50 Years Ago: Eysenck at the LSE (2023)

The 50 Years Ago column from the June 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard 

On Tuesday 8 May Professor Eysenck, who holds certain controversial views about the intellectual abilities of American negroes, was forcibly prevented from expressing his views at the London School of Economics. Responsibility for this political censorship was claimed by a Maoist group. Our comrade Dom Zucconi, an LSE student expressed Socialist opposition to this suppression of free speech, as the following report from the Daily Telegraph of 11 May shows:

“Tuesday’s incident was last night described as a ‘disgrace and discredit to socialism and a brief for fascism’ by Mr. D. Zucconi, a student who described himself as a member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain when he proposed the motion to apologise to Professor Eysenck.

‘How does one best deal with fascism? With the butt-end of a rifle or with ideas? The political process is a battle of ideas and, unless you can rebut these concepts, you are lost’, he said.

‘In preventing him from speaking, you are resorting to the same tactics you accused fascists of using’, he told the meeting to loud cheers.”

For the record, the precise wording of the motion proposed by Comrade Zucconi and carried by a large majority at the LSE Union meeting was:

“This Union strongly deprecates the conduct of those present at Professor Eysenck’s meeting on Tuesday who appointed themselves to decide that nobody should be allowed to hear a point of view with which they disagreed. We place on record that only in the healthy atmosphere of free expression can ideas be debated, false ideas debunked and sound ideas developed. We therefore apologise to Professor Eysenck for the action of a minority in preventing him from being heard.”

The Socialist Party of course has always practised the principles expressed in this resolution. We have always been prepared to give opponents of Socialism a chance to express their views from our platform. This is because we are convinced that our views are right and that this will emerge from full and free debate—and if we are wrong we want to know, so that we can stop wasting our time.

Censorship, whether through the legalized violence of the capitalist State as enforced by the Courts or by the violence of self-appointed political guardians as displayed at the LSE, is anti-socialist and anti-working class and must be exposed whenever it rears its ugly head.

[Socialist Standard, June 1973]

Love, Ideas and Historical Materialism — and a different view of Professor Eysenck (1973)

From the June 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

A correspondent has taken up a quotation from Frederick Engels in last month’s Socialist Standard, asking if it is really true that romantic love is a product of history and not an all-too-natural propensity of human beings. “Why on earth should sex-love be related to the mode of production and economic relationships?” says the writer, and cites a poet of the ancient world — “Let us live and let us love” — to support the point.

What is questioned is the basic statement of historical materialism. In  the Preface to the Critique of Political Economy Marx wrote:

The mode of production in material life determines the general character of the social, political and spiritual processes of life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but, on the contrary, their social existence determines their consciousness.

The Communist Manifesto is similarly explicit:

Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man’s ideas, views, and conceptions, in one word, man’s consciousness, changes with every change in the conditions of his material existence, in his social relations and in his social life? What else does the history of ideas prove, than that intellectual production changes its character in proportion as material production is changed? 

Engels reaffirmed in his old age, writing to H. Starkenburg:

Political, juridical, philosophical, religious, literary, artistic, etc., development is based on economic development.

The problem for our correspondent, and many others, is how far this is meant to be taken. The development of political and legal forms in direct response to changing class structures throughout history is clear enough. So are the shapes taken by the major institutions of society: technics, commerce, nation-states — and, inevitably, ideas related directly to them, including ethical and religious “reflexes of the real world” as well as political ones. Art forms, too. But is it true that human relationships and qualities, and truths which appear to exist beyond social organization, must be included in Marx’s description of man as the “assemble of social relations”? Can we take seriously Engels’s assertion (in a letter to Marx) that "the atom itself is nothing more than a Relation”?

Construction and Reality

Indeed it is true, and we must. There is a single qualification to be made: the materialist conception of history is of course a generalization, so are its particular applications. In homely illustration, this means that statements like “Not a speck of dust anywhere” and “No apples on the trees this year” are not invalidated by someone’s finding a speck of dust or the odd apple. Similarly, historical materialism cannot be expected to explain all the minutiae of social life or else be adjudged incompetent. Engels himself gave reasons in a letter to Conrad Schmidt:

In other words, the unity of conception and appearance manifests itself as essentially an infinite process, and that is what it is, in this case as in all others. Did feudalism ever correspond to its concept? . . . Or are the concepts which prevail in the natural sciences fictions because they by no means always coincide with reality? From the moment we accept the theory of evolution all our concepts of organic life correspond only approximately to reality. Otherwise there would be no change: on the day when concepts and reality completely coincide in the organic world development comes to an end.

(Selected Correspondence, pp.529-30) 

Historical materialism sees man as “not only a social animal, but an animal which can develop into an individual only in society”, in Marx’s words. Hence, his activities and ideas are part of society too. The language in which we think, the conventions and motives which direct thought, are social constructions. These are taken for granted as if they had existences of their own, yet they are all consequences of the basic human activity of production: the manner of satisfying man’s needs. The same applies to ideas. Two simple examples can be given. First, the idea of exchange which cannot arise except in societies where production surplus to elementary physical needs has been achieved; second, the idea of opportunity which can exist only where access is limited and one man’s meat is another man’s fancy.

Knowledge and Intelligence

The multiplication of these instances leads to the fact that property societies are class-divided societies. Some own the means of living, some do not. Those who own, in whatever form of society, are its ruling class and the dominant ideas of that society are theirs. The outstanding examples are, of course, religious and moral concepts presented as eternal values. However, it only begins there. Knowledge and measurable facts exist not in an objective world from which they must at all times influence society, but in fact exist at all — or are brought into existence — only insofar as they are useful to society.

Thus, the mathematical and scientific knowledge of the Mediterranean civilizations was lost and had no existence at all from the end of the Roman Empire to the beginnings of capitalism: unrequired and (if this concept too had existed in mediaeval Europe) obsolete. The loss and rediscovery may be put down to historical chance — but, as Marx says in one of his letters to Kugelmann:

These accidents themselves fall naturally into the general course of development and are compensated for, again, by other accidents.

As well as being buried and dug up again, knowledge may be devised. The word need not imply a lying conspiracy. Ruling needs in a society can give rise to a conceptual answer. The concept is accepted as a fact: x in an equation presented as a real number instead of an expedient device.

In the past fifty years State education — and in turn, what is thought about ability and equality — has been dominated by the idea of quantitative intelligence. It began with the work of Galton, between 1869 and 1886, on hereditary factors in “man’s natural abilities”, and was applied immediately to school- children and students. Prior to that time, indeed, the word intelligence commonly meant “information” (a meaning it retains in military usage, and the two had better not be confused there). Today every school-child is labelled with his or her intelligence quotient; over 150 means being in “the top 2 per cent.”, and Mensa is the society of the crème de la crème.

Invention at Work

Yet the history of this varying personal endowment synchronizes with that of popular education. Its theory and the methods of testing were produced between 1904 and 1922, and their application has been to the continued process of selecting children and workers. But while intelligence is measured daily, nobody — significantly — has defined it. Spearman, the theorist of the I.Q., called it "a word with so many meanings that finally it has none”. And the fact is that intelligence is not a reality but a concept, a system of measurement for the ruling class to sort sheep from goats regarding the skills and organization of modern capitalism. To be good at what they need is to have high intelligence; to show different abilities is, as well as irrelevant, low-grade. Those concerned over Professor Eysenck (one way or the other) should try considering him in this light for a change.

What is knowledge? The essential facts of one set of circumstances are not merely useless in another; they would be denied. In the present age self-description begins with one’s name and date of birth. Basic information as they are, they did not exist as such before 1837 when Registration started. Names existed, of course, but as variables — an approximate rendering served the purposes of most of society. Births and deaths were not recorded at all; the only dates known were for baptism and burial, and the first might take place at any time or not at all. The important point is not that facts were unrecorded, but that they were not facts at all; except for purposes of succession which concerned few, nobody recognized their existence. Knowledge was declared into existence by law, for administrative purposes.

Marx and Engels pointed out repeatedly that effects become causes in society:

. . . once an historic element has been brought into the world by other elements, ultimately by economic facts, it also reacts in its turn and may react on its environment and even on its own causes.

(Engels to Mehring: Selected Correspondence, p.512)

As with intelligence, a concept taken for physical fact can produce physical responses. An interesting example from contemporary social life is that of adolescence, which began as one of the four Roman legal divisions of life-span. In English law there are two main periods only — infancy, i.e. under 18, and adulthood, with a mixture of legal rights and obligations under various headings in infancy. This statutory division reflects the practical one which existed virtually up to modern times: people were children, then they were men and women. The idea of an interim phase having taken root from developments in society, physical and psychological symptoms followed; and in recent years, with adolescence a profitable social mania, it has been discovered to start even earlier than was thought before.

Man's Nature can be Free

Human relations, then, are inevitably shaped by the form of society. It is not the view of historical materialism, however, that we are but clay in the hands of our own economic organization. Apart from the continual effect-to-cause flow — man makes history, as Marx always insisted — there are what are described in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 as man’s “species powers”. These are his drives and needs, the use of his senses. Related to the framework established by production and social activity, “man’s species powers express the kind of life which man, as distinct from all other beings, carries on inside this framework” (B. Oilman: Alienation).

Is Engel’s claim justified—"Before the middle ages we cannot speak of individual sex-love”? In fact Engels gives the necessary explanations in The Origin of the Family. He compares sexual love in our sense, where the emotions are involved in an exclusive relationship, with the arranged marriages of antiquity. But the keyword is not “love”, but “individual”. By “individual” Engels means the “free citizen”, the knight, or the guild member. In The Communist Manifesto the term is made explicit:

You must, therefore, confess that by “individual” you mean no other person than the bourgeois, than the middle-class owner of property.

Indeed, Engels like our correspondent refers to lovers in ancient literature (Daphnis and Chloe, etc.). Either, he says, they were slaves and therefore outside the state, or the objects of male affection were foreigners or hetairai and likewise outside official society: “that sort of thing only happened in romance — or among the oppressed classes, who did not count”.

How much does all this matter? If the bondage of capitalism is to be ended and a human society realized, there must be comprehension of how the fetters are made. The alternative is the view stigmatized by Marx and Engels as sterile in its limitation to “the interests of Human Nature, of Man in general, who belongs to no class, has no reality, who exists only in the misty realm of philosophical phantasy”. Engels spelled out how consciousness, derived from society, can change society:

Freedom does not consist in the dream of independence of natural laws, but in the knowledge of these laws, and in the possibility this gives of systematically making them work towards definite ends . . . Freedom therefore consists in the control over ourselves and over external nature which is founded on knowledge of natural necessity; it is therefore necessarily a product of historical development.

(Anti-Duhring, p.128) 

Robert Barltrop

Letters: What is our IQ? (1977)

Letters to the Editors from the May 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

What is our IQ? 

The article “Question of Intelligence” (December 1976) has been brought to my attention. It arises from the announcement in the Sunday Times that Professor Cyril Burt had “published false data and invented crucial facts to support his controversial theory that intelligence is largely inherited”. It quotes a reference to Burt in a pamphlet by Harold Walsby, SPGB—Utopian or Scientific, published by the Social Science Association in 1949, and says: “The ‘evidence’ Walsby thought conclusive was emotion wrapped up as science, and whoever used it to illuminate ‘the psychology of the workers’ would now be in the dark.”

The evidence to which Walsby refers is “the actual statistical-psychological investigations by Prof Burt, Thompson, Cattel and many others . . .” This evidence, as a whole, has not been invalidated, and the work of the other investigators stands as firmly as before.

I must draw attention to something else in the article likely to mislead people not familiar with Walsby’s work. It mentions the view “that a large proportion of the population were constitutionally incapable of learning much or running their own lives”, and says “Typical examples of this appeared in writings by Harold Walsby”. I challenge you to provide even one example of Walsby saying this. The implication is that Walsby regarded the working class as being mentally inferior. He did not.

Walsby held that the majority of people, workers and capitalists alike, would reject the Socialist case. The SPGB holds that the majority of the workers will accept it— if not, what is the point of presenting it to them? Since 1904 the evidence has been consistently in Walsby’s favour. According to the SPGB the material conditions are ripe for Socialism and the workers are capable of understanding Socialism. But we don’t get Socialism. Harold Walsby’s theory explains how it comes about that the overwhelming majority of those who have heard the Socialist case have rejected it in the past, persist in rejecting it, and will continue to reject it in the future. Also—and this is a harder task—Walsby’s theory explains how it is that a tiny minority comes to accept the Socialist case.

Geo. W. Walford 

London N1

Reply:

Your letter presents not arguments but heads-I-win-tails-you-lose propositions. You say (a) that the evidence used by Walsby from Burt and others "has not been invalidated”, and (b) Walsby never held that view anyway.

It is quite incorrect that “the work of the other investigators stands as firmly as before”. If this were so, Professor H. J. Eysenck (one of Burt’s supporters) would not have said in The Times of 8th Nov. 1976 :

  Perhaps it is time that society devoted more money to this important area . . . The issue is an important one, and should be taken beyond the range of simple argument and assertion.

L. J. Kamin, Professor of Psychology at Princeton University, called this plea “grotesque”.

The relationship between Burt’s work and that of other investigators seems to be a matter of widely differing opinion. According to the Sunday Times of 28th Nov., 1976, in 1973 Eysenck spoke of the “outstanding quality” of Burt’s work, but after the discrediting of Burt said his data were “useless”. Sir P. B. Medawar (The Times, 3rd Nov. 1976) contended that “the expression ‘innate intelligence’ should now be dropped from the language”. This was supported by Professor C. B. Hindley; and Professor J. Tizard said (The Times 25th Oct.) that the Burt case “would have the same effect on that branch of science as the finding that the Piltdown Skull was a forgery had on palaeontology”.

Regarding Walsby’s own views, a review of the Social Science Association pamphlet Science, Politics and the Masses by Richard Tatham appeared in the New Leader on 14th April 1945. The reviewer was F. A. Ridley. The pamphlet set forth the conclusions of Harold Walsby. Under the heading “Can the Masses Think?” the article said it was “clearly against the democratic assumption on the question of a rational approach to the masses”, and “the masses have usually only been used as pawns on title political chess-board by ruling — or would-be ruling — classes”.

Elsewhere Harold Walsby was quoted as saying "Anyone who understands the public knows that they like trash.” (Sunday Chronicle, 11th April 1954). If Ridley’s statements misrepresented Walsby’s views, did he repudiate them? If these and the statements in SPGB—Utopian or Scientific do not say the working class is mentally inferior, what the devil are they supposed to mean?

Finally, we are unaware what basis can exist for a prediction that the majority of workers will always reject the Socialist case. You say it has been rejected by “the overwhelming majority” of those who have heard it. But the overwhelming majority of the working class have not heard it, and more often than not it is heard under disadvantageous conditions. Walsby’s theory consists of trying to persuade us that these obstacles are of no consequence. You should try it. 

Editors.

Things to come

I would be grateful if you could clarify two points arising from one of your meetings which I recently attended.

1. What are the grounds of your conviction that when the capitalist system collapses a Marxist society is bound to take its place?
2. I cannot see why it would be presumptuous to produce a blueprint of the new society. Surely an examination of the practical problems involved must be undertaken firstly in order to prove that the system could be successful, and secondly to demonstrate to a sceptical electorate that there is a viable alternative to the present system.

S. Bettaney

Edgware

Reply:

Your first point is based on a misconception. Contrary to the vapid wafflings of other parties, both long ago and now, we have always held that capitalism will not collapse. The working class cannot sit back and wait for that to happen: they must organize consciously to get rid of capitalism and put Socialism in its place.

On your second point, we are unable to give you a blue-print for several reasons. You will appreciate that Socialism was feasible in 1904 when the SPGB was founded. Had the working class been ready then, the new society would have been established in an era of horse traffic when the burning question was “who will sweep the crossings?” Clearly the blue-print will look different in the age of jet engines and atomic power. Unless you can tell us when the workers—this means you!—will join us, how can we know what marvels will have emerged? As you say, there are practical problems.

Suppose that a would-be manufacturer tried to convince others in, say, the year 1600 that capitalism would be a good idea. Can you imagine the mind-boggling notions of banking, insurance, capital gains and all the multitudinous problems suggested by a society aiming to produce goods for sale instead of for use? The practical problems of Socialism would seem simple by comparison. If you have particular problems in mind, please let us know.

Editors.

More impact please

Socialism as the SPGB defines it has never been a motivating force in British working-class politics. From the formulation of the party in 1904 to the present day, it has made no movement in British politics worth talking about, because the working-class of Britain have never taken the SPGB’s case against capitalism as being the best way to get rid of capitalism, and the establishment of Socialism. The workers today still vote Labour, Liberal, and Scottish Nationalist. And in the economic field all the worker’s main drives are centred on work, full employment and the right to work.

If according to the doctrine of historical materialism capitalism produces the material and economic condition which turns the workers into Socialists there has been no real evidence for holding this point of view since Marx’s publication of The Communist Manifesto of 1848. Whether Socialism is inevitable or not is not a major question for Socialists. The major question for Socialists is: Why has not Socialism ever had even the slightest impact on the working class of Great Britain? Can the SPGB answer that one?

Ian Campbell 

Dundee

Reply:

It would be a wonderful thing if the material and economic conditions of capitalism did indeed “turn the workers into socialists”, for Socialism would then have been established long ago. Men turn themselves into Socialists, however, by developing their concept of what society should be, while material conditions supply the background and stimulus for this change.

History shows us that before there can be a fundamental change in society there is a long period during which the ideas and attitudes necessary for the change are fully developed. The establishment of Socialism will also require this maturity of ideas, although with the means of communication available today we can expect the development period to be much shorter. You say Socialist ideas have had no impact: but labour and social-democratic parties adopted (and so perverted) the word Socialism because it is attractive to large numbers of workers. Many of these parties have access to far greater resources to be used for propaganda purposes than does the SPGB.

In the meantime the workers still vote, as you say, for the Labour, Liberal and Scottish Nationalist parties. However, their propaganda often wears thin; the “anti” vote (“I’ll vote for this lot because the other lot are even worse”) is a recurrent common feature. The parties supporting capitalism, whether they label themselves Socialist or not, lose their credibility because at the end of the day they cannot produce results. When the working class sees the futility of capitalism, the SPGB will be there to be used by them for the establishment of Socialism.

Incidentally, we are pleased to see that the Socialist case has had sufficient impact on your own thinking to prompt you to write to us.

Editors.

Parties and profits

I subscribe to the Socialist Standard and, in the main, I find your articles to be both lucid and irrefragable. However, there are several points which in my opinion require elucidation.

Firstly, on more than one occasion you have asseverated that the Labour Party represents one section of the capitalist class whilst the Conservative Party represents another. Please identify these two sections of the capitalist class.

Secondly, in your answer to Robin Cox’s letter (March 1977) you pointed out that although consumer expenditure increased by 80 per cent between 1970 and 1975, the Index of Production rose by 0.6 in the same period. Could it not be that a part, at least, of the extra consumer expenditure was on imported goods not included in the Index of Production statistics, and that had British goods been more competitive there would have been an increase in the Index of Production?

Thirdly, as you adhere to Marx’s version of the Labour Theory of Value, can you explain how it is that retail organizations make profits if goods are sold at their value? Is it by exploiting their own employees?

P. S. Maloney

London N13

Reply:

1. In the first half of the 19th century there was a clear-cut division of representation—the landed interests by the Tories and the industrial capitalists by the Liberals. Now that 85 per cent of the electors are working-class and British capitalism’s problems have become more complex, the lines are blurred and shifting capitalist interests are being served by Tory and Labour.

In the first place, the parties have to win elections by making the kinds of promises on social reforms, prices, wages, unemployment, housing etc. that will appeal to a mass electorate; so that in this field there is little to choose between the programmes of the Tory, Labour and Liberal parties. But as governments they have to deal with capitalism’s problems as they arise. Each party, having received representations from the CBI, TUC, farmers, retailers, self-employed etc., and after consulting its economic advisers, formulates its taxation and other policies. These are bound to help some sections of the capitalist class and damage others, and sections of the capitalist class give their support to one or other party accordingly: as when the Labour Party (like the Liberals) was standing for free trade and the Tories protectionist.

The same sort of division arose over entry into the European Economic Community because at the beginning of consideration of the question, majority Labour Party opinion was against it. At one time the Labour Party backed the small firms against the big ones; a Labour Party spokesman said that they “preferred a large number of small capitalists to a small number of large ones". But when the Labour government came to office in 1964, they adopted the policy of encouraging company mergers through the Industrial Reorganization Corporation.

In 1945 the Labour, Tory and Liberal parties were agreed on adopting inflation as a policy (to prevent unemployment as they supposed). In the 1970s increasing numbers of capitalists were turning against it, leading to a swing against inflation in the Tory Party but with, so far, the Labour Party and its TUC backers basically unchanged in their attitudes. Those capitalists who still favour inflation will look to the Labour Party.

The parties have traditional commitments and “images”. For example the Labour Party’s fervent commitment to nationalization while the Tories and Liberals have adopted it only when circumstances required it in the interest of the dominant section of the capitalist class; and the Labour Party’s commitment to the trade unions who supply its funds. But in practice the urgent need to try to solve capitalism’s problems forces governments to act, if necessary, in opposition to the views of their own members. At the 1970 general election the Labour, Tory and Liberal parties were all pledged to legislation to control trade unions; though, as it turned out, opposition was so great that the Labour “In Place of Strife” was dropped and the Tory Industrial Relations Act repealed. And it was a Tory minister in a coalition government, in 1915, who first introduced rent restriction.

Also, policies change with circumstances, and from time to time the capitalist class find their interests being served by the Labour Party — as for example, when it appears that unpopular policies can be put over more easily by Labour than by the Tories. (Several Tory newspapers favour keeping the Callaghan government in office until the third stage of the Social Contract has been negotiated with the TUC).

Government intervention in industry and nationalization present striking examples. The Tory government, against its declared policy on “lame ducks”, was forced to nationalize Rolls Royce. And with much of industry in financial difficulties, many shipbuilding and other companies welcomed nationalization or government aid accompanied by the government becoming a shareholder. (But it is a Labour government which is selling part of its holding in British Petroleum.) In a similar situation in Italy a year or two back it was reported that companies “were queueing up to be taken over”.

An article published in Management Today (December 1976) dealt with the Labour governments Industrial Reorganization Corporation. It was set up for the purpose of encouraging companies to combine and thus increase efficiency, the government providing advice and finance. The writers, who worked on IRC, say:

What surprised us most while at the IRC, however, was the willingness of private sector individual companies to discuss their problems with a government organization and to seek its help and assistance. It appears to be quite wrong to take the view that in the UK private sector capitalists are opposed to government help. Whatever they may say, in practice their opposition does not exist.

(The IRC was scrapped by the Tories, its work having been largely completed.)

When the present depression passes and it again becomes easy to make profits, the Labour Party’s leaning towards nationalization and government intervention in industry will lose the attraction it has at present for “lame duck” companies. The Tory traditional attitude may find favour again with that section of the capitalist class.

(To be continued) 

R. W. Clayton (London SW7): Part of your letter was dealt with some months ago under another name. As regards the remainder, if you care to offer an argument in support of your statements we will consider it.

Editors.

Letter: IQ tests and racism (1992)

Letter to the Editors from the February 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors.

A brief (and inadequate!) response to your somewhat misleading article dealing with "intelligence testing" (‘We Are Not Inferior', Socialist Standard, November 1991).

There is a long tradition among traditional “socialists" that rejects IQ testing. Stalin banned IQ tests in 1935 on the grounds they were grounded on “bourgeois ideology"; Hitler made them illegal at the same time because of their “Jewishness”. (In numerous studies, the largest in Glasgow, Jews do significantly better than Gentiles—hardly a finding to endear the procedure to the Fuhrer!). And now, the Socialist Party has to put in its two pennies-worth, arguing that the social scientists who support the concept of IQ arc racist and anti-working class.

The racist argument just doesn’t stand up. Both Eysenck (a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany) and Jensen have repeatedly drawn attention to the fact the Japanese and Chinese, individually, whether tested in their own countries or as American immigrants, do better on blind IQ tests than do their white counterparts—but nobody accused the researchers as advocates of yellow supremacy! And, yes, they also report that literally hundreds of tests of black and white Americans have found that the former score lower (although. ironically. Jensen found that blacks perform relatively better on the more culture-loaded verbal tests!)

Likewise, the IQ advocates cannot be accused of arguing that the working class is "innately inferior”, as your writer suggests by repeated references to Herrnstein. Indeed the logic of statistical repression theory, fundamental to an understanding of Eysenck and his colleagues, is exactly the opposite to a "genetic" justification of social class division in society.

As Eysenck puts it: 

  Regression is intimately connected with social mobility. In Western societies, only one person in three retains the social class of his or her parents. The major determinant of this upward or downward movement is IQ. When we look at children of a given family, we find that the brighter ones rise in the social scale and the duller ones drop despite the same education, socio-economic status and home background . . . (Intelligence: The Battle for the Mind. Pan Books 1981, p64)

Contrary to your writer’s assertion, the overwhelming majority of psychological researchers base their theoretical work on the biological basis of human behaviour. We have all met unfortunate individuals born with damaged bodies/brains and consequently limited in their abilities. Only simplistic thought imagines that the handicapped are qualitatively different from the rest of us: we all form an extended continuum. What we are and what we may attain is determined firstly by the genes we inherit from our parents and secondly by environmental factors (especially “educational”— especially in the critical first years of life).

If we reflect upon the great number of genetically determined characteristics and potentialities that vary between major racial groups— body size and proportions, cranial shape and size, hair and eye colour, number of vertebrae. fingerprints, bone density, age when we cut teeth, blood groups, colour blindness, diabetes. depression. schizophrenia—wouldn't it be truly amazing if genetically-conditioned mental traits were a major exception?

When Karl Marx suggested for socialism the slogan "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs” he was, as a disciple of Darwin, acknowledging the importance of genetic factors.

This is why IQ tests, for all their failings (and let’s be under no illusions, psychologists do not even have a universally agreed definition of the multi-dimensional construct "intelligence"!) can be a valuable tool for identifying "problems" children are likely to experience as they travel through the vital "learning years”. Knowing each individual's strong and weak attributes can help the teacher devise an appropriate learning environment.

Bob Potter 

Hove, East Sussex

Reply:

Bob Potter should re-read the article in question and he will find that we did not say that all who support the use of IQ tests are racist and anti-working class. What we said was that racists have been able to use IQ tests to back up their views since the term "intelligence quotient" misleadingly suggests that what the tests measure is "innate intelligence".

Differences in IQ Test scores between so-called "racial groups" (which are in reality cultural groups) are to be explained by the groups' different opportunities to learn to do and/or by their different attitudes towards what is being tested. Thus the high scores of people from Jewish. Chinese and Japanese backgrounds is to be explained in terms of their group's particularly favourable attitude towards intellectual achievement rather than to genetic factors. Similarly. the better scores Bob Potter mentions of American Blacks on verbal tests are due to cultural factors amongst this group favouring verbal expression.

We criticised people like Jensen and Eysenck for suggesting that biological factors related to "race" were at work in such cases. Clearly different human beings do have different abilities—as is indeed implied by the old socialist slogan "from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs"—and some of this at least will be due to their different individual genetic make-up. But. frankly, since our correspondent asks, no, we don't think it likely that this will be found to be linked to factors such as skin colour, head shape, blood group or big toe size.

Editors

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

Is Crime Hereditary? (1975)

From the December 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

The nearest thing in contemporary newspapers to Beachcomber’s “Dr. Strabismus (Whom God Preserve) of Utrecht” is Professor Eysenck. Dr. Strabismus produced useless masterpieces such as artificial wigs and dummy glass eyes; Professor Eysenck produces statistics which are supposed to have Profound Implications. The difference is that Dr. Strabismus was a parody created by a well-known humorist. Eysenck, unfortunately, is real and is therefore taken seriously.

During October Eysenck made two announcements of statistical discoveries. The first, and farther-reaching, one was the existence of hereditary criminal tendencies. The evidence presented was from a number of adopted children. Those whose natural parents had criminal records showed a higher propensity for getting in trouble themselves, even though they had been brought up in different surroundings by law-abiding foster-parents: heredity triumphing over environment. The second announcement, made in a television discussion, was that Eysenck had found statistics to support the claims of astrology. What was not explained was whether the stars cancel out heredity, and if the impulse from Aquarius make up for an embezzling father.

The danger in this kind of thing is that Eysenck is a “popular” investigator, in both senses of the word. He is responsible for superficially instructive books such as Know Your Own IQ and Know Your Own Personality, designed for mass readership; and his conclusions tend to affirm common prejudices and therefore to be readily received and referred to as authoritative. The man in The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists who said “Go in any chemists’ shop and ask the bloke” is now likely to say “Professor Eysenck says it’s true”. There are large numbers of people, who through ignorance, believe that some are born good and some are born bad; they are approximately the same people who believe, for the same reason, that black men are inferior to white ones; and Eysenck enables them to say “Told you so”.

Circumstances and Cases

In dealing with crime the fundamental question is not the make-up of the individual but the make-up of society. What is crime? When a law is passed, those who offend against it are criminals; when it is annulled, a criminal section becomes a law-abiding one. During the last war a number of laws were enacted and very strictly enforced. A person found with food he had not given rationing coupons for, or who left his job without permission, was liable to a heavy fine or imprisonment. The fact that the war is now thirty years distant makes that seem rather astonishing, but many people were convicted for those breaches of the law. At other times and places the holding of wrong political or religious opinions has been a crime.

An up-to-date example, shown in various newspapers on 2nd November, is that of a couple convicted for incest. The case was followed by correspondence and discussion, much of it remarking that the existing law is archaic; one newspaper, the Sunday People, suggested that the couple appeal against the order for them to separate and thereby make a test case In the recent past the offence was regarded as intolerable, and they would without doubt have been given heavy sentences. If, as seems feasible, a change in the law is made in the not-distant future, it will mean that a class of criminals will automatically become respectable citizens. What then becomes of the hereditary propensity to that crime?

The question can be taken further. The most widespread of all crimes is stealing, in one form or another: robbery, embezzlement, fraud. All of them are obviously connected with the desire for money or what money is seen as providing in possessions, comfort and display. It is not suggested by Eysenck or anyone else that the desire for these things is a reprehensible inborn tendency. On the contrary, it is usually praised as “ambition”; and so far from being hereditary, it is taught as an essential to personal and social well-being — children are urged to be “first” and “top”, and shown examples of people who have succeeded. The criminal’s motive is learned from society; his error is choosing the wrong way.

No doubt it would be said that this is the point, that there is a section who persistently make that choice in the face of prohibitions. One important answer is that a high percentage of crime is due to nothing of the kind, as the court reports in local newspapers show: people steal when they are in need or in debt. But underlying this is the property foundation of the society we live in. The law is a social apparatus for its preservation. Its basic concern is protection of the class ownership of the means of production and distribution, and of necessity the products too; so that in practice it centres on property at all levels. If, as Socialists advocate, private ownership were abolished and there were free access to all the wealth of society, the effect would be the same as the limited one now produced by the dropping of an irrelevant law. That class of crime — the largest one — would immediately disappear. Will Professor Eysenck communicate this to the genes of adopted children?

Class and Heredity

Prejudices are ideas, of a sort. The saloon-bar oracles who find Eysenck’s proposition to their taste are voicing the kind of idea the ruling class likes. It means that the capitalist system is not to be blamed for a social problem: how can it be, when the cause of crime is individually organic?

The same gift to capitalist thought was made at the beginning of this century by Cesare Lombroso. He held that crime arose from physical and mental anomalies, due to degeneration or heredity or even reversion to a primitive evolutionary stage; criminals could be identified by definite physical characteristics. Lombroso’s concern in fact was reform, to obtain more humane treatment for criminals by destroying the supposition that they were responsible for their acts or could be cured by punishment. His theory was accepted, however, for its usefulness in substituting hereditary and psychological causes for social ones.

If the records of forebears govern people’s conduct, few of us would escape the taints Eysenck claims to discern. The genealogical fact is that over only three or four centuries we are descended from a relatively small number of ancestors. Because of the high rate of early death in the past, a single survivor in the seventeenth century can and does stand as the progenitor of several hundreds in this century. It is fairly well known that most people can, if they like, trace some “blue blood’’ in their ancestry; for the same reason, and probably with less difficulty, there are less honorific elements to be found by all. It can also be added that most nations have in their fairly recent history some huge act of barbarism in which large numbers of the population took part. Do genes then pass a moral judgement to avoid the repetition of such behaviour? Such a conclusion being obviously silly, the advocates of the “hereditary evil” idea have no choice but to say it was the need or the standards of the time, i.e. a social phenomenon. Quite right; but they should then explain why this explanation is abandoned over crime.

One other aspect which should be mentioned is that material presented in a statistical form is often taken to be undeniable fact. It should be appreciated that Eysenck’s findings are of “statistical relationships”: that is, sets of figures which are pointed out to be similar and therefore possibly linked as cause and effect. These are — as he admitted in the discussion of astrology — anything but conclusive and often thoroughly misleading. A light-hearted example given some years ago concerned the observation that the audiences at strip clubs had a high proportion of bald-headed men; a “statistical relationship” would suggest that watching such performances caused baldness, despite other and likelier explanations.

There is no question of anything having been proved; the area for proof is non-existent. The fault, dear Eysenck, is not in our stars or our heredity but in our social system. The point is to change it.

Robert Barltrop

Intelligence is not understanding (1980)

From the September 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

Is a child born with a certain level of intelligence or is it acquired, through upbringing and education? Or perhaps some of both? Arguments over this question are common, and they indicate the extent to which the concept of “intelligence" has been accepted as a reality.

The more deeply we dig, however, the clearer it becomes that “intelligence” is a fairly recent construction, rather than any objective mental characteristic or ability which has been discovered. It becomes clear, also, that this construction or invention of intelligence plays an increasingly large part in the control and running of modern capitalism.

Through the widespread use of intelligence tests and a complex examinations structure young workers are selected, streamed and paced through their education, training and jobs. Moreover, the idea of “intelligence" has become the core of an ideology which contends that every child actually has equality of opportunity; that the “best” will rise to the top; and that these deserve to be paid the highest salaries and given the greatest admiration. It is an ideology that (like the growing cult of sport) encourages intensified competition and the acceptance of a hierarchy throughout the working class in all capitalist countries.

"To Ford a degree signifies proven intellectual capabilities. We train graduates from a wide variety of disciplines to become some of the most professional and achievement orientated managers in British industry, and our management training is recognised as one of the most fertile breeding grounds for top management professionals.
The quality of these managers has helped Ford to emerge and remain as one of the most successful companies in Britain . . .

(Graduate Opportunities 1979)

In this advertisement, the Ford Motor Company was trying to buy trained intelligence like the commodity it is, but at the same time to present the illusion that to dedicate all your enthusiasm, loyalty and hard work to the rat-race of increasing Ford’s profits at the expense of competitors is a fulfilling, satisfying life. These managers are to become the top-paid workers who control and pressurise workers lower down the hierarchy to produce more, better, faster, cheaper.

Here, in these watchwords of capitalist production, is one clue to definition of “intelligence”. In the introduction to Check Your Own I.Q. by Professor H. J. Eysenck, he says (p. 15), “When we analyse performance on intelligence tests in some detail, we find that there is one outstanding characteristic which more than any other determines success or failure. This characteristic is mental speed.” And then he shows where he stands in the “nature/ nurture” argument by finishing the paragraph, “This all-pervasive mental speed, I would say, is the fundamental, inherited basis for intellectual differences between people.” Then he goes on to point out that the effects of mental speed are modified by personality factors such as persistence and care in checking answers. He also draws attention to the fact that practice can make a considerable difference to the scores people achieve; and, because he regards it as an impossibility to keep intelligence tests totally secret, advocates the alternative policy of making them as widely known and used as possible.

Eysenck makes the crucial point about intelligence testing, however, in response to criticisms about the partiality of tests:

To obtain a reasonable measure, therefore, we must have a certain homogeneity of motivation, background training, set, experience and knowledge: no intelligence test is universally valid but applies only to a given sub-set of the population. Know Your Own I. Q., as well as the present book, was intended for literate, English-reading people, between the ages of eighteen and fifty or sixty, with above average IQs and a corresponding minimum degree of schooling.

As he develops his argument it becomes obvious that the way intelligence tests are designed discriminates in favour of those adults and children who come from families which are already relatively successful and ambitious in competitive capitalist society and who have accepted the values set up for them by their rulers. Intelligence tests do not merely test: they also incessantly validate and reinforce those values. They serve as an instrument of social stability and a means of social control.

There was an upsurge of mental testing of all sorts in the latter half of the nineteenth century in Britain, Europe and America, and it is not difficult to see why. In the sixty years between 1851 and 1911 the population of Great Britain doubled to 18 million; agricultural workers declined from 2 million to 1.5 million, while workers in mining and manufacture doubled to 8.5 million, and workers in services, commerce, transport and communications trebled to 8.3 millions. With such a reproduction of labour power, capitalism badly needed techniques and systems for sorting and grading this labour power. With such an increase in the size of the working class, the capitalist class looked anxiously for a means of social control. Intelligence testing, integrated with the school system, provided an answer to both. In America, H. H. Goddard wrote (Human Efficiency and Levels of Intelligence, Princeton University Press, 1920, p. 97), “The disturbing fear is that the masses—the seventy or even eighty-six million—will take matters into their own hands."

In an address delivered to the Fifth Conference on Educational Policies at the New York Teachers College entitled ‘How may we improve the selection, training and life work of leaders?’ (Columbia University Press, 1939, p. 32) Edward L. Thorndike said, “It is the great good fortune of mankind that there is a substantial correlation between intelligence and morality, including goodwill towards one’s fellows. Consequently our superiors in ability are on the average our benefactors, and it is often safer to trust our interests to them than to ourselves.” To psychologists like Goddard and Thorndike, Carnegie and Rockefeller gave a continuous stream of money for research and development of tests and school text books. In this way they were able to supplement, and eventually influence, the policies of national and local government in the USA.

This development of a hierarchy of intelligence in all the industrialised capitalist nations is sometimes misleadingly called a meritocracy. Apart from the fact that equating mental speed with merit is cynical even by capitalist standards, the word implies that the people with this sort of merit rule society, which is simply untrue. Intelligence tests and examination ladders are for workers. Capitalists neither want nor need them; and it is they who rule. They do not even need “intelligence” because they can buy it without difficulty, together with enthusiasm, loyalty and hard work. Indeed, it is ironic that it has been members of the working class, in the middle and higher income brackets, who have been most assiduous in developing and consolidating the intelligence hierarchy in order to enhance their own prestige and fend off competition. Nevertheless, by allowing virtually all the work to be done for them, the capitalist class has given up any pretence at performing a useful function in society. They rule only through their ownership of capital and the fact that the working class continues to operate society according to their laws and in their interests. 

“Intelligent” workers do not understand this any better than “unintelligent” workers. As the slump develops, they will be just as bewildered when they are thrown out of a job as the man on the factory floor. When the next war comes, they will have more sophisticated rationalisations for going to fight their masters’ battles, but they will die just the same.

Intelligence is not understanding; it is not common sense; it is not awareness; and above all it is not class consciousness. These are the mental abilities the working class must develop if they are to do away with slumps, wars and all the other idiocies of capitalism. Intelligence, defined, selected and trained as it is at present, is a hindrance rather than a help.

Ron Cook

We are not inferior (1991)

From the November 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

The recent death of William Shockley, the American physicist and Nobel prize-winner, has removed from the scene a particularly unpleasant racist. Together with Arthur Jensen, Richard Hernstein, Hans Eysenck and others he argued that working class people and black people were innately intellectually inferior. At one time, and until fairly recently, this was the dominant view but is now largely discredited. But this has not prevented its protagonists from fighting a rearguard battle and denouncing their opponents as "dogmatic egalitarians” and even as "socialist utopians".

According to Jensen social scientists and educators have been indoctrinated to ignore genetics while Hernstein begins his argument for the biological basis of class society by a denunciation of Marxist theory and the socialist alternative. The theorists of the French and American Revolutions are not spared either, with Eysenck taking issue with the egalitarianism of Rousseau and Jefferson, and Hernstein attacking the American Declaration of Independence as well as the Communist Manifesto.

Trying to measure so-called innate intelligence goes back to Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, who wrote a book in 1869 called Hereditary Genius. Galton misapplied Darwin's theory of biological evolution to the evolution of human society and its division into higher and lower classes (as well as to what he considered to be superior and inferior races) and went on record as stating that the eminent families of Great Britain had been selected in the struggle for the survival of the fittest in society because of their biologically superior traits.

Galton's intellectual descendants today have some equally bizarre views. Jensen concentrates on the differences between the average IQ Test scores for Blacks and Whites. Hernstein stresses the different scores obtained by upper and "middle class" children on the one hand and "working class” children on the other. Both attempt to explain these differences in IQ scores on biological, instead of sociological or environmental, grounds.

These theories of the innate inferiority of some group are all based on the view that "intelligence" is innate and fixed. Each of us is supposed to be born with a given amount of intelligence which stays the same throughout our lives; our minds can develop but only up to a certain point, and that point is fixed at birth, or rather at conception. Each person is seen as possessing a given level of intellectual ability and it is this that prevents some from going as far as others.

These theories had practical consequences since until comparatively recently they predominated. The selection of children at 11 under the 1944 Education Act in Britain for one of three kinds of education, for instance, was largely based on the faked IQ findings of Sir Cyril Burt. To this day Eysenck, Hernstein and the others argue that the level of intelligence that pupils will or will not reach has already been basically determined once and for all by their genes, and that schools should therefore be adjusted to sorting out and selecting the "bright" from the "dull" as determined by nature.

This totally ignores the fact that thinking can be taught. In the past thinking, in the sense of formal reasoning, was taught by a more or less spontaneously developed and unconscious method; which led to the belief that thinking either happened or it didn't. Today, however, it is clear that intellectual development is not a fatal process in which the basic learning faculties become more or less fixed by the age of six or seven. It is possible to facilitate the development of intellectual skills in everyone.

IQ Tests don't measure "innate intelligence"; they merely measure the ability of individuals to answer the questions and solve the problems set in IQ Tests. If individuals from some groups do better on average from those in other groups, this is merely a measure either of the different groups’ opportunity to learn to do the tests or of their different attitudes to the sort of things that are being tested.

Michael Ghebre

Summer Madness (1982)

Book Review from the October 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Authors take sides on the Falklands, edited by Cecil Woolf and Jean Moorcroft Wilson. Publ. Woolf. 1982. £1.95 paperback. £4.95 paperback.

Over the past few months the frenzied jingoism of the Falklands War has been dropped from the national press in favour of more traditional entertainments such as the Royal Baby, the World Cup, the latest slaughter in the Middle East and the "Battle at Home" against the health workers, who not only insist on working hard to care for people, but also bother  the government by wanting to be paid for it.

The Falklands War exposed both Labour and Tory as hypocrites, with Thatcher claiming that about a thousand people died for the sake of the "British" citizens of the Falklands, many of who are prevented from even coming to Britain by the Nationality Act, and the "inveterate peacemonger" Foot fighting to be first to send the gun-boats out. But quite aside from these aspects of the conflict, there is an underlying question which must be answered.

The murderous destruction of the Falklands War, like that of all wars today, arose out of the particular form of society in which the world is divided into nations, competing for profit in the world market. In each of the these countries there is a small class who own and control the factories, mines, offices, hospitals and other means of production, and there is a majority class who have to work in those places to survive. The owning class possesses without having to produce, while wage and salary earners produce accumulations of wealth which they do not possess.

Wars are fought by workers, but over the interests of employers. National sovereignty, lucrative markets, mineral resources and trade routes are matters of concern for those who profit from them. Despite the rhetoric about fighting fascism, defying aggression and loving freedom from governments who scorn democracy, thrive on violence and fear the freedom of their electors, wars are not fought over such ideals. The question is, are workers to defend our own interests by uniting across national boundaries to end war and the system which causes it, or are we to continue to be blinded by the ideology of nationalism?

In Authors take sides on the Falklands a number of writers have been asked whether they supported the government's action in sending the task force, and how the conflict should have been solved. A number of them. including Magnus Pyke, James Cameron, Peter Cadogan and Christopher Hill, put their faith in the United Nations to deal with these awkward little arguments over control of territory which naturally flows from a system of society based on property and profit. This hope is well answered, though, by John Papworth, who says that "the UN is an international league of warmongers and it is as unreasoning to expect it to secure the abolition of war as it is to expect an international league of the Mafia to secure the abolition of crime". This elite band of learned academics, imaginative visionaries and humanitarian philosophers come out with the same murderous rubbish which the Sun put more bluntly in its articles about killing "Argies". Piers Paul Read talks about the "Latin temperament", and Margaret Drabble, while recognising that the war was a modern form of "bread and circuses", says that she is patriotic enough to have been "embarrassed" by what happened.

Brian Aldiss, Kingsley Amis, D. M. Thomas, Arthur Hailey, Muriel Spark and Melvyn Bragg all support the idea of workers in British uniforms killing workers killing workers in Argentine uniforms because an Argentine ruler took over some land which was largely controlled by Coalite through the Falklands Islands Company. They see the senseless slaughter as unfortunate, but necessary, because to them the present way of running society is the only way possible and must last forever, even though it has existed for only a fraction of past human life on earth.

Roald Dahl, in between writing pleasant stories to entertain and amuse innocent young children, had this to say:

Today, excessive socialism seems to have nurtured a flabby and idle breed of people who would rather compromise than fight. I would fight. Thank goodness there are some left who would do the same.

H. J. Eysenck, who is supposed to be an expert on intelligence, wrote:

I think the British government's response to the Argentine annexation of the Falklands Islands was entirely justified, and executed with exemplary determination, courage and competence.

Literary critic G. R. Wilson Knight obediently confessed that since these exemplary cases of burning alive young conscripts to the Argentine forces were ratified by all three parties in Parliament, he would not "presume to register any complaint". Keith Waterhouse "supported our response — but not its supporters". The historian Hugh Thomas says that "In the end, the British action was exemplary and I supported it with all my heart". The astronomer Patrick Moore wrote: "Of course the Government acted correctly". Spike Milligan, for all his war jokes, seems to think that the only ridiculous thing about war is the idea of trying to get rid of it:

I am for the Government's response to the Argentine annexation of the Falkland Islands . . . Utopia only exists in the mind . . . the only way to end wars is to have them (p.79)

and Alan Sillitoe hopes that by the time his reply to the questionnaire gets printed the Falklands Islands will be "back where they belong—under British administration".

There are a few contributors who are more realistic. Peter Fryer points out that "compared with the real problems facing humanity, which set of robbers control a tiny bit of land in the South Atlantic is a pseudo-problem". Michael Bogdanov asks:

A choice between an exocet and a hospital, a sea-king and a school. What sane person would not opt for welfare before war?

Michael Horovitz quotes Ghandi, when asked what he thought of western civilisation: "I think it would be a very good idea". More representative, however, is David Holbrook, who thinks that the Falklands campaign was "a form if 'useful hate', forced upon us by circumstances", or Arnold Wesker who, after eight points of qualification, makes point nine, that "The Task Force had to be sent", and point ten, that:

I'm driven to the desperate and uncomfortable conclusion that depressing and tragic though it is for the price paid, the task force have no alternative but to fight on until occupying Argentine forces surrender (p. 107).

The painful dilemma which so many of these writers seem to be suffering, between dislike of destruction and acceptance of a global system of competition rooted in violence, is being solved by them at the moment by suspending their dislike for destruction.

Clifford Slapper

Sting in the Tail: The Perfect Worker (1989)

The Sting in the Tail Column from the October 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Perfect Worker

That the owning class have a very poor opinion of the working class was perfectly illustrated in a recent report in The Guardian. It informed us that Professor Eysenck, emeritus professor at the Institute of Psychiatry in London and Professor Charles Spielberger, president-elect of the American Psychological Association are the research directors of a creepy outfit that calls itself by the horror-name of Psycorp.

A psychological testing service aimed at providing companies with "clones" of their most successful employees was launched today  . . . the company aims to pre-select the personality types most likely to succeed in jobs ranging from airline pilots to cab drivers  . . . Using the Eysenck personality profile the aim is to come up with the "perfect" employee for a particular job.

Ignoring the professors' claims, let us look at what the owning class REALLY want from the working class. Here is the profile of the perfect worker.

Someone who leaves school at 16 years of age, works for 50 years, never complains about working conditions or wages; and on the first day he goes to claim his old age pension drops dead at the post office counter.

Obedience, diligence and lots of surplus value. Now that's perfection, Professor!

Breakfast With Jehovah

John Stalker, the former Assistant Chief Constable has many interesting things to say about his former boss James Anderton, Chief Constable of Greater Manchester in his book "Stalker". 

"He was aglow with excitement, like a child who was anticipating a party. He said that at breakfast that morning (11.12.86) he had been moved by the Spirit of God to speak out at the conference against modern morality, which he felt had resulted in the scourge of AIDS. I asked him how the message had manifested itself and he answered me in an almost detached manner. He said that he could describe it best by asking me to imagine an invisible finger writing out for him on the breakfast table what the Lord wished to say." (Page 228).

We learn later (Page 242) that despite this divine assistance . . . "the 1985 crime figures for Greater Manchester had shown a big increase in the crime rate and a fall in the detection rate . . . "

It appears that the invisible finger had failed to write out between Anderson's orange juice and Rice Krispies anything that would assist him with the crime figures. Truly the ways of the Lord are mysterious . . . and none too helpful.

Economics of Prejudice

A nasty development in northern Italy is the rise of the Lombardy League.

This outfit, which gained 635,000 votes and 2 MEPs at the recent European elections, wants to exclude a lot of people from Lombardy because, they claim, these people breed too much, figure prominently in crime statistics and are forever looking for government handouts.

Just another bunch of racists raving about black immigrants? No, their target is their southern Italian countrymen and women. Indeed, one of the League's MEPs stated-

I have nothing against the blacks and, in fact, I prefer them to souther Italians". (The Guardian 16 August)

The League's real complaint is that industrialised Lombardy pays more tax to central government than all the southern regions combined and that much of this tax goes to the underdeveloped south.

So whether it is gentile against jew, protestant against catholic, white against black or even white against white, what it boils down to is the economic rivalry spawned by capitalism.

Sounds Familiar

Here's another "socialist" party which has ditched its defence policy in order to catch votes.

This is the Socialist Party of Japan, an out and out reformist bunch. Until now they had adopted the strange idea that the world's second greatest economic power could be "unarmed and neutral", and its manifesto called for the abolition of the United States-Japan Security Treaty and the disbanding of Japan's armed forces.

That was until the last elections to Japan's Upper House of parliament when the SPJ made big gains. Now that it smells a share of power it is ready to maintain the treaty.

Takako Doi, the party's chairwoman, explained:

"The Socialist Party should take the road to gradual but sold reform which could be accepted not only by the Japanese people but by the world community." (Daily Telegraph 22 August)

Such cynical expediency should convince both Japanese and US capitalism that they have nothing to fear from these "socialists".

The Welsh Windbag

On the 6th September The Guardian devoted a full page to such matters as society, the state and the class structure in Britain and how it had changed in the last 10 years.

It was the usual mixture of confusion and journalistic nonsense, but one piece under the heading "Class and Power" by Seamus Milne recorded how politicians view the class structure.

Outsiders have traditionally regarded Britain as one of the most class-divided societies in Europe. But Neil Kinnock denies the existence of the working class, David Owen says that 90 per cent of us are middle class. And Mrs. Thatcher once asked "Aren't I working class? I work jolly hard, I can tell you."

Leaving aside Owen's crass stupidity, and the bizarre image of Thatcher as a member of the proletariat, the effrontery of Kinnock is truly staggering. Who does he imagine produced the food he eats, built the house he lives in or made the clothes he wears?

While the Welsh Windbag produces nothing but hot air and empty rhetoric, it is the working class that produce all the useful things in society  . . . and some of the useless things, like silly articles in The Guardian.