White supremacy is stupid (1993)

From the November 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

In a world that is becoming smaller and societies that are becoming multicultural, it may be time for Western culture to examine critically its view of other cultures. For how much of Western culture is made up of prejudice about other cultures? How much of Western identity is constructed upon the negative identity of others?

Decolonization in a political sense has occurred. What remains to be addressed, however, is cultural decolonization. The legacy of several hundred years of Western expansion and domination, manifested in racism, continues to be recycled in Western cultures in the form of stereotyped images of non Western cultures.

Social Construct

It has often been observed that "race" is not a reality but a social construct. In his study of the "Jewish question'', Jean-Paul Sartre wrote, "Don't ask what the Jews are, but what we have made the Jews”. This applies equally to images of Africa and blacks. The term "White on Black” refers to the whole spectrum of relations in which Western interests were dominant — the trans-Atlantic slave trade, master-slave relations on plantations in the Americas, colonialism, the post-colonial era. and majority minority relations in the Western world. In each of these situations Europeans constructed images of Africa and blacks on the basis of selective perception, expedience, second hand information mingled with reconstructed biblical notions and medieval folklore, along with popular and "scientific” ideas that were current at the time.

Stereotypes of Africa and of blacks are still in circulation but old images have faded away or acquired new meaning and new images have arisen. In the second half of the 20th century, "race” is no longer invoked as the primary key to differences; it has been succeeded by systems of differences founded not on biology but on culture.

"Race" discrimination has increasingly yielded to discrimination along cultural lines, bringing with it different sets of images. Hence "racism" in the literal sense is no longer a satisfactory term to understand the changing realities. Culture as a new basis for differentiation is much more diffuse in its ideological claims than race theory, but in some ways equally effective in establishing boundaries and demarcations. While science marched forward, popular thinking in Europe still followed Christian modes of thought. Genesis (9:18-27) relates that "Noah drank wine and fell into slumber while naked”. Ham, his youngest son, saw him but did not cover his shame, whereas his brothers Japheth and Shem covered their father with cloth. Awakened, Noah praised Shem and blessed Japheth. but cursed Ham.

Curse of Ham

In the early Church the curse of Ham or Canaan was regarded as an explanation of slavery, but not simply of blacks because slavery at the time was "colour-less". The association of the curse of Ham with blackness arose only much later in medieval Talmudic texts. In the 16th century it became a Christian theme and by the 17th century it was widely accepted as an explanation of black skin colour. From here it was just a step to the interpretation of the curse of Ham as an explanation of and justification for the slavery of black Africans.

The view of Africa as a continent condemned to eternal servitude was well suited to a theological assessment of slavery. According to the theological explanation, the Continents were peopled by descendants of Japheth (Europe), Shem (Asia) and Ham (Africa), ranked in a master-servant relationship. Until well into the 19th century, even after the development of the theory of race, this remained the most popular explanation of slavery.

Minorities often a find place in society in certain specialized occupations. No matter how unreal and how dependent on circumstances its position in the labour market is. it is often extremely difficult for a minority to overcome the stereotyping that goes with that position.

The occupational roles allocated to blacks in Western society are an example a minority specialization which has been in existence so long that it seems to reflect the "natural" order: entertainment and sport.

The first role blacks were permitted to perform in White society, after that of slave or servant, was that of entertainer. Indeed entertainment was itself one of the functions of slaves. Entertainers do not threaten the status quo but embellish it. Emotive expression by blacks is accepted and conforms to the rhythm myth, the stereotype of musicality. Thus over the past century, blacks have become the musicians, dancers and buffoons of Atlantic culture.

Sporting challenge

Another terrain on which blacks have been permitted to manifest themselves is in sport. Several sports had travelled along with Africans to the New World and. according to a study by the tennis champion Arthur Ashe who died recently, by the mid-19th century several sports were integrated. The achievements of black athletes challenged "white supremacy" and breached the myth of "racial" inferiority. The integration of sport is part of overall black integration. But it is also a limited kind of success. Their success seems to confirm one of the stereotypes of the black as bestial brute, the all brawn-and-no-brains kind of athlete. At first the story was that blacks were inferior to whites in every respect, physically as well, and therefore unfit to compete with whites led to other stories about blacks having "abnormal muscular qualities, different from those of white men”.

Recently a Tory councillor in Derby was quoted as claiming that "black people do not use swimming pools because they cannot float":

"Retired teacher Colin Brown, 59, said: 'Black people are very heavily boned and they sink. It’s a physiological fact that was taught when I was studying physical education. You never see any black Africans in Olympic swimming finals, do you?’” (Sun, 9 September).

Racism never comes alone. It forms part of a hierarchical mental set which also targets other groups. The features attributed to groups define by “race" are not peculiar to racism, but are also attributed to entirely different categories defined according to social status, gender, age, nationality and so forth.

What racism and other forms of prejudice and discrimination all have in common is social inequality. The common denominator is power — the power that arises from a hierarchical situation and the power required to maintain that situation and, also the anxiety that comes with power and privilege.

Michael Ghebre

For your night out (1957)

Film Review from the October 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

If you have five shillings to spare, go and see "The Witches of Salem"—it might come off soon. Even if its title does not sound very interesting, this new French film is unique. A gripping drama—reminiscent of Ibsen at his best—it has everything the heart could desire: a most moving love story, a good deal of direct, down-to-earth sex; a vivid portrayal of puritan life. More important is that you won't need to leave your critical faculties at home, for this is a movie that deals with the lives of real people. Always political, and an impressive study in mass psychology, it shows the struggle between rich and poor, between the Church and the people. One of those rare films that a Socialist should not miss to see. Script by Sartre, based on a play by Arthur Miller. Subtitles in English.

B. J.

'Was it something that we said scanned?'

MICHAEL: Hey, did you hear him making fun of you earlier?

ALAN: I did, Michael, but as Oscar Wilde said, ‘There’s only one thing worse than being talked about …’

MICHAEL: Cancer.

ALAN: No, not being talked about.

MICHAEL (Sickened): What, Oscar Wilde said not being talked about was worse than cancer?

ALAN: Yes, yes. I think he was at a party. Probably just being a gay show-off.

(from Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa.)

From the agenda for the SPGB's 2023 Autumn Delegate Meeting:

How's that for a kick in the knackers? No words. Actually, a few: To paraphrase Jean-Paul Sartre, 'Hell is other Party members . . .'

Mixed Media: Mary Barnes (2015)

Saint Joseph
Finger painting, April, 1968

The Mixed Media Column from the December 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Earlier this year there was an exhibition of paintings by Mary Barnes (1923-2001) at the Nunnery Gallery, Bow in East London. The works came predominantly from the collection of psychiatrist Dr Joseph Berke, who is 'Boo-Bah', Mary's therapist and friend. Mary was an Army Nurse in the Second World War, in 1949 she converted to Roman Catholicism which was a rebellious and unusual step, representing a break from staid and bourgeois Anglicanism. But when she was 29 she was diagnosed as schizophrenic. With her condition seriously deteriorating, in 1963 she read RD  (‘Ronnie’) Laing's The Divided Self, and contacted and began regular therapy sessions with him.

Laing and fellow psychiatrist David Cooper were heavily influenced by Jean-Paul Sartre's Marxist Existentialism which was expounded in Search for a Method (1957), and Critique of Dialectical Reason (1960). Sartre aimed for a synthesis of Marxism and Existentialism, seeing Marxism as the dominant philosophy and existentialism as a reinforcing ideology. Sartre proposed Existentialism and Marxism as a possible means of understanding humanity and the world as a totality. Laing and Cooper in their 1964 book Reason and Violence, a Sartrean synopsissaw a combination of a Hegelian-Marxist dialectic with an Existentialist psychoanalysis that incorporates individual responsibility into class relationships, thereby adding a properly Existentialist dimension of moral responsibility to a Marxist emphasis on collective and structural causality. For Laing and Cooper, mental illness was a normal, functioning element of the capitalist world we live in, and that it was in fact a perfectly rational response to an insane world and must therefore be treated as such.

In 1965 Laing, Cooper, and Berke set up the Philadelphia Association at Kingsley Hall in East London, a therapeutic community. One of the first members was Mary Barnes. Laing believed that a breakdown, if allowed to progress without medical intervention, could lead to a more stable state of mind. Thus Mary was encouraged to give in to, and regress to, a state of helpless infancy so that she could grow up again into sanity. She became the patient of 'Boo-Bah' Berke, regression therapy and a psycho-dynamic discourse ensued. Mary discovered her gift for painting, and her condition improved. Mary became a cause célèbre, featuring in a June 1968 Sunday Observer article How Mary Barnes grew up again at 42, and held her first solo exhibition in April 1969 at the Camden Arts Centre.

Mary's canvases are full of vivid colour and often depict religious imagery. Trees shows a figure on a tree in a crucifixion pose while Crucifixion, with its 'INRI' is much more explicit. Mary wrote that 'Ronnie especially liked The Vine, a crucifixion painting of Christ as the vine.' (Mary Barnes: Two Accounts of a Journey Through Madness Mary Barnes and Joseph Berke 1971) William James in The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) pointed out that religious emotions may be deranged but are crucial to human life, religious experiences can be irrational but nevertheless are largely positive as after a religious experience the ideas and insights usually remain and are often valued for the rest of the person's life. Marx identified that 'Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering.' (Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right) In The Politics of Experience (1967), Laing wrote 'we are born into a world where alienation awaits us. We are potentially human beings, but are in an alienated state, and this state is not a natural system' which owed a huge debt to Marx's writings on alienation in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts.

Mary's Volcanic Eruption: Explosion of IT (1969) is the centrepiece of the exhibition, all primary red, green, yellow, orange, and black colours in seismic flourishes. Mary wrote 'in December 1965 I had a dream that I think must have been about IT: walking along a road... I saw a man in a dark suit and beret. He reminded me they would soon be testing the bomb.' The exhibition features her metal trunk with a handwritten note sellotaped to it 'Mary Barnes Art Work, paintings etc. of mainly Kingsley Hall period 66-70.' There are photographs of Boo-Bah and Mary at the publication of their book, Mary at a performance of David Edgar's 1978 play Mary Barnes, and a photograph of Mary in 1990 visiting Sweden where she frequently gave talks to both psychiatrists and patients. This particular photograph shows Mary meeting a patient deemed too dangerous to meet face-to-face.

For the rest of her life Mary showed her work worldwide, usually accompanied by lectures on mental health issues, and the benefits of psychotherapy. According to Laing's son, 'Mary became a show-piece for Ronnie's central theory of the potential healing function of extremely disturbed forms of behaviour.' (RD Laing: A Biography Adrian Laing 1994) The exhibition epitaph is Mary's hymn to Berke: 'Boo-Bah, Ascension Day, Hip-pip Hooray! Joe, I love you with the burning heart of the Sun' which is testament to the humanism of radical 'anti-psychiatry'/Existential Marxist psychotherapy.

Steve Clayton

The Enemy on the Left! (1973)

The Enemy on the Left Column from the January 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

A regular column dealing with the antics of those who call themselves socialist but in practice do  nothing but harm to the cause.

First, a  look at the title of this series. We all know what an enemy is, but what is "the left"? The matter is not as simple as it sounds. Was Nazi Germany "left" and Stalinist Russia "right"? How absurd, most people would say. Just the opposite. Yet the similarities between the two régimes were most marked. In particular, both countries were wage-slave societies where the wage-slave had practically no rights and where the concentration camp and the death penalty were the answer for those who dared question the actions of the rulers. And, as is well enough known, their differences were so unimportant that in 1939, the Hitler-Stalin pact gave the green light for the start of the holocaust.

So perhaps we will have to deal only with those people and parties who pretend to be socialist (maybe closing our eyes, for convenience, to the fact that the very word Nazi was only shortened for National Socialist; while as to the communists — who, in Marxian terms, are but synonymous with socialists, the term "red-fascist" is really nearer the mark.) Some readers may recall that the French writer and pseudo-socialist, Jean-Paul Sartre, once coined the slogan "No enemies on the left" in an endeavour to produce a "united front" of French pseudosocialists. The reality is, however. that it is precisely these leftists. all these people who masquerade as socialists, the Wilsons, the Foots in this country, the supporters of Brandt or Brezhnev, of Mao or Castro et al, who are the real villains of the piece. The reason is simple. In order to achieve Socialism, in a world such as we live in now where the objective conditions, the power to produce abundance to satisfy all human needs, have long been established, the only real obstacle is the subjective one of convincing the working class of the world that Socialism is the answer. It therefore follows that all these people who lead false trails merely produce the confusion as to what Socialism is all about, which, sadly, characterises almost the whole electorate over one hundred years after Marx and Engels had pointed the way ahead. And it is even worse that that. For not only do these people sow confusion, they also have the effect of producing revulsion against the very thought of Socialism among such elements of the working class who are prepared to think (or who have the time and energy to think after they have been through their day's rations of exploitation). Who would wish to be socialist who believes that Wilson's government was an example? Who would not be sick of the very idea of a communist (or socialist) society if that means anything like the vicious tyranny which exists for to see in places like Russia or China?

It is hoped that this brief introduction will have set the scene. In future issues we can deal with some of the activities of these leftist enemies of Socialism and of any progress towards a sane and humane society.

L. E. Weidberg 

The Enemy on the Left! - Jean-Paul Sartre (1973)

The Enemy on the Left Column from the April 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Apart from the conventional left, the Labourite and Communist elements, the pseudo-socialist political scene is also cluttered up with a plethora of fringe-leftists who call themselves Trotskyists, Maoists, International Socialists etc. and who (insofar as one can follow their varying lines) claim to be lefter-than-left or more socialist than thou. (Alice's answer to the Mad Hatter is perhaps relevant. She could not have more tea because she hadn't had any yet. Similarly, these proliferating groups cannot be more socialist than the Labour Party which is not socialist at all. Though it is true they could not be less, either.)

It is difficult to keep up with these endlessly splintering groups and practically impossible to gather what they really stand for but perhaps one can begin by mentioning an interview in the Guardian recently with Jean-Paul Sartre "widely acknowledged as the greatest living philosopher". (Not so long ago, the title of world champ was claimed for Bertrand Russell whose most philosophical moment had occurred when he mooted the dropping of an atom bomb on Moscow. Not bad for a life-long pacifist. If only Marx was still around to re-write The Poverty of Philosophy.) This French genius, hero of the would-be revolutionary students, now, it seems, calls himself a Maoist. What he was doing all his leftist life, before Maoism was thought of as a creed, the interview does not make clear. One recalls that at various times he has quarrelled with the French Communist Party and at other times he has supported them — including times when the Stalin terror has been at its most ferocious; but you can't really expect leftist philosophers to bother themselves with such trivia as the fact that 200 million Russian workers were held in a tyrant's grasp and untold numbers were being frozen and worked to death in forced-labour camps. One also recalls his association with Russell in the so-called Tribunal to try America for war crimes in Vietnam (of which there was no shortage, of course) which really boiled down to support for the victory of that kindly, freedom-loving "communist", Uncle Ho.

The interview, though it occupies four columns, never gets round to asking the Great Man why he is a Maoist or indeed what kind of an alleged socialist that animal is supposed to be. So one can only fall back on the assumption that the Maoists stand for the sort of régime that exists in China today: where Mao makes it clear, both in word and in deed, that he is himself a Stalinist. So we have the farcical position that the revolting students of 1968 who called the French Communist Party "Stalinist shit" are now personified by a philosopher who stands for Chinese Stalinist shit. A rose by another name indeed. But of course that sort of muddle is the inevitable fate of those who lurch from one fashionable nostrum to another without ever giving themselves the time to work out the real lesson of the present jungle world, in Russia, or China, or the West — that capitalism is the enemy and only an understanding proletariat can do anything about it.

Clearly, the workers will never learn that lesson from a Professor of Maoism. Instead of getting knowledge in their heads, their heads will be broken by the brutal arm of the state. For our Maoist makes it clear he does not hold with the "legal action" of voting and although he does not spell out what means the workers should adopt, it is clear that our Maoists are enemies on the left indeed.

L. E. Weidberg