Messenger boys (1984)

From the November 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

The various Christian churches seem to be hitting the secular headlines recently with the Catholic church, by far the biggest, taking the lead. For the last year or so it has been deeply embroiled with the larger than life moneylenders of the international banking world. But it isn’t (as the innocent Catholic might think) the Children of Christ condemning the moneylenders, calling on them to “Store up their riches in Heaven and not on earth where they will rust and be eaten up by moths.”

A collection of about 120 foreign banks and other creditors want to know what has happened to £916 million of their money which was last seen passing through an intricate network of companies and subsidiaries from Liechtenstein to Peru, mostly owned by the Vatican Bank (IOR). Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, ex-head of the Vatican Bank, has been intimately linked with this mysterious affair. A one-time diplomat in the Vatican, Marcinkus seems to have been unwise in the company he kept while head of the Vatican Bank, for two of his closest associates were Michele Sindona and Roberto Calvi. Sindona, a successful Sicilian banker, has been convicted of fraud and misappropriation of funds while Calvi. ex-member of the infamous masonic lodge P2. belter known as “God’s Banker”, recently slipped secretly out of Italy. He crossed the Gulf of Trieste to Yugoslavia and London, apparently to hang himself from Blackfriars Bridge, first taking the precaution of filling his pockets with stones and placing half a brick down the front of his trousers.

As with any good story, the plot thickens. In July 1978 Pope Paul VI died and was succeeded by a Pope John Paul I. Pope John Paul I died a few months later in September 1978. Allegations have been made that Pope John Paul I was poisoned because he had uncovered the financial wheeling and dealing of the Vatican Bank and objected to it. Contradictory statements by the Vatican about the circumstances of the death only encourage suspicion. Who really did discover the body? What was the Pope really reading when he died in bed?

All this has cast some doubt on the infallibility of the papacy. How could the Vatican get itself into such an embarrassing mess? Even if Pope Paul VI didn't know what was going on under his very nose (Marcinkus’s office was directly beneath the Papal apartments) you would have thought God would have had a quiet word in his ear. After all the Pope, so they tell us, is our direct link with God.

Of course, the Vatican hasn't admitted to making a mistake. It never does. Nevertheless, Archbishop Marcinkus has applied for immunity from prosecution by the Italian Judiciary. The Vatican Bank has also agreed to pay creditors £180 million. confidently expecting to recoup the loss from contributions by working class catholics.

While the Vatican is uneasily wearing the cloak of infallibility the Church of England has attributed falling attendances to the rigidity and inflexibility of ideas, which haven’t changed much in centuries. It has realised that the mumbo-jumbo of the past that worked quite well is seen to be more and more ridiculous. To counter this it has decided to invent some more modern mumbo-jumbo, adapted from the old stuff. Oxbridge theologians have been telling us that a lot of the Bible isn't strictly true, that the meaning and symbolism of what is written in the Bible is more important than whether or not it actually occurred in history. This innovative bit of philosophical sophistry has not gone unnoticed by the more conservative members of the clergy.The result has been a bitter debate about whether the Virgin Mary was or wasn’t.

In July David Jenkins, a leading advocate for change, was consecrated in York Minster as the Bishop of Durham amid protests and interruptions. A few days later there was an unhappy coincidence when the south transept of the Minster was struck by lightning and burnt down. Not surprisingly some of the clergy put this down to a divine thunderbolt, sent by a merciful God as an act of retribution. Fortunately, York Minster was insured by an ecclesiastical insurance company even if it is paradoxical for the church to be insuring itself against acts of God.

So while the Catholic church is grappling with financial corruption and infallibility, the Church of England is trying to reinterpret the work of God. A church that isn't as burdened with outmoded ideas and traditions inherited from previous centuries is Billy Graham's Evangelism. Everybody living in the English provinces must have noticed Big Brother Billy staring down at them from bill boards. His square set jaw. menacing smile and piercing eyes encourage the question “Would I buy a second-hand car from this man?”, especially in view of the personal testimony from ex-President Richard Nixon: “Billy Graham is one of the giants of our time”. But Dr. Billy isn’t the man he was in 1949 when he terrified all those who would like to sec 1950 with Christian threats like “Communism is inspired, directed and motivated by the devil himself. Either communism must die or Christianity must die”. A couple of years ago he went to preach in that nest of demons and devil worshippers, Moscow. Having been well treated by the puppets of Satan, he returned to cause a storm with some inane comments about the benevolent nature of the Russian state.

For a few months this year Graham was on Mission England. Backed up by technicians, campaign managers, thousand-voice choirs, security heavies and the all important $40 million business machine. Billy visited Bristol. Norwich, Sunderland, Birmingham. Liverpool and Ipswich. It must have been quite a spectacle to sec him preaching from the hallowed turf of Anfield. to hear the stadium echoing to the songs of praise, though not the usual irreverent and profane type. No doubt there was a deathly hush as Billy asked the spectators if they could hear Jesus knocking to come in. Jesus certainly wouldn't have been the first to be locked out of Anfield anyway.

Billy is not, as some might think, a man of peace, for when our masters’ property and profits are threatened he believes in the necessity of defence — of killing people and not turning the other cheek. Although he has gone to great pains to appear concerned about the problems of his flock such as unemployment and poverty, these are problems that God has spared Billy, who lives in a converted log cabin on a 200 acre site in America and receives a salary of $55,000 a year.

It’s all very easy poking fun at the Church now that the age of inquisition and witch burnings is over, but it is beside the point. Why do these ridiculous people and institutions exist? Why do so many people believe in what they say?

It is not possible to prove or disprove the existence of God. who exists only for people who have "faith”, a belief in something for which there is no material evidence. The evidence that Christians will give for the existence of a God is their faith. How could they believe in something of which there is no material evidence (except a book of dubious origin and authenticity) unless that belief was inspired by God himself? Their god is supposed to give them faith and this explains, for them, why they have faith. To break this circle of "God exists because 1 believe in God", it is necessary to understand why Christianity is so appealing to many people.

We live in a friendless society of competition. insecurity and. for many of us, absolute poverty. We live in a cruel and impersonal world, over which we seem to have no control. Most Christians would refer to all this as "suffering”. But they offer a unique "solution” to those who arc suffering, which is most of us — a philosophy, a set of ideas, that turns this suffering from something pointless and wasteful into something worthwhile. If we believe in God and Jesus Christ and accept the suffering doled out to us by the world, so they tell us, we will go to a much better place at the end of it and there live forever. The meek acceptance of suffering is a sort of lest and the better we do. the better the chance that we will be rewarded.

This, in essence, is very much like working for a wage. You graft for eight hours a day in a job you hate for the promise of a wage packet at the end of the week. The difference is that there is no pie in the sky at the end of your stint down here. Only worms and maggots. The idea of Christianity also gives you a sense of control over your ow n life for you can participate in the kingdom of Heaven. In every sense Christianity is masochistic, it dupes you into enjoying pain and suffering. It anaesthetises you against the stresses and strains of society. Once accepted, it becomes more difficult to face up to the real horrors of society

DB

50 Years Ago: See the Conquering Hero (2006)

The 50 Years Ago column from the February 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Religion is not yet at such a discount in the United States as it is here; and it is from America that Billy Graham has made his sallies across the Atlantic. Dr. Graham commands more real income than two or three English bishops: and members of the British ruling class hurried to give him financial backing in his tours of this country – among them Mr. Alfred Owen, the racing-motor magnate, and Major-General Sir Edward Spears, the Chairman of the Council of the Institute of Directors, and a director of five companies. Lawyers, politicians, army officers, all hurry to Graham’s side, and the Prime Minister receives him at No. 10, Downing Street.

Count me in

The significance of Dr. Graham’s success is not lost on English church leaders. Though his antiquated theological views are so discredited and exploded that anyone holding them would be turned out of any self-respecting theological college, leaders of the Anglican and Nonconformist Churches rush to climb on his bandwagon. Prominent Methodists like the Rev. E. Benson Perkins, and Anglican prelates like the Bishop of Barking, would three years ago have sooner joined the Rationalist Press Association than had any truck with anyone holding Dr. Graham’s fundamentalist views. But nothing succeeds like success, and a man who gets as many thousand dollars a year as Billy Graham does merely for preaching must obviously be on to a good thing. So on to Dr. Graham’s platform troop Benson Perkins and Dr. Gough of Barking: in the fabulous company of the Graham gospel-singers and cheer-leaders the reverend gentlemen find that they can swallow not only Jonah but also his whale.

The church leaders who support Dr. Graham are, from their own point of view, on the right lines. For it is only by filling the churches again that the leaders of organized religion can win back their former high place in society.

(From an article by Alwyn Edgar, Socialist Standard, February 1956)

Diary of a Capitalist (1978)

The Diary of a Capitalist column from the December 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sunday

There has been a lot of ill-founded criticism of Princess Anne’s behaviour on her visit to Norway. She was shown on Norwegian television touring a hospital nursery. The television audience watched as a five-year-old boy "tried to shake hands or get a cuddle from her and was apparently spurned. ‘No cuddle, not even a smile’ was the headline on one newspaper's front page" (Daily Telegraph, 7.11.78). Thousands of people rang the papers expressing their distaste, and suggesting the Princess should go home. Most of them said they could not understand how Princess Anne, herself a mother, could show such coldness to a child.

All these proley protesters are missing the point. Motherhood isn’t the same thing in the capitalist class as it is in the working class (and the Royal Family are in the capitalist class: they have a very large income from investments, apart from their annual State payments). Upper-class mothers still have to bear their children themselves — the workers can't do it for them yet (though these experiments to plant a fertilized human egg from one set of parents into someone’s else’s womb may soon solve that little difficulty): after that, the hard work of bringing the children up is done by the servants. Most upper-class children form what emotional links they are capable of in the circumstances with their Nannies. Take me: I was brought up by my Nanny and a nursemaid. My parents came in most days about four o’clock to sec me having tea in the day nursery: apart from that I saw little of them. When I was a bit older, other servants looked after me and introduced me to blood sports on the estate. As Lord Lovat says in his March Past: a Memoir, just published, the person who first lock him fishing was not anyone in his family, but an "old retainer, the castle lamplighter" (Daily Telegraph, 2.11.78). Then at nine I was sent away to boarding school: prep school till thirteen, public school till eighteen. There I was given a thorough training in how to order other people about, which is the role in life of a member of the upper class. (At the same time the state schools very properly teach the workers’ children the mirror image of that: how to conduct themselves at the bottom of the pile, and how to obey those above them. As the Daily Telegraph leader said on October 27, the teachers' power to cane their pupils is a necessary "supplement to a whole system of ritual and convention designed to instil the notion of hierarchy and predispose the young to habitual obedience".)

The result of this upbringing is to implant in the future members of the upper class the necessary harsh, tough, unsentimental character which one must have to be a ruler in class-divided society. Kindness, pity, sympathy, humanity — all these would be a handicap to us in doing our job: we can leave all that to the workers.

Monday

Shopping today for furniture for my new house. Got a couple of nice armchairs for £305 each, and a sofa for £1070, all from Harrods (Observer, 15.10.78).

Tuesday

Lord Brooke is letting the side down. He is the present descendant of the Greville family, who have owned Warwick Castle since 1604. The Fulke Greville of that time, who was a rich man in Warwickshire. mainly through the fortunate marriage of his grandfather to an heiress, jumped the right way on the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603. and backed the successful claimant to the throne, who became James I. Soon after James’ coronation he gave Warwick Castle and its lands to Greville. The Grevilles have had them ever since. The present head of the family, the Earl of Warwick, sold some farmland in Warwickshire for £500,000 in 1959, and moved away to live in Rome. Warwick Castle he handed over to his son, Lord Brooke. The castle makes a nice profit from the hundreds of thousands of tourists who pour in each year, including 500,000 adults at £1 a head. But since 1968 Lord Brooke has been selling off the treasures in the castle, including twenty-six pictures (Canalettos, Rubens, Van Dykes) for about £2 million, and the famous Warwick Vase, the 1800-year-old Roman marble masterpiece at present in a Wimbledon warehouse awaiting a buyer for about £250,000. Now Lord Brooke has sold Warwick Castle itself to Madame Tussauds. the waxwork people, for £1,500.000.

For years Lord Brooke, who prefers to live on various properties he owns abroad, has refused to explain his activities. Finally, in August, he said he had to sell his pictures and so on in order to repair the castle. Now he has sold his castle, unrepaired, and kept the picture money as well.

Lord Brooke should realise that we in the upper class have to put up a united front against all the others, who naturally can’t see why we have all the property. One good excuse is that we really only look after our wealth, as trustees for the nation: we are safeguarding the country’s heritage. The Greville family motto is "Scarcely do I call these things our own". Now he has blown the gaff, and everyone can see what a hollow excuse it was. I sympathize with all those members of the Greville family who arc very annoyed with Brooke for having given the game away so openly, such as his cousin, Priscilla Greville, who said, "the house of Greville is in the dust" (Observer, 8.10.78). She said she hoped that if Tussauds do put some wax models in the castle, as they intend, one of them will be of Lord Brooke being beheaded by the guillotine.

Wednesday

My friend Viscountess Chelsea has had her BMW stolen from a garage in Hungerford. The irritating thing was that she had £150,000 worth of jewellery in the boot. She has offered a £10,000 reward (Daily Mail, 1.11.78). Even worse was what happened to Sheikh Salman Jassim, of the Royal Family of Qatar in the Persian Gulf — I met him some time ago over an oil machinery contract. He was having treatment at a London hospital, and someone stole his bedside briefcase containing gold and diamond jewellery worth £250,000. The country’s coming to a fine pass if one can’t carry a few gem stones round with one.

Thursday

A few years ago I was involved in a small business arrangement with William Stern, a big property dealer. He wasn’t able to control the huge empire he created well enough, and it collapsed leaving him a bankrupt, owing over £100 million. However, he had shown some foresight, and though he has had to draw in his horns a little, he still lives very adequately. He used to spend £70,000 a year, and now he still gets through £30.000 a year. "His six children still go to private schools. His family still live in an elegant house at West Heath Avenue, Golders Green. They still use the luxurious furniture. They can still admire paintings that cost £30,000" (Daily Telegraph, 21.10.78). All the finance comes, apparently, from a trust in New York for his children that he set up in good time before the crash.

A man who can contribute to society by buying and selling property like Mr. Stern deserves to have a luxurious standard of living, even after his slight business contretemps.


Friday

I sent off today for a statue of a horse, ‘'the Flying Horse of Kansu", which should fill a corner in the hall of the new house. It is a reproduction in hall-marked eighteen-carat gold of a Chinese bronze sculpture, found in a Han dynasty tomb. The reproduction weighs 250 grams, and costs £3000. The advert of the company selling these reproductions (this one in gold, and others in silver and brass) gave a lengthy, would-be learned commentary (Daily Telegraph, 21.10.78) covering the historical and cultural background. "The horse is shown in an attitude expressive of ecstasy and freedom supported by one hoof on the back of a flying swallow which turns its head in surprise." Well, it would, wouldn’t it? A pity they can’t spell Buddhist (they think it’s “Budist”), but most of the people who will be coming to my house and listening to me bragging about the cost of the statue aren't too hot on spelling anyway: they don't mind, so long as they have enough arithmetic to count their dividends.


Saturday

When the newly-elected Pope John Paul I died, so soon after the deaths of the previous pope and of Metropolitan Nikodim (officially ranked second in the Russian Orthodox Church), Dr. Billy Graham thought it was significant. He "said in Stockholm yesterday: ’Perhaps in the deaths of Pope Paul VI., Metropolitan Nikodim and Pope John Paul I within such a short time in Rome God may have a message for the world.’ Graham said he did not know what the message was" (Daily Telegraph, 30.10.78).

This Graham man is losing his grip. What we capitalists require, to keep the workers’ minds off stern practicalities, is supernatural certainties, not these vague hints. For example, the Daily Mirror said Yuri Geller would mend watches and clocks by long-range, wholesale magic, if people put them near his photo in the Daily Mirror (in other words, you had to buy the paper to try it). The usual flood of simpletons wrote in convinced that this optimistic treatment had worked, and the Daily Mirror was able to announce in a banner headline taking up most of its front page, “You did it. Yuri!" The same with the miracle shoe which has turned up at a convent in Canada. The old priest who founded the convent died there eighteen months ago. and the nuns who laid him out were convinced they could see a face on the sole of his old shoe — the face of Christ, naturally. The Sunday People (24.9.78) published a picture of it, and if you look a long time at the picture with the eye of faith you might be able to see in the scratch marks something like a face. A professor of organic chemistry at Quebec’s Laval University had no doubts: “there is no possibility that the face was placed there by a human being, using artificial means. That leaves only one conclusion." The convent’s medical adviser (a man doubtless quite impartial as to the prosperity of the convent, to which thousands of pilgrims have been flocking since the discovery) said, “I have no doubt that something strange has happened. This could not have been done artificially."

That's the stuff we capitalists need! One of the best ways to divert the workers’ minds from the annual wage-cut called inflation. for example, is to persuade them there is a great supernatural being demonstrating his power, and reminding them that eternal bliss is in store for them.

Graham should be ashamed of himself.

Alwyn Edgar

Running Commentary: Peace in our time (1982)

The Running Commentary column from the May 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Peace in our time

Violence, mayhem and murder are essential features of today’s social structure. Yet, we are frequently encouraged to believe that we live in a generally peaceful society which is only spoilt from time to time by erratic outbursts of barbarity. So, while the number of people who perish from starvation is equivalent to one Hiroshima every three days, the picture of the world we receive from, for instance, the newspapers is one in which things are all right except for a “Policeman Killed in Bolton’’ or “Street Disorders in Toxteth”.

By the same token, the propaganda of a groups like the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament is deceptive because it tries to concentrate anxiety and horror of violence solely against particular instruments of violence rather than the reasons for organised violence being used. Even without Pershing missiles, the SS 20’s, Trident and Polaris, society organised on the basis of private property would still be torn with aggression.

Last month the number of people around the world who were involved in wars of the old-fashioned death-producing kind came to about 701,600,000. (Sunday Times, 21/3/82.) This figure represents about one person in six across the face of the globe and embraces forces not all that short of those taking part in the Second World War.

But we are assured by smiling politicians, priests and teachers that we are now enjoying “peacetime”. The figure of over 700 million who are involved in wars is most probably an underestimate, as the Foreign Editor of the Sunday Times observed, ". . . when the battleground is effectively sealed off, as in East Timor, there is always a risk of losing a few tens of thousands through unreported genocide”.

Across the world people are taking part in organised brutality: in Northern Ireland, Afghanistan, the Middle East, the Philippines, Angola, Iraq and Iran, the Spanish Sahara, Kampuchea and Chad. And now, spokesmen for British capitalism like John Nott and Michael Foot (who one Tory MP described as truly “speaking for England” in a recent parliamentary debate on the crisis of the Falkland Islands) are busy stirring up nationalistic sentiments in preparation for the possibility of members of the working class in Britain being ordered to go and murder our counterparts from the Argentine.

For the havoc of war to continue, a majority of people must remain gullible to the fallacious ideas that we are naturally aggressive and that we better our condition by fighting the battles of our rulers. Socialists reject these fallacious beliefs and organise for a society of human cooperation.

A place of his own

Good news for the homeless is that there is a desirable property down in Kent going for a bargain price. It would suit the larger family, whose children are doing fine arts or history at school. Plenty of space for outdoor activities and for leisure time socialising. Sounds good.

Hever Castle, in the lush countryside around Edenbridge, includes 3,145 acres of farms, houses, a pub and woodlands. The Castle itself has an abundance of priceless works of art and historical knick-knacks like a Milanese suit of armour made for Henry II of France, worth about £600,000.

The owner of this lot, Lord Astor of Hever, shrinks from the prospect of developing the “commercial” side of the estate in order to remain solvent. Since 1963 he has graciously allowed workers to pay to shuffle round and admire bits of the estate, which was anyway built from their exploitation. Farther than that he was not prepared to go.

Aristocrats are, after all, supposed to be above such sordid worldly preoccupations as making money. “Here 64 years ago I learned to walk. Here too I learned my ABC. Here too are buried my father and mother” lamented Astor to the reporters who hurried down to Hever when the plans for the sale were leaked to the press.

But the Lord is in even worse plight. When Hever is sold he must take refuge at his other home in Scotland. With over 14,000 acres this is even bigger than Hever but the house has dry rot and in April it was still snowing there.

Workers who are thinking about making a mortgage application to buy Hever had better check on the price. So had those who feel sorry for the homeless Lord Astor. Including the contents, the place is likely to go for about £14 million. And that’s a bargain price. The estate agents have not evaluated the misery and stress of the exploitation which went into every square inch of it.

Cleric’s tale

Who noticed that Billy Graham—who prefers to be known as Doctor Billy—has recently been over here on another crusade to convert us all to religion? Gone are the days of overkill publicity and mass hysteria in his meetings. Now our Billy is just another god-banger trying to smooth over the inconsistencies in his propaganda.

Interviewed on the Radio 4 programme Sunday a couple of days before the start of this latest campaign, Graham tried sweatily to unhitch himself from the “Moral Majority” movement, saying that it is not a religious organisation but a political one. He also said that “Moral Majority” accepts people who are not necessarily Christians—some Jews, even atheists.

Well most of the spokesmen for “Moral Majority” claim to be Christians—Born Again Christians, no less—and in 1980 were strong supporters of Ronald Reagan (who also thinks he’s born again, which must be nice for everyone). Perhaps this association with an increasingly unpopular president is what Graham is really trying to separate himself from.

Graham gloomily forecast a nuclear catastrophe in as little as five years, unless the nations of capitalism (which is not how he put it) lay down their nuclear weapons. During his thirty-odd years as an evangelist nuclear weapons have increased vastly in number and power of destruction. Yet Graham has been silent on the matter, except to hint that American nuclear weapons were not too bad because they kept at bay the evils of “communism”—by which he means the Russian bloc of capitalist powers. Has born-again-Billy had a change of heart, then? We’ve got five years to find out.

On the same day that Graham was being interviewed, another—but rather different—cleric was having his say on television. Don Cupitt, author of Taking Leave of God, is no pulpit-pounding believer in the divinity of Christ, the infallibility of the bible or of life after death. That doesn’t leave much for him to believe in; Cupitt manages it by accepting most of the advances of scientific knowledge into areas formerly explained in religious terms and then re-organising his faith to fit in with what’s left. And that amounts to little more than an indwelling concept of god and a selection of quotes attributed to Jesus as “a guide for living”.

Clearly, Cupitt and Graham have a theological difference, which shows up as a choice between stubbornly holding fast to discredited ideas—and so becoming even more alienated from people at the intellectual sharp end of capitalist society—or of altering basic religious concepts to the point at which they virtually disappear. And that shows up that religion, whether of the conservative-born-again, or the swinging age of technology, variety is a denial of reality and a hindrance to anyone concerned with building a better world out of that reality.

News From Wales (1961)

From the August 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

The principality continues to provide events and talking points for that section of its people (alas, still the great majority) who see no further than the day to day controversies of those personalities and organisations whose business is to carry out the function of maintaining capitalism. The unimportance and—in some cases—the absurdities associated with the comings and goings of the various individuals who make up our Council Chambers can only be appreciated by the Socialists among us who are still much too few to have an effective voice in affairs.

Pride of place must be accorded to the local elections. The usual candidates representing the usual parties, with one or two exceptions, took the field. Labour managed to attract a good deal of support especially in industrial areas though, in rural areas mainly, the Independent and Welsh Nationalists got a fair number of votes. In the Llanelly area the Welsh Nationalist candidate made great play in his election address on the question of local rates and “abuse” of public funds. The Swansea branch SPGB made a fairly detailed statement on the question of the effect of bigger or smaller rates and tax demands and challenged the participating candidates to show how the raising or lowering of rates and taxes, etc., in any way affected the working class. The challenge was met with a blank silence.

Another point of discussion has been well aired recently, namely, the question of Sunday Opening. Despite the virulent attacks of various religious organizations, the position appears to be well on its way to a final solution—the possibilities being that in the none too distant future one will be able to have a pint of one's favourite on a Sunday. Socialists again see this question in its true perspective and only point out that the “new freedom” when it comes may be such that pub managers and servers, etc., may have to forego a day off. Naturally such workers may be prepared, like so many more, to sacrifice more and more leisure for more and more money in order to catch up with more and more living costs.

The Report of the Committee on the Re-distribution of Boundaries, etc., has created quite a stir. Roughly, the Welsh Counties are to be amalgamated to form five large counties which will presumably cut down costs in administration, Glamorgan being the exception. This again is an example of fiddling with trivialities.

What has concerned many of the steel and tin-plate workers of the Swansea and Llanelly areas recently was the “Lock-Out" that took place at two of the Steel Co.’s of Wales strip mills. Briefly, sales in tinplate have been falling off, with increases in stocks as a result. This forced the Company to reduce the working hours with a resultant loss in wages for the workers. . The workers' reply to this has been to operate a “go slow” policy which resulted in the Company closing the factory gates. Now, however, the workers, through their Unions, have informed the Company that “We are prepared to work immediately they call us in.” It should be perfectly plain to the workers now that not being owners of the means of production, they have no right to work or be on the premises unless they are wanted. The law, of course, would, if necessary, have fully supported the Company.

We were also to have been treated to a visit from “God Incorporated,” the Billy Graham menagerie. Billy, it seems, was taken ill, but the meeting took place despite this and attracted over 30,000 delirious hymn-singing workers. Some scenes bordered on fanaticism. It may be significant to note, lest one becomes too despairing over the scene of 30,000 workers chanting for “pie in the sky” while the Steel Company locks them out, that a report in the Western Mail points out that more and more churches in South Wales are closing down and that there is a shortage of young blood entering the Ministry.

Perhaps we shall be in a position to report in a short while on the German Panzer troops in Pembrokeshire. In the meantime, the invasion has not yet been fully arranged. When it has been then the Welsh contingent of the Polaris army at Holy Loch and elsewhere can “fight” nearer home. As for Socialists in Wales, we try to reach the brains of our fellow workers with all the means at our disposal.

W. Brain

The power of unreason (1997)

From the December 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Why has irrationality become so powerful an urge at this stage of capitalist development?

Where I live there’s been a noticeable growth of charity shops in town, a more reliable sign of the times, we suppose, than what the politicians tell us. One shop is selling Billy Graham tapes for 30p. My mate buys one (to record over). Then:

“So you like Billy Graham?" His eyes are on full beam.

“Er ... he’s all right like ... I mean, yeah." Nervously my mate coughs, transfixed by those eyes, unable to escape, unable to admit the real reason he’s buying a cheap tape.

“He’s wonderful, you know. I found Jesus through him. We all did. Do you believe in our Lord Jesus?”

"Well er ... no, not exactly ...” 

“You will when you’ve heard that. Here, have a leaflet. Take another. Jesus loves you."

He laughs confidently, as do the rest of the staff. Billy has changed all their lives. My mate backs his way out of the shop, making ingratiating noises. The stare never leaves him. Hugely discomfited, like a bird after a near- miss with a tarantula.Why is irrational faith so hypnotic? Why do religious people always cause such acute embarrassment while remaining immune to it themselves? Why is Unreason such a powerful force? A picture emerges: the Christian as ideological terminator, Cliff Richard with an Uzi. You can’t stop them, you can’t argue with them. You just better run.

Speaking of Terminators, I’ve been reading about "technofear" in the weekend rag. Lots of guff about humans turning into machines. Are machines taking over? Is it science fiction or fact? Readawlabahtit!!! What bollocks. If they did, they wouldn’t be so stupid as to operate a system of artificial shortage, would they? If humans learned a thing or two about reason and logic it would be a bloody good thing in my view. In fact, if the world was run by a pinball machine I shouldn’t think anybody would be any the wiser.

Of course technofear exists. Everyone is terrified these computers are going to do us out of gainful employment. Eventually this might well be the case. So-called "expert systems" are a serious attempt to replicate all the diagnostic and prescriptive abilities of a human expert, without his or her irritating tendency to take weekends off, get ill, go on strike or die. Programmers in the trade are expressing considerable surprise at the unenthusiastic response of the human experts whose brains they wish to pick. Some experts have displayed open hostility to the new technology. Next it’ll be sabotage. The programmers are bemused by ail this lack of co-operation. Why don’t these people want to have their expertise enshrined on disk? Why won’t they let us build machines to replace them? They scratch their heads and mutter words like “Luddite” to each other

This is a sorry case of what happens to some people when they overspecialise, I reckon. The programmers have forgotten the plot. Somewhere behind the loops of an algorithm Planet Earth recedes further and further form their view. Finally the light at the end of their tunnel vision goes out.

Capitalism is logical! (erm ...)

But is it just a case of a few techies doing us all out of a job? I think there’s more to this technofear than that. I think people are afraid of science and reason because they are the gods of the modern age and just look what a mess the modern age is in. In this society, people are increasingly afraid of the internal logic of the system. Because it leads to more pollution, closed wards, less freedom and less security. But this is logic built on sand. If there are wars, it is logical to build weapons. Capitalism proceeds therefore to build weapons. It follows its own logical architecture. It never questions its own foundations, however. War is not logical, but nobody has noticed. It is also possible to build a perfectly logical case that people should starve, if you accept the premise that it is all right for individuals to own food that other people need. That is what our society is faced with. Humans are starving. Capitalism is following the correct logical route. So it must be logic that has brought about this disaster. People are frightened of reason itself because they know from experience that reason levels cities and reason breaks hearts and reason always has really convincing reasons for it all.

In the circumstances, reason begins to look like the poisoned chalice. Religion—a state of benign Unreason—profits from this.There is a powerful sense that Chaos would have been better than the "Order" our logic has created. It is better to believe without evidence, because the evidence points to terror.

Or maybe our culture is at bottom genuinely frightened of logic. Anticipating that we will lose our title of Most Intelligent Species to the incipient binary hordes, we fall back on that ragged and bullet-riddled flag of distinction, the human “spirit”. Not having the faintest idea what a “spirit” is exactly, we only know that machines haven’t got one, so at least we can still crow about being special. We then blithely make a fetish of our own ability to think irrationally, as if this was somehow what made us great in the first place. Besides, illogic is more appealing to our prejudices, given that logic can often take you where you don’t want to go.

And isn’t this irrational flag-waving spirit-soaked species just painfully aware of what a disaster their society is? Doesn’t every newspaper broadcast endless proof of that? Like a supremely bad planetary manager, aren't we convinced that at any moment someone or something is going to come along and give us the sack, and that we deserve it? Underneath it all, everybody knows what a rational intelligence would do about the absolute capitalist system, but nobody wants to admit it.

So why is irrationality so powerful an urge? Perhaps it is nothing but our emotional swell, our hearts beating against our minds, that other force in us which is young as a child and older than all reasoning. The human race is still in the dark and in the dark ages, struggling with its shaky mastery over the planet, an unaccomplished student in the school of thought which it has built for itself. It is now at a desperate stage where it begins to suspect that its skill and cleverness have carried it too far, over the edge and into the abyss. It turns its fear and rage on the rationality that brought it to the very ledge where it now teeters. It’s as if, to recall the myth of Prometheus, we have decided that Prometheus was wrong and Zeus was right. Science has betrayed us, cries a voice in our heads, we should have remained ignorant! So the gift of Prometheus is flung back in his face by people tired of being scorched.

And yet socialists get tired of such knee-jerk anti-rationality. Unreason burned science at the stake for stating the obvious again and again. Nowadays, unable to summon up on demand an auto-da-fe to broil our uncomfortable knowledge, we seem to have buried our heads in “individualism" and telly soaps to avoid thinking at all. Rooted to the spot, like rabbit before the headlights or my mate before the Christian, we stare uncomprehendingly at the chaos bearing down on us, and blame ourselves for its design and manufacture.

We have just missed the whole point of knowledge, that’s all. When Prometheus gave us the fire of reason he neglected to mention that we should never allow it to become the private property of a few “specialists". Private ownership of knowledge is like private ownership of food—it is the conversion of a tool into a weapon, and now that the world is empty of tools and stuffed with weapons we cannot be surprised at people’s wholesale retreat into never-never land, where the bad guys (supposedly) can’t get them. In the world of capitalism, illogic is for many the logical response.

Paddy Shannon