Letter: "Writing as an ex-member . . . " (1987)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Writing as an ex-member . . . "

Dear Sirs.

Writing as an ex-member of your party who has recently taken out a subscription to the Standard I think I will derive very little pleasure at what I have to say, nevertheless, having lived for 62 years I am now coming to terms with "the facts of life" and endeavouring to learn to live with them.

Like "the old days" you have some very forthright and amusing writers. Steve Coleman seeming to be a leading light; and his June 1987 article about "Post Election Blues" was in the usual format, excepting for the last sentence. Predicting that June 12th would be "a bloody miserable day" (and it was!) Comrade Coleman concludes by writing — "and for none will it be more miserable than for those who know how easy it would be to change the whole rotten set-up and establish a society fit to live in".

Apart from the serious error of grammar, whether one is of the chosen few (i.e. members of the SPGB) or the abysmally ignorant majority it is a gross exaggeration to state that any change from the capitalist system to a socialist society would be easy!

May I quote the General Election figures for Islington South and Finsbury? Tory 8,482, Labour 16,511, SDP 15,706, Greens 382, Humanists 56, SPGB 81. It is a reflection of the idiocy of human beings that only 56 people voted for a party which has more sense in one of its little leaflets than in the whole Conservative and Labour manifestos, but the fact that out of a total of 41.218 Islington and Finsbury electors only 81 voted for the SPGB merely proves that what the renowned Robert Tressell wrote over 70 years ago. is as true today as it was then. I have formed the opinion that the working class are more dumb than Dumbo ever was. There is far more insanity outside than inside "mental institutions" and on the whole human beings are much more obsessed with erotica and religious myths than their well-being and happiness. "Look at them". Robert Tressell's character said, with a contemptuous laugh. "Look at them! The people you are trying to make idealists! Look at them! Some of them howling and roaring like wild beasts, or laughing like idiots, others standing with dull and stupid faces devoid of any trace of intelligence or expression, listening to the speakers whose words convey no meaning to their stultified minds, and others with their eyes gleaming with savage hatred of their fellow men, watching eagerly for an opportunity to provoke a quarrel that they may gratify their brutal natures. Can't you see that these people, whom you are trying to make understand your plan for the regeneration of the world, your doctrine of universal brotherhood and love are for the most part — intellectually — on a level with Hottentots? The only things they feel any interest in are beer, football, betting, and. of course — one other subject. Their highest ambition is to be allowed to Work. And they desire nothing better for their children. They have never had an independent thought in their lives . . .!" And so the brilliant monologue goes on. and. like a surgeon's scalpel cutting into a cancerous growth it reveals the monumental task that the changing of society involves.

I work in a small post office-cum-general stores and apart from the usual vast majority of customers who can see nothing beyond their daily dose of Murdoch's law (i.e. the Sun). 20J.P. (i.e.. coffin, or is it coughing, nails) and a bar of Cadbury's for the weekend. I was appalled at the time of the General Election by the amount of people "on the Social" who voted Tory!

When I informed one elderly gentleman that I was a Socialist and would not be voting in my constituency, he told me to "get back to Russia" On June 12th he came up to my counter to draw his pittance of a pension triumphantly wearing a cheap blue rosette and sneered. "Well. I suppose you're laughing the other side of your face now that we've beaten you!”

I conclude with Robert Tressell's immortal words which sum up my feelings towards The Socialist Party of Great Britain. Although you are light years behind the razzamatazz of the Labour and the Tory parties and you are probably right in your analysis of society (based, of course, upon Karl Marx's) "your party persists in regarding people as rational beings, and that is where you make your mistake. Labour are just learning, the Tories knew long ago the sort of people they have to deal with; they know that although their bodies are the bodies of grown men. their minds are the minds of little children. That is why it has been possible to deceive and bluff and rob them for so long." (The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, 1905)

And please do not accuse me of arrogance. Anger, contempt, scorn — I plead guilty to these, but I make no claims to be proud of the fact that I belong to a species that will burn, blind and torture innocent animals for the sake of making a profit and kill and maim fellow humans in times of war.

Reg Otter 

Shepperton, Middlesex.

Reply

Before turning to the very real and understandable reasons for our correspondent's lack of hope, let us spell out what defeatism means. It means that you come to terms with a social system which you know to be exploiting you, restricting you, impoverishing your lifestyle and, with increasing ferocity, threatening you with destruction. Not only is capitalism doing that to you, but to your friends and family — people who you care for and want to help. And to millions you have never met. capitalism is doing even worse things. As a defeatist you accept that this is the way life must be. You give up on the struggle to transform society.

Reg Otter is clearly not a complete defeatist. He still tells fellow workers that he is a socialist. He no doubt argues with workers and may well be underestimating his ability to change the way some of them think. Our fellow workers do not always tell us directly when they have found socialist ideas convincing but we would not be surprised if there are a few workers scattered about who would say, "You've got to hand it to old Reg Otter, he talks a lot of sense about the problems of society".

What our correspondent most certainly does underestimate is the intelligence of the working class. After all, these creatures who are "more dumb than Dumbo ever was" make a pretty good job of running the trains, producing all the wealth in the factories, operating on bodies in hospitals, teaching children to read, delivering letters — and the thousands of other important and intelligent tasks which we, the workers, perform. Yes. plenty of workers are laughing like idiots and seem to have dull and stupid faces and appear to have eyes gleaming with savage hatred for their fellow men. Socialists do not romanticise the working class: we are of that class and know just how degraded the system can make wage slaves. But — and Reg Otter will know this very well — the human animal is highly adaptable. In a jungle s/he will behave like a beast. Given an incentive to leave the jungle society of capitalism workers could co-operate. Just as they are doing every day when it comes to producing and distributing wealth, just as workers are always doing when it comes to voluntary efforts to help make other people's lives better. Workers are not naturally programmed for capitalism; nor are we naturally programmed to forever reject the cooperative option of socialism.

Our correspondent is right if he is saying that now, in 1987, the political minds of the workers of the world are in a frightful mess. He is right if he says that this is dispiriting. He was right to feel miserable on 12 June. He is entitled to be angry, although it will do him little good. But should he dismiss the efforts of The Socialist Party as a waste of time? We perform an enormously important task in putting to workers the only alternative to the dangerous chaos of capitalism. We succeeded in persuading Reg Otter to join us and even though he later decided to leave, because he is not arrogant he will accept that there was nothing special about him which made him able to work for socialism while other workers could not understand. Every time we win one new worker to our cause it is proof that we could win a thousand more. And. in practical terms, each new member provides us with access to several workers who know him or her.

The 81 votes for socialism in Islington South and Finsbury was disappointing. We would like to have recorded all 41.218. We ran a great campaign in the area, as many workers living in Islington (even if they do not support The Socialist Party) will testify. Unlike any other party in the election, we consistently asked voters not to vote for us unless they agreed in full with our ideas. That 81 did vote for us — in a constituency which was a key Labour marginal, and in which the Green Party were there to take away the mere protest votes — is something to get working on. If we could persuade those 81 socialist voters to join our Islington Branch we would be very happy. Similarly in Swansea, where we recently recorded 50 votes in just one ward.

Of course, we could regard 81 and 50 votes as good reasons to give up and learn to live with capitalism. Well firstly, capitalism may not allow us to live with it for that much longer, because it is set to put an end to the live-in arrangement, and secondly society will one day change from production for profit to production for need and we are not going to waste a moment's time or withhold any energy to hasten that revolution. We are not defeatists and neither, perhaps, is Reg Otter: maybe he has made the comments which he has so that we can give him the answer he is waiting for. Get into the movement for socialism and do your bit to make history

Editors.

Letters: Green debate (1987)

Letters to the Editors from the December 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Green debate

Dear Comrades,

I think the Socialist Standard production committee and the other members concerned are to be congratulated on the interview with Jonathon Porritt which appeared in the August Socialist Standard. It was topical, interesting and, above all, reasonable in tone.

I agree entirely with the member of the Green Party who wrote to you the following month to say he was impressed by it for its lack of any "we have an answer to everything" boast. I have sometimes heard members boast that a Party speaker has "wiped the floor" with an opponent in debate. It doesn't seem to occur to them that if you want people to join you in a difficult task of creating revolutionary consciousness you probably won't have much success if you first wipe with the floor with them.

Socialist propaganda can be put without aggression, arrogance, condescension or abuse. The contents of most copies of the Socialist Standard these days prove that. More power to your (our) elbow.

Yours for socialism,

Keith Graham

Bristol

Does human nature exist?

Dear Editors.

I particularly enjoyed the September issue of the Socialist Standard but was astounded to read, in the very last column, the emphatic assertion "Human nature does not exist". Unquestionably it does exist, in both physical and psychological terms. To assume otherwise would surely imply that, uniquely in the animal kingdom, no human activity could ever be deemed natural. Including, of course, "our rational desire for comfort and welfare"

Obviously however, the way that human nature manifests itself through our behaviour is significantly affected by environmental, social and cultural conditioning. The relative influence of nature or nurture in this process remains a matter for legitimate debate but I have great respect for what I always considered to be the socialist position. Succinctly stated on the first page of the same issue.

Does Steve Colborn really believe that it is as unnatural to make love as it is to make war? And do other socialists agree with him?

Yours sincerely,

Richard Headicar

London, NW5

Reply
It is nice to know that Richard Headicar enjoyed the September Socialist Standard; we hope he will go along to his local branch of The Socialist Party to discuss his opinions about socialism.

As Richard Headicar points out, our behaviour varies under the influence of our conditions, yet human behaviour is what our opponents are really referring to when they say that "human nature" would make socialism unworkable The problem is in deciding what is natural to human beings; to begin with, whatever is natural must be fixed, which counts out human behaviour which changes with its conditioning.

This leaves us with very little which can be properly called human nature. As far as the case for socialism goes, it is so insignificant as to justify the phrase that it does not exist

Editors

Material needs

Dear Sir.

After reading your journal for a few months now, I find myself in broad agreement with most of your aims. However, there are one or two points.

In particular, you advocate a socialist society mainly for material reasons: for houses and general consumer goods. The criticisms you make of our present society are normally only ones of material deprivation. You do not seem to consider the point that man has inner, non-material, needs. I do not mean religious or spiritual needs, but man as a social animal needs to feel at one with his surroundings. his work and his fellow human beings. These yearnings come from inside man and need a harmonious society externally to be satisfied. By often ignoring these inner and social needs of men you seem to be denying that there is a psychological and emotional basis for socialism as well as a material basis. Or perhaps the SPGB claims that our present society has no effect on our inner stability?

One other point of criticism. The language of your paper is surely dated. Whether we like it or not. people today do not generally use terminology such as "capitalist class", "class struggles" and "surplus value". Instead of using language that you talk to yourselves in, shouldn't you choose words and terms that ordinary non-socialists use. They are, after all, the people whom you have to convince. Your Declaration of Principles uses terms that it needs a dictionary to make sense of

Yours for a non-market world,

Simon Pearson

Reply
The Socialist Party is most certainly a "materialist" party in the sense that we argue that to understand society fully we must look first at the ways in which people are organised to meet their material needs, how the goods and services that are necessary for life are produced. In capitalist society that production takes place only for profit and people are divided into two classes — the capitalist class which owns the means of producing and distributing goods and services, and the working class which owns nothing except their ability to work. These two classes have opposing interests which cannot be reconciled within the capitalist system. The effects of this class division — and the conflict which it entails — are both material, in the sense that workers never receive the full benefit of their labour, and non-material in the sense that capitalism also engenders insecurity, conflict and division.

We do indeed recognise that people have what Simon Pearson refers to as "inner needs" — to live in harmony and cooperation with each other — but would argue that the material conditions created by capitalism frustrate the meeting of those needs. Socialism, by contrast, will ensure not only that people's needs for a decent standard of material life are met. but will also create a society in which people can live in peace with each other.

On the question of the language used in the Socialist Standard, we accept that the language of the Declaration of Principles is dated — they were after all drawn up in 1904. Nevertheless, as a statement of what the Socialist Party stands for they are as relevant today as when they were drafted. The language may have changed but the basic features of capitalism still exist. And it is the ideas contained within the Declaration of Principles which are the basis for the analysis of society and contemporary events presented in the Standard. Although we do at all times try to use ordinary language in the articles we print, it is not always easy to find words and expressions which carry the same meaning as "capitalist class" and "class struggles".

Editors

Socialism and democracy

Comrades,

Let me commence by saying that I'm in broad agreement with your analysis of socialism; what it is. how it can be achieved and the absoluteness of its necessity.

However I do have one query. One of your prerequisites for socialism is that it must be on a worldwide basis. Does this infer that the development of a universal socialist consciousness will arise uniformly? If so, is this not an unrealistic assertion?

My point is that it is quite possible and even probable that a realisation of the need for socialism will gain uneven support between the various nations of the world. For instance how is it possible for socialist thought to take seed in the state capitalist regimes where dissension is not tolerated and a parliamentary process is non-existent. Ditto for right wing dictatorships. Thus it would seem inevitable that socialist thought is more likely to advance in the partially democratic nations of the West, over the aforementioned totalitarian regimes.

If a socialist majority should arise in these Western nations whilst socialist awareness remained hindered in other countries, what route then for socialism? Would such a problem be irretractable? I should hope not!

I await with interest your reply

Yours sincerely,

James Ryan 

London SW16

Reply
This is a vital question, which often bothers people who are in "broad agreement" with our case.

Socialism must be a worldwide social system because a stateless, moneyless, classless set-up could not exist, as a separate enclave, amid a capitalist world of nations, wars, class division, commodity production and so on. It follows that socialism must be established at pretty well the same time throughout the world but this does not imply that workers develop socialist consciousness at exactly the same rate everywhere. Inevitably, there is some unevenness but in terms of social movement this is so slight as to be insignificant.

Ideas mirror material conditions. At present workers all over the world support capitalism and this support takes just about the same form wherever we look. The same false ideas help to keep capitalism in being on both sides of the Atlantic, on both sides of the Iron Curtain . . .

The development of socialist ideas faces many problems and political dictatorship is one of them. An absence of democracy reflects a low state of development of workers' consciousness; its presence is one of the fruits of a flourishing consciousness. That is the direction in which society is moving, as workers' ideas react to capitalism's contradictions.

We hope James Ryan will feel able to assert his own political awareness by joining in the work for socialism.

Editors

Who runs the world?

Dear Editors.

I am not a member of the SPGB but I must say that the letter from Reg Otter in the October issue annoyed me immensely. Obviously he has contempt for the great mass of people forgetting that they run the world.

I have no doubt that when Mr Otter is in trouble he sends for the plumber or the doctor or seeks the attention of a dentist; when he travels he may well fly in an aircraft made, serviced and flown by working people. Every day "miracles" are happening throughout the world carried out by working people. These people are not socialists neither are they dumb or stupid, were Reg Otter not so cynical and bigoted he would see that there is a tremendous amount of goodwill and sacrifice in the community in spite of the pressures of capitalism.

I have lived for nearly 65 years and know that the main political parties have nothing to offer but division and delusion. Socialism appears to be the answer when people are prepared to listen and act.

Yours fraternally.

W. Cozens

London NW8

The Ten Commandments (1958)

Film Review from the March 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

Amidst much ballyhoo and publicity, with a prologue about “tyrants and freedom.” spoken by the famous Cecil B. de Mille. and a small orchestra to get one “in the mood” by playing excerpts from “Kismet” and other “Eastern” music, a film—“The Ten Commandments” is currently showing at the Plaza, W.1.

Like all other things, this film was made chiefly to create a profit and stimulate interest in the Christian religion, and when you ask the prices of admission you’ll realise that Mr. de Mille must be doing very nicely. The writer would like to warn anybody who may want one of the colourful programmes, that if you tender a shilling, expecting sixpence change, you will be requested (quite politely) to give the usherette another two shillings and sixpence! Of course, you could always take along a copy of the Bible.

One doesn’t have to be a Socialist to realise that if people will believe all that this film portrays, they’ll believe anything! But it did leave the writer of these words asking himself a few questions. How often are we, as Socialists, accused of having “our heads in the sky”? How often, when we put forward the Socialist case, do we hear words like “Fantastic!" — “Impossible" — “Nonsense”? The writer wonders how many critics of Socialism will applaud the obvious trickery of the cameras in “The Ten Commandments”? They may believe that wooden staffs can turn into deadly serpents, but the idea of production for use instead of profit—“Oh no, we must have competition! ”

The Israelites crossing the Red Sea (which, I was surprised to see, has a very dry bed!) is more easily believed than the idea of a world without social, colour or religious barriers!

The striking into rock, by fire, of the Ten Holy Commandments is “divine”—“heavenly,” much more to be believed than the object of the S.P.G.B. printed above the Declaration of Principles, which are probably too “down to earth.”

By all means, see this film which is an experience, although a bit of an expensive one! You’ll hear God speaking in a croaky American accent, yet declaring his Ten Commandments in Hebrew. One is left to wonder how those Israelites could have been so fickle in their loves of various Gods, especially after having apparently seen such marvels of miracles.

Of course, everything about Mr. De Mille’s production is a bit of a wonder, but the biggest wonder so far as I was concerned was how on earth people still believe implicitly that all of this was true. Rameses (beautifully acted by Yul Brynner) came pretty close to the most sensible part of the whole film when, during the plague which was supposed to have been sent down by the “merciful Father ” upon His people, he said. “ Bah, this is not the work of any God, this is the natural order of things! ’’

R. J. Otter