideas are, therefore, not created in a vacuum. His concepts such as Freedom, Truth, Good and Evil, are not absolute but are subject to change; not separate entities but qualified by conditions.

This particular criticism of Marx’s works arises because he maintained that the determining factor in history was the way in which man produced his means of living. In this production man forms certain social relations which are of paramount importance because they form the basis of the system of society in which he lives. Marx found that at a certain stage these social relations took the form of opposing class interests, and so he said that all written history is the history of class struggles. The system of capitalism existed in the time of Marx although of course not as highly developed as it is today. Marx defined the class system of capitalism as consisting of a capitalist (ruling) class and a working (subject) class. The capitalist class owns and controls the means of production and distribution of wealth like food, oil, copper and coal. The working class own virtually nothing but their ability to work. Therefore, in order to live they have to sell their labour power to the owning class to gain access to the means of production and to produce wealth. The workers are paid wages in return for their labour power, but the amount of money they receive is not the full value they create. Wages usually hover around the accepted subsistence level. The balance of the value of their labour (over and above their wages) forms profit and this keeps the owning class in luxury. The system of capitalism consists of a contradiction between socially produced wealth and the private or sectional ownership of the means of wealth production.

Included in the means of production and distribution are those for producing and distributing ideas. These means are the educational and advertising media: schools, colleges, universities, press, television, radio. They are owned by the capitalist class just as much as the land, factories, airways or mines. Having control of these media, the ruling class is able to spread and give an appearance of validity to ideas which are actually invalid because they have no bearing whatsoever on real human interests. To explain and justify a social system which works only in their own interests, they spread ideas of nationalism, patriotism, leadership, hero-worship, prejudice and religion. Economists, politicians, sociologists, historians, churchmen, lawyers—all play their part in this presentation of a good image for capitalism. The drawbacks of the system are either ‘explained’ as necessary evils in the best of all possible worlds, or else it is said that they are capable of cure within the status quo by ‘practical reform’ or belief in God. It is tacitly assumed that capitalism is natural and absolute.

Ruling class ideas of morality—in line with their other ideas—suit their particular interests. This is strikingly shown by the fact that in peacetime it is ‘wrong’ to kill because the taking of human life is most often connected with crimes against private property—for instance, bank and mail robberies. On the other hand in wartime it is ‘right’ to kill, for national capitalist interests need to be defended (by workers) when their masters’ quarrels (over markets, sources of raw materials and strategic positions, basically) can no longer be resolved without the use of force.

Because of its control of the means of communication, the ideas of the ruling class become the accepted ideas in society—often termed orthodox ideas.

Explaining the idea from the conditions and not the conditions from the idea is characteristic of Marx and is the materialist method that Socialists use. Far from being indifferent to what is termed our ‘spiritual’ or ‘moral’ welfare, Marx stressed the really human qualities of Man. He refers both to money and to the idea of god as examples of human alienation because they involve a transference of man’s own powers to an outside force—to the detriment of man himself.

We have only to look at some of the worst aspects of human behaviour under capitalism to see that drug-peddling, alcoholism, prostitution, blackmail, are reactions to a private property form of society, a society of buying and selling, profit and exploitation. If we define human beings as predominantly good or bad, we are being idealist and getting nowhere. Human behaviour varies from society to society.

When the working class channels its intelligence towards its own liberation it will by political action take the means of production and distribution out of the hands of the capitalists and place them at the disposal of the whole of humanity. This act will be its last act as a class for in so doing it will have established the first classless society in written history—Socialism. When wealth is no longer produced to make a profit by its sale but to satisfy the wants and needs of all, those ideas which belong to capitalism will have disintegrated and come down like Alice’s Pack of Cards. In Socialism, the criterion for all things will be human reason; the preservation and betterment of human life, untainted by human alienation, will have top priority.

J. MCL

Is The Materialist Conception Of History Sufficient? (1905)

From the November 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

Interesting Letters on an Interesting Subject 

[The following correspondence has passed between two members of the Socialist Party of Great Britain. The subject matter is of such importance—an understanding of what is implied by the term “the materialist conception of history” being indispensable to anything like an adequate appreciation of the Socialist position—and our comrade Watts has presented his case so admirably, that we have readily undertaken to give the letters the wider publicity of these columns.—Editorial. Committee.”]

Dear Comrade,— So far as I understand it, I agree with the Materialist Conception of History, but recently I have been studying the reports of the Sociological Society, which magnify the problem of the unification of the Social sciences until it appears almost insoluble ; and I have had my faith shaken in the sufficiency of the Materialist Conception because these learned people have made the question appear so great that the Materialist Conception appears too simple. I will, therefore, explain the difficulty according to the disciples of the Sociological Society.

They appear to agree that society is an organism of a complicated type, and that these complications are made intelligible only through their relations being truly comprehended. They view the sociological field as at present being separated into many particular fields, each in the hands of specialist investigators, and they claim that the sociologist (through the Sociological Society) is the scientist whose duty it is to co-ordinate the social specialisms and generalise from the investigations of the social They consider that the specialist investigators should work with the idea of the ultimate unity of their investigations, an idea that they claim it is one of the duties of the Sociological Society to foster. They deprecate the interpretation of the highly complex social phenomena in the terms of any one specialism; and this, it seems to me, is the point that particularly touches us.

On every hand we see men working with a view to the application of their particular remedy for various social evils. Do we not come under the same ban ? Do we not offer a sort of Morrison’s Pill for the earthquake? Socialism, at the last and ultimate analysis, is an economic proposition, a fundamental one, I grant, but still purely economic. Now the economic relations of men in society are not the only ones. We say : true, but all other relations grow out of the economic ones, and this, as I understand it, is the basis of the Materialist Conception of History. The point, then, is to demonstrate that the all important, the dominating factor in society, is its economic conditions.

There are a considerable number of people sometimes designated cranks, who desire to regenerate society through the application of their particular Morrison’s Pill. According to your alleged philosophic radical, all that is required is political perfection—the carrying of in political revolutionary reforms (I use the Hibernianism advisedly). According to the temperance fanatic, all that is required is the entire removal of the “drink evil,” root and branch. The ethical reformer seeks to emphasise the moral factor in social relations and through that means to establish the millenium. The orthodox man seeks that everybody should believe that certain impossible things once happened, and through that belief, somehow, I know not how, the millenium is coming. And so on. Every reformer of whatever colour or creed, has some Morrison’s Pill to give Society, to cure it of all its evils at one blow. But again I ask, does not the Socialist fall into the same category ? He says that ethical, moral, religious ; artistic, asthetical; political and intellectual relations are fundamentally determined by the economic relations, and he seeks to alter those economic relations so that following from such revolutionary change should come the change (and. of course, improvement) in the ethical, moral, religious: artistic, aesthetical; political, intellectual, and all other relations.

Now the difficulty seems to be, even granting all that we claim for the dominance of economic conditions, how far can man’s intellect get ahead of his economic and other conditions, and frame ideas and ideals to work to and for ? If man’s ideas were rigidly determined by his economic environment, the Socialist would be impossible, and indeed, the social conservative would be impossible, too, because in the same environment we find most divergent minds.

The whole problem that I am trying to formulate would seem to be the old one of “free-will” and “determinism.” And the only explanation of the divergences can be the individual temperament, call it what you will. So that the position seems to resolve itself into the effects of the action of the environment (in which must be included every influence which the human mind comes into contact with from first to last) on the individual personality, the “ego.” The great difficulty would seem to be, therefore, the true recognition of the forces that go to make up that ego through hereditary channels. Is our knowledge of the action of heredity sufficient for the formulation of a philosophy that should comprehend all the influence that go to make men, in all their strange variations of temperament ?

In conclusion, therefore, I would ask, is the Materialist Conception sufficient for the explanation of all the complex phenomena of modern Society ?

Fraternally yours,

“ENGINEER.”

P.S.—of course, you must not suppose that I am such a heretic on the Socialist philosophy as I appear from the above. I have exaggerated my own difficulties in order, not only to make the matter more controversial, but to, so far as possible, get the other side discussed.

________________________

Dear Comrade,—I have read your letter on the the Materialist Conception of History, and as I hold firmly to that conception as a guiding principle (having entirely convinced myself of its truth), I shall be glad to discuss the matter.

Before doing so, however, I will ask you to carefully peruse the following somewhat lengthy but exceedingly important quotation from Marx’s “Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy,” which gives an explanation of the Materialist Conception of History, as it is necessary to define our terms before using them as signs in our discussion.

This extract is from the preface to Marx’s “Critique of Political Economy.” Published (in Germany) 1857.

“The first work which I undertook for the purpose of solving the doubts which perplexed me was a critical re-examination of Hegel’s; ‘Philosophy of Law.’ The introduction to this work appeared in the German French Year Books of 1844. My investigations ended in the conviction that legal relations and forms of government cannot be explained either by themselves or by the so-called development of the human mind, but, on the contrary, have their roots in the conditions of men’s existence, whose totality Hegel, following the French and English writers of the eighteenth century, summed up under the name of civil society ; and that the anatomy of civil society must be sought in political economy, to which study I next gave my attention.

“The general result at which I arrived and which, once obtained, served as a guide for my subsequent studies, can be briefly formulated as follows:

“In making their livelihood together men enter into certain necessary, involuntary relations with each other.

“These industrial relations arise out of their respective conditions and occupations and correspond to whatever stage society has reached in the development of its material productive forces.

“Different stages of industry produce different relations.

“The totality of these industrial relations constitutes the economic structure and basis of society.

“Upon this basis the legal and political superstructure is built.

“There are certain forms of social consciousness or so-called public opinion which correspond to this basis.

“The method prevailing in any society of producing the material livelihood determines the social, political and intellectual life of men in general.

“It is not primarily men’s consciousness which determines their mode of life; on the contrary it is their social life which determines their consciousness.

“When the material productive forces of society have advanced to a certain stage of their development they come into opposition with the old conditions of production, or, to use a legal expression, with the old property relations under which these forces have hitherto been exerted.

“Instead of serving longer as institutions for the development of the productive sources of society, these antiquated property relations now become hindrances. Then begins an epoch of social revolution.

“With the change of the economic basis the whole vast superstructure undergoes, sooner or later, a revolution.

“In considering such revolutions we must always distinguish clearly between the change in the industrial methods of social production on the one hand ; this change takes place unconsciously, strictly according to the laws of natural science, and might properly be called an evolution.

“And, on the other hand, the change in the legal, political, religions, artistical or philosophical, in short, ideological, institutions; with reference to these men fight out this battle as a revolution conscious of their opposing interests. This conflict takes the form of a class struggle.

“As little as we judge an individual by what he thinks he is, just as little can we judge such revolutionary epoch by its own consciousness.

“We must rather explain this consciousness out of the antagonisms of men’s industrial occupations, out of the conflict existing between the productive capacity of social industry and the legal institutions under which this industry is carried on.

“A society, no matter what its form may be, is never broken up until all the productive powers are developed for which it is adapted.

“New and higher social institutions are never established until the material conditions of life to support them, have been prepared in the lap of the old society itself. Therefore, mankind never sets for itself any tasks, except those for which it has received proper training and which it is able to perform.

“If we examine closely, it will always be found that the conflict never arises except where the material conditions of its solution are already at hand, or at least are in the the process of growth.

“We may in wide outlines characterise the Asiatic, the antique, the feudal and the modern capitalistic methods of production as a series of progressive epochs in the evolution of economic society.

“The industrial relations arising out of the capitalistic method of production constitute the last of the antagonistic forms of social production ; antagonistic not in the sense of antagonism between individuals, but of antagonism growing out of the circumstances in which men must live who take part in social production.

“But the productive forces which are developed in the lap of capitalistic society create at the same time the material conditions needed for the abolition of this antagonism. The capitalist form of society, therefore, will bring to a close this cycle of the history of human society, as it has existed under the various forms of exploitation.”

And now to proceed with my own contribution to the discussion.

All history, indeed all intellectual life, can be explained only from the accompanying and preceding material conditions, since any other theory than this postulates an uncaused thing, which is contrary to all experience, and is therefore unscientific and untenable. Intellectual life is but the reflex of material conditions. That intellectual life has a secondary reflex action upon material conditions in no way changes the fact that material conditions form the base, origin, and material of all intellectual life.

Now, in the Materialist Conception of History we are given the dominant factor in the determination of all history ; that is, the method in which wealth is produced and exchanged. Obviously, in order that there may be human history two things are essential; firstly, men, and secondly, food and shelter for them. How much, where and how food and shelter can be obtained, determines, firstly, man’s existence, secondly, where he shall live, and thirdly, how he shall live. Therefore the Materialist Conception of History is without doubt the determining and basic factor in all history ; indeed, broadly interpreted, all material conditions are comprised in it.

Just as we speak of the “Law of Evolution” so we may speak of the Materialist Conception as the “Law of History.” As in one case we can explain existing organic forms by the “Law of Evolution,” so in the other case can we explain existing social forms only by the materialist ”Law of History.” In organic, as in social, evolution, there are many minor matters that, with our present defective knowledge we cannot yet explain. Nevertheless, it would be absurd and unscientific to abandon the law which has been proved right in so many instances the moment we come upon obscure or complicated detail whose connection with the fundamental law is not at once seen.

Both in biology and in sociology, inability to see the working of fundamental principles or laws is usually the result of insufficient knowledge, narrowness of the field of view, and a priori notions. This is especially true of the modern social specialist. Lost in a forest of detail he lacks the breadth of view that is necessary to an understanding of general principles. We do not now magnify the accidentals of zoology to the extent that the old naturalists did, who thereby got fanciful and conflicting classifications; but, probably aided by the fact that we see the detail of animal life from a distance, and so get a truer perspective than in sociology, we have grasped the basic principles of organic evolution in the food supply and the conditions of the struggle to obtain it. No science is so subjective as sociology, for here we meet the “furies of private interests ;” and hampered as are the majority of specialists by preconceived ideas and class prejudice, small wonder is there that even the most honest of them arrive at such inane conclusions. They fail to distinguish between essentials and accidentals, and detail assumes greater importance than principles or laws in consequence. “They cannot see the wood for the trees.” Specialisation is, of course, essential, but. the co-ordination of the social sciences can only he the work of one who takes a thorough but even view of all.

To realise the full force of the Materialist Concept a broad knowledge of history, economics, and natural science is absolutely essential, and history is the most important. Such broad surveys of history as are given in even elementary primers like Jenk’s History of Politics and Fyffe’s History of Greece, or in such works as Thorold Rogers’ Six Centuries of Work and Wages and Buckle’s Introduction to the History of Civilisation, throw into relief the general principles of history and afford a granitic foundation to the Materialist Conception.

It is too great a task to attempt any historical survey here ; but it is most clear; to take the example that immediately affects us; that the tremendous transformation in this country during the last three centuries of the conditions of things and the social life arising therefrom, is directly traceable to the wonderful change which has taken place in the methods of producing and distributing wealth. A new class has been created and forced to power. The face of the country has been changed from agricultural to manufacturing. Huge towns have arisen where once were cornfields. The change from individual to social production has revolutionised social relationships. Where once men worked singly for home consumption they now work in huge armies for others, disciplined and commanded. Where once was handicraft is now giant machine production. All this has been brought about by the gradual change in the methods of producing and distributing the wealth of the country ; due to the greater economy of co-operative over individual production, and to the greater economy of machine over hand labour. Modern social life is explicable only upon this basis : the line of least resistance in wealth production impelling men into entirely new social relationships.

It will be seen how curious is the idea that the scientific Socialist, by indicating economic conditions as the basis of all social relationships, has only a Morrison’s Pill a la Carlyle to offer of no greater efficiency than is usual with such nostrums. The cure-all pill idea implies idealism. It implies that men can, out of their own souls, evolve a scheme of things and force it on society without that scheme being of necessity the outcome of present conditions and in harmony with the natural trend of things. Socialism of the scientific type is, of course, not this by any means. The various reformers with their nostrums are rather like the quacks who profess to cure virulent fevers by means of prayers, charms and incantations, or at least, like the pseudo scientific quacks who prescribe drugs to counteract only the symptoms and effects of diseases, leaving the causes untouched. The Socialist is rather like the true scientist who goes to causes in material conditions, and sees that effective drainage is laid down, cleanliness maintained, and correct food given.

The question often occurs : how is it that in identical environment some are Socialists and some are conservatives, if economic conditions determine, in the last resort, the views of men ? The matter of this “identical environment” can be illustrated by a simple analogy. Suppose a hundred soft clay balls were put in a bag and sat on, these balls would all be in an identical environment, like men in any class in society subjected to economic pressure, so what would happen ? Some balls would be squared, some slightly flattened, and some utterly squashed, as determined by their position in this so-called identical environment. In society different classes have different environment. In a given class some would be slightly modified conservatives, and some revolutionary: as pressure increases so all would become entirely altered. All, then, would be affected, but slightly unequally, since no two balls, or two persons, could possibly be in exactly the same environment. So in society men picture the future from what they see and feel in the present. Some by hereditary fitness and actual environment would more easily and clearly comprehend the needs of the present and the tendency of things; others in conditions less violently affected would find it more difficult to see clearly, or would from the materials to their hands or inherited weakness, form false pictures which would lure them in wrong directions.

So far from economics being but one specialisation of no greater import than a host of other artificial divisions or specialisms, economics is, then, the fundamental, the essential specialism. It is the trunk upon which all the various branches depend, or rather, to be more accurate, it is the anatomy of social life. The truth of this proposition is amply demonstrated at the bar of social history, even with the knowledge at present, available ; just as the truth of the law of evolution is shown at the bar of the more developed natural sciences. The conclusions of all natural science, indeed, render no other interpretation of history logically tenable except the Materialist Conception of History.

F. C. Watts.

[A further instalment of this correspondence will appear in the next issue.]