Science and the British Association (1951)

From the October 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard

The limitations of a society which has outlived its usefulness is shown in every aspect of art, literature, religion and science. Man must live, and whether he be a scientist, factory worker, writer or artist, under Capitalism his labour power becomes a commodity. The factory worker produces things, not because he likes producing those things, but because he is paid for it.

To survive in Capitalism, the capitalist must be ever increasing the efficiency of his industry and for this purpose he demands specialised scientists and psychologists to tell him exactly how hard he can drive his workers. What these scientists produce is a commodity and their livelihood depends upon the demand for such knowledge by the capitalist class. Gone is the individual adventurer in the field of science; all are absorbed in the capitalist system, driven to produce what can be sold in order that they may continue to do so.

It is not surprising therefore, that the recent meeting of the British Association, reported in the Manchester Guardian (10.8.51). contains much that displays the myopic vision of science gone mad. Dr. Meiklejohn, lecturer in Industrial Health, sounded this warning: “The clamant demand is for more coal, and to this end there is more mechanisation. But pause to examine the situation. Are we quite certain that, in some mines, more coal cutters and conveyor belts are not diminishing output by the deleterious effect upon the miner.”

Notice the placing of his words. The danger is diminishing output. The reason is. “the deleterious effect upon the miner.” Thus the profit and interests of the capitalist class are put first and the health of the worker only incidental.

Dr. C. G. Gooding, the Scottish Coal Board's principal medical officer, when dealing with the effects of lighting upon miners' health, said that the amount of lighting concomitant with safety was so small until twenty-live years ago that the miner was unable to use the most efficient part of his vision. This caused miner’s nystagmus with its deleterious effect on vision and its neurotic symptoms. But this disease was physical, he claimed, and was not caused, as some psychologists had claimed, from a desire to escape the dangers of the pit. When he went on to say that there was not much evidence that the improved lighting had increased output, we were rather surprised that it had been introduced. But when he added that the most important possibility was that the increased comfort would work “revolutionary change in the psychological climate of the industry by converting mines into underground factories,” we began to see what he was getting at.

The effect of dust inhalation on miners was discussed by Dr. C. M. Fletcher. He mentioned the prevalence of pneumoconiosis among the South Wales miners and said that the low tubercular death rate seemed to derive from the fact that the presence of pneumoconiosis disguised the usual symptoms and caused death to be ascribed to chronic bronchitis. He said that with the new regulations, miners were queuing to get back to work although still suffering from this disease and he wondered whether this was medically justified or merely expedient in view of our need for more coal. We know, however, that every day expediency takes over another portion of humanity.

Finally, Dr. Meiklejohn came to the point once more and said that it was a question whether the increased mechanisation which sprang from the increased need for coal would not eventually diminish output by the deleterious effect on the miners.

Giving weight to the point. Sir Andrew Bryan, a member of the N.C.B., said, “ We are losing more manpower through pneumoconiosis than from any other cause.”

The cold way these capitalist whip-crackers and profit-watchers can deal with human lives as they deal with machines reflects the perversion that is the outcome of the last burst of a society past its usefulness.

One imagines the fanfare of trumpets greeting the arrival of the so-called psychology into the arena of capitalist apology. He went on to point out that the high incidence of pneumoconiosis in South Wales was related to the highest accident rate in any of the country’s coalfields. Analysis, he claimed, suggested a definite relation between the two. He did not commit himself to saying whether the physiological effects of the disease make men less alert or whether the fear of contracting it gave rise to a subconscious desire to be injured in order to get out of a unacceptable situation.

The final futility was left to Mr. C. A. Oakley who suggested that some people have accidents perhaps unconsciously to cover up some personal difficulty or to attract attention or even deliberately as a form of self punishment. One might give the same reasons for so-called scientists who make such futile statements as “some” people; it would be equally meaningless.

We in the Socialist Party of Great Britain have long known that in capitalist society profit comes before health and that health is regarded as a means of increasing profit. We recall the days when children of five years and onwards were working fourteen and fifteen hours per day in factories, and the employers who ridiculed the idea that they were overworked. They said that these hours agreed with the children wonderfully. Factory children, they urged, were healthier, more moral than others and more intelligent. Looks, they pleaded, were deceptive. “When long hours have to be worked,” said the manager of Mr. Gott’s mills, “the children are less tired than the adults.” For the children’s sake they deprecated shorter hours and it would be exceedingly prejudicial to their morals to let them out earlier. “ Nothing,” said one of these philanthropists who worked his children from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m., “ is more favourable to morals than habits of early subordination, industry and regularity.” (Evidence of Mr. G. A. Lee, cotton millowner—“The Town Labourer,” p. 163.)

We know the capitalist who tries to hide his thirst for profit behind morals, religion and philanthropy. And to-day, the capitalists whose mental outlook is more refined and subtle hide their profit motive behind a huge body of pseudo-scientists, industrial doctors and fact-finding bodies.

The capitalist system defiles everything it touches; all who support or accept it allow their brains to be twisted and perverted by the contradictions it brings. Only those who see the solution to its problems outside of capitalist society can see all within it in true perspective, in its relation to history.

To find the cause of social evils is in the interest of all.

It is in the interests of doctors who see that the conditions which produce such diseases as tuberculosis are inherent in the system itself, that tuberculosis is an occupational disease of the working class; it is in the interests of criminologists who see that crime is caused by the very nature of capitalist society; in the interests of psychologists who see that the environment of the class is governed by the economic system, that men feel insecure because they are insecure; in the interests of economists who cannot solve the periodic unemployment, the ever-present poverty and wars within the capitalist system; in the interests of atom scientists who are transformed from agents of the emancipation of man from nature into manufacturers of the death of millions; in the interests even of the capitalist class who cannot escape the indiscriminating power of the atom and hydrogen bomb; in the interests of the whole of the working class to study the scientific case of the Socialist Party of Great Britain in order that they may see the solution to the major problems of the world, and that they may achieve that solution.

P. J. McHale.

Dope For The Workers (1951)

From the July 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many films, books and newspapers show us the naive indoctrination of the workers by the ruling class of other countries. You will be shown “Big Brother" Stalin beaming benevolently at the German workers. You may read such papers as the Soviet Weekly in which everything done by the state is referred to as “great.” But it is much more difficult for the British worker, having been slowly poisoned by subtle propaganda to see exactly the power and organisation of the “head fixing” industry in his own country.

One important difference between Britain and other countries arises from the fact that capitalism, having been in existence for a few hundred years, has had time to get organised. Propagandists are something like the mythical “vampires;” not only do they suck blood but it is generally supposed that their victims also become vampires. That is what has happened to a large extent in Britain. The workers' minds have been so conditioned that long before the capitalists have thought of a good angle to explain away some criticism, one or two workers have already started to apologise for them. But whereas these secondary “vampires,” the “head fixed” workers are ready with their apologies, quite often they find such apologies out of date and find that their capitalists have taken quite a different angle.

An example of this came after the announcement of the re-call of “Z” reservists. Throughout the country there grew up an organisation of sincere ex-servicemen to resist conscription. But good intentions can be very confused. These ex-servicemen did not object to war, only to the coming war; they did not object to weapons, only to the atomic bomb; they did not object to marching, only to marching alongside the German army. In short, they still believed that the Germans are the scum of the earth. Foolish, out of date people. The very reasons they believed they had for fighting the last war were the reasons they had for avoiding this one. It would be funny if it were not tragic.

Capitalist propaganda often takes place without any conscious effort on the part of the propagator. The child upon its mother's knee does not realise that the language it is being taught is suitably coloured to help the continuation of capitalism. Even the mother, unless she be a socialist, does not realise that she is teaching her children the capitalist attitude to good and bad, the doctrine of God and the Devil.

At the age of five the child is thrust into an organised scheme to enable it to know enough to earn a living but not enough to know anything of great importance. It is taught obedience to authority which results in apathy, patriotism which results in racial prejudice, religion which results in blind acceptance, and the history of “great men” which means meekness before prestige. The child turns to entertainments and it finds children's magazines, a brighter presentation of the same dope. The child goes to the cinema and sees the brave king defending his property against a weak, cringing, brutal coward, the glorious British army sniping the enemy with smiles and a few brief jokes.

Should the child be unfortunate to have to go to Sunday school, here he will be exhorted to leave the few pleasures he has to the wicked rich, to fast and to mumble thanks to some infinite omnipotence up in the clouds. He will be asked to sing aloud, “All things bright and beautiful” midst slums and factory smoke.

Having left school into the hurried and worried life of capitalist efficiency he will fall a victim to tabloid thanking, reducing misfortune and hardship to a few silly platitudes. He will get to know all the capitalist incantations summed up in the philosophy. “All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.”

If among the little knowledge he has gained from the sciences taught at school he has found a method of thinking with any degree of clarity, he finds he must disguise it. His employers will not hire such a man, his trade unions call him names and refuse to listen to him and the women refer to him as a “queer fish”

Sooner or later he finds himself in a world of drug addicts, mental drug addicts. Unless he absorbs regularly what can be read in newspapers he finds little to discuss with his fellow men. He too becomes a drug addict, taking one of the many brands each morning after breakfast and devouring it on his way to work. He can now “argue” with his fellow workers and persuade them that his brand of dope is better than that of his friends.

Eventually he is given a change. He is dressed in a uniform, numbered, given a rifle and told to shoot someone. He does so with all the unconscious hatred he has for the system in which he finds himself. The devil he heard about on his mother’s knee, the brutal cowards he read about in children’s books, the wicked men he saw on the screen; he shoots them all and feels happy, ready to reap the benefits of ridding the world of such people.

He returns home to claim his promised land and finds the same old system, the same old misery. He reads the daily dope once more and finds that all his troubles arise because he wasn’t killing the right people. It was not the Germans but the Russians he should have killed. The hatred boils up again. He tells himself that he will know better next time.

So many people today think that they will know better next time. Unless they are socialists they will not know better. The dope, whether of the church, the press or the schools will claim them.

Yet the strongest instinct in man is the will to survive and to do this he must think. From the moment of his birth man is slowly conditioned for capitalism. He is told he does not suffer from poverty, only from a “lack of the necessary purchasing power.” He is not short of houses to live in, only suffering from “a temporary divergence of labour into other industries.” He is not made to go to war, only to “fight for peace.” Rose coloured spectacles stand in the workers' way in their struggle to survive. When they get rid of them, as they will, they will be ready to see things in perspective. They will be socialists.

P. J. McHale

Monkeys of the World, Unite! (1961)

A Short Story from the June 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

Monkeys, trained to operate controls at given signals, are being used to pilot American space ships! Newspapers show front-page photographs of the new astronauts, their apish chins thrust forward with Mussolini arrogance. It's all very interesting, but what about the social effects of such new developments?

Human astronauts are too few and disorganised at the moment to insist on union membership. And if an Astronaut Union meeting was held to discuss the matter, it’s likely that there would be more chimps there than men. The result could be a union dominated by chimpanzees.

Now everyone knows chimps are reactionary. They accept the truck system of payment, fully satisfied with a weekly wage of bananas. They demand no danger money and can easily be bribed with a full length cover story in Life magazine. What will happen when the characteristics of monkey labour are noticed by industrial employers?

An American factory has already tried using chimps as labour. Mechanisation and mass production have reduced most factory jobs to a simple routine. The monkey could become a serious threat to the working class. Their food, clothing and shelter requirements are few: so are their notions of freedom. They could be farmed in colonies and crossbred to produce strains suitable for all conditions.

Naturally they'd have to be kept happy but industrial psychology is already a science. How about a few rousing songs like. "The British Chimpanzee, is the salt of our Count-err-ree ”?

Laws could be passed making it a capital offence to murder a chimp and a National Veterinary Service could be set up to make sure a sick chimp could go back to work as soon as possible. British law would have to be extended to cover the chimpanzee; he should be able to sue his master for the loss of five bananas at the cost of only a hundred bananas.

Religion would have to be adapted for him. As a reward for work, patience and obedience, he would look forward to a life after death in which he would be introduced to a Gorilla father image who presided over a banana plantation. He would learn modesty and cover up his bottom, read good books and be prevented from reading bad books about his promiscuous ancestors.

None of these things is impossible with careful scientific breeding and conditioning, and our modern age would he far better served by chimp workers. For it’s becoming increasingly obvious that in our modern age. human beings simply don't belong.

P. McHale