20 years ago (1965)

From the August 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

One August morning twenty years ago an atom bomb exploded on the town of Hiroshima. It was shortly after 8 o’clock local time that a U.S. bomber dropped the new weapon. An estimated 80,000 people died; and more than that were injured. Together with the attack on Nagasaki a few days later, about six square miles of built up area were completely destroyed. President Truman mentioned the figure of 2,000,000,000 dollars spent on the research and production involved in the manufacture of the bomb.

Despite six bloody years of mechanized slaughter, the devastation resulting from this single raid was on a sufficient scale to penetrate the minds even of those resigned to a world constantly racked by war. Throughout the capitalist press the need for a new morality was preached and, here and there, voices were raised in humanitarian protest,

To consider the protests first; these generally took the line that the atomic bomb was such a terrible weapon that it should never have been used. But the A-bomb is just as “legitimate” as any other weapon. There is no distinction between methods of warfare which are “acceptable” and others which are not. If the stakes in any capitalist dispute are sufficiently high then every available resource is thrown into the struggle, and pious condemnation of this makes not one iota of difference.

Yet this emotional reaction to nuclear war still finds its adherents in CND and similar organisations. It is based on a refusal to face up to the reality of this capitalist world where brute force is a not inconsiderable factor in securing and maintaining a share in the world’s markets. When the permanent bickering over trade periodically flares up into open warfare no power is prepared to fight with one hand voluntarily tied behind its back. Speaking three days after the Hiroshima bombing, Truman’s double-talk made quite clear the purpose of the second world war, which culminated iu the use of a nuclear weapon:

“The U.S. wants no territory or profit or selfish advantage out of this war; we are going to maintain the military bases necessary for the complete protection of our interests and of world peace.” (Our emphasis).

However, in August 1945 the bulk of the press was unanimous in its support of the allied bombing but cautioned its readers on the threat involved to mankind. This took the form of sermonising on the “new world” which was to be ushered in with the coming of “peace” and which had to be a world free from the danger of war. The Daily Express advised:

“Everything turns on the wisdom and goodness of the peoples and their rulers.”

The Daily Telegraph felt that:

“Unless we now so bear ourselves that the power of war-making is stamped out and peace among men of good will is securely established, the human race must go down to ghastly ruin.”

The pacifist Peace News cried from the heart:

“The latent moral crisis of the world has now become evident and palpable. The invention of the atomic bomb imposes upon mankind the necessity of a new behaviour-pattern.

Henceforward, there is only one form of security for Russia or any other great power. That is moral security.”

The Daily Mirror took refuge in the thought:

“Basic power is moral power.”

Originality seemed to have gone by the board. The sum total of this wisdom amounts to this: that wars in the past have been the result of the wickedness of men but if mankind now decides to embrace the good, wholesome life than (God willing) we can all live in peace and plenty.

In Britain, amid this deluge of rubbish, Socialists raised their voices in a common sense analysis of the situation. They explained that man is not innately evil and warlike and that, in a world dominated by production for profit, it is the mad scramble for economic advantage that causes war. Conflicts between nations are the result of friction between their rival economies in the struggle to obtain or keep foreign markets and supplies of raw materials, trade routes and spheres of influence. The decision before mankind of war or peace presents itself as the wider choice between capitalism or socialism.

J. B. S. Haldane, writing on nuclear energy in the Daily Worker, had the cheek to declare:

“Marxists should be the first to realise that with a complete revolution in war and production the principles of politics will also change. What was right last week may be disastrously wrong this week.”

On the contrary, Marxian socialists realise that as long as capitalism: lasts nothing fundamentally changes in the relationship between the property-owning class and the working class; the class struggle continues. The advent of nuclear energy is no reason for socialists to desert their principles. The only effect of nuclear weapons is that the task of the working class—to establish socialism—is now even more urgent. As the Socialist Standard pointed out in October, 1945:

“Your choice is as simple as it is vital! On it rests the future of humanity.” 

If this were true in 1945, how much more so these twenty years later?

John Crump

Here and There: On Initiative (1933)

The Here and There column from the April 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

On Initiative

It is a commonplace argument of the apologists of capitalism that the possession of wealth is the reward for and the result of the initiative of its owners. Socialism, they argue, would destroy this initiative and progress would be impossible. Three reports in the Daily Telegraph for January 1st and January 2nd completely upset this claim.

It was stated that Professor Haldane, who was Professor of Bio-Chemistry at Cambridge University, was resigning his position to take up a position at the London University. Some remarkable facts were given of his career. It was stated that he had produced in his own body the condition of certain diseases in order to discover a remedy for them. In doing so he had knowingly and deliberately endangered his own life in order to increase the knowledge of science in the conquest of these diseases.

Yet he does not appear to have had any pecuniary advantage in view.

Another instance was given in an appreciative obituary notice of Dr. Alfred Smith: Dr. Smith was one of the eighteen pioneers of X-ray work. In devoting his life to X-ray research, he fell a victim to X-ray dermatitis. The consequences for Dr. Smith were the loss of a leg, semi-blindness, and physical ruin. Unable to practice in his profession, his life savings gone, he was rewarded with a disused army hut to live in, and 35s. a week from the Carnegie Hero Trust.

The Daily Telegraph also gave the names of twelve others who had lost their lives in the cause of X-ray.

The same newspaper reported the trial of J. Geen, the associate of Factor, the fraudulent company promoter, who had successfully displayed initiative in relieving his fellow capitalists of millions' of pounds. It was stated of Factor that he was an illiterate, who "was even unable to sign his own name without difficulty.

Such are the rewards for initiative. It would be true to say that the ownership of wealth by the modern capitalist class is as much due to initiative as Factor’s millions were due to his academic attainments.

Some Effects of Capitalism

From Wépszava (“The People’s Voice”), the Hungarian Social-Democratic daily, for December 22nd, 1932: —

In 1932 down to December 20th 1,126 women began giving birth to children in the street, and were taken to a hospital or nursing home. 1,126 fearful blows in the face for Hungarian social policy, which does not even take steps to see that new-born children shall come into the world with a roof over their heads! . . . A mother who finds herself lying in the hour of her greatest stress in the filth of the street instead of on a clean operating table, not only feels that society has no use for her, but that her child is born with the chains of poverty shackling its limbs, and to a destiny devoid of hope.

And from The Star, December 22nd, 1932: —

The best study I have seen recently of the psychological effect of unemployment is the vivid report on life in the Austrian village of Marienthal which appears in “Character and Personality.” The 1,500 inhabitants have been workless since a local factory closed three years ago, and are living on 5d. per family per day.

The investigators got at the facts in an ingenious way. Before distributing clothing they called from house to house, inquiring into the need, and in this way secured an insight into the domestic conditions. They also organised sewing classes and made the keeping of household accounts a condition of membership.

The inquiry revealed that the unemployed, having time on their hands, lose all sense of it. They become unpunctual and slowly resign themselves to a state which renounces even the discussion of politics and the reading of newspapers.

After three years the inquiry tabled only 14 per cent. as unbroken in spirit. Of the rest most were resigned to enduring their present state and the remainder broken completely. “heedless of the future as of the present.”

We can imagine all the parsons and priests in the kingdom arising with a great self-righteous show of protests if animals were treated with a fraction of the inhumanity meted out to the unwanted wage-slave.

Incidentally, these conditions and their results on the workers in Austria are a somewhat tragic commentary on the notion held by many woolly headed persons that starvation makes Socialists.

In the House of Commons

During the debate on the Kenya New Lands Trust Ordinance, which deprives the Natives of Kenya of the right to their lands on it being required by the Kenya Administration or White Settlers, Sir J. Sandeman Allen, commenting on the protests on behalf of the natives made by several prominent clergymen, said: “ . . .  If Church dignitaries in East Africa confined themselves to their missionary work and did not try to do anything outside of their proper sphere it would be. better for all concerned.” (Hansard, February 8th, 1933.)

The social influence of the Church seems to be in its twilight. When it interferes in class conflicts, as in the “General Strike,” it is told—in the words of Mr. Baldwin to the Archbishop of Canterbury—to ” mind its own business.” In short, the business of the parson is to console and not to interfere.

The varied attitude of the British Government in foreign affairs makes a somewhat interesting and contrasting reading. Mr. J. H. Thomas, being asked in the House of Commons what there was to be gained in pursuing the policy of the Government in relation to Ireland, replied (amidst laughter): “I have got a few hundred thousand pounds more as a result of the increased duties.” (Hansard, February 9th, 1933.)

On Saturday, February 10th, a wireless debate took place between students of Yale University, America, and students of Cambridge University, England, on the subject of War Debts. The English case was for the complete cancellation of War Debts, thus summarising the attitude of the British capitalist class as expressed through its Press. The reasons given for cancellation were ingenious, and were to the effect that cancellation was really in the interests of the United States of America. Somewhat after the sanctimonious manner of the schoolmaster, who, having punished a pupil, claimed the punishing to have hurt the schoolmaster the most. In Kenya the attitude of the British capitalist class is one of the heavy boot; in Ireland, that of a. bullying braggart; but their attitude to America is—well, sycophantic is a mild word, perhaps Pecksnifian would be appropriate. The reasons, of course, are obvious. Beneath the tender solicitude for backward countries and the polished verbiage of diplomatic documents, there are hypocrisy and greed as crude and as vicious as that which characterised the early days of Capitalism..

Strange Bedfellows.

The Leader, February 7th, 1932, contained an article called “Blasphemous Attacks on Christianity.” Among other books that were quoted was our pamphlet (without reference to its source of publication), “Socialism and Religion.” The Leader is very concerned about these attacks and thinks leaders of the Labour Party, especially ”those who call themselves Christian Socialists,” should do something about it. The Leader is a "tipster’s ” journal, which thrives on the belief among millions of gullible workers that they can get rich quickly and easily from betting and competitions of the kind run by popular newspapers for large money prizes. (Quite recently, a mathematician publicly stated that the chance of winning a prize in one of these competitions was many millions to one.) It is perhaps quite fitting that those who thrive on one form of superstition should feel a brotherly concern for those who foster superstition in another form.

The I.L.P. Finds Inspiration.

During January, letters appeared in the columns of the New Leader from members of the I.L.P. on the subject of “ Religion and Revolution.” The varied views held aptly expressed the confusion of ideas of the I.L.P. on the subject, and ranged from the view that “Christianity is Socialism” to an attitude that more or less approached the Marxist position on the subject. In the issue for January 10th, Dr. John Lewis replies in what the Editor of the New Leader describes as an “able contribution” to the discussion. Dr. Lewis's reply is a typical piece of I.L.P. shuffling. He evades the essential points in the letters from critics of Christianity, and, like Paton in his reply to a similar discussion on "Parliament and Democracy,” attempted to placate and satisfy all the diverse elements that make up the I.L.P. Christianity, he says: —

. . . .Takes on a totally different form according to the period, and at no period is it a mere reflection of a static economic order. . . . At periods of crisis in which we are mainly interested, religion splits. One part sanctifies the obsolete; one part champions the new order.

Which, as historical summary, is fairly accurate. But his conclusion, based on the above, is as follows: —

To-day religion inspires, for the first time, a movement which can achieve its ideal by building a classless society, and finally overthrowing the exploiters.

Dr. Lewis's view, which he attempts to support with Marxist formulae, is that the demand for Socialism by the workers will express itself in a religious form inspired by Christianity. Dr. Lewis is, of course, entitled to his peculiar views, but to pretend that these are the views of Marx is sheer misrepresentation of Marx's explanation of religion. Had Dr. Lewis gone one step further he might have discovered that the forces which, in the past, determined that Christianity took on a “totally different form according to the period,” also determined the decay of Christianity in Capitalist Society. So much so that, for all practical purposes, Christianity is dead so far as the workers are concerned. It is almost a certainty that if Christianity ceased to be taught in the Schools and subsidised by the State, it would quickly take its place in the museums of antiquities.

It is an interesting explanation, however, that the I.L.P.'s latest pose as a “ real revolutionary party ” is so inspired. This is a new angle on the decisions of the Bradford Conference, which was perhaps a waste of time.

Harry Waite

Mitres and Miracles (1948)

From the February 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

On October 15th, 1947, at the Convocation of Bishops, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Lang, mildly rebuked the Bishop of Birmingham, Dr. Barnes, for the views he expressed on miracles in his book “The Rise of Christianity.” The Sunday Pictorial published extracts from the book, and at the end of the series the archbishop appointed Dr. Blunt, Bishop of Bradford, to reply. Both bishops confined themselves to the authenticity of the gospels and the miracles.

This side of the religious question is of little interest to the Socialist, who ignores them for the same reason that he ignores so-called Lourdes cures and Mons angels. They are contrary to nature, and he cannot know all the circumstances of the happening and the telling. In particular the telling.

Nevertheless, miracles are of vital importance to the ecclesiastic. Dr. Lang admitted as much in his first protest.

While Dr. Garbett said “Acceptance of modern and scientific theories with regard to religion would leave the church only with the memory of a ‘good and courageous man,' who failed in his mission and whose body remained within the tomb.” Other bishops joined in the general condemnation, and Dr. Barnes was left in a minority of one. Needless to say they were all concerned, with or without miracles, in making religion acceptable to the credulous.

In spite of his objections to the literal acceptance of miracles, Dr. Barnes still believes in the greatest of all miracles: the creation of the world, universe or cosmos by a personal god. His explanation of the manner in which miracles came to be believed is probably true. But in retaining the creation miracle and a spiritual domain he gave away his case to Dr. Blunt. He says: “In the discussion of alleged miracles, much nonsense would be avoided by the ardent controversialists if they remembered the first rule of experimental religious psychology: spiritual truths must be spiritually discerned.” Which in plain English is a confession that religion is just a world of make-believe.

After Dr. Barnes’ concessions to spiritual power, miracles, like casting out devils, or turning water into wine, are only small fry, comparable with the spiritualist manifestations of today. And a god who could create the cosmos would take them in his stride. But Dr. Blunt said this in a round-about way. He says that man can modify the rigid working out of cause and effect, and then asks if God cannot do as much? He quotes Dr. Barnes’ statement, “That spiritual qualities do not use material media,” and then declares "This statement is falsified every time that a boy kisses his girl, or a friend grasps a friend’s hand.” 

Kissing a girl and shaking a friend’s hand, according to Dr. Blunt, are spiritual impulses causing physical effects. They are actually physical attractions evoking emotional responses; something not confined to man, but common to the whole biological world. Dr. Barnes’ second point: “Spiritual causes do not produce material effects,” is, he says, "falsified whenever a cricketer catches a falling ball, and so interferes with the law of gravity.” But the law of gravity persists whether the ball rests on the player’s hand, his head, or the ground. The player himself stays on the ground in accordance with the law; and when he catches the ball its weight is added to his own, and player and ball remain under the earth’s power of attraction. Even in its flight the ball was subject to that power. Had the ball rendered the player unconscious by falling on his head, it would have been just as true to say that the law of gravity had interfered with the life force.

Next, Dr. Blunt appealed to science, in the person of Sir Oliver Lodge, who for some years had been engrossed with psychical research under the guidance of spiritualist mediums. He is introduced with a flourish: “So it was that so eminent a scientist as Sir Oliver Lodge, lecturing to a body of clergy warned them ’not to give up the idea of miracle, just when science is preparing to concede it ’.”

On the strength of this, Dr. Blunt makes a more general statement, for which he supplies no evidence: “For fifty years science has been more and more conceding the limited scope of merely physical causation, and has been more and more admitting the power of spiritual forces in the processes of the Universe. Indeed the scientific question nowadays is not whether matter is absolute, but whether there is such a thing as ‘matter’ at all.”

When scientists popularise their ideas, especially among the clergy, they should explain what they mean by matter. As it is stated above it may mean any one of three things: an essential matter underlying all phenomena—the philosophers’ bugbear; matter in the form of atoms in motion; or just matter.

Matter and force are merely two names for one and the same thing. And this, in spite of the claim by a scientist, that a recent experiment could only be explained on the assumption that a minute quantity of matter had been converted into energy and lost. Which, in the telling, proves nothing except that it is just as easy to lose things in a laboratory as anywhere else.

The older materialistic theory was that matter in the shape of atoms in motion was responsible for everything in nature. It held the field until some hundred years ago. Its adherents were unsatisfied, they wanted to know of what did the atom consist, if force or energy was only motion of the atoms. A question that has intrigued philosophers and even scientists, and still confuses the ecclesiastical mind; as instanced by all the bishops in this controversy who insist on the influence of mind over matter. So this alleged disappearance of matter from the scene is of no help to either side in the controversy.

Throughout the middle ages philosophers thought of matter as the substance of the universe: the reality behind its manifold appearances. But neither the modern philosopher, nor the scientist has yet discovered this supposed reality, because however deeply they penetrate they still find only phenomena.

The atom idea was put forward in Ancient Greece. It served as the basis for theories and experiments throughout the middle ages. And eventually all modern chemistry was based on it. Yet the modern scientist found that its hardness was not due to solidity. That it was in fact made up of electrons, which he described as mere points of force moving at incredible speeds. He tried to separate these points of force with a process called "splitting the atom.” The measure of success achieved was plainly revealed to the world at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

What a tribute to the wages system ! It drags the best efforts out of men in the service of the ruling-class. The scientist will give of his utmost to get into the four-figure wage class. All his discoveries add wealth and power to the ruling-class on the one hand, and on the other, greater insecurity and more highly concentrated labour for the rest of his class. The clergy, too, are wage workers. Badly paid in the lower ranks, but always striving for one of the high-up jobs; where they can juggle with spiritual metaphysics like “experimental religious psychology ”; and get big money by means of dignified eulogies on the sacred rights of private property, the essence of capitalist ethics, and a vital necessity for himself and the class he serves.

In spite of all the recent discoveries on the nature and structure of the atom, industrial scientists carry on with their table of elements, with its relative atomic weights, and it still works. They are continually discovering laws of substance of which man can take advantage in the struggle for existence. Most scientists, however, turn away from investigations into the nature of existence. It doesn’t pay. While labour-saving processes and atom bombs do.

The tendency on the part of the clergy to merge what they call the spiritual into human thought and mental work is the result of their inability to show, even the probability of a separate spiritual existence, so they are driven back on the mind, and some day they will discover that the mind is merely the function of a physical organ. An instance of this tendency occurred during a broadcast debate on “Belief and Unbelief,” when a prominent churchman made the absurd contention that it was an "example of the influence of mind over matter whenever he took off his hat.” Quite forgetting, in his innocence, that it was material nature, in the shape of rain, cold, etc., that made him wear a hat at all; while over-exertion on a warm day would necessitate its removal to mop his perspiring brow.

Before the clergy talk of mind influencing matter, they must first establish it as a fact that mind is something different from matter, and secondly, that it is independent of matter. It needs no scientist to tell us that there is nothing in nature that is anything in and by itself. Everything within our knowledge is a combination of many things, each of them parts of the universe, and all interdependent, related, and subject to incessant change by that relationship. In that respect the mind is no different from anything else.

Some light on this subject of "mind versus matter” was reported in the Daily Worker (8/4/47). Bertrand Russell had said "that modern physics make materialism very unplausible.” In reply to him J. B. S. Haldane said: "To my mind modern physics makes materialism far more probable than it seemed a generation ago. If the smallest bits of matter are not mere inert particles, but buzzing with activity, it is much easier to suppose that life and mind could arise from what we call dead matter. Materialists think that the gap between non-living matter and human beings is not absolute, and has in fact been bridged by evolution.”

There are, of course, no gaps in evolution; only in our knowledge of it. But the closing of the gap in our knowledge of evolution has broken down one of the main defences of the Church: the mystery of the ego, or soul, has been solved by the discovery that this is nothing but the primary sense of feeling; a quality possessed by the lowest and simplest organisms. In man this primary sense is reinforced by the development of the other four senses, as a result of the hereditary genes, and emerges as a persistent awareness of self early in life.

Mind is merely a function of the brain, just as digestion is a function of the stomach. A condition appertaining to certain dispositions of a special kind of matter evolved in the universal processes of infinite change and, therefore, like everything else, short of the universe itself, limited in its duration. Moreover, it has been scientifically established that man, during his embryonic stage, passes through all forms that have characterised his own evolution from nature’s "culture” upwards.

If spiritual merely means love, friendship or the higher feelings between men in social life, the clergy have indeed abandoned all their defences. Doctors Lang and Blunt are the diehards of a fantastic belief that a spiritual god of infinite power, who created an infinite universe and a class-divided human society, expects men to stifle the greed, hatred and conflict that such a system breeds, in order that they may inherit a state of eternal spiritual bliss. Many people, besides socialists, have already jettisoned these absurd notions. The clergy, under the pressure of scientific knowledge, the indifference of the vast majority, and a growing sense of their weakness, are being steadily forced to abandon these superstitions. They may be well-intentioned, they certainly preach charitableness and brotherly love; but the evil results that flow naturally from the conflict of interests in a class-ridden social system overwhelm their ever weakening efforts.

Brotherly feelings are only possible among those who, having discarded all forms of superstition, realise and affirm that the means of life are the common inheritance of the human race as a whole. Real comradeship is only possible with those who organise consciously to abolish this class-dominated system of capitalism, and to establish a system in which the wellbeing of the people as a whole, is the chief concern of the whole of the people.

F. Foan

Answers to Correspondents: Is Christianity “fizzing out”? (1930)

Letter to the Editors from the July 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have received from a reader the letter which is printed below :—

Clapton, E.5. 31/5/30.

To the Editor.

Dear Sir,

I am a regular reader of the Standard, and admire the good sense in most of the articles, but I should like to know if the writer of the article on religion in the April issue includes the Christian religion ; if he did, I should think he requires a dose of logic. If the circulation of a party’s organ is any criterion to go by, there is no evidence at present of a “fizzing out” of the Christian religion. Last year’s world sale of the Bible was 42,000,000. Compare this with 30 years ago and you will find a good increase. I am sure he must be at sea a little.

All modern movements for the uplifting of the worker received their impulse from the religion of Christ, and probably the writer of “fizzing out” would not have the ability to write if it was not for our religion.

In conclusion, I should advise you to improve your articles on religion if you wish to maintain your good reputation.

God Bless You.

Yours very sincerely,

H. F. Roberts.

P.S.—I should be glad if you would let me know if the religion of Jesus helped Amy Johnson.

Our Reply.

It is good to hear that Mr. Roberts is a regular reader of our paper. Long may he remain so. We are always glad to hear from our readers, either in criticism or in approval. Anything is better than a devastating silence. It is heartening to feel that the thoughts one hatches and commits to paper, find a response somewhere; that someone is moved to throwing either bouquets or bricks. The article to which Mr. Roberts takes exception was largely composed of the thoughts of others. First, an extract from the “Daily News” described the “unholy scramble for jobs” amongst the professional Christians. Then an extract from Robert Graves’ “Good-bye to All That,” in which he stated that under the test of war, the professional Christian was often a contemptible creature. Finally, there was a series of extracts from Haldane’s “Possible Worlds,” confirming Graves’ observations, and adding that the modern clergy are recruited from the dregs of the universities and that their income is diminishing and not likely to increase. Our restrained comment was, “Knowledge and correct action will kill capitalism ; religion will flicker out.”

Mr. Roberts disagrees. He thinks we require a “dose of logic” ; that we are at sea a little. As for logic—well, what are we to gather from the mention of 42,000,000 Bibles? Does Mr, Roberts believe there will be 42,000,000 more Christians than before? And will they differ materially from the Christians we meet every day? And will they behave any differently in the next war from that described by Graves and Haldane? 42,000,000 Bibles in one year is certainly a staggering figure, but what is quite as staggering is the futility of it all. What becomes of them? Where do they go? Crossword puzzlers must account for quite a lot, and in the tropics white ants must make a difference. The armies that have sprung up consequent upon the Christian treaties following the war would also affect the Bible market. You don’t see the connection?

Then you must have another quotation, this time from Brigadier-General Crozier’s “A Brass Hat in No Man’s Land.” He describes the use which the military authorities made of the Chaplains and their religious ceremonies and beliefs, in the following pointed phrase :—”The Christian Churches are the finest blood-lust creators which we have, and of them we made free use.”

However, we need not labour the point. The final enquiry of Mr. Roberts as to whether the religion of Jesus helped Amy Johnson, is one upon which, up to the time of writing, we have no exact knowledge. Our only source of information, the daily newspaper, has only mentioned petrol so far, and this appears to have been sufficient. We have never heard of the religion of Jesus being used in the way suggested, or undoubtedly Major Segrave would have availed himself of it in his similar desperate enterprise.

W. T. Hopley

* * *

There is rather an amusing commentary on the wide circulation of Bibles in that very religious country—the U.S.A.

The Gideon Bible Society—sometimes called the Giddy ones—collect funds from the rich to supply a Bible free to every room in every hotel, so that commercial travellers may have some spiritual consolation for lack of orders. It has often been noted that whilst articles of any value whatever are constantly stolen—the Bible is always left behind. And the only evidence of its nice, clean pages being disturbed, is the rude remarks scribbled in the margins.

Editorial Committee.

The Decay of Religion. (1930)

From the April 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

With institutions there are degrees, even of deadness. Religion, for instance, may be deader than we think. The following extract from the religious notes in the Daily News of March 5th is quite illuminating : —

“Unholy Scramble.”

“An Anglican clergyman has described to me what he alleges to be the ‘unholy scramble’ that goes on behind the scenes for clerical appointments in the patronage of the Crown. He states that every possible string is pulled, not of course by the clergyman himself, but by his friends (with his knowledge). No avenue of approach is refused and a political caucus could not behave with greater skill and discrimination. While the friends of one man are at work he knows full well that several other clergymen are being pushed forward in a similar manner. Everyone concerned hates the system. But, as my informant says : ‘What can be done to improve it and place such patronage upon a more dignified basis?'”

This we might usefully follow with the following extract from Robert Graves’ “Good-bye to All That.”

“It was said that not one soldier in a hundred was inspired by religious feeling of even the crudest kind. 

For the regimental chaplains as a body we had no respect. If the regimental chaplains had shown one-tenth the courage, endurance and other human qualities that the regimental doctors showed, we agreed the B.E.F. might well have started a religious revival. But they had not. The fact is that they were under orders not to get mixed up with the fighting, to stay behind with the transport, and not to risk their lives. No soldier could have any respect for a chaplain who obeyed these orders, and yet there was not in our experience, one chaplain in fifty who was not glad to obey them. Occasionally on a quiet day, in a quiet section, the chaplain would make a daring afternoon visit to the support line, and distribute a few cigarettes, and that was all. But he was always in evidence back in rest-billets. Sometimes the colonel would summon him to come up with the rations and bury the day’s dead, and he would arrive, speak his lines and hastily retire.”

There you have two pictures of the value of superstition as a guide to living. There is a “holy scramble” for jobs in the world of witch-doctors when what is called peace is the order of things. When war presents the opportunity of a quick acquaintance with the joys of heaven, the self-appointed guides show a strange reluctance to leave the solid earth. Whether Robert Graves knew Prof. J. B. S. Haldane or not is not known to the writer, but it is remarkable how similar are their observations.

In an essay called “Mercy” in his “Possible Worlds,” Prof. Haldane says:

“I should be the last to suggest that the late war was a good thing, but there is no doubt it furnished a rough test of character. It will therefore be interesting to analyse the conduct of ministers of religion during its course.”

He proceeds, in the course of the essay, to do so. The following are fair extracts :

“A large number of the younger clergy became army chaplains. In this way they at once obtained the very satisfactory status of commissioned officers. With other officers that status was on the whole a fair return for the very grave dangers which they ran. The army chaplains generally ran the irreducible minimum of risk. Most of them kept well behind the line. In my war experience I never saw a chaplain display courage.”

Another extract.

“It may be contended that I was unfortunate in my acquaintance among army chaplains, and biassed in my interpretation of their conduct. It is therefore important to examine the behaviour of the clergy as a body. When conscription was introduced in Britain the clergy of all denominations showed a unanimity without parallel since the Reformation. Conscription was not for them, and so great was clerical influence among the governing-classes that their exemption was taken as a matter of course. Now from a Christian point of view, it is perhaps arguable that ministers of religion should not fight. But there is absolutely no reason why the self-styled disciples of Jesus should not, as privates of the R.A.M.C., have tended the sick and wounded under conditions of moderate discomfort if relatively little danger.”

The final extract.

“Priests have always used their power to evade the moral obligations of the ordinary man ; and threatened him with fire here or hereafter, or with social or economic penalties if he referred to the fact. What is new in the situation is that the public is beginning to recognise the moral and intellectual inferiority of the clergy. Their income is diminishing, and it is not likely to increase. For whereas the clergy of sixty years and over are on the whole men of fair intelligence, those of to-day are being recruited from the dregs of the universities, whilst many have no higher education at all. Under these circumstances they are hardly likely to tap fresh sources of revenue.”

So there you are. Knowledge and correct action will kill capitalism ; religion will flicker out.

W. T. Hopley

Science and You (1939)

Book Review from the April 1939 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Science and You," by Prof. J. B. S. Haldane. Fore Publications, Ltd., 35, Gt. James Street, W.C.l. 64 pp. 2d.

This book, by a well-known scientist, whose speciality is biology, is one which all workers can usefully read.

The book, very well written, in simple English, presents some of the latest scientific discoveries in an easily assimilable form, but what makes the book specially interesting is the uncompromising way in which the bearing of scientific facts on social conditions is brought out.

Concluding an article on bees, for example, he writes: "And although the worker is worn out after five or six weeks' work in summer, it has had a varied life, including many different kinds of work, and a good deal of leisure." Wage and salary workers who toil monotonously at the same task, year after year, with no prospect of changing the nature of their work, will readily appreciate the comparison.

Another article on population decrease shows that he clearly recognises that a system of “family allowances" is likely to cause a fall in the general wage level, for he says : "And if some system of family allowances is recommended" (i.e., by the Government) "it will be for the Labour movement to see that it is not used to depress the wage of childless workers and to break the unity of the workers." Readers of the Socialist Standard will be aware that we have always maintained that any system of family allowances is likely to depress the general wage level. Haldane quotes the director of a French family allowance fund to the effect that ; “From the social point of view, the allowances have prevented the subversive trade: unions from using for their revolutionary purpose workers who are fathers of families. The great majority of these have remained outside the class struggle." In other words, their economic conditions have been more bearable, whereas the conditions of those not receiving family allowances have been less bearable.

—The reason for the interest of governments in the size of the population is explained thus: —

“Until recently, reactionary writers deplored the increase of population and thought that it caused unemployment; though it obviously could not account for unemployment in Canada or Australia. As lately as 1936, Professor Macbride said that the unemployed should be punished by sterilisation for producing unwanted children.

“Now their tone has suddenly changed. It is realised that soldiers may be needed for new wars, and that increasing population offers a good excuse for wars of conquest. In fact, as the experience of Abyssinia has shown, conquests do not afford an outlet for 'surplus' population. But they do supply labour power at starvation rates for predatory capitalists." 

Haldane makes a number of references to Russia, but one gathers that he has no first-hand experience of conditions in that country. He states that: "In the Soviet Union, where women enjoy a greater equality with men than anywhere else, the birth rate is not falling." Apparently he has not seen the reports published a few years ago, to the effect that abortion in Russia, previously legal, is now illegal, and a punishable offence. The reason here is that Russia, like other modern powers, needs soldiers to protect her frontiers. We would recommend Haldane to read the books, by Yvon and Gide.

There is a chapter showing how scientific research is impeded under present conditions, and other chapters on sanitation and vitamins, making the whole book a good twopennyworth. 

R. M.

What is the Future of Civilisation? (1925)

Book Reviews from the May 1925 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Study of “Daedalus” and “Tantalus.”

These are the names of two mythological beings who flourished in the ripe imagination of the Greeks. They are also the respective names of two stimulating little essays, the one by Prof. J. B. S. Haldane and the other by Prof. F. C. S. Schiller. It is impossible adequately to review and attempt to answer the two sets of views in a paper this size, but it may not be unprofitable to consider them a little.

Daedalus is sub-titled “Science and the Future,” and though only cautiously optimistic is by far the more stimulating. The rate at which science is progressing is emphasised by the mention that H. G. Wells in 1902 (“Anticipations”) thought it possible that by 1950 there would be heavier than air flying machines capable of practical use in war. Prof. Haldane undertakes to make no prophecies in his paper “rasher than the above.” In that spirit then, he predicts that future developments in transport and communication are only limited by the velocity of light. Progress of this kind is limited by supplies of human and mechanical power. He considers it possible that capitalism itself may demand that the control of certain key industries be handed over completely to the workers therein, so that sporadic strikes may be eliminated. This argument is interestingly developed, and he turns to mechanical power. What will replace coal and oil? Prof. Haldane’s opinion is that four hundred years hence England will be covered with rows of metallic windmills working electric motors. During windy weather the surplus power will be conserved by using it for the electrolytic decomposition of water into oxygen and hydrogen. The gases would be liquefied and stored in vacuum jacketed reservoirs. In times of calm the re-combination of these gases in explosion motors would furnish electrical energy once more. So much for power.

He next foresees that immense possibilities await the chemist. At present we rely upon plants for our food, even when we take it at second or third hand from animals or their products. Prof. Haldane considers that less than 120 years will see a completely satisfactory diet, produced by chemistry alone. Agriculture will thus cease as an industry. “Synthetic food will substitute the flower garden and the factory for the dunghill and the slaughterhouse, and make the city at last self-sufficient.”

Prof. Haldane gives the eugenist but short shrift. The eugenic official he describes as a compound of the policeman, the priest and the procurer, and his prophecy as proceeding from a type of mind as lacking in originality as in knowledge of human nature. His own prophecy certainly lacks nothing of originality and consists in what he describes as “ectogenesis.” The first ectogenetic child is to be born in 1951, and apart from the stage of an ovum will dispense with the necessity of a mother. The period of gestation will be spent in a serum or medium, but the more intimate details are left, perhaps wisely and necessarily, to the future. In 1968 France is producing 60,000 children a year by this method, and 150 years hence less than 30 per cent. of children are to be born of woman. Mother Nature must look to her laurels.

One must read in the book how the sands of the desert, instead of growing cold as the ballad singer has assumed, are to be made fruitful, and the deep blue sea to become a permanent beautiful purple. It is not as nonsensical as it may appear. We think it probable Prof. Haldane would not disclaim the label of Socialist, but fear he would not feel at home in the S.P.G.B. The reason will appear presently. It is refreshing to note that he includes Marx with the great figures in world history. He warns the conservative that he has little to fear from the man whose passions play second fiddle to his reason. He is to beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest of his passions. These, the doubters, are the wreckers of effete civilisation. It may take another world-war or two to convert the majority, but the next world-war has at least one satisfactory element. In the last one the most rabid patriots were well behind the front line. In the next, no one will be behind the front line.

He sums up by saying, science is as yet in its infancy, and we can foretell little of the future save that the thing that has not been is the thing that shall be; that no beliefs, no values, no institutions are safe. He reiterates that not one of the practical advances he has predicted is not already foreshadowed by recent scientific work. 

Briefly the outlook appears gloomy and threatening in the immediate future whilst the dull majority is learning its lesson, but the first gleams of a scientific dawn are discernible about 25 years hence.

Prof. Schiller pooh-poohs the gloom. Mankind has always known enough to wreck itself, but chance or providence has enabled it to avoid destruction. What is needed is just a little clear thinking and plain speaking. His first fact is that mankind ceased to evolve biologically about 30,000 years ago. This raises two further questions; how did it happen and what caused it? And secondly why has he progressed in other respects ; knowledge, power and culture. His answer to the first is that man ceased to develop biologically when he developed social habits. Singly nature weeded out all but the giants. Socially the herd protected its weaklings. His answer to the second is that social institutions like language and writing, have dictated social progress by preserving experience and knowledge independent of the death of the individual. Prof. Schiller develops his thesis very cogently, and opines that modern man (with a slight reservation) is slightly inferior to his own ancestors and markedly inferior to the great races of antiquity (like the Greeks) in their hey-day. Morally, we learn, modern man is substantially identical with his palaeolithic ancestors. This is not the end of our tale of woe. In one particular he is in agreement with Prof. Haldane. The latter says that ectogenesis will save civilisation from collapsing from the greater fertility of its less desirable members (page 66). Prof. Schiller occupies about nine pages in developing the same line of thought, i.e., that the “best” elements in civilisation are sterilising themselves through restricting their families whilst the continued growth of population is mainly due to the unrestrained breeding of casual labourers and the feeble-minded. Dean Inge has said something similar, but then he is only a follower of the Casual Labourer of Nazareth. (Capital letters make a difference, don’t they?). All men, professors, or otherwise, have their blind spot, and it is curious though understandable that these two should be so similarly afflicted. It is still more curious and less understandable that men whose obvious pride is clear-cut English and lucid thought should commit themselves to such tawdry, fustian expressions as “desirable,” or “best” as scientific descriptions of definite categories. Desirable for what? Best for what? What a begging of questions ! What rubbish ! Pardon this unprofessorlike language, but we have a shrewd suspicion that we are classed with the undesirables. The Freudians would say we suffer from an “inferiority complex.” We are not of the “best.” The felicity of attending Oxford or Cambridge has been denied us. We have been too busy working for the men whose sons the learned professors are teaching. It is only too obvious that their “desirables” and “bests” are those who have achieved wealth and position in our modern capitalist civilisation ; those who have attained “success,” those who have specialised in the exploitation of their fellows. Whom is it otherwise? Who are the “best”? Who are the “desirables”? And who are the “worst” and the “undesirables?” Professor Schiller permits himself the “shrewd suspicion that certain types, say the feeble-minded, the sickly, the insane, are undesirable, and that …. certain other types, say the intelligent, healthy and energetic, are inherently superior to the former.” This occurs so late in the book as to look like an afterthought. He has therefore no time to inquire whether the causes of the first three conditions are discoverable or remediable. When he says, “no good can come of coddling and cultivating them,” we can almost visualise him idly planning a lethal chamber on the margin of his manuscript. Prof. Schiller is a eugenist and eugenics implies the sterilisation or extinction of those below a certain standard. And who is to set the standard and who enforce it? Would it be universally enforced? We mean, would the Duke of Northumberland, or Westminster, or Lord Banbury, be subject to the same impartial treatment as the village idiot? We venture to doubt it.

We welcome the excursions of thinkers such as Professors Haldane and Schiller into the world of real men but they often seem to have one objectionable quality. Their cloistered seclusion among the sons of the rich seems to have imparted an air of aloofness to their views. They appear to overlook the fact that the little world in which they live, move and have their being is not the real world at all. Their pupils and their friends are by no means the “best” or the “desirable.” Numerically a handful, they are in the strictly scientific sense parasitic. If they were to vanish from the planet, production would go on unperturbed. Those destined for industrial pursuits as they might term them are solely concerned with acquiring skill in the intensive exploitation of labour. The ladders by which they or their fathers climbed to eminence are carefully withdrawn, lest a better man follow and push them down. The real world consists of the toiling millions who compose the vast bulk of human society. Without them there would be no society in a civilised sense at all. They are human society. They may be inarticulate, slow of thought and unimaginative, but we are of them. They are bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh. We can see undesirables being created every day. We can see our best being starved, stunted, exploited, and robbed always. We can see our geniuses denied opportunity or swindled out of their reward constantly. And we can discern the causes of it all. Society, a social product, is being run for the benefit of a select few. They safeguard their hold on the powers of production by also controlling the armed forces. Society, however, is greater than they, and their perpetual problem is how to get rid of the enormous wealth produced by modern machinery without stopping the machine. The body politic is increasingly liable to the illness called slump, and the slump is increasingly due to over-production. And now, more and more are coming to see that there is something wrong with a society that condemns the bulk of its members to poverty, a poverty which is intensified with every increase in the production of wealth.

Of course there is something wrong. The wealth producing machinery of society is owned and controlled by a few. Their sole concern is not the benefit of society as such but their own individual benefit. The productive forces have outgrown this petty, personal restriction, and the Socialist says the time has come when they should be owned, by society as a corporate organism. Humanly speaking we cannot expect the capitalists to view this prospect with any enthusiasm or to co-operate in its achievement. Fortunately they are numerically negligible and solely depend upon the workers consistently and persistently handing them the keys of power every election day. Their trust has been justified so far, but we propose a change. We propose that at a future election the workers send to Parliament delegates pledged and instructed to take control of the armed forces of the nation, and to then legislatively convert the whole productive machinery of society from private to social ownership. This requires organisation. The beginnings of that organisation exist in the Socialist Party of Great Britain.  Join it.

W. T. Hopley