Intelligence and equality (1982)

From the September 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialism is all about equality, but that does not mean that everyone will look alike, dress alike, live in similar homes, have the same interests, behave more or less the same. It does mean a society where everyone will have equal access to everything that is produced. Production in abundance is a prerequisite of socialist society, long since made possible by capitalism’s technological advances.

Sexual reproduction enables an unending variety of possible combinations of genes. It is estimated that each individual is capable of reproducing 8 million different germ cells which, when combined at fertilisation. gives a possibility of 60 billion different offspring. Given such a variety, how can it be argued that people can be "made equal”?

But what about the question of whether mental abilities are inherited? It could be argued that if "intelligence” is largely genetically determined, gifted people would always stand a better chance of ensuring a more comfortable life-style for themselves, provided that "intelligence” is well rewarded by society. But what is "intelligence"? The following quotation from Elements of Psychology, by Krech. Crutchfield and Livson, leaves us no wiser:

Intelligence is a concept variously used and variously defined. Some people define it as the ability to adapt to new circumstances, others as the ability to learn and still others as the capacity to deal with complex and abstract material. . .

Do people possess a greater share of wealth or a better standard of living because of superior mental abilities? Let us disregard the 10 per cent of the population who do not have to work because they own the means of living. This is a straightforward transfer of capital from parents to children; clearly, if these children were imbecilic they would still get their inheritance. It is within the other class—the 90 per cent who have to work in order to live—that some researchers feel they have found evidence to suggest that intelligence is largely hereditary.

IQ Tests

Tests to measure innate "intelligence quotients" were developed by the Frenchman Alfred Binct at the beginning of this century, for the purpose of detecting mentally “subnormal” school children. The formula for IQ is a person’s mental age divided by his chronological age multiplied by 100. If a child is at the average level expected of his age group he will have an IQ of 100. It was soon found that a person’s mental development stagnated at the age of about 15, so an adjustment was needed to this formula thereafter.

IQ tests were administered on a large scale in America before the First World War, supposedly to measure the recruits’ innate mental abilities and assign suitable candidates to officer jobs. These first tests were very crude indeed and looking at them now it is hard to believe that scholars could have seriously considered using them, or have granted credibility to their results. But they did; and some astonishing conclusions were drawn, such as that the average American had a mental age of 13, which was considered just above the level of moronity.

R. M. Yerkes, a Professor of Psychology, presided over the administration of IQ tests to 1.75 million recruits during the First World War. The tests were often worked out by people already in eugenic societies with definite biases towards "Nordics” and the upper strata of American society. The academic reports and recommendations of these mental testers were as nauseating as any of the propaganda put out by the Nazis in Germany. These are some of the views of Dr. Arthur Sweeney, in Mental Test for Immigrants, which were made part of the appendix to the hearings of the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalisation on 24 January, 1923:

psychological tests . . . have furnished us with the necessary yardstick . . . The Army tests . . . revealed the intellectual endowment of the men . . . The tests are equally applicable to immigrants . . . All that is required is a staff of two trained psychologists at each port. . . We cannot be seriously opposed to immigrants from Great Britain. Holland, Canada. Germany. Denmark, and Scandinavia . . .We can, however, strenuously object to immigration from Italy, Russia. Poland, Greece, Turkey. The Slavic and Latin countries show a marked contrast in intelligence with the western and northern European group. . . One cannot recognise the high-grade imbecile at sight. . .

They think with the spinal cord rather than the brain . . . The necessity of providing for the future does not stimulate them to continuous labour . . . Being constitutionally inferior they are necessarily socially inadequate . . . Education can be received only by those who have intelligence to receive it. It does not create intelligence. That is what one is born with . . . The D minus group cannot go beyond the second grade . . . we shall degenerate to the level of the Slav and Latin races . . . pauperism, crime, sex offences, and dependency . . . guided by a mind scarcely superior to the ox. . .

We must protect ourselves against the degenerate horde . . . We must view the immigration problem from a new angle . . . We must apply ourselves to the task with the new weapons of science . . . the perfect weapons formed for us by science . . . it is now as easy to calculate one’s mental equipment as it is to measure his height and weight. The examination of over 2,000,000 recruits has tested and verified this standard . . . this new method . . . will enable us to select those who are worthy and reject those who are worthless.

Literate recruits were given what was called the Army Alpha, illiterates the Army Beta. The Beta was supposed to be "fair" to illiterate immigrants unused to American habits and frames of reference. In reality these were culture biased, as borne out by the fact that the average score of immigrants on IQ tests increased markedly with the duration of their residence in America. This fact was conveniently overlooked by the mental testers. Also, contrary to the statement that "education does not create intelligence", it turned out that the average mental age of American recruits during the Second World War showed a considerable increase on the average for those in World War One — the World War Two recruits had been much better educated.

The following is an example of the type of multiple-choice test given to recent immigrants with an inadequate grasp of the English language and little or no knowledge of American culture:

Crisco is a: patent medicine, disinfectant, toothpaste, food product 

The number of a Kaffir's legs is: 2,4,6,8 

Christy Mathewson is famous as a: writer, artist, baseball player, comedian

Or consider the Alpha analogy: Washington is to Adams as first is to. . . Considering the cultural bias of these tests, it is not surprising that immigrant groups least familiar with American culture and the English language scored low on the IQ charts.

Apart from being racist, in favour of "North Europeans", the tests were also used to explain differences of wealth in terms of "superior" and "inferior" genes. The argument in the following excerpt is still commonly heard today:

These men in their ultra altruistic and humane attitude, their desire to be fair to the workman, maintain that the great inequalities in social life are wrong and unjust. For example, here is a man who says, “I am wearing $12.00 shoes, there is a labourer who is wearing $3.00 shoes; why should I spend $12.00 while he can only afford $3.00? I live in a home that is artistically decorated, carpets, high-priced furniture, expensive pictures and other luxuries; there is a labourer that lives in a hovel with no carpets, no pictures, and the coarsest kind of furniture. It is not right, it is unjust". . .As we have said, the argument is fallacious. It assumes that that labourer is on the same mental level with the man who is defending him . . .

Now the fact is. that workman may have a ten year intelligence while you have a twenty. To demand for him such a home as you enjoy is as absurd as it would be to insist that every labourer should receive a graduate fellowship. How can there be such a thing as social equality with this wide range of mental capacity? The different levels of intelligence have different interests and require different treatment to make them happy . . .

As for an equal distribution of the wealth of the world that is equally absurd. The man of intelligence has spent his money wisely, has saved until he has enough to provide for his needs in ease of sickness, while the man of low intelligence, no matter how much money he would have earned, would have spent much of it foolishly and would never have anything ahead . . .

These facts are appreciated. But it is not so fully appreciated that the cause is to be found in the fixed character of mental levels. In our ignorance we have said let us give these people one more chance — always one more chance.

The first IQ tests were structured within the frame of reference of the educated, white city-dweller and therefore would not show up the true abilities of somebody from a different ethnic or social background. They measured a person’s training and the quality of their social environment rather than potential ability. A great deal of work has since gone into making IQ tests as “culture-fair" as possible, although this cannot be completely successful as long as social distinctions prevail; for example it would be possible to compare blacks and whites from a strictly “professional" background only, but even “professional” blacks would have experienced colour prejudice and a higher percentage of them would probably have come from a relatively poor family background—two environmental factors which would influence their IQ scores.

Twin research

Identical twins have been used as test objects to prove once and for all which factor plays a greater role in the determination of intelligence—environment or heredity. Identical twins are the result of one fertilised egg dividing to produce two individuals with exactly the same genetic make-up. Fraternal twins—two egg cells fertilised by two sperm cells—have also been used in kinship related intelligence studies, although these twins would be no more alike than ordinary brothers and sisters.

At first sight, some of the studies performed with identical twins reared apart seem to provide strong evidence that heredity is the determining factor in mental abilities. Correlations varying between .7 and .9 for identical twins reared together and apart have been quoted in various studies (total correlation being set at 1.0). However, these figures are questioned by L. J. Kamin in his book The Science and Politics of IQ. After an extensive perusal of primary sources, he challenges the validity of famous twin studies, like the Shield study and the Juel-Nielscn study.

Kamin's objections can be summarised as follows. Firstly, the researchers were politically biased—they probably expected to find that their interpretation of intelligence increased with social status. This may have influenced the nature and administration of the tests as well as the interpretation of data. Secondly, the competence of some of the mental testers is questioned; for instance, interpretations of IQ were accepted from vicars who, in the course of their duties, would administer “concealed" IQ tests to London grandparents. Thirdly, twins reared apart were not, as often claimed, placed arbitrarily in totally different environments. It appeared that a large proportion of the separated twins were reared by relatives of more or less the same social standing. Fourthly, Kamin questions the methods and accuracy of the calculations used in arriving at the various correlations.

And lastly, he questions the reliability of secondary sources. Many famous writers on the social implications of the heritabilty of intelligence would pick out and quote those studied which agreed with their own point of view and leave out others reaching opposite conclusions. It seems then that as yet no reliable scientific evidence exists to enable anybody to claim that intelligence is genetically determined. However, it is known for certain that some illnesses resulting in subnormal mental abilities are hereditary—like trisomy-21 mental deficiency.

One programme in a recent BBC series on education in Britain examined the effects of young people's backgrounds on their scholastic performance and job expectations. A familiar trend showed up: students at universities still come mainly from “professional" families, while children of the unskilled still do not on the whole expect to take up academic careers. All this in spite of the observations of the makers of the series, who compared young children in a wealthy area of Surrey and a deprived slum area in Liverpool. The tiny tots in Liverpool seemed just as bright and lively as the Surrey children; however, with time the majority of the Liverpool youngsters would probably end up in unskilled jobs or on the dole, whereas the youngsters in Surrey would most likely end up in the more comfortable end of capitalist exploitation.

Some might argue that mental abilities exceptionally above or below average are inherited. But for the large majority it seems more likely that their scholastic performance is profoundly affected by their family background. If a person has had the optimum attention, stimulation and care from the new-born stage onwards, plus very good material conditions, this is bound to have a positive effect on their achievements in school. 

We are presently living in a social system, capitalism, which depends on an appalling waste of human abilities. Extreme poverty results in mass starvation. Malnutrition, if it does not result in death, often cripples brain capacity for life. In this part of the world, less extreme poverty still ensures that large numbers of people grow up in deprivation, non-expectation and obedience to the system and its various leaders—clergymen, politicians, royalty— who reinforce the idea that the majority of us are not "intelligent" enough to deserve a better existence.

Torgun Østenseth

Sources: 

"A nation of morons”, article in the New Scientist, 6 May 1982.

L. J. Kamin, The Science and Politics of I.Q. 

David Krech. Richard S. Crutchfield and Norman Livson, Elements of Psychology.

Material World: A history of inequality (2025)

The Material World Column from the November 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Thomas Piketty is an academic who specialises in the study of economic inequality and has written a number of books on the subject, the most well-known of which is the 700-page tome Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2013), which we reviewed in 2014. The most recent is A Brief History of Equality which first came out in French in 2021. Based on historical records such as the archives of legacies, property transactions and tax returns, Piketty identifies a trend since the beginning of the 19th century towards less inequality in wealth ownership, income, and access to education, health care and better-paid jobs. Describing himself as a socialist but in the gradualist, reformist tradition, he believes this can continue and lead to ‘a systemic transformation of capitalism’.

On wealth ownership, he takes as a measure of inequality the proportion of wealth owned by the top one percent compared with that of the bottom 50 percent. The figures for all forms of property are:

‘The wealthiest 1 percent held about 45 percent of total property in France in 1810, and about 55 percent of the total in 1910 …. Then, in the course of the twentieth century, we observe a very strong deconcentration of fortunes: in the whole of France, the richest 1 percent’s share fell from 55 percent in 1914 to less than 20 percent at the beginning of the 1980s, before beginning a slow increase; in 2020, that share was nearly 25 percent’.

But ‘this did not benefit much the poorest 50 percent, whose share rose from 2 percent in 1910 to 6 percent in 2020’ and ‘the richest 1 percent’s share of total private property is currently two times smaller than it was a century ago, but it still remains on the order of five times larger than the share held by the poorest 50 percent’.

The beneficiaries have been the middle 40 percent between the top 10 percent and the bottom 50 percent who Piketty calls the ‘patrimonial middle class’. Their wealth he finds is ‘held mainly in housing’. In fact, the monetary value of housing represents about half of that of all privately-owned wealth. The figures for the ownership of all wealth are interesting but the relevant one for socialists is the one for the ownership of means of production. Piketty usefully defines means of production as ‘all the goods necessary to produce other goods and services’ (‘agricultural land and equipment, factories and machinery, offices and computers, shops and restaurants, salary advances and working capital’). He doesn’t produce figures for this but says that ownership of these is more concentrated than for all wealth. But there is a table which shows that:

‘In France in 2020 (as in all countries for which such data are available), small fortunes are composed principally of cash and bank deposits, middle-sized fortunes of real estate, and large fortunes of financial assets (especially stocks)’.

It cannot be denied that the middle 40 percent — the vast majority of whom are members of the working class properly defined — have benefited, but this doesn’t mean that this group is not dependent, like the rest of the working class in the bottom 50 percent, on having to sell their ability to work in order to buy what they need to live. If they lose their job, they can survive for longer before they become destitute, perhaps a year or so after selling their house. But it does mean that we socialists should be careful when we say the working class is ‘propertyless’. We don’t mean that they literally own nothing but that they don’t own means of production.

There has also been a reduction in inequality of access to education and health care. But this can’t be seen as anti-capitalist, as a better educated and more healthy workforce became necessary as production methods became more complex. As Piketty himself points out:

‘During the second Industrial Revolution [chemicals, electricity, the car industry, household goods], it became essential that an increasingly large part of the labour force be capable of mastering manufacturing processes that required technical and digital education, and the ability to understand detailed equipment manuals’.

Nor is the lessening of discrimination over job opportunities for women and minorities incompatible with capitalism. Capitalism could cope with the abolition of discrimination and even benefit from it by being able to draw on a wider pool of trainable and competent workers.

As a gradualist, Piketty would like to see what he calls ‘the march towards equality’ continue and completely ‘transform capitalism’. Besides steep taxes on wealth and inheritance, he envisages changing company law to allow for more employee participation in decision-making and for a proportion of profits to be set aside for spending to benefit workers. Neither of these will change the workings of capitalism as an economic system which imposes on those who make decisions about production that the priority be making a profit. Widening the circle of those who make such decisions won’t alter this; even worker cooperatives have to obey capitalism’s basic economic law of ‘no profit, no production’. And, of course, from time to time companies go bust and there are no profits to set aside.

He also proposes a scheme to give everyone at age 25 a minimum inheritance equal to 60 percent of average wealth per adult (which is France in 2020 would have been about 120,000 euros, or about £105,000; more today of course). The aim, he says, would be to ‘increase the negotiating power of everyone who owns almost nothing (that is, about half the population)’:

‘Recipients could reject certain job offers, buy an apartment, engage in a personal project, or create a small business. This freedom, which is certain to delight some, may well frighten employers and property owners’.

Which, apart from the cost, is precisely why it will never happen; it would undermine the wages system by putting workers in a stronger bargaining position with employers and enable them to extract a higher wage, meaning less profits. It is rather surprising that anyone should seriously imagine that the capitalist state could be made to give half the working class a lump sum of at least £105k. In any event, such a redistribution of wealth would not affect the unequal ownership of means of production.

In short, the trend since 1800 towards less inequality has not undermined the basis of capitalism. Even less has it been an ongoing slow, gradual transition towards socialism. Not that socialism is a society with a more equal distribution of wealth. Its basis is the common ownership of the means of production which will allow everyone access on equal terms to education, health care, work and what they need to live.

Adam Buick

Reformism (2025)

Book Review from the October 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Equality. What It Means and Why It Matters By Thomas Piketty and Michael Sandel, Polity, 2025. 119pp.

‘‘Why should a hedge fund manager make 5,000 times more than a teacher or nurse, or for that matter a physician?’ (Michael Sandel)

This short book is the record of a public discussion between two well-known ‘left’ academics. Social and economic historian Piketty is author of the much discussed Capital in the Twenty-First Century (see review in this journal), while Sandel is a prominent ‘public intellectual’, who has written books on what may broadly be called political philosophy. The book is divided into a number of chapters with titles such as ‘Why Worry About Inequality?’, ‘Should Money Matter Less?’, ‘The Moral Limits of Markets’, ‘Globalization and Populism’, ‘Meritocracy’, ‘Borders, Migration and Social Change’ and ‘The Future of the Left: Economics and Identity’.

Though presented as a kind of debate, both participants tend to agree on most things. In particular, they both seem convinced that the current social and economic system, capitalism, can be reformed in such a way as to make things significantly more ‘equal’ than they are at present. Piketty points to how, over the history of capitalism, vast swathes of people have seen their conditions of life greatly improve. And we can agree: even in the nineteenth century, in the system’s relatively early stages, this is something which Marx, for all his insistence on capitalism’s inevitable inequalities, observed as an ongoing reality. In this connection Piketty mentions, for example, the abolition of slavery, universal suffrage, decolonisation, increasing gender and racial equality, the welfare state, and higher living standards for many.

The way forward from this, according to both discussants, is even greater equality. They do not view this as lying in the ‘neoliberal’ turn capitalism has taken since the 1980s which has seen an increased proportion of total wealth owned and controlled by the richest, but in governments levying swingeing taxation rises on the wealthiest (‘80-90% on income and profits’) and being more active in implementing ‘a fuller development of the welfare state’. This, rather than ‘uncritically embracing the market faith’ as they see recent Western governments as having done, will assure a more equal (or at least less unequal) distribution of wealth and give more people access to the goods and services which will allow them to have comfortable living standards. The aim, Piketty argues, should be an economy that is ‘99% decommodified’, by which he means extensive government ownership and control of the means of living, and one which, Sandel asserts, will also lead to ’greater equality of recognition, honor, dignity and respect’.

It would be churlish not to acknowledge the well-meaning nature of the two commentators’ wish lists, their support, for example, for ‘more investment in health and education, higher progressive taxation, curbing the political power of the rich and the overreach of markets’ (Sandel). Unfortunately, however, these do not stand up to close scrutiny. While capitalism, with its ‘growth at all costs’ compulsion, may continue to improve living standards for many on the planet overall, governments simply cannot create anything resembling equality among those who live under that system, since their prime purpose is to manage it in the overall interest of the minority who monopolise the wealth. Different governments may of course have different approaches to this, in the degree of central control they exercise, for example, but, so long as the overall framework of money, wages and salaries, and buying and selling exists, they will always – and inevitably – find themselves trying to keep afloat a system founded on producing goods and services for a profit.

At one point, one of the discussants (Piketty), who claims to stand for ‘democratic, federalist, and internationalist socialism’, seems to come close to suggesting the society of free access that socialists advocate. He talks about a situation in which ‘99% of goods and services, like education and health, are freely accessible’ and ‘you only have 1% left commodified’, advocating ‘a system outside monetary logic and the profit logic’. Yet he comes out the other end still failing to see beyond a monetary economy, and in the end it becomes clear that what he is hoping for is a form of capitalism with a less unequal distribution of wealth and income and a more extensive welfare state (or ‘social state’, as he calls it) than exists at present. It also becomes clear, in the end, that the discussion between the two figures is one about old-fashioned reformism, about the extent to which it is possible for capitalism to ‘narrow’ the pay gap between one worker and another and the wealth gap between workers and capitalists. It is not about achieving the absolute economic equality that will characterise a society of voluntary cooperation and free access to all goods and services – the society of the future that we call socialism.

Howard Moss

. . . . Begger Man, Thief (1948)

From the August 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

As a well known spokesman of the Tory section of the British Capitalist Class, G. L. Schwartz seems to write the most incredible nonsense, especially when he gets on the subject of economics in his article, “Rich Man, Poor Man.” (Sunday Times, May 30th, 1948.) He is twitting the Labour Government for their caution in lifting controls, and says

“A thing is in short supply unless it is in absolute abundance like fresh air in the open or salt water at the sea shore. There is, a simple test, Has it a price? If it has a price even of one farthing per unit, there is a shortage.”

So presumably he is telling us that the Capitalist class put a price on commodities only when there are not enough of them to satisfy everybody’s needs. We rather wonder why capitalists have been known to burn tons of wheat, and dump other unsaleable, commodities into the sea, not because these goods had no price, but simply because the price was not high enough for them to realise their profits. Since these goods had a price they must have been in short supply, according to Mr. Schwartz’s theory—and yet they were dumped! Mr. Schwartz mentions two things, which are absolutely free—fresh air and salt water; we have an uncomfortable feeling that if it were at all possible to commercialise them, these too would have their price—after all if a man’s potential energies can be given a price why not?

It is however rather comforting when one is feeling weak at the knees about the task of converting the world’s millions to Socialism, to find Mr. Schwartz putting over a point which the Socialist Party is always making. Supporters of the capitalist class are fond of telling us that Socialism won’t work, because human nature being what it is, certain greedy people would not be content with taking just what they need, but would proceed to grab as much as possible, and here is one of their own spokesmen making the point for us : He says,

“Gloves and ties are coming off the ration. They are still in ‘short’ supply for they still have price tags. Now let’s see if the rich buy up the whole lot, Here’s a chance for my Lord Croesus to fit glass cases in his bedroom, and collect ties by the thousands including first editions.”

True he is only making a point for the capitalists’ pet squabble at the moment about which controls to lift, but you see even capitalists (known to be the greediest specie) can only wear one tie, and one pair of gloves at a time. Mr. Schwartz also has a very queer idea about equality. He tells us a little story. About 50 years ago he used to get a penny a week pocket money, and the grocer’s son got tuppence. Well he so hated this inequality that he knocked all the boy’s sweets out of his hand into the gutter. He speaks of this as his “early essay in equalitarianism” of which apparently he is rather ashamed ; but he comforts himself by saying that he might have been in the present Cabinet if instead of sublimating his inhibition he had bottled it up until it was sour. Well this is not even the Labour government’s idea of equality. Their idea is not to knock the sweets right out of the hands of the owning class but merely to abstract a few (just a very few, mind) and pour them into the hands of the very poor. As far as we are concerned in a Socialist system someone will not come, along and say “Here’s two for you and two for you and two for you !” This is not equality—it is absurdity. Under Socialism each shall have according to his needs, be it one or two or three or more, and despite what Mr. Schwartz says about a perpetual shortage, there could he enough and to spare even now, and still more reason to suppose there will he under Socialism, when everybody capable of it is doing a useful job of work instead of a large proportion of them doing useless jobs like ticket collecting, rent collecting —and peddling false notions of economics in Sunday newspapers.

E.D.

Hypocrisy about ‘rights’ (2025)

From the July 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) recently moved to secure a High Court injunction banning peaceful protest outside its Vauxhall offices. The aim was clear, to halt a Trans Kids Deserve Better protest encampment calling out the Commission’s anti-trans guidance. Instead, the court firmly rejected the move.

On 3 June 2025, Justice Sheldon dismissed the application, stating the EHRC’s landlord failed to prove a ‘strong probability’ of future trespass or encampment. Campaigners celebrated the decision:

‘Simon Natas of ITN Solicitors, representing campaigners, warned that such so-called “persons unknown” injunctions: “have become increasingly common … their impacts on freedoms of speech and assembly are far-reaching”’.

The EHRC’s website proclaims that ‘Article 11 protects your right to protest’. Now, as Good Law Project points out:

‘The EHRC was created to protect our rights. Now it’s trying to quash peaceful demonstrations.’ It’s hypocrisy laid bare.

This is arguably alarming given that the protest highlighted the EHRC’s recent interim guidance, issued hastily after the UK Supreme Court’s April ruling defining womanhood and EHRC Commissioner Akua Reindorf’s call for a ‘period of correction’ for trans people, believing they had ‘been misled for years’.

The backlash was immediate: the interim guidance prompted Labour to scrap its national women’s conference for the next two years and extend consultations, forcing the EHRC to delay updates to its code of practice.

Last month, ‘thousands’ rallied in London and Edinburgh to oppose the guidance. In Glasgow, activists scaled the EHRC building, displaying a banner reading ‘End Segregation, Trans Liberation’ — a direct challenge to its policies.

This affair lays bare a telling reality: the EHRC, ostensibly set up to be a rights champion, now resorts to court injunctions to silence criticism, specifically from the trans community. Claims of institutional independence crumble when it attempts to suppress dissent aimed directly at itself.

Rights under capitalism are conditional. The EHRC’s failed injunction is significant, not because it defends protest, but because it pushed legal limits on dissent and lost. Socialists can never trust courts or quangos. Genuine rights including freedom of assembly, equality, and dignity, rest only with mass collective working-class control. The EHRC’s attempt to ban protest is an attack on that principle. Fortunately, this time they failed.

A.T.

Letter: Socialism and “supermen”, (1927)

Letter to the Editors from the December 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard 

A Criticism and our reply. 

The Editor of the Socialist Standard.

Sir,

When reading socialist literature I do not disagree with its claims that capitalism is based upon exploitation. But surely this does not constitute an exception ? It seems to me that all life is one immensity of desire to exploit and attain power and supremacy. Even in the obedience of the slave there is the ceaseless desire to take advantage of any weakness in the master. There is no equality or desire for equality to be found in alert and healthy organisms. But there is youth and decay, triumph and death. And it is when failing powers, frustration and consequently misery are paramount that the sentient creature begins to doubt the wisdom of the warlike nature of existence. It is in this condition that we get the following conceptions : (1) That robbery and exploitation are abominable ; (2) that equality is desirable ; (3) that one should sacrifice for one’s neighbour ; (4) that the base have been chosen to bring to naught the things that are; (5) that in the order of social evolution the emancipation of the slaves will involve the emancipation of all mankind; (6) that all souls are equal before God. Some of these are to be found in Christianity, others in Socialism. It appears to me that there is not a great deal of difference between either, allowing for phraseology and the periods when written. I contend that they are both emanations arising from revolting and submerged peoples or classes who have found means to present their case as if their conceptions and values of existence were worthy objects for all. Thus the vanquished can teach that the highest goodness is to sacrifice for one’s neighbour. This, if successful, would act powerfully in their favour. Or they could teach that democracy and equality are involved in the order of social evolution, and interpret history to that end. Both are ruses of the vanquished designed to turn the tide in their behalf. And both have met with partial success.

For instance there is that phenomena the Christian capitalist, who is a monster of contradiction and falsehood, whose very existence depends upon a mode of conduct that is anti-Christian as well as anti-Socialist. But he is yet Christian enough to will vast sums to succour the miserable and unfortunate of life, he has a conscience that way ; and English philanthropy is perhaps one of the most amazing spectacles in existence. Further, he is democratic enough to enfranchise vast numbers of slaves, etc. That which separates me from Christian, Socialist and modern ideas is that they are wholly or in part attempts to exercise a paralysing effect upon enterprising and thoughtful men under cover of the lie of equality, and they hold up the ideas emanating from decline, envy, resentment and decay as the goal of human well-being and goodness.

The object of the Socialist Party is in opposition to the natural desires of extraordinary men, for they wish to further their ideas regardless of the indifferent and conforming multitude. But Socialism would have it that they must, before embarking on new ideas and therefore on new actions, consult by democratic means the opinion of the majority who are inhospitable to ideas, suspicious of anyone who is different, and who cling tenaciously to a few simple superstitions, hates, aversions and longings—most of them idiotic, and all of them coarse, blunt, cowish and stupid.

I am convinced that new civilisations proceed from the higher levels of the race. They are the work of men of exceptional energy, powers of thought and audacity. Both Socialism and Christianity are attempts to paralyse the free play of these men by means of the belief that the low, the ordinary and wretched have something sacred or worthy in them. At their best they are useful, and cannot be more than that. Socialism is the unification of the belief in the greatest good of the greatest number, government of the people by the people for the people, and similar products “in the interest of the whole community” emanating from mob and slave ideas. I claim that these ideas are opposed to the development of higher men, and therefore of a higher race, which can only proceed from its exceptional individuals who should be above responsibility to the general mass of ordinary men. And if among Socialists there happen to be working men of profound intellectual perceptions, they are surely jumping out of the frying pan into the fire in elevating the common man by means of revolt from below and equal rights for all.—I am, Yours, etc.,

Robert Hart.

Reply to Mr. Hart.

Mr. Hart’s letter consists almost entirely of baseless assumptions for whch he does not attempt to give the slightest evidence.

For instance, he uses the term “equality” on several occasions without defining it, and then tries to fix his term on us. In view of our published attitude in our pamphlet, “Socialism and Religion,” Mr. Hart’s claim that we differ little with the statement that “all souls are equal before God,” is not merely absurd, it is a direct misrepresentation.. Moreover, we do not say that “the emancipation of the slave will involve the emancipation of all mankind,” but that the emancipation of the working class will involve this. The modern working class is a slave class, but it is only one in an historical series. What distinguishes it from previous slave classes in this connection is the fact that it is the last class in the series and there is no class below it. Hence its emancipation must mean the emancipation of humanity as a whole.

Neither does the Socialist talk about or advocate “sacrifice for one’s neighbour.” On the contrary, we distinctly point out that it is to the interest of each member of the working class to do his or her share in bringing about Socialism.

Mr. Hart’s ignorance of even elementary history is shown in his statement that “English philanthropy is perhaps one of the most amazing spectacles in existence.” At base English philanthrophy is no different from any other philanthropy, ancient or modern. The sort of philanthropy Mr. Hart mentions has its roots either in a fear of a hereafter, the belief in a heaven or a hell, or else in a desire to achieve notoriety or fame. There is nothing “amazing” about this.

When Mr. Hart says the object of the Socialist Party is in opposition to the natural ( !) desires of extraordinary men, he merely shows his ignorance of Socialism. Unless the men desire to be “extraordinary” thieves and murderers, there is nothing in Socialism to prevent them furthering their ideas unless this furtherance is to the injury of the community. To-day, so beloved by Mr. Hart, these people can only “further their ideas” if such ideas suit the ruling class. If they do not suit this class, the ideas are crushed at birth.

Mr. Hart summarises his views in the last paragraph of his letter when he says “new civilisations proceed from the higher levels of the race.”What are the “higher levels”? He does not say. Further on we are told that higher development “can only proceed from exceptional individuals who should be above responsibility to the general mass of ordinary men.” How charming! But are these “exceptional individuals” also going to “be above” using the services and abilities of this mass? If not—if, as happens to be the fact, they are utterly dependent upon these abilities of the “general mass,” even for their existence, then on what ground does Mr. Hart claim that the “exceptional individuals” should be above responsibility to those on whom they depend?

Apparently Mr. Hart has been reading some defender of Capitalist robbery, like Mr. Mallock, who argued that the Capitalist was entitled to the wealth he stole from the workers, because of his (the Capitalst’s) “exceptional abilities.” If—and when—Mr. Hart cares to give a little time to the study of historical development, he will find that “new civilisations” proceed from the changes in the material conditions of existence. That this development is due, not to the “higher levels of the race,” but to growth and changes in the instruments of production and distribution. When these 
changes reach a stage where they become fettered and hampered by the then system of Society, a struggle ensues between the class interested in the new forms of production, and the class wishing to retain the old system of Society. From the point of view of social status, the class interested in the
new forms is always a “lower” class, but from the wider point of view of social evolution, it is a “higher” class because it is endeavouring to establish a more developed, and therefore a “higher” system of Society. But these terms “higher” and “lower” are the cant and humbug of a ruling class and its dupes, who use them to try and hide the truth from their victims. Socialism is the next stage in the order of social evoluton, and when the growing knowledge of the working class in the truth of our case is extended over a majority of that class, they will take the necessary steps to establish that system despite all the squeals of the “exceptional individual ” who may try to sweep back the ocean with a broom.

Editorial Committee.

Blogger's Note:

Mr. Hart further replied in the February 1928 issue of the Socialist Standard. 

Between the Lines: Male violence (1993)

The Between the Lines column from the June 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Male violence

Channel Four's Brookside (Mon and Wed 8pm, Fri 8.30pm) has woken from its recent slumbers in a controversial attempt to lift its ratings, now down to little over three million. By introducing the gruesome Trevor Jordache character—a wife beater and child abuser— Brookside has once again set the daytime TV shows a-chattering. And with good reason. Brookside have simply introduced the best (and most original) storyline into a British soap for ages.

The background to the story has been that the Jordache family, of mother and two teenage daughters, had previously been moved to get [away from] husband and father Trevor, convicted of physical assault and sexual abuse. After ferrying them around bedsits for two years, the authorities have now found the Jordaches an inadequate “safe house” on Brookside Close. Unfortunately they have been beset by Trevor's unwelcome attentions once again on his release from prison. Having wiled his way back into the Jordache household with a cry of poverty, the plot has essentially been revolving around Trevor's increasingly hideous behaviour and the plans of the desperate mother and eldest daughter to kill him rather than face his continued assaults—or the alternative of eviction from their new "safe house” on Brookside Close if the authorities find out about Trevor’s return.

The portrayal of this sticky situation has been graphic, bringing into the homes of millions the torment suffered by those women and children with a monster in their midst, a monster mentally equipped for his wrong-doing by a society where sex is cheap and dirty and where violence appears as the "easy” solution to problems. The most interesting aspect of the story is the way in which, beyond the ratings hype, it has illustrated how monumentally badly capitalism copes with the situations it itself has helped create.

Viewers may well ask themselves whether a two-year spell couped up in a dingy prison cell was appropriate for a man whose actions towards those he professes to love have persistently bordered on the pathological. Dealing with any such individuals in a socialist society would not be easy, and no-one pretends it would be, but as Brookside has amply demonstrated, capitalism is at a complete loss, unable to provide the institutional framework to help those individuals who may not be able to help their own actions, let alone provide a situation where mother and children can live in safety and comfort.

Life should never be as brutal as it is for the imaginary Jordaches of Brookside, but unfortunately for thousands of families in the real world of capitalism, it most certainly is.

Female equality

If any show has demonstrated why feminism on its own is not enough it was BBC2’s “Ladies in Lines". Forty Minutes (4 May 9.50pm).This documentary about a platoon of raw female recruits into the Australian army showed why "equality” under capitalism is not generally much of an equality worth having. In this particular instance it was, to be charitable, equal opportunity to be treated like a lump of shit.

The young women involved, arriving with parents, boyfriends and teddybears were subjected to a daily routine that would not have been entirely out of place in a Stalinist labour camp. A quarter of those who started the basic training with the ritual hair-cropping were unable to compile the course and many who did seemed to spend a fair proportion of their time in the charge room, in tears, or both.

Why these individuals should have chosen to enter the army is a tribute to the strength of the society-wide propaganda which eulogizes the virtues of discipline, aggression and competition—supposedly "male values”—above all others. Indeed, virtually all the young women involved testified to an identity crisis. Although they knew they were really women, they were forced to behave as they imagined men behaved.

All in all it proved to be an unedifying sight. Many of the women eventually proved that they could be like male soldiers. but no one, including the women themselves, were really prepared to suggest why this might be a good thing. Beyond correctly identifying the emptiness of the life offered in civvy street, none seemed able to give a credible reason for their presence as women in the army.

In truth, this was not really their fault, as no such reason exists. How on earth can there be a realistic salvation for women under capitalism through simply acting as maniacally as men have so often being trained to behave? Could female soldiers really be the giant step forward for womankind that was implied? Surely not.

As socialists have always suspected, capitalism's reaction to an inequality is invariably to sink those previously at a more humane level to a more barbaric one. thereby giving the appearance of evening things out a bit. Across the world capitalism’s tendency has been to barbarise those who are most vulnerable to its unyielding propaganda, and the "ladies in lines" were as good an example of this as is possible to get.

Dave Perrin

Identity and the politics of scarcity (2021)

From the October 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

We are living in a society which even its supporters admit is based on ‘scarcity’ even if their definition of scarcity is rather eccentric (the absence of ‘sheer abundance’, as their economics textbooks define it). Scarcity does exist in the normal sense in that not enough is being produced of the things, services and amenities that people need to lead a healthy and satisfying life.

It is a society of artificial scarcity as far as the vast majority is concerned. Society has the means to produce enough for all, in fact more than enough. Enough food, decent housing, a good all-round education, a good health service. Enough for everybody could be produced but isn’t and can’t be as it’s not profitable. So, people are put in a position of having to compete for what there is; and where the rule is that the more money you have the more (and better) you get. People are in effect rationed by the amount of money they have or can get. For most people there is not much choice about this. To get money, you can beg, steal or work for an employer. Working for wages is the basic way most people get the money to buy what they need. But it means that what people can get is rationed by what they are paid.

You can get together with others to try to get a better deal. Socialists have always argued that all those who have to work for wages should join together to get as much as they can and eventually as a class – the appropriately named ‘working class’ – to get rid of the present competitive economic system and replace it with one organised on the basis of the common ownership of productive resources.

Unfortunately, this hasn’t got very far, and has never even been attempted, apart from ill-conceived and misnamed projects such as in Russia and by Labour governments, which failed. Partly because of these failures people, including activists, have come to think and act as if there is no alternative to the present system, and that the most that can be done is to get a better deal within the system, whether as an individual (or family) or as a member of some group other than as an economic class.

As a result, practical politics is ‘scarcity politics’ where individuals and groups compete to get the most they can out of what has been made available. Identity politicians seek to create a new grouping and work to organise their target group as another competing unit. This brings them into conflict with socialists who want all workers, including those in the targeted groups, to organise on a class basis. The identity politicians, if they succeed, will only make a bad situation worse by further dividing people, splitting them into more competing groups than there currently are.

Legitimate grievances

Having said that, the targeted groups generally have a legitimate grievance – they have and still do suffer discrimination purely on the basis of being who they are. The demand to be considered of equal worth, with the same treatment, as any other human being is a perfectly legitimate demand which socialists endorse and practise. There should be no discrimination against anyone on the basis of gender, skin colour, language or even religion. Every human being, whoever they are, is of equal worth and should be treated as such.

‘Black Lives Matter’ is a good example. This slogan is an elementary declaration that all lives are of equal worth. But then the question arises of how to put this into practice. Most countries (with the notable exceptions of those that practise sharia law) recognise the legal equality of men and women. In Britain there is complete legal equality between them and in fact between ‘whites’ and, to borrow a term from apartheid-era South Africa, ‘non-whites’. The only people living here who suffer from legal disabilities are non-citizens (a reminder that so-called ‘nations’ are identity groups too).

Legal equality, though important, does not end other forms of unequal treatment that arise from being poor and its consequences in terms of worse housing, worse education, worse health and inferior health care. This is where the identity politician jumps up and adds extra demands to the simple demand for respect and equal consideration such as the ‘Black Lives Matter’ slogan. They demand more money be allocated to their target group to improve housing, education and health care services for its members.

The trouble is that, in the context of the politics of scarcity, this will tend to be at the expense of other groups. Capitalist states only spend on social reforms that improve people’s lot if there is also some benefit to the capitalist interest in terms, for instance, of a more educated or fitter workforce. Even then the amount they spend is limited – since they have to pay for these through taxes that fall, directly or indirectly, on their profits. Spending too much undermines their competitiveness and the whole profit motive that drives the system. So artificial scarcity is never going to be ended under capitalism. It can’t be as it’s built into the system.

Zero-sum game

That we are dealing with a more or less zero-sum situation is explicitly recognised when claims for ‘quotas’ and ‘positive discrimination’ are raised. Here, more for one group means less for some other group. What is that other group expected to do? Given that neither group sees any alternative to the present system and accepts that the only politics is the politics of scarcity, they are not going to accept this lying down but will push back and resist, to try to keep what they’ve got (or think they’ve got). Identity politics on one side encourages identity politics on another, making the overall political situation worse.

In some cases this is deliberate, as with racists and nativists, but also those who talk of ‘white privilege’ which implies that all whites have an unfair privilege which should be taken away. The result is that the basic conflict in society is seen as a scramble between different identity groups rather than between those who monopolise the means of life and the excluded majority forced to work for wages.

In-system activists

Peter Joseph of Zeitgeist has coined a useful term to describe the well-meaning people who seek a solution to discrimination and poverty within the present system of artificial scarcity – ‘in-system activists’. But what do they envisage as success? If they reject, either explicitly or in practice, a different system of society (common not class ownership, production for needs not profit), what will things be like if they achieve their aim of eliminating any discrimination against their own target group within capitalism?

Logically this could mean, for instance, governments, parliaments, boards of directors, even the top military brass, composed of 50 percent women and 50 percent men. Or that the percentage of university students from their target group be exactly equal to their percentage in the general population. From the opposite angle, that the same percentage of the majority population should be living in bad housing or in poverty or in prison as their percentage in the population. If that’s 90 percent then 90 percent of those in bad housing, poverty or prison should be from the majority group instead of whatever lesser figure it is now. A redistribution of poverty to benefit the target group. That’s not going to get them very far.

In-system activists may regard this as a caricature of their position but it is a logical conclusion that stems from them trying to obtain more for a particular group within the context of artificial scarcity. They may protest that what they want is more resources to be devoted to improving all sections of the population, even if proportionately more for their target group. That, for instance, the percentage of them going to university could be increased without reducing the number of others going there, by increasing the total number of university places.

They are correct that the resources do exist to improve things for everyone – across the board and not just in education. However, the structure and operation of the capitalist economic system prevents this being done. Using existing resources for this purpose can only be achieved in a quite different system where the aim can be human welfare, not profit, and where artificial scarcity can be replaced by plenty for everyone.

Not communities

Identity politics assumes that all in the target group constitute a ‘community’. To describe some group as a ‘community’ there must be some overriding common interest which binds the group together. But, whatever else they have in common, the identity politicians’ target groups don’t share a common economic – ie. survival – interest. They are divided into classes, into owners and non-owners, rich and poor, with antagonistic, in fact irreconcilable, interests since the wealth of the wealthy is dependent on the past and present labour of the excluded majority.

There are plenty of rich women, gays and non-whites. Those from the excluded majority have a different economic interest from the wealthy members of their supposed communities. Their material needs are not fully met, not because they are gay, non-white etc. but because they are part of the excluded majority forced to work for wages to live. And so they have more in common with others who are in the same economic position as them. Which is why socialists urge them not to identify themselves with the rich people within their proposed identity group but with their economic class.

Those in-system activists who stand for equal treatment for their target group within the artificial scarcity of capitalism could protest against the criticism that logically their ideal must be strict proportionality in the distribution of both benefits and disadvantages amongst all groups. They could say that what they want is not that, but that nobody should be discriminated against because they are a woman, gay, black, or whatever; that everybody should be treated as an equal human being.

Precisely. So they should. But dividing people into separate identity groups is not the way to treat them as equal.

Even if equal treatment of women, gays, black people is achieved under capitalism – and there is no reason why in principle it could not be, even if in practice there are historically-inherited obstacles to this – those in these groups who are not wealthy owners of means of production would still face discrimination: as members of the excluded majority who have to work for wages. They will remain victims of what might be called ‘classism’. This is the one discrimination that cannot be ended within capitalism as it is built into the system; in fact, capitalism, as an exploitative class-divided society, is based on it.

Those who want a better deal for some particular group should not be promoting ‘identity politics’ within a system that imposes artificial scarcity. They should be working for an end to artificial scarcity; which is not possible in a society based on class ownership and production for profit.

‘Classist’ discrimination can only be ended in a classless society based on the common ownership of productive resources where everyone has a chance to have an equal say in the way things are run and the same access to what they need to live and enjoy life. In short, where the old socialist principle of “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs” applies. Everybody accorded equal consideration irrespective of what they are. And nobody discriminated against as regards access to material goods, services or amenities.

Adam Buick

The Case for Equality (1990)

From the June 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

In a socialist society all human beings will be equals. Without equality there could be no society which could accurately call itself socialist. So, the class-divided, extremely hierarchical nations such as Russia and China, which have a class of privileged party bureaucrats ruling over the majority of the population who are wage slaves, are clearly not socialist—they are part of the social inequality which characterises capitalism.

What do we mean by social equality? We mean that we seek to create a condition of social organisation in which no person is entitled to be regarded and rewarded as superior to others and no person is to be condemned to the disadvantaged position of being socially inferior. In a society of equality there will be no socially superior or inferior people.

We are not advocating a social situation in which no person is superior to another person in any respect. In a society of human equality one person might be a better violinist than another. The inferior violinist might be a better poet or bricklayer than the superior violinist. The significant point is that such differences of achievement (which are almost certainly conditioned rather than innate) will not lead to social inequality. In a society of equals the better violinist will have no opportunity to live a more confortable life than the violinist whose music sounds awful. The person who is an expert at cutting up human bodies (a surgeon) will have no greater access to pleasant accommodation or decent cigars than the person who is skilled at fixing motor cars (a mechanic). Society needs surgeons and mechanics, violinists and poets.

Just as a society of equality will include people with different levels of talent and skill in various areas of life and work, so it will be a society of humans who are different from each other. The distinction must be understood between equality and sameness. If the present writer is asked whether he prefers the plays of Chekhov or Pinter he will reply that he enjoys them equally; this does not mean that he regards them as being the same—in fact, the two writers are very different from one another. The two playwrights (in the view of the present writer) are worthy of equal respect. To say that the dedication of a nurse and a firefighter is equal is not to suggest that both types of work are the same. Equality does not imply conformity or uniformity. On the contrary, it implies that our appreciation of our fellow human beings is not governed by a monolithic value structure, but that we have the capacity to respect different abilities without subordinating one to the other. Rather infantile critics of the case for social equality suggest that we are advocating some kind of absolute natural equality. Jerome K. Jerome wrote a rather foolish satire about utopia in which he depicted a society in which everyone had to be the same height and weight. Clearly, social equality will not require the elimination of natural human differences. If one person has natural advantages over another (such as the physical strength of the young over the old and feeble) that will not allow such a person to have social domination over those who are so-called natural inferiors. Natural differences such as gender or skin colour are no basis for social differences; it is only in a society of human inequality that these natural distinctions become parts of a battle for power

The facts of social inequality
Only a fool or a liar would contend that we are now living in a society of human equality. World capitalism has as its first characteristic the unnatural, artificial inequality between class and class. In Britain today the richest 1 per cent of the population own more of the marketable wealth than all of the poorest 80 per cent added together. The richest 10 per cent own between them more than half of all the wealth in Britain. In short, even if the 90 per cent joined together we would still be poorer than the richest 10 per cent. Approximately one in four humans alive today are malnourished because they cannot afford to buy food. In Britain and the USA one in four children live on or below the official poverty line. The most recent World Land Census, carried out by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, showed that 2.5 per cent of the people who own land of over 250 acres own between them 75 per cent of all the world's privately owned land.

These are the dry statistics of inequality. The more visible and emotionally comprehensible features of inequality are before us every day. The sight of kids sleeping on the streets on cold nights while estate agents advertise six-bedroom houses for over a million pounds—often as suitable second homes for the useless rich. The queues in the casualty departments of NHS hospitals where the poor must wait for serious injuries to be treated, while round the corner in the private wing there are comfortable lounges for the rich to wait in while they demand the very best in health care, regardless of whether they are ill or not. The mothers who cannot afford to feed their children and keep them warm on £40 a week, while a couple of miles away five-star hotels are serving dinner to parasites at £250 a head. Only the socially blind will deny the existence of social inequality: only the socially brutalised will regard it as a desirable condition of affairs.

Is social equality possible? Some have argued that it is not. and if we are to argue scientifically we must examine and dispose of their claims. We can commence with the most stupid argument against equality; the religious objection. In 1784 George Pitt argued against the doctrine of equality";

  A doctrine, the fallacy of which is proved by the experience of every day. by the concurrence of all history from the earliest times, and above all by the contemplation of all the works of the Creator, the very essence of which appears to be gradation or inequality. (Letter To A Young Nobleman.)

In short, humans are created to be unequal. The Church has pursued this propaganda with vigour: The rich man in his castle, the poor man in his hut. God made them high and lowly . . . Apart from the fact that this nonsense ignores the first 40,000 years of human society (the great majority of our history) in which classes did not exist, its entire reasoning depends upon the completely unproven and utterly unprovable belief that the world was designed by an over-seeing being who decided how it would be organised. The religious defence of inequality is an ideology designed by the defenders of the rich who offer a creationist account of human inequality as a way of keeping the ignorantly—believing inferiors in their place. Lest there be any doubt about this we can turn to the writings of the prominent 18th century Christian and conservative, Edmund Burke, who spelt out the religious purpose in clear terms:

   The great body of people must not find the principle of natural insubordination . . . rooted out of their minds. They must respect that property of which they cannot partake. They must labour to obtain what by labour can be obtained; and when they find, as they commonly do, the success disproportionate to the endeavour, they must be taught to console themselves with the prospect of divine justice.

The claim that inequality was designed by a god requires a belief in an unprovable. immaterial deity, and then a respect for such a supernatural being who designs poverty and social misery for the majority class in society.

Biology not determinant
Different from the religious case against equality—but not all that different—is the biological theory. The infamous Professor Eysenck states that "biology sets an absolute barrier to egalitarianism"; we are all born with unequal capacities to become intelligent; this intellectual inequality is genetically inherited and determines our status in life: "Clearly, the whole course of development of a child's intellectual abilities is largely laid down genetically" (The Inequality of Man).

This biological determinism replaces genes for gods and contends that we are all born to fit into an intellectual hierarchy and must make the best of what our genes allow us to become. Eysenck and others have attempted to link superior genetic abilities with white skin colour. Others, such as Steven Goldberg in The Inevitability of Patriarchy, have tried to make a case for the biological inferiority of women. The case for biological inequality rests upon some very weak reasoning. Firstly, its conception of "intelligence' is a very narrow one, rooted in the limited history of European and American capitalism. If Professor Eysenck was left to survive in an African desert region we wonder how "intelligent" he would be in relation to the people who were brought up in such an area. The best evidence regarding human behaviour points to the fact that humans learn to be what we are: the extent to which we inherit genetically any mental aspects of our being is negligible. Even if there was some truth in the Eysenck theory, there would be no more reason for a society of human equality to discriminate against less intelligent people than it would be to discriminate against those who are physically disabled.

Davis and Moore have constructed a sociological theory which is simply an updated version of last century's Social Darwinist defence of social inequality:

  Social inequality is . . . an unconsciously evolved device by which societies insure that the most important positions are conscientiously filled by the most important persons. (Some Principles of Stratification).

According to this theory, society offers rewards to the people it needs most. Superiority is a reward for usefulness. If you are socially useless you will become inferior. The fittest will survive and thrive. The only problem with this theory—a pretty major problem for a would-be scientific analysis—is that it bears no relationship to the experience of how capitalist society actually does run. We know very well that under capitalism the useless stockbroker is rewarded (by income) much more than the nurse; the parasitical Royals are rewarded with billions of pounds for waving at people, while workers who grow food are often so poor that they cannot afford to eat properly. The belief that life is one great competition in which the capitalists win because they are the most able is a nice idea if you are a millionaire, but a lot of rot if you consider that most millionaires inherit their fortunes, and that these were obtained in the first place by exploiting the labour skills of others.

Free society of equals

It will not take long for the thoughtful reader to detect that all of the arguments against social equality are unhistorical. The god-myth has no basis in material history and entirely ignores the thousands of years during which humans lived in a condition of what social anthropologists call primitive communism. Were these humans (the majority of those who have lived on the planet) built by god with a design fault? The biological theory relies upon unproven notions of inherited intelligence and defines intelligence in an unhistorical manner. The modern Social Darwinists can see no further than the social order of the capitalist jungle.

There is one further argument against social equality which is sometimes put by capitalism's defenders and which does make sense. It is said that equality can only occur by limiting certain liberties which currently exist. This is quite true. The liberty of the least needy to push in front of the most needy in the queue for food, clothing and shelter will be taken away in a socially equal society. The liberty to destroy food and take land out of cultivation in order to keep prices and profits up will no longer exist. The liberty of humans to compel others to work for them (or starve) will be ended. In short, a socialist system of human equality can only occur once the expropriators have been expropriated—once the capitalist class has been dispossessed of its monopoly of the earth's resources. This threat to the capitalists' liberty to own and control the world is seen by them as something to be resisted at all costs—including the reputations and lives of those who dare to advocate social equality. The capitalist minority use every means of propaganda at their command to distort the case for equality, to defame its advocates and to defend their own privilege in the name of popular liberty and democracy.

To the majority of us, who are not capitalists but live by selling our mental and physical energies for wages and salaries, the awful danger of the capitalists losing their liberty to be the top dogs ought not to appear as such an awful threat. On the contrary, the removal of the liberty of the capitalist to be superior is the necessary precondition for the liberty of the wealth producers not to be inferior. The right of the worker not to be a wage slave requires the abolition of the right of anyone to be a capitalist. Freedom and equality have the abolition of class society as their social basis.

The only free society will be one where all human beings, without any distinctions of race or sex or age, have free and equal access to the common wealth of the world. Once goods and services are freely available to all, on the basis of self-defined desires, without the interference of money or markets, humans will be able to say in honesty that we are members of a human family—a family of equals.

Steve Coleman

What's Wrong With Education: Bursting of the 'Comprehensive' Bubble (1974)

From the May 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

So the cat is finally out of the education bag — at last. The cracks have finally broken through the paper!

The situation in the Inner London schools is now so disastrous that teachers are telling the papers how, in many of them, it is practically impossible to teach. Truancy has reached catastrophic proportions. According to Dr. Rhodes Boyson MP (late Head of Highbury Grove Comprehensive School) 500,000 children play truant every day; he says “it is creating a new criminal sub-class”. Nobody really knows how many truants there are, because without frequent spot-checks absence is uncontrollable. The kids are voting with their feet. Many of those who sit through the morning to get the school dinner vote with their eyes, glaring balefully at the monkey up front in silent vicious hatred.

All the millions in money, the shiny new glass and plastic buildings, the innumerable experts (there is no field of human endeavour with more bloody "experts” than education!) and “advisers”, the gimmicks and stunts to keep the kids at it till 16 — have, in about half the schools population, lamentably failed.

Above all, it is the dismal failure of the so-called comprehensive schools. These are the hot-beds, the fertile source of the troubles. For twenty-five years the love-child of every sentimental “Lefty”, eventually official Labour Party policy, “comprehensive” was to be the magic key to crack the education problem. It was to give “equality of opportunity” to all, including the academically backward.

Only those who are actually inside the school racket (sorry — “educational profession”!) know the full story of the incredible goings-on in the most notorious giant London comprehensives. The one in North London where the kids piled the desks and chairs in the middle of a class-room and set fire to them. The other one in South London where when the teacher shouted “Will you shut up?” thirty-three boys shouted back in unison “No, we will not!”

So bad has the situation become that the Inner London Authority now has special Truancy Centres (staffed by “experts", of course) where the kids who just will not attend, any school do what they like. According to the London Evening News “what they like” is smashing things up.

The ILEA now wants to abandon “comprehensive” policy and build no more. Having scrapped the smaller, despised “Secondary Moderns” to set up vast comprehensives, small schools have become a desperate administration’s new ideal. Quite outside all the high-minded and noble educational sentiments and theories, the main motive for comprehensives was simply economy — as it was foolishly believed: saving money.

Your contributor was actually present at a meeting of several hundred London teachers in the early days when Mr. Houghton, Chief Education Officer, told them: “I don’t care whether you are for or against comprehensives — I’ve got to find a quarter of a million places on the ninth of September!” A comprehensive school saves at least three headmasters’ salaries (about £5-6,000 p.a. each) and makes many practical economies in buildings, power, heating, maintenance, catering, etc., by working on a large scale. With the result that, with the raising of the school-leaving age, 2,000 or even 2,500 children have been crammed into schools bursting at the seams.

After the war, the Labour Government set up a committee to enquire into education. It came up with the Hadow Report, which was the Bible of the teachers’ training colleges in those days. The old system of sorting elementary-school sheep and grammar-school goats was to be replaced by juniors up to 11; then Grammar, Technical and Secondary Modern up to 15. The now-notorious eleven-plus examination would decide that each child would receive education according to “his age, aptitude and ability”.

Almost as soon as this tri-partite system was introduced, the howls of protest started. True it is that the eleven-plus produced some fantastic results (like the boy whose card was sorted into the wrong box at the office — an eleven-plus failure — who went on to get a Ph.D.). The theory behind “comprehensivation” — yes, that’s what they call it! — was “equality”. Even if a boy couldn’t do differential equations, analyze a sentence, or speak German, he wore the same uniform and played football on the same pitch (although frequently he couldn’t play football either).

Faced with the fact that various kids have different aptitudes — and certainly Socialists have never thought otherwise — an elaborate system of “streaming” and “sets” was set up, to shove some through the university-animated exam, system. The teachers themselves got together and drafted a completely new examination, the Certificate of Secondary Education. Still only a few responded. A flood of learned books has poured out; teams of research sociologists have “proved” that a boy (or girl) in a “home” where money is tight, the telly never stops, there is no spare room and, above all, the parents can hardly read and despise learning—has little chance against a well-fed, contented child with ample room, warmth, light, and (most important of all) the practical example of a genuine delight and pleasure in books and learning.

Outside the school, the lure of money is compelling. A hefty well-built lad of sixteen can get a job as a hod-carrier at a man’s wage. Small wonder that the bait of examination passes fails to attract!

Thousands of teachers leave training colleges annually filled with a genuine vocational idealism and the intention to dedicate their lives to the education of our children: only to have “their hearts broken” (as they say) and leave to do anything — barmaid, petrol pump, shop — rather than “be driven mad” teaching. Four out of five girls leave in the first year.

The zealous educational reformer has now to swallow the bitter bread of humiliation. The old submissive obedience has gone. The kids are sceptical, intensely suspicious and inquisitive. To them we would say: “Why waste time and effort harassing and barracking the teacher? They are victims of the capitalist system no less (even more) than you. They are working men and women trying to do an extremely onerous and impossibly demanding job. There is something to be learned from even the worst teacher!” And: "Ignorance never helped anybody ’ (Marx).

To the teacher we say: You will never get educational equality in capitalist society. All you can do is maintain an efficient Union to protect you from abuses.

During the recent General Election the school debating society at a large north-west London comprehensive ran a mock election. The Socialist candidate, a sixteen-year-old boy, denounced the Labour Party and exposed nationalization. To cheers from the audience he declared : "We’ve got to learn, we’ve thought too much about Lenin; we’ve got to find out more about Karl Marx!” And they will, too. After all, they are finding out about practically everything else!

Horatio

Correspondence: Socialism and Equality. (1931)

Letter to the Editors from the February 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

A correspondent writes asking us whether we base our case for Socialism on a supposition that human beings are equal. This is the question :—

  On what foundation is your “Declaration of Principles” built, seeing that the only justification for “common ownership and control” can be that of "Equality” and that "Equality” does not exist, since no two human beings are ever born equal and consequently can never live the same life (whatever the conditions), or die equal? Without “Equality” the principle of "common ownership and control” is surely most unjust. Does your "socialism" wish to make the conditions of life similar for those who possess and those who do not possess a number of commendable qualities?

(Here follows a list of such qualities and their opposites.)

Our correspondent is mistaken in thinking that Socialism is based on any such claim. Human beings do not possess the same attributes, combined in the same proportions, and therefore a claim that they are equal would be absurd.

On the other hand, the suggestion that there can be no other justification for "common ownership and democratic control ” itself requires proof, and our correspondent offers none except the statement that it is "surely most unjust" to make the conditions of life similar for the bad character and the good character. Without going into the relevant question of the conditions which produce "bad" and "good" characters, we would point out that capitalism most flagrantly fails to apportion economic rewards according to such merits, and yet it manages to survive. People lucky enough to have been born into the privileged ranks of the propertied class do not have to produce certificates of wisdom, bravery, cleanliness, industry or anything else before being permitted to draw dividends on investments. The possession of property means now the legal right (backed up by the forces of the State) of preventing the working class from using nature-given material and instruments of production (fashioned also by the working class) to produce wealth, except upon the condition that the property owner shall be permitted to live at the expense of the wealth producers.

The capitalist system has now outlived its usefulness, and the capitalist class has become an unnecessary class. The class can be dispensed with and the system replaced with advantage to the working class, who are the great majority and can impose their will when they choose to do so. That is the basis of Socialism. No other basis is needed.

Ed. Comm.