What is Democracy? A Socialist View. (1913)

From the October 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

What is democracy?

Many people, when faced with this question, conjure up pictures of the American eagle, and think that democracy is all that that amiable bird symbolises. They imagine that a State run on the lines of the American republic is a democratic State, that the institutions of such a State are democratic institutions, that the spirit of such a State is the democratic spirit, and that the philosophy of such a State — the “Rights of Man” (printed, of course, on the reverse side of a “green-back”) — is the democratic philosophy.

All of which ideas are wrong.

The common meaning of the term “democracy”, — a form of society in which supreme power is lodged in the hands of the people — is correct enough as far as it goes, and is sufficient in all that it implies. But it implies something very different from the American republic, and American institutions, and the “Rights of Man”.

For supreme power to be lodged in the hands of the people does not mean merely that they are to have the widest possible franchise and equal voting power. It implies that the people are to have complete control of all social institutions, the ordering of all social activities, the domination of the whole social life. Such a condition of affairs presupposes at the very outset the ownership by the people of all the means of life, all the social products, even all the social intelligence and skill and energy.

There can be no other foundation for democracy than this common ownership of all the means of life, for where these fall into private possession social distinctions at once spring up, the owners become dominators, and it becomes impossible for the people to control the social activities — because, forsooth, they have not control of the means and instruments through which the most important of those activities — those directed to the production of the social wealth — are applied.

Notwithstanding, then, the popular conviction to the contrary, existing republics no more enfold democracy than do monarchies. Nor are they nearer to it since they are no nearer to the property condition upon which democracy must be founded.

That was democracy which existed among all races prior to the advent of private property. There the people of the community really controlled the affairs of the community, deputing functions to certain officials, but jealously keeping power in their own hands. The “little brief authority” in which they dressed their elected persons was never allowed to pass beyond the popular control. Even in the case of the war-chiefs — the direction, perhaps, in which usurpation was most likely — it was in many cases usual to elect two, to act alternately, in order that the influence of one should form a counter-balance to the other.

If we cannot have democracy under the present social system, at least we may have men and women imbued with the democratic spirit. Indeed, every Socialist must be so imbued. In the light of this spirit he has faith in the capacity of the whole people to control the social system as a democracy, just as he has faith, primarily, in the capacity of the working class to institute the social system based upon the common ownership of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth.

It is obvious that the natural corollary of the claim that the working class must make these means and instruments the property of the whole people is the implication that the people, as such, and not as a few directing the many, will be able to organise for the efficient use of those instruments of labour. Therefore the class idea — the idea that the working class possess every qualification for the establishment of a democratic social system — and the democratic idea — the idea that the whole people are capable of democratically controlling the affairs of society — are intimately connected, are, as a matter of fact, inseparable.

Democracy has a philosophy of its own. This philosophy is grounded upon the exactly opposite conception to that upon which all individualist systems of thought, from the capitalist to the Anarchistic, rest. In the democratic conception the organic nature of society is the very corner-stone. Naturally this awards to the individual a subordinate place. He finds his true position as an organic atom, the product of the organic whole, and subordinate, therefore, to the social body. In the democratic philosophy it is realised how supremely important a factor in social development the mass of the people — the “rank and file” — are. There is no intellectual class. The highest intellect is a social product, the result of the food, shelter, and clothing produced by society, and of the accumulated experiences for which society has paid with pain. And further, the opportunity even for such intellects to perform their useful part depends entirely upon the general level of intelligence. Just as the female blossom on the gourd vine, open before there is a mate to round her career, must die unfruitful, so the intellect advanced beyond its day must prove sterile and useless to society.

The individual, then, is a social product; he owes not only his being, but his opportunities, to society. Instead of being the “great man”, to whom society owes everything, he is the creature of the social entity, without which he is nothing.

In the conclusions of such a philosophy the capabilities, the strength, and the energies of the individual are just as much the product of the social activities as are the means and instruments of production and distribution; also they are just as necessary to the social organism, and therefore just as properly fall under the social control.

The philosophy of the “Rights of Man” of the bourgeoisie — which mocked humanity so cynically at the Paris Commune, and does so every day, in fact, the wide world over — with the “Rights of Society”.

In the course of time democracy must also have an ethic of its own. What form this will take can at present only be roughly prognosticated. Just as, with all our knowledge of primitive democracy, we are unable to adequately conceive the outlook on life of the social units of those early days, so we cannot hope to understand the mental outlook of the democrats of the future.

As the Materialist Concept of History, however, teaches us that all ethics take their form from the method in which the people gain their livelihood, when the people gain their livelihood democratically, the ethic will be in keeping. Public opinion will then be, as public opinion always is, favourably disposed to the public welfare as it is conceived in the public mind. To-day this conception of the public welfare is distorted to the capitalist view of the meaning of the term; but the popular conception shapes the ethic of the day. The revolutionist requires a new ethic, and, cynical as he may pretend to be in this connection, he has got it. It is based on the needs of humanity as he understands them. When the Revolution has been accomplished, and warring interests have for ever been unified, when the individual interest, having been made one throughout the community, has by that achievement been absorbed by the community, when all the machinery of wealth production and distribution, and the human labour-power by which this wealth is produced and distributed, and the wealth so produced, is owned by society; when by the harmonising of social activities, and the clearing away of confusing social anomalies and contradictions, men and women come to realise through every fibre of their being that they owe everything to the commonwealth, that without society they are nothing, that they are but cells in the social organism, on which every act of theirs has a far-reaching effect for good or evil: then the ethic prescribed by public opinion will be such as will make for the clearly known good of society.

Then once again democracy will exist in the world, and men and women, nurtured into finer feeling by that standard of conduct which holds the common good to be the highest good, will unconsciously sink their individuality in the community, and strive always for that common good, as the highest morality of which the human mind is capable of conceiving.

A. E. Jacomb

Society and Morals. Part III. The Pre-Class Stage. (1917)

From the October 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part II.

In our “first part” it was stated that man starts out with a society akin to those of the less advanced animals in being an organisation to secure mutual welfare. Now, as we enter into the evidence for this, into the details of savage and barbarian society and morals, it will be useful to quote from authoritative sources. But before doing so let us briefly examine the manner in which the peculiar character of the human animal affects the manifestation, in him, of the social instincts.

Reason and the Social Impulse.

Among the simpler forms of animals impulse and action seem to be more or less identified: The gathering together of single cells is probably due to a form of chemical affinity or attraction. Even in the highly complex and social insects elaborate inherited instincts seem to determine even the details of individual action. But in the higher vertebrates, consciousness and intelligence make for the reasoning out, more or less clearly, of the precise actions to be taken to satisfy the social impulses, which, however, remain inherent. This makes possible a far readier adaption of conduct to varying circumstances. To an overwhelming degree is this the case in man with the relatively rapid changes and variety in his needs, due to technical evolution and division of labour.

But reason leads to results which cannot occur with unconscious reflex action which, with a given stimulus, always takes a certain inevitable line. Efficiency in a man’s actions, however, must be based upon a correct estimate of the essential circumstances he is in contact with. This itself depends upon the extent of his experience and the ability he has of analysing and comparing the various perceptions he receives. Consequently errors of opinion and therefore mistakes in action can easily occur through insufficient experience and defective reasoning.

Man is the victim of all manner of wrong conceptions and superstitious beliefs. This fact is apparent in the study of morality. In practice man’s activities are not determined by their actual interests, individual or collective, but by what they believe their interests to be. This belief, often correct enough in immediately practical affairs, is frequently very wide of the mark when concerned with complex matters which are known and felt only indirectly.

Speech and writing, which enable tho acquisition of the experiences and thoughts of other people, thus greatly extending the field of knowledge, also make possible the spread of wrong opinions, both unintentionally and as frequently happens, through a deliberate desire to bring about a certain mode of action.

These facts must be remembered when considering the problem of morals, for they explain the often useless and fantastic practices in religious ritual as well as the concern of a modern proletarian for his master’s interests and capitalist exploitation.

The feeling of duty, that “mysterious” conscience, despite all the weird talk about it, arises from a social impulse which, as we have seen, is animal, not “divine,” in origin. The social instincts, however, like all the other bodily and mental traits of animals, vary, being of different strength in distinct individuals, some men being potential martyrs, others moral cowards. In cases where conscience is too weak to enforce moral action, it frequently happens that respect for public opinion (itself generated by the social impulse) as manifested, for instance, in the love of praise and dislike of blame, ensures adherence to the code. But where, as in class-divided societies, there are widespread interests permanently opposed by the generally accepted code, the violation of which is therefore liable to be frequent, the force of the State is added to that of public opinion.

Primitive Society.

Although savages and barbarians have long been outrageously misrepresented by ignorant and antagonistic invaders, thieving traders and prejudiced missionaries, the patient and sympathetic methods of real investigators have made possible an approximately true idea of primitive societies and morals. Of this we can hear, of course, only sketch an outline.

Like the animal societies in which the offspring remain in the same herd as their parents, the earliest human societies were groups, usually small, of kinspeople, related in blood. Primitive man’s life was bound up with that of his community, without which he could not exist. Separation from the tribe or horde was the equivalent of suicide, for, alone, he was at the mercy of mysterious and terrible natural powers and the ferocity of alien men.

In primitive societies, both in practice and in theory, the welfare of the group is recognised as the supreme good, this, however, as we have seen, in the killing of the aged and infirm, necessitates the sacrifice of individuals in certain circumstances.

Social and Economic Equality.

The small yield of production made inevitable, in the beginning, equal division of the common produce, and the strength of social ties developed this into a cardinal principle. Even presents received are divided equally, as Darwin saw the Feugians do. Every able person is expected to aid in production. Hospitality and generosity are practised as a duty. Catlin, who lived for many years among the American Indians, says, “Every man, woman, or child in Indian communities is allowed to enter anyone’s lodge, and even that of the chief of the nation, and eat when they are hungry.”

Only the objects in permanent personal use, such as weapons and clothing, are regarded as private property, and often at that only very vaguely. “An Eskimo,” says Larfargue (“Evolution of Property”), “cannot possess more than two canoes; the third is at the disposal of the clan.” Natural resources may be freely utilised by any member or members of the group, providing only that it has the power to prevent other groups from acquiring them. Thus, although no private property in land exists, or is even conceived as possible, the tribe very zealously guards from trespassers its hunting grounds, and, later, pasturage territories or preserves.

So objectionable is inequality that when, owing to various circumstances, differences in wealth arise, periodical redistributions are made. This persisted until quite late in the history of the Jews.

The affairs of the community were managed democratically, all adult males and females taking part in the election of chiefs and speaking in the public assemblies. The chief wielded no despotic power, but only administered the will of the people. He could be deposed if occasion required. In the councils not even the majority decided: “Among the Iroquois the final resolution had to be passed unanimously,” says Engels in his “Origin of the Family.” (P. 112).

In dealing with internal disputes the sentiment of equality again manifests itself. A life for a life was the rule; tooth for tooth, eye for eye, wound for wound. To neglect to avenge an injury, or obtain satisfaction, is considered shameful. Usually, and especially in later times, mediation is first attempted by the public council, but, even after fines and other penalties are permissible the right to blood revenge could not be denied as a last resort. But to shed the blood of a kinsman was so opposed to the communal spirit, was considered so unutterably criminal, an injury to a tribesman being an injury to the tribe and treated by them as such, that it was a very rare occurrence. Speaking of the Aleoutes Kropotkin says in his “Mutual Aid” that in 1840 “one murder only had been committed since the last century in a population of 60,000 people.”

Fridjof Nansen says: “For the Esquimo it has especial value that he should be able to rely on his fellows and neighbours. In order, however, that his mutual confidence, without which common action in the battle for life is impossible, should continue, it is necessary that he should act honourably to others as well,” and he remarks about their truthfulness, which is a necessary factor in this. Veniaminoff, the Russian missionary, wrote, that the Aleoute is with difficulty moved to make a promise, but once he has made it he will keep it, whatever happens. Primitive man’s equalitarian habits harmonise so well with his inborn social instincts that he has no need to force his children to conform to a code of artificial restraints. A Sioux chief expressed surprise to Catlin at seeing “along the frontier white men whip their children: a thing that is very cruel.” “Spare the rod and spoil the child” is evidently not accepted as a motto.

Sex Relations.

The evidence available tends to show that man emerged from the ape condition with indiscriminate intercourse between the sexes. As primeval mankind developed in intelligence and experience the injurious elfects of close inter-breeding were evidently recognised, for we find at a very early stage moral restrictions placed upon sex intercourse, first between parents and children, and then between brothers and sisters born of the same mother. The covering of the sex organs probably became virtuous to minimise unrestricted sexual desire, for absolute nakedness was, in warm climates, habitual up to the period of puberty.

The mutual or communal marriage of entire groups of each sex has left traces of its former prevalence in the customs of almost every people, and the system exists to-day among the savages of Australia, as the recent investigations of Prof. Spencer and Mr. Gillen have finally and abundantly proven. As Jenks says in his “History of Politics,” “all the men of the Snake totem are husbands of all the women of the Emu totem in the same generation.” (P. 10.) Even after the marriage of a woman or several woman to one man became habitual, although at first in loose and easily dissolved unions, unlimited intercourse was allowed at certain festivals. Prof, Westmarck, in his “History of Human Marriage,” says Engels, gives “a whole series of examples of such periodical saturnalia restoring for a short time the ancient sexual freedom . . . among the Hos, the Santals, the Punjas and Kotars of India, among some African nations, etc.”

Out of the attempts to prevent close interbreeding arose that social organisation known as the “gens” or “clan,” The gens was a subdivision of the tribe whose members were morally bound not to intermarry. In its original and purest form all the children remained in the gens of the mother, no matter from which gens came the father, so that (except in the rare cases of adoption) all the members of a gens had a common ancestress. This was the only possible way of recognising kinship, for there being, as yet, no permanent marriage of women with one man, the father of the child was not known with certainty, and descent was therefore only traceable through the mother—in the female line. The material gens gave to women that respected and important social standing which she has in all savage and early barbarian communities.

With the division of the group into gentes the “horde” stage was passed and the gens became the unit of organisation until at a later date it gave way to the patriarchal family. The gens had its own chiefs and public meetings. “All the members of an Iroquois gens,” says Lewis Morgan, who lived, by adoption, in one for many years, “were personally free, and they were bound to defend each other’s freedom; they were equal in privileges and in personal rights, the sachems (peace chiefs) and chiefs claiming no superiority; and they were a brotherhood bound together by ties of kin.” In a modified form the gens persisted well into the era of civilisation.

So-called secret societies within the tribe are also a widespread feature. There are male “societies” and female “societies” into which the young people on “coming of age” are initiated and taught under the presidency of the aged and experienced the duties of their sex (hunting and fighting methods, the development of endurance, etc., for males; domestic work and the management of children for females) together with the “mysterien of sex.” As, however, everything is accounted for by spirit action or magic, the activities of the societies are frequently largely made up of intricate ceremonies, propitiation of spirits, sacrifices and other rites, all of which must be kept in the strictes secrecy.

External relations and war

The primitive motive for war was food—either the preservation or acquisition of hunting territory, or, at a very early stage, human meat, which, as we have seen, is necessary and therefore moral. While, within the tribe, each for all and all for each was the rule, making habitual sympathy and trustworthiness, to those outside the tribe, as a rule, the same did not apply. So in savage warfare extreme cruelties and what appear to us as horrible atrocities are perpetrated. The outsider, the alien, is not of “the kin.” has nothing in common with it. He is a spy upon the tribal secrets, a thief and a trespasser upon the tribal territories.

Practically all people outside the tribe or its related groups are regarded as enemies. Engels says : “Theoretically, each tribe was at war with every other tribe with which it had not formed a treaty of peace.” (“Origin of the Family,” p. 112.) To slay an enemy was beneficial, was good. Thus the scalps collected by a redskin “brave” are like the medals of many a doughty general—claims to the admiration of his follows. The Dyaks of Borneo collect the heads and adorn their huts with the skulls of those neighbouring peoples who fall into their hands. Yet these same men condemn murder within the tribe. As Kropotkin says (Ibid p. 15), in “head-hunting” the Dyak “is not actuated at all by personal passion. He acts under what he considers a moral obligation towards his tribe.” The Australian aboriginee “is a murderer when his tribe requires a murder to be done,” says Dr. Keane (“The World’s Peoples,” p. 49). “This state of things is not really contradictory,” says Tylor in his “Anthropology.” “The tribe makes the law, not on an abstract principle that manslaughter is right or wrong, but for its own preservation.” When tribes live in a condition of almost perpetual war, as do the Dyaks, “they put a social premium upon the warrior’s proof of valour in fight against the enemy.” (Tylor, p. 413.) Hence the record kept in skulls or scalps.

Courage and endurance are two of the highest of primitive virtues, and to acquire them deliberate self-privation and self-torture are practiced. The young men, incipient hunters and warriors, are tested as to their endurance of pain, and to wince or utter a sound under torture is considered weak and therefore shameful.

Tribal customs and religion. 

Primitive man with his meagre experience and knowledge changes his means of production very slowly. The early evolution of man’s tools was a painfully protracted process, little improvement being made throughout immense periods. The same continuous or constantly recurring needs are felt over a correspondingly extended time, and their satisfaction causes the continual repetition of practices which are ages old. That which is old, is tried and tested, is safe; new methods have unforeseen results, are mysterious and dangerous.

Moreover the savage and barbarian has other reasons for habitually following the traditional ways of his people. He believes in ghosts as firmly as he believes in the existence of bodily men. Not being capable of understanding sleep, dreams or death, he “explains” them as the wanderings from the body of a phantom or ghostly second-self. The spirits of the dead, of his ancestors, persist after their bodies have long since decayed. His kinsmen, whom he looks to and respects, are not only the living men but the dead also.

Those invisible inhabitants of the “land of the dead” are wiser and more powerful than the living men. They it is, thinks the savage, who move the wind and the stream, who howl in the storm and rustle in the woods. They must be honoured and conciliated, care being taken not to make them angry. The customs which the venerated ancestors practised in life must be faithfully adhered to by their living descendents who look to them for aid in times of dire distress. (*)

Innovation is an insult to the gods—it is criminal for outraged ancestors will visit their wrath upon the tribe. In primitive society, no matter how a practice originates, it tends to harden into a habit rigidly and religiously adhered to. Morality is identified with custom—that which is customary is right, if it is uncustomary it is wrong. This veneration for practices ages old makes very difficult, sometimes impossible, the understanding of many a moral custom where the real needs which brought it into existence have long passed away.

The “closeness” of primitive man’s societies—the importance given to blood kinship and the intolerance and hatred of strangers is reflected in his religious views. As Edward Jenks says in his excellent little “History of Politics,” “The view that their ancestors belonged to them alone, naturally made the tribesmen very jealous of strangers acquiring any knowledge of their forms of worship.” (P. 38.) Therefore the ritual was kept strictly secret, and it was the blackest treachery to reveal its mysteries to strangers, who would only mock and blaspheme.

The belief in spirits is the cause of eome of the most peculiar practices and moral ideas of primitive man. Attention to the requirements of the dead is a profound duty. Tools, weapons, and animals are buried or burned with the corpse for the use of the spirit. Food and drink must be provided in the shape of offerings made at the grave. Human and animal sacrifices are made. Charms are worn to ward off evil spirits-—the ghosts of aliens. Human spirits are believed to enter the bodies of certain animals and trees which then become “taboo”—objects of respect and fear which it is awful sacrilege to destroy or injure. But the effects of savage superstition are almost endless in their number and variety so that the above sketchy indications must suffice.

* * *

The social organisation, therefore, of man in savagery and lower barbarism, together with the morality which therefrom flowed was based as the above testifies upon the principle of mutual aid and communal support in its every aspect. No class interests marred its unity despite its many (to most moderns) anomalous and absurd characters. Moral theory and practice were identical, modern conventional morality and corresponding hypocrisy was unknown—the “age of cant” was not yet. This was only acquired during his “rise to civilisation” which will be our next consideration.

R. W. Housley

(*) The widespread view, to which we have made previous reference, that a people’s ethical code is ordained by God arises in the above way, for gods are as a rule, only exalted ancestral spirits.

To be Continued.

Free for all? (1977)

From the October 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many people considering the SPGB’s case for the first time are staggered by the implication that when Socialist society is established there will no longer be private property or its manifestations. “Surely that’s absurd, everything free, no money, invoices, tax returns, banks. People would go mad taking things which they couldn’t afford—why would anyone work if not for wages? Everyone would rely on someone else to do things for them.” So goes the argument, and yet very often the same people who raise this objection also throw up the obstacle of “human nature” stopping the establishment of Socialism. We are all apparently too selfish, greedy, warlike and generally steeped in original sin to be capable of establishing Socialism (desirable though it sounds).

It comes as a shock, therefore, to people who react in this way to learn that for the most part in the development of human society the concept and consequences of private property did not exist. Capitalism itself (about 200 years old) conditions workers to regard it as permanent, unchanging and the only possible form of society, so that people are indeed jolted to hear about what anthropologists call “primitive communism”.

However, if we are to accept that nature, stars, planets, rocks, the atmosphere, life and man are all the products of evolution, then it is unreasonable to regard human society as being something immutable. L. H. Morgan was one anthropologist who discovered and described the workings of early society including the “communism in living” he observed among Iroquois Indians. One of the reasons for the violent academic backlash against Morgan’s theories was that they upset the notion of the permanence of private property. But Morgan was not the only one to note the lack of property relations among “primitive” peoples. A few illustrations are worth mentioning. G. Taplin talking of Australian tribes wrote: “In the clan there can be no personal property—all implements, weapons, etc., belong to members collectively, every individual regards them as possessions of his clan and to be employed for its welfare and defence as occasion may require. If he has a weapon, or a net, or canoe which is in some sense his own, he knows that his property in it is subject to the superior rights of the clan. Every man is interested in his neighbour’s property and cares for it because it is part of the wealth of the family collectively.”

Also writing of the Australian aborigines the Rev. W. Ridley said: “Real and personal property in individuals is rendered impossible by their systematic communism.” Darwin wrote of Fuegian tribes: “Even a piece of cloth given to one is torn in shreds and distributed, no one individual becomes richer than another.” Of the Eskimos H. W. Klutshak wrote: “In small things and in great, whatever is to be found in an Eskimo village in the way of provisions and tools is the common property of all. As long as there is a piece of meat in the camp it belongs to all.” L. A. de Bougainville wrote: “ . . . it seems that as regards the necessaries of life there is no private property, and everything belongs to everybody” (of Tahiti). Even Lowie, who was a vehement opponent of Morgan’s evolutionary view, had to grudgingly admit: “With respect to certain forms of property there is often what virtually comes to communism notably in connection with the procuring of food.”

The general Socialist argument about private property is that it gradually developed as man became more proficient at regularly producing surpluses which could then only be exchanged with other tribes for other produce. Concepts such as money, insurance, accounts, etc., could only arise from private property, which in turn depended on production surplus to the tribe’s needs. Property is a social phenomenon and not a biological one. It was Engels who pointed out that we must thank the ancient Greeks for that wonderful invention called the mortgage.

Those who object to Socialism on the grounds of “human nature” being incompatible with common ownership must explain why human nature changed. Or if it did not change then, what did change to give us the current situation?

Whilst human nature has not changed, man’s social organization and his behaviour have changed. These changes have occurred because man has continually improved his means of subsistence, i.e. of staying alive, and this has resulted in the development of property and wealth. The time is long due when man should use his means of production as a common instrument for all rather than for the benefit of a minority, the capitalist class.

Tony D'Arcy

Running Commentary: Human nature (1982)

The Running Commentary column from the October 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Human nature

We watched them go about their daily affairs as the television narrator quietly described aspects of their way of life. “Here”, we are told, “No man or woman has authority over any other man or woman . . . wealth is shared communally, if one person manages to catch many fish the whole community benefits including those who are not able to work. or who have not worked on that particular day . . . they operate on the basis of 'from each according to his hunting ability, to each according to his hunger' . . . the land, forests and rivers are owned by nobody and no one works for anyone else." Worlds Apart (BBC2 10/9/ 82) was examining the lifestyle of the Panare Indians of Venezuela, with a lot of well presented evidence to repudiate the myth that it is “Human Nature" to be acquisitive, uncooperative and to wish to live in societies with hierarchies of wealth, power and status.

Here were people, physiologically the same as everyone else, who displayed none of the behavioural characteristics which have sometimes been labelled as immutable features of human beings. Through its historical stages, property society has cultivated people to think and behave in selfish and acquisitive ways. Although cooperativeness has always been a striking feature of mankind — as people are social animals and we cannot organise any society without working with each other — in capitalism we have had to cooperate with each other under coercive conditions.

In some parts of modern society with a long history of property, vicious aspects of human behaviour like the barbarism of war are offered as proof of brutal human nature. But war, and people’s behaviour in it, are products of a social environment not a natural propensity to violence. Property society pits people against each other.

An owner can say “This is mine, it is not yours, we have different interests". If the object is a factory the owner can say, “Because this is mine, you will have to spend your life working in it to produce wealth for me, and because the levels of my profits are inversely related, we will be in a constant struggle". The Panare have no notions of property and consequently no notions of competition. They have no competitive sports and those which are played in neighbouring areas, which do put people or beasts against themselves, are looked on as meaningless.

The Panare live in a small tightly-knit community which is a little suspicious of outsiders and does not use much modern medicine or technology. Such communities illustrate the behaviour that homo sapiens are capable of enjoying.

However, civilisation is marching into the forests of Venezuela with its Deeds of Land Ownership in one hand and its police forces and prisons in the other. New roads and a huge bauxite mine will soon disfigure the regions inhabited by the Panare for, as the television narrator observed, “to the investors and entrepreneurs the communities who presently occupy the forests are obstacles to progress". Curiously, in The Investors' Dictionary, the word “progress" is spelt profits.

Parker’s pen

The bookshops will not be troubled by long, disorderly queues of people desperate to buy a copy of Father of the House — the political reminiscences of John Parker, Labour MP for Dagenham. Parker is the longest-sitting Member — he has been in Parliament for 47 years — and that is how he qualifies for this fatuous title. And he has become a strangely tedious man, liable to pass over events of historic importance in some ill-considered laconism.

But it was not always so. Parker was once at the centre of an incident vital enough to reveal the true unsavoury character of the Labour Party. In 1945. Attlee appointed him Under Secretary at the Dominions Office which, as the Secretary of State was in the Lords, put Parker in charge of the affairs in the Commons.

His ministerial career did not last long. Parker refused to intervene over the death sentence passed on a Boer farmer in the (then) South African protectorate of Swaziland who had killed his girl friend. Of course only black people were hanged in South Africa: at that time a white man had not been executed for 15 years. The South African Prime Minister appealed to Attlee to help maintain this racist version of “justice" and the Labour Prime Minister was ready to oblige. Parker was sacked and never offered a job in a Labour government again.

This episode did nothing to reduce Parker’s ardour for the Labour Party. A quirk of his was that he often agreed to take part in public debate with the Socialist Party of Great Britain. His defence of the Labour government’s desperate attempts to organise British capitalism was unconvincing but no matter how many times he was floored by the SPGB, Parker persistently got up for more.

In his old age. does he reflect now on these instructive experiences in his political life — on the practical and theoretical destruction of the case for the party to which, through thick and thin, he gave his misguided loyalty?

Jaws

A ten-year-old boy was recently killed by an automatic exit barrier at an underground station in Newcastle on Tyne. It happened very simply and very suddenly. The boy jumped, or tripped, into the barrier, which snapped its jaws about his neck. It took a long time to free him and he was dead by the time they got him to hospital.

Anyone who has had a thoughtlessly trailing piece of luggage bitten by these barriers knows how aggressive they are, with that malevolently watchful eye to trip them into action. The barriers are installed, in places like Newcastle and London, to stop people travelling without paying a fare — to stop them using the railways as a means of travel instead of as a means of yielding a profit to the owners. They are not designed to distinguish between those who are evading paying a fare and those who are just not totally alert to the instantaneous demands of electronic ticket checks.

The cause of profit making is greater than all others, in the morality of private property society. Truly, it is greater than any human being, or of any collection of them. In this cause it is permissible to herd long suffering workers, probably trying to get to and from the places where they are to undergo the indignities of being exploited by their masters, into canyons of electronically controlled discipline. To stray deliberately from the canyon could mean that they are punished — fined, imprisoned — and if they do this by accident they may even be killed.

In many ways — some trivial, some substantial — capitalism informs the working class that they are socially inferior, exploited, degraded. This information is sometimes emphasised in episodes of bitter tragedy, which would not have happened but for the class divide of capitalism, or for the production of wealth as commodities, or for the poverty of the majority of people, or for some other essential feature of capitalist society.

Such an incident was the death of the boy in Newcastle. There will be an inquest, which may decide that it was an accidental death. A better verdict — simpler, straighter, more accurate — would be that Capitalism Kills.

Blogger's Note:

"A quirk of his was that he often agreed to take part in public debate with the Socialist Party of Great Britain." 

According to the SPGB debates wiki page, Parker only debated the SPGB once, in June 1948 at Fulham Town Hall. (The SPGB speaker was Clifford Groves.) My guess is that the wiki page is incomplete, and that Parker did debate with the SPGB on more than one occasion. He was a Fabian intellectual in his early political career, and such types had a tendency to debate again and again with the SPGB.

50 Years Ago: Origin of the idea of justice (1965)

The 50 Years Ago column from the May 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Locke, who, like the philosophers of the 17th and 18th centuries, used the deductive method employed in geometry, came to think that private property engendered the idea of justice. In his “Human Understanding” he expressly says that “Where there is no property there is no injustice, is a proposition as certain as any demonstration in Euclid: for the idea of property being a right to anything, and the idea to which the name injustice is given being the invasion or violation of that right . . .”

If the idea of Justice, as Locke thought, can only appear after and as a consequence of private property, the idea of theft, or rather the tendency to take unthinkingly what one needs or desires, is on the contrary, well developed, before the institution of private property. The communistic savage and barbarian behave in regard to material goods as our savants and writers do in regard to intellectual goods: whenever they find them they take them, to use Molière’s expression. But this natural custom becomes theft, crime, from the time when common property is replaced by private property.

Into the head and heart of savages and barbarians common property put ideas and sentiments which bourgeois Christians, those sad results of private property, will find very strange.

Heckwelder, a Moravian missionary who in the 18th century lived fifteen years among North American savages, not yet corrupted by Christianity and bourgeois civilisation, said:

“The Indians believe that the Great Spirit created the world and all that it contains for the common good of men; when he stocked the earth and filled the woods with game, it was not for the advantage of some, but of all. Everything is given in common to the children of men. Everything that breathes on the earth, everything that grows in the fields, everything that lives in the rivers and waters, belongs jointly to all, and everyone has a right to his share."

[From a lecture by Paul Lafargue on Idealism and Materialism, Socialist Standard, May 1915.]

Hunting, Gathering and Co-operating (2001)

From the January 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Is a change in the basis of society from one of minority class ownership to one of common ownership against human nature?

Are human beings naturally lazy, aggressive, hostile to one another? Or are we by nature friendly and co-operative, ready to help others when they are in trouble and share what we have with them? Or alternatively, does it make little or no sense to say that we are anything very specific “by nature”, since the society and culture we live in play a great part in determining how we behave? Questions like these have been around for centuries, and they are important for the socialist case, for if people are bound to behave aggressively and take more than their fair share, then a socialist society, based on equality and co-operation, is presumably impossible.

The questions we raised above are part of the debate on human nature. One recent academic contribution to these issues is the theory of evolutionary psychology, which attempts to apply Darwin’s way of explaining biological evolution to human behaviour and psychology. Darwin’s theory of natural selection explains how organisms change by adapting to their environment and so becoming more fitted to survive and reproduce. Evolutionary psychology uses the same kinds of arguments in attempting to account for human behaviour and the nature of the human mind which underlies this behaviour. In the words of leading evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker, in his book How the Mind Works:

“The mind is organized into modules or mental organs, each with a specialized design that makes it an expert in one arena of interaction with the world. The modules’ basic logic is specified by our genetic program. Their operation was shaped by natural selection to solve the problems of the hunting and gathering life led by our ancestors in most of our evolutionary history.”

This, to take one of Pinker’s own examples, according to evolutionary psychology our disgust at unpleasant food is not due to any innate dislike for particular tastes. Rather, it would be an adaptation that emerged as a safety device: we don’t eat things unless we are pretty sure that they are unlikely to harm us; thus we stand a good chance of avoiding foodstuffs that may well be poisonous—an invaluable trait in a world where humans relied on hunting and gathering but were surrounded by masses of potentially toxic plants and animals.

Hunting and gathering (sometimes known as foraging) is the way that humans lived for 90 percent of our species’ time on earth. People lived in smallish tribes, moving frequently from place to place, gathering wild plants and hunting animals. Money did not exist, nor did any form of government, and there was no distinction between rich and poor. The rise of settled agriculture about ten thousand years ago put an end to hunting-gathering communities in most parts of the world, though some are still just about surviving nowadays.

A lot would seem to rest, then, if the evolutionary psychologists are right, on the nature of hunting-gathering society: if it was essentially peaceful and based on sharing, then the human brain and mind would have evolved to fit in with a peaceful way of doing things, whereas if hunter-gatherers were often violent, then (on the evolutionary psychologists’ view, anyway) our minds are adapted to survive in a violent world. Let’s quote Pinker again, as he makes the political issues here quite explicit:

“One of the fondest beliefs of many intellectuals is that there are cultures out there where everybody shares freely. Marx and Engels thought that preliterate peoples represented a first stage in the evolution of civilization called primitive communism, whose maxim was ‘From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs’ . . .

Foraging peoples, to be sure, really do share with non-relatives, but not out of indiscriminate largesse or a commitment to socialist principles. The data from anthropology show that sharing is driven by cost-benefit analyses and a careful mental ledger for reciprocation. People share when it would be suicidal not to . . . warfare itself is a major fact of life for foraging tribes. Many intellectuals believe that primitive warfare is rare, mild and ritualized, or at least was so until the noble savages were contaminated by contact with Westerners. But this is romantic nonsense. War has always been hell.”

Most work in evolutionary psychology takes a similar view, that hunting-gathering society was built around—or at least marked by—power and aggression, and that therefore the human mind has evolved along lines designed to enable us to cope with power and aggression.

More recently, however, an alternative has begun to emerge within evolutionary psychology itself. Andrew Whiten of St Andrews University has argued that egalitarianism, sharing and lack of domination were the most prominent features in hunter-gatherer societies, and that it is this is that lies behind human psychological evolution. In papers such as “The evolution of deep social mind in humans” and “Egalitarianism and Machiavellian intelligence in human evolution” (the latter co-written with David Erdal) he has presented a very different picture from that offered by most evolutionary psychologists. At a recent conference in Edinburgh, Whiten argued that our ancestors evolved through sharing and co-operation in line with socialist ideals, a claim that was even noticed in the press (Times, 19 August). Let’s look a little more closely at his ideas.

Examination of a wide range of studies of present-day hunter-gatherers shows that they share food, especially meat, and that this sharing takes place even when food is scarce. This sharing, Erdal and Whiten argue, occurs because it reduces the risk for all individuals, enabling them to get by on unlucky days, secure in the knowledge that some time soon they are likely to be successful in their own hunting. Sharing means that nobody has priority of access to food, and this ties in with the fact that hunter-gatherer societies lack any kind of dominance or rank. There are no permanent leaders, and anyone who has ambitions for dominance is ridiculed or ostracised. Co-operation extends beyond food-sharing and countering would-be chiefs, as it also involves co-ordination, such as the organisation of hunting expeditions and care for the sick.

Non-human primates (chimps and gorillas) do have dominance hierarchies, so the human capacity for egalitarianism is an evolutionary innovation. According to Whiten possibly people who put time and effort into trying to dominate others found they had less time to devote to foraging and enjoyable leisure pursuits, so the would-be leaders discovered that they were living less well than their more co-operative colleagues. This last part is speculative, but it does help to emphasise the point that humans are different from our closest non-human relatives, so that it is quite invalid to argue that whatever holds for chimps must be valid for people too.

So what does Whiten’s work have to say about the prospects for socialism? The answer is: not necessarily very much. It would be nice if we could conclude that human characteristics, as they have evolved over the millennia, have made us “naturally” egalitarian and co-operative. But what matters is not whether people are naturally like this or not. More important is whether our behaviour, influenced as it is not just by our evolutionary heritage but also by the social conditions we live in and our cultural response to these conditions, can fit in with the idea of a co-operative and egalitarian socialist society. Even under capitalism people often share and work together. Hunter-gatherer societies also show that people can live in a co-operative way, without bosses or governments. It might be nice to bolster this by claiming that humans’ long egalitarian heritage means that we are better adapted to sharing than to competing, but this extra, and more speculative, argument is not really essential.

We may conclude that humans are not condemned to be endlessly competitive or selfish, and that socialism is not contrary to human nature.

Paul Bennett

What is this money thing? (2001)

From the January 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Below is a report of how members of a society which had evolved beyond primitive communism but still retained some of its features and attitudes reacted to their first contact with the money economy.

The Treatment and Customs of the Governor’s House at Botany Bay as told by Tongan Chief Páloo Máta Moinga and his Wife, Fataféhi to Finow King of Tonga and Chief Filimóëátoo. Recorded by William Mariner, Resident of the Islands for 4 years, to John Martin M.D. Author of “The Natives of Tongan Islands”. Published 1818:

“The first thing he and his wife had to do, when they arrived at the Governor’s House, where they went to reside, was to sweep out a large court yard, and clean down a great pair of stairs; in vain they endeavoured to explain, that in their own country they were chiefs, and, being accustomed to be waited on, were quite unused to such employments: their expostulations were taken no notice of, and work they must, at first their life was so uncomfortable, that they wished to die; no one seemed to protect them; all the houses were shut against them; if they saw anybody eating, they were not invited to partake: nothing was to be got without money, of which they could not comprehend the value, nor how this same money was to be obtained in any quantity; if they asked for it nobody would give them any, unless they worked for it, and then it was so small in quantity, that they could not get one-tenth part of what they wanted with it.

One day, whilst sauntering about, the chief fixed his eyes upon the cook’s shop, and, seeing several people enter, and others again, coming out with victuals, he made sure they were sharing out food, according to the old Tongan fashion, and in he went, glad enough of the occasion, expecting to get some pork; after waiting sometime, with anxiety to be helped to his share, the master of the shop asked him what he wanted, and, being answered in an unknown language straightaway kicked him out taking him for a thief, that only wanted an opportunity to steal.

Thus, he said even being a chief did not prevent him being used ill for when he told them he was a chief, they gave him to understand, that money made a man a chief, after a time, however, he acknowledged that he got better used in proportion as he became acquainted with the customs and language, he expressed his astonishment at the perseverance with which white people worked from morning till night, to get money: he could not conceive how they were able to endure so much labour.

After having heard this account, Finow asked several questions regarding the nature of money: what is it made of?—is it like iron? can it be fashioned like iron into various useful instruments? If not why cannot people procure what they want in the way of barter?—but where is money to be got?—if it be made, then every man ought to spend his time in making money; that when he got plenty, he may be able afterwards to obtain whatever else he wants.

In answer to the last observation, Mr Mariner replied that the material of which money was made was very scarce and difficult to be got, and that only chiefs and great men could procure readily a large quantity of it; and this either by being inheritors of plantations or houses, which they allowed others to have, for paying so much tribute in money every year; or by their public services; or by paying small sums of money for things when they were in plenty, and afterwards letting others have them for larger sums, when they were scarce: and as to the lower classes of people they worked hard, and got paid by their employers in small quantities of money, as the reward for their labour: &c. That the King was the only person that was allowed to make (to coin) money, and that he put his mark upon all that he made, that it might known to be true; that no person could readily procure the material of which it was made, without paying money for it; and if contrary to the taboo of the King, he turned this material into money, he would scarcely have made as much as he had given for it.

Mr Mariner was then going on to shew the conveniences of money as a medium of exchange, when Filimóëátoo interrupted him, saying to Finow, I understand how it is:- money is less cumbersome than goods, and it is very convenient for a man to exchange away his goods for money; which, at any other time he can exchange again for the same or other goods that he may want; whereas the goods themselves may perhaps spoil by keeping (particularly if provisions) but the money he supposed would not spoil; and although it was of no true value itself, yet being scarce and difficult to be got without giving something useful and really valuable for it, it was imagined to be of value; and if everybody considered it so, and would readily give their goods for it, he did not see but what it was a sort of real value to all who possessed it, as long as their neighbours chose to take it in the same way. Mr Mariner found he could not give a better explanation, he therefore told Filimóëátoo that his notion of the nature of money was a just one.

After a pause of some length, Finow replied that the explanation did not satisfy him. He still thought it a foolish thing that people should place a value on money, when they either could not or would not apply it to any useful (physical) purpose: if, said he it were made of iron, and could be converted into knives, axes, and chisels, there would be some sense in placing a value on it; but as it is I see none: if man he added, has more yams than he wants, let him exchange some of them away for pork or gnatoo (cloth); certainly money is much handier, and more convenient, but then as it will not spoil by being kept, people will store it up, instead of sharing it out, as a chief ought to do, and thus become selfish; whereas, if provision were the principal property of a man, and it ought to be, as being both the most useful and the most necessary, he could not store it up, for it would spoil, and so he would be obliged to either exchange it away for something else useful, or share it out with his neighbours, and inferior chiefs and dependants for nothing. He concluded by saying ‘I understand now very well what it is that makes the Papalangis (Europeans) so selfish; it is the money!’ When Mr Mariner informed Finow that dollars were money, he was greatly surprised, having always taken them for Páänga (a kind of bear used in one of their games, they supposed dollars to be used among us for a similar purpose), and things of little value; and he was exceedingly sorry he had not secured all the dollars out of the ship Port au Prince before he had ordered her to be burnt: I had always thought said he, that your ship belonged to some poor fellow, perhaps King George’s cook (at these islands a cook is considered one of the lowest of mankind in point of rank); for Captain Cook’s ship which belonged to the King, had plenty of beads, axes, and looking glasses on board, whilst yours had nothing but iron hoops, oil, skins and twelve thousand Páänga as I thought: but if every one of these was money, your ship must have belonged to a very great chief indeed.”

Gray Matter (2008)

Book Review from the August 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia by John Gray (Penguin £8.99)

Gray’s main argument is that unrealistic political aims should be abandoned and replaced by goals which are truly achievable. It is probably difficult to disagree with this as a general principle, but of course it all depends on what is regarded as realistic and unrealistic.

Quite a bit of Gray’s discussion is aimed at the impossibility of establishing a Socialist society. While Marx was an unrivalled analyst of capitalism, he says, his view of the future society was impractical. Central planning is bound to fail, since nobody can know enough to plan a modern economy; but this is based on the misconception that there will be an office somewhere that decides how many widgets will be produced and where. Other claims fare no better: it’s just not true that Lenin’s State and Revolution is rooted in Marx’s writings on the dictatorship of the proletariat. Lenin twisted Marx’s idea of a transitional form of state into a vicious repressive regime that ruled over workers. Gray’s view that Marx and Engels saw terror as part of the revolution is based on remarks made in a talk in 1850, rather than on any of their mature works. In any case, it deals with how workers should act if bourgeois democrats came to power (specifically in Germany) rather than with the aftermath of a Socialist revolution.

Furthermore, Gray claims that no trace has ever been found of ‘primitive communism’ (which is not true either — see the Socialist Standard for December 2006, on life before the Neolithic Revolution). A Socialist society is allegedly impossible because it would pursue harmony and so clash with ‘the diversity of human values’, since apparently a moneyless society would be a vision of hell to some people. To which we can only say that capitalists who yearn for a world where they are billionaires will just have to lump it in Socialism.

And what of the realism that ought to replace all this supposed utopianism? According to Gray, ‘The root of realist thinking is Machiavelli’s insight that governments exist, and must achieve all of their goals in a world of ceaseless conflict that is never far from a state of war’. The heart of realism is ‘its assertion of the innate defects of human beings’. In other words, we should accept capitalism with its violence and poverty, since people are too fierce and unreasonable to live in harmony. But the true realistic approach is to see through the pretensions of capitalism and its supporters and take the view that a society based on cooperation is a practical possibility.

Paul Bennett

Voice From The Back: The cold facts (2000)

The Voice From The Back Column from the November 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

The cold facts

Britain has seen a sharp increase in poverty, according to a major study that measures how far people on low incomes can afford the basic necessities of life. The report, Poverty and Social Exclusion in Britain, has shown that the proportion of households regarded as living in poverty rose from 14 to 24 percent between 1983 and 1999 . . . The research found that about 9.5 million people cannot afford to keep their homes adequately heated, free from damp or in a decent state of decoration. Eight million people cannot afford one or more essential household goods, such as a refrigerator, a telephone or carpets for the living areas in their homes. Times, 11 September.

A corking night out

A worker’s Saturday night out can sometimes turn a bit nasty. You know the sort of thing. Disputes with the waiter about whether you should pay for the extra noodles or boiled rice. But spare a though for the gravity of the situation when one of our masters went for a meal. “The London Restaurateur Gordon Ramsay once had a customer who claimed that a £3,000, 1957 bottle of Petrus was corked. “I don’t mind arguing with people, but if you’ve got a talented sommelier then you know what you’re talking about.” That wine needed to be left open for 45 minutes, but the customer insisted on drinking it immediately. “He was just trying to create a bit of a scene,” says Mr Ramsay. “After half an hour he appreciated the flavours. Had we been weak then, we would have binned a very expensive bottle of wine.” Independent on Sunday, 3 September.

Whose world is it, anyway?

Capitalism is turning the world into a giant dustbin. Oceans are being poisoned, the air is being polluted and, according to a recent report from WWF, the global environment network: if the present rate of global warming continues, almost a third of plant and animal habitat will be destroyed by the end of the century. “Global warming means a horrifying future for nature,” said Ms Jennifer Morgan, the director of WWF’s climate change campaign. “This is a wake-up call to the world’s leaders—if they do not act to stop global warming, wildlife around the globe may suffer the consequences. They must give top priority to reducing levels of carbon pollution to prevent a catastrophe that could change the world as we know it.” Herald, 31 August.

Good news!

In the long dark days of winter there is always some good news. Here are a couple of news items that should lift the gloom a little:

(1) The Labour Party is £2 million in the red and has lost more than 30,000 members . . . However, the Conservative leader, William Hague, is also facing the prospect of embarrassment when the party’s accounts are published: they are expected to show that the Tories managed to raise only £8 million last year, indicating a reluctance by business to make donations. Independent on Sunday, 3 September.

(2) In the past ten years, billed by the churches as a “Decade of Evangelism”, church attendance of all denominations has dropped by 22 percent. Between 1989 and 1999, the Roman Catholic Church lost 490,000 worshippers and the Church of England 290,000. Observer, 3 September.

Without comment

Expect a change in the way business stories are covered on the BBC. The director general, Greg Dyke, says one of the things that irritates him most on the news is seeing a reporter say, “So, it’s good news for the shareholders, even if not for the rest of us.” Dyke wants BBC staff reminded that profit is good for everyone. Independent, 5 September.

Basic instinct

Prehistoric human beings were able to flourish and spread throughout the world because they lived in a state of “primitive communism”, a psychologist has claimed. Professor Andrew Whiten, from St Andrew’s University told a conference at the Royal Society of Edinburgh that our ancestors evolved through a form of co-operation not very different from the ideals of communism. Human beings were able to dominate the world against predators such as big cats and wolves, he said, only by adopting socialist values. All members of the prehistoric tribe were considered equal, he said, and food and clothing was equally shared. Times, 18 August.

Population and Poverty. (1926)

From the April 1926 issue of the Socialist Standard

A debate took place recently in South London between an alleged Communist and a champion of the New Generation League on the question, “Is Birth Control Necessary for the Abolition of Poverty?” This is not a report thereof, but an attempt to put before our readers the Socialist view of the question raised.

The speaker in the affirmative was decidedly modest in his claims. He did not assert that Birth Control would abolish poverty, or even ameliorate it, but simply that poverty could not be abolished without it. He advanced, of course, the time-worn dogma that population tends to press upon means of subsistence, no matter what the latter may be, and left his audience to conclude that poverty was a result of this pressure and, therefore, short of artificial control of births, unavoidable. He further attached great importance to the facts that Marx formed his opinions prior to the publication of Darwin’s “Origin of Species” (based upon Malthus) and was, moreover, a townsman ignorant of agriculture and its limited possibilities.

Let us examine these claims. In the first place poverty is not merely a relative term, it is a description of the condition of a particular class in society, namely, the working class, i.e., the class which produces the antithesis of poverty, which is wealth. This wealth is enjoyed by a comparatively small section of the community, namely, the capitalist, or master, class, who own the material means by which the workers produce it. In this ownership is to be found the cause of their social position and not in the size of their families. Broadly speaking, it is true that the workers have more numerous progeny than their masters, but it is equally true that no amount of abstinence from the function of procreation will make a man a millionaire. Something more is necessary, i.e., the exploitation of social labour.

This fact is ignored by the Malthusian. He talks imposingly about “the struggle for existence” (a term which he never accurately defines), but omits to mention that before the struggle for wealth can commence, it has to be produced by some measure of co-operation. Every historical form of society has involved the co-operative efforts of the labourers as an element in its economic basis. The ancient empires, founded on chattel-slavery, the feudal kingdoms of the middle ages resting on serfdom, as well as the capitalist régime of to-day based upon wage-labour, could not conceivably have existed if the productivity of the workers’ labour had not exceeded their necessary consumption.

The pressure of the workers upon their means of subsistence is thus the product not of “nature” but of society under certain conditions in the course of its development. In other words, the contrast between wealth and poverty is of historical origin and came into existence only when, by dint of labour, mankind had acquired a degree of control over nature’s supply of the means of subsistence sufficient to permit of the existence of an idle class.

Under pre-historical conditions, a primitive form of Communism existed. The small, narrow social groups of those days knew no class distinctions. If nature was niggardly, all suffered ; if generous all benefited. Property rights as understood to-day did not exist. Mankind exploited nature as their state of development permitted, with none but the savage beasts to say them nay. The basis of the group was kinship, i.e., descent from a common ancestor. Under Communism men advanced from the lowest depths of savagery to the threshold of civilisation. They discovered fire, invented the bow and arrow, and the arts of smelting and pottery-making, domesticated animals and initiated horticulture. They laid, in fact, the ground-work for all subsequent progress.

Tribal communism, however, broke up with the advance of chattel-slavery, an institution, the origin of which affords an interesting refutation of Malthusianism. In extremely primitive times, groups engaged in warfare among other objects for women to add to the numbers of their tribe ; the men they slew. With the increase of the fruits of labour, however, a use was discovered for the male captives of war as well. They became slaves of their conquerors, and the wealth of a Roman patrician was in proportion, not to the smallness of his household, indeed, but, on the contrary, to the numbers of these slaves who constituted its most important element. For their maintenance he was responsible just as the farmer is responsible for his cattle ; but the surplus-product of their labour was the source of his wealth, and the same principle has applied under various forms to this day. The wealth of the feudal lord was in proportion to the number of his tenants, while the modern financial magnate controls huge industrial armies.

On the other hand the avowed birth-controlling peasants of France “enjoy a standard of life lower than that of the wage-slaves of Britain and America; a fact which is due, not to any niggardliness of nature in France, but to the antiquated methods of exploitation upon which its rulers depend.

The Malthusian claims that this is due to the absence of coal in France. He forgets that if this is true then the presence of coal would have led to similar results as in England, i.e., a higher degree of exploitation and unemployment !

It is clear in any case that the progress of industry and, consequently, in the long run the progress of society, depends upon the further development of social labour. The restriction of population can at best play but a negative part in this progress, while, pushed to extremes, it can only produce stagnation. Modern industrial development necessitates the existing population with its massing of the workers in highly organised productive centres. As a remedy for poverty, therefore, birth control is a policy of reaction and despair, whatever its value may be from a hygienic point of view.

To recapitulate, present poverty is due to capitalism, i.e., to the monopoly by a diminishing class of the fruits of social effort. It can be abolished so soon as the class which suffers from it realises the cause of it and removes that cause. When the workers organise as a class, seize political power, and convert the means of living into the common property of all, then and then only will class distinctions and their social and economic accompaniments disappear.

The struggle between the capitalists over the surplus wealth wrung from their slaves on the one hand and the struggle between the slaves for jobs on the other are the fruits of immature development. They will vanish when in the struggle between these two classes as a whole, the workers, are victorious. Production will then be carried on in conscious co-operation in order to secure the fullest possible development for every individual.

The limits of productive possibility no one can foresee, and it behoves the workers in their own interests to study existing conditions for the solution of existing problems. Mathematical calculations with regard to the number of elephants per square yard likely to result from unchecked multiplication may be ingenious and even exciting to an overheated imagination, but they have no bearing upon the problem of poverty. As for Marx, whatever his views on Darwin may have been, he was able to expose Malthus for the plagiarist he was (see footnote 1 to page 345, “Capital,” Sonnenschein edition).

Eric Boden

Society without exchange (1987)

From the September 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

It may be hard to imagine a society totally without exchange, but nevertheless for the vast majority of human history, around 15.000 years, this was exactly the way things were organised in a stage of human history called primitive communism.

At this time humanity lived a tribal existence with each member of the tribe as important as another: the men as hunters, the women as gatherers of fruit and roots. The young, as the future of the tribe, the old as the wisdom of the tribe, who knew the migratory patterns of animals, where the best roots could be found and much more besides. When the men and women returned with food it was not (as portrayed in some of the more pathetic films such as One Million Years BC) a mad rush for food and the strongest getting the most but a fair and equitable share-out, as the tribe realised the importance of each member of their society.

Examples can still be found today of such tribal societies: the Kalahari Bushmen and Pinaro Indians to name but two who, when first confronted by colonialists and asked about greed and property and who owned what, could not even find words in their language for such concepts and would end up laughing and looking bemused.

Socialist society

The Socialist Party however is not advocating a return to primitive communism. Far from it. but we can learn from history. Socialism must be on a world-wide scale, to replace worldwide capitalism — no individual countries, just one world. Also, it can only be established when the majority understand and want it. There will be no leaders and it can only be brought about democratically, by the ballot box, through conscious political action.

Socialism is only viable when the means of producing and distributing wealth are sufficient to provide for everyone's needs. Even the most conservative estimates of food production conclude that with farming methods now available we could feed six times the present population of the world — a total of five billion people.

Money is only necessary today because, living in capitalism, the means of producing and distributing wealth are in the hands of a tiny minority of the population. A person's position in society is determined by their relationship to these means of production. If someone is lucky enough to be one of the owning minority then they are members of a capitalist class whose ownership of the means of producing wealth means that they do not have to work but are able to live off rent, interest and profit. If however you are one of the vast majority of people who do not own factories, banks, shipping lines or whatever, then you are a member of the working class. You must make a living by selling the only thing of any value you own; this is your labour power — your ability to work — for which you receive a wage or salary.

Some people say that even workers do not have to work. They could live on social security, but anyone who has tried to manage on this pittance realises how hollow this argument is and that, if a worker is able to get a "decent" wage, he or she is forced by necessity to take it.

Workers, even though they and their class produce everything in society and run it from top to bottom, are only able to gain access to the fruits of their labour through money. A worker who helps to produce, for example, £50.000 worth of cars a week will only receive a small fraction of this in wages; the rest is the surplus value (unpaid labour) extracted from all workers, which yields the rent, interest and profit from which capitalists derive their wealth.

In socialism however things will be very different. Once a majority of people want and understand socialism and how to get it, then they will take control of the various state machines and implement it. When socialism is established the land, factories, transport — all the things we need to live — will be taken into common ownership and democratic control. No one will own anything (apart, of course, from personal items). This is not to be confused with nationalisation, which is merely state controlled capitalism as exists in countries such as Russia. China and Cuba.

Production for Use

How will things be produced? Who will produce them? They will be produced as they are now. by the people who produce them now. The important difference will be that instead of the rationing of a wage or salary, there will be free access to all wealth for everyone. Everything produced will go into a common store from which everyone will take what they need. Everyone will have free access to the common store because you cannot buy what already belongs to you and everyone else. People will not be left out because they are too old, young or sick to contribute to production as happens now. These people will be looked after to the best of society's ability. Things will be produced directly for human use, not for sale with a view to profit as now. when, if there is no profit there is no production and if you are unable to pay then you are not able to consume.

Human Nature

One of the arguments socialists often encounter is that all the greedy and selfish people will take more than they need. How correct is this argument?

First of all, in a socialist society people would have to be very greedy and foolish to consume so much as to cause any kind of problem. However, apart from that the notion of greedy people is quite wrong.

"Human nature" does not exist. Human behaviour, which is its proper title, is not fixed but is the result of the society people are conditioned to live in. At present we all live in a "dog eat dog" society of competition; a vicious society where the weak are fair game. Yet even now anyone can point to examples where people forget about the greedy nature of this society to help others. They co-operate even though there is no economic reward; think of voluntary workers, or blood donors for example. There is no reason why our rational desire for comfort and human welfare should not allow us to co-operate even further in a sane society based on cooperation.

So-called human nature is no barrier to a concept of “from each according to ability, to each according to need". Human beings are not naturally greedy, selfish, aggressive, or naturally anything else; human behaviour is determined by the kind of society people are conditioned to live in. There is only one barrier to socialism: a lack of understanding by people and therefore a lack of desire for it — in other words, a lack of socialists.

The Socialist Party does not have or need leaders; the party is only used by politically conscious socialists as a vehicle to get socialism; when socialism is established the need for the Socialist Party will disappear. Its job done, it will go out of existence.

Steve Colborn

Where Private Property Does Not Reign. (1922)

From the March 1922 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialism stands for a society of equals in which the distinctions between rich and poor, exploiters and exploited, no longer exist. Opponents of this revolutionary conception assure us frequently that no such form of society has ever existed, or ever will ; that there always have been rich and poor, and always will be, and so on. The following is an attempt to show this statement to be false by depicting the social conditions obtaining amongst the native races of the interior of Africa prior to the European invasion. This invasion having taken place (so far as the countries known as Kenya and Uganda are concerned) during the past generation only, living evidence of previous conditions still exists. It takes the form of customs not yet entirely abandoned, of institutions not yet completely destroyed, and, above all, of the wonderful memories of the old men of the tribes, memories which, of necessity, are enhanced and sharpened by the absence of any literature of native origin.

The evidence above described has been the subject of much investigation on the part of Government officials, missionaries, and travellers in the course of their occupations, some of which has found expression in book form. To this the present writer is much indebted ; but the key to the understanding of native life was supplied to him by one (Lewis H. Morgan) who actually had very little knowledge of Africa; for the obvious reason that it had hardly been opened up at the time he wrote his master-work, "Ancient Society." This speaks volumes for the thoroughness with which Morgan dug to the foundations of barbaric society.

He discovered that among the American Indians the clan (or gens) was the central institution of society, the pivot on which turned the customs and beliefs of the people. He further showed that the same condition had obtained in ancient Greece and Rome before the development of political society, that is, society founded on economic classes ; and also among the barbaric races of Northern Europe and Western Asia who subsequently came under the sway of the above Empires. The case is the same in Africa!

The essential feature of the clan is kinship, i.e., its members are supposed to be descended from a common ancestor more or less remote. Being of the same blood, they may not intermarry. Each member of the clan must find his or her mate among the members of the other clans, the children ultimately becoming members of their fathers' clan. This occurs at the age of puberty, when the rite of circumcision is practised amid great ceremonial and rejoicing. Henceforth they are regarded as adults eligible for marriage. The young men at this age are trained as warriors. Their function is to protect the flocks and herds (which constitute the tangible wealth of the clans), and occasionally, when considered necessary, to undertake raiding expeditions on hostile tribes to augment this wealth.

At this age the young men and women enjoy a considerable amount of sexual freedom, which, as might be expected, gives bourgeois, who are establishing themselves there, a horrible shock and provides them with ample material for the propaganda of measures, such as forced labour, etc., which convert the men into wages-slaves and the women into whores. Infanticide appears to be practised before marriage, but this latter state is seldom long delayed, whereupon children become an important object in life. In fact, barbaric sentiment with regard to the younger generation, only equalled by its respect for the old, surpasses anything the present writer has seen expressed among the civilised races.

The first-born child marks yet another change in the status of its father, who thereupon commences to take an active part in the administration of tribal affairs. He serves at this stage an apprenticeship, as it were, in the art of judging cases such as are brought from time to time before the council of elders, the supreme judicial authority of the tribe. A man becomes an elder upon the circumcision of the firstborn. He thus enters upon the final stage of his career. Those dying before reaching this stage are exposed for the wild beasts to devour ; the elders, however, are accorded burial and their spirits become the guardians of the tribe. This brings us to another aspect of native life, i.e., its religious aspect. It is difficult, however, to say just where this aspect begins and ends. Unlike the abstract religions that have succeeded it, ancestor worship is an everyday religion. From birth to death the life of the individual is hedged around with superstitious observances to secure the favour of the guardian angels and, through them, of nature, the supreme element in a social order based upon primitive modes of living. As a result there exists a hierarchy of so-called medicine-men, elders who are supposed to have special intimacy with the spiritual forces surrounding the tribe and are expected to exercise their influence for its benefit.

Mr. A. C. Hollis, in his work, "The Nandi," gives a curious instance of a chief medicine-man who was put to death by his tribesmen for being the assumed cause of a serious military disaster. Misfortune, however, of various kinds continued to dog the path of the tribes, who then, with characteristic lack of consequence, attributed this to the murder of the medicine-man!

The medicine-men share with the people at large the selection of the chiefs from among the warriors to direct military affairs, and their advice also guides the people in the choice of times and seasons for stock movements in the case of pastoral tribes, and planting, etc., for those depending on horticulture. Thus the religious and conservative element dominates and holds together the destinies of the people, as is but natural in a State where economic conditions hardly vary from generation to-generation.

Between the different leagues of tribes, or peoples, the mode of life naturally varies. Thus, in the mountain fastnesses, clad in dense forest, dwell the Wandorobo, hunters of the big game (elephant, buffalo, and the like), whose bows and poison-tipped arrows are practically their sole means of production. Out on the open plains the Masai herd their cattle, wandering from place to place according to the rainfall and the growth of grass. Among the lower hills and the valleys formed by the streams, live people like the Kikuyu, cultivating with primitive knives and hoes small patches of ground for grains, legumes, tuberous roots, plantains, etc. But although normally hostile to one another, each people recognises amongst itself the principle of common access to the means of life, i.e., the land. With the hunters and the pastoral nomads this is obvious ; but even in the case of the horticultural tribes the same principle applies. The family (normally polygamous) holds from the clan sufficient land for its needs. It is entitled to that, and no more, and if by chance it dies out the land reverts to the clan.

Private property is confined to tools and domestic utensils, weapons and ornaments. These are all in such an immature state of development that it is impossible for them to form means for exploitation through monopoly. Agriculture strictly so-called (i.e., the cultivation of fields by drawn ploughs) not having arisen, the productivity of the individual is too small to make slavery a source of wealth. The slaves would produce little more than they would consume. Hence only the female sex are taken captive in battle, and they are adopted into the captor's family either as daughters or wives. Cattle occupy a peculiar importance in native economy. Their slaughter for food is practically confined to festivals and sacrifices. Their milk, of course, is used, but their principal function seems to be to serve as equivalents to human beings. Thus, when, by marriage, a man takes a woman from another clan, he has to compensate that clan, through the father, for the loss, with so many head of cattle. When, again, a man kills another, of a different clan, similar compensation must be made.

To kill a member of the same clan as himself is apparently a hopeless crime, for which no compensation can avail. The murderer becomes an outcast for the rest of his life.

After a raid the relatives of any warriors who have been slain receive, again, this same compensation. The herds are so numerous in excess of economic requirements and are distributed so liberally among the families from the heads of the clan downwards, and are, withal, regarded with such an intense sentiment, bordering on (if not actually amounting to) superstition, that they appear as a part of the tribe rather than a form of property.

Thus European civilisation has discovered in Africa a form of society somewhat similar to that examined by Morgan in America, a system in which economic classes do not exist, in which each individual becomes in turn warrior, worker, and counsellor, thus combining in his own person the social functions, the division of which, later in history, formed the basis for the origin of classes.

Some bourgeois critics, impatient for an end to this primitive form of communism, do not hesitate to describe it as the enslavement of the people by the chiefs.

Their assertions, however, are based on a very scanty acquaintance with the facts, and are effectively refuted by the painstaking literary efforts of prominent officials such as Sir Alfred Sharpe and Sir Harry Johnston, men whose life-work is the overthrow of this same communism in favour of British capitalist Imperialism, and consequently they are not prejudiced on its side.

The chiefs and elders express the unity of the clan. They have no power apart from it. They are its agents in dealing with other clans and with its individual members. Any privileges which may be incidental to their office are in the nature of special rewards for special services. They depend upon the voluntary tribute of the people and not upon any political or economic means of extortion. (Such means are a later innovation of the British Government, anxious to undermine native solidarity.) The chiefs are the creatures of the customs which they enforce ; any antagonism between them is fatal for the chief. As for the so-called subjection of the female sex, this is readily seen to be a form of division of labour dictated by the conditions of social existence. The women till the gardens, look after their houses, prepare the food, and nurse the young; but the bourgeois critic conveniently forgets that the tribes would soon expire if the male sex did not clear and break up the ground, fell the trees and build the houses, and devise and construct the tools and weapons (of iron) with which the ground is tilled and the herds protected from the wild beasts.

Still the defender of capitalism remains unsatisfied. "Even so," he will say, "admitting that society existed without economic classes for hundreds of thousands of years from the days of the ape-man to the dawn of history, granting that in that time it developed speech, discovered the art of making fire, domesticating animals, the use of grains and vegetables, and evolved from promiscuous herds to organised groups, even so, it did not produce the comfort and leisure without which art and science, in a word, civilisation, would not have come into being ! To do this the subordination of the ignorant many to the intelligent few was necessary."

This admits that civilisation is based on the servitude of the people; for it is not they who enjoy comfort and leisure, art and science, although they produce these desirable conditions by their labour. They do not even obtain the same security of life as the clansman ! But the same onward march of the productive forces which burst asunder the narrow communism of the past is preparing the economic basis of the world-communism of the future, i.e., enough wealth, comfort, leisure, art and science for all !

Eric Boden