Editorial: The strikes in France (1953)

Editorial from the September 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

The strike movement which began on 5th August among Post Office workers and quickly spread to transport, gas, electricity and many other state and private undertakings and involved at its height some three or four million workers was still in progress a fortnight later; though by that time some workers had returned to work because their strikes had been deliberately limited to one or two days, and others had been reported as drifting back. As a movement to demonstrate workers' solidarity and to bring pressure to bear on the government and the employers it was complete and highly efficient. As was remarked by one observer, the Paris correspondent of the Manchester Guardian, “rarely has any strike movement in France, planned and announced in advance, been so successful ” (Manchester Guardian, 8/8/53).

The spark that set off the Post Office strike was a report that the Government’s “emergency” economy measures included reductions of Post Office staff and extending the age of retirement on pension. It was later denied that the Government had ever intended to make the later retirement compulsory but a possible explanation is that they were preparing the way and only the unanimous demonstration of resistance by the strikers made them repudiate it. The reason why the strike was enthusiastically joined by millions of other workers demanding higher wages was that the workers in general were finding their low standard of living being further reduced by rising prices. Mr. Douglas Jay, in the Daily Herald (13/8/53) estimated that “the average wage-earner in France today if he is single, gets a wage not much above two-thirds of what the British wage-earner gets." It is only through the higher rate of family allowances in France that the worker, if he has a wife and three children, has an income about equal to that of workers in Britain. Mr. Jay also pointed out that under French rent acts rents are exceedingly low—he goes so far as to claim that "the British worker’s family on the average spends eight times as much on rent as the French.”

But he went on to say:—

“However, these cheap rents—which the new decrees are to raise—are not much consolation to the French worker. It is partly just because food prices are so high that he has little to spare for anything else." (Italics, Mr. Jay’s).

Although Mr. Jay draws attention to these facts he fails to see how hollow they make the social reforms of the “Welfare State” which he and the French Labour leaders so blindly support. Unless the workers use their only industrial weapon, the strike, to fight for higher wages; low rents and social insurance benefits merely operate to enable employers to pay a low money wage. This is further borne out by Nora Beloff, writing from Paris to the “Observer” (16th August, 1953) on the condition of French workers.

"An official publication has revealed that they enjoy an even smaller proportion of the national revenue today than before the war: the substantial rise in social benefits has been more than offset by the severe drop in real wages. The Civil Service is proportionately worse off than am employees of private business."

So much for the alleged benefits of the “Welfare State” and of being employed by the Government.

The strikes themselves have had some very interesting features. It has been customary in Western Europe, including Great Britain, for Governments and some trade union officials to see in every strike the hand of the Communists; but the French Postal strike was started not by the Communist Union but by the anti-communist French Post Office Workers’ Union belonging to the “Labour Force” trade union federation. They took the initiative first in the Post Office and then in other industries, and the Communist Trade Union Federation (C.G.T.) and the Christian Trade Union Federation later joined in. It happens that the “Labour Force” Union is stronger than the Communist and Christian Unions among Post Office workers, though the C.G.T. claims in all 2,000,000 members as against about 800,000 in the “Labour Force” Federation and the same number in the Christian Federation. As the Times remarked (7/8/53) “ No Communist interference seems to have been needed to start the trouble.”

But though the excuse of Communist “plotting” could not be used this did not prevent the French Government from threatening to use all measures to smash the strikes, including the movement of tanks into Paris (News Chronicle 18/8/53).

The French Prime Minister when he ordered the movement of tanks might have recalled the outcry three months ago when Russian tanks in Eastern Germany were used to overawe German strikers; but the Western Governments' reaction then was very different. They approved the strike and made horrified protests about the tanks, and with their approval the American Government has been distributing millions of food parcels to the hungry East German workers. But this time it is the French tanks not Russian, and there has been no offer by Western Governments of food parcels for the hungry French workers. The Daily Worker (11/8/53) seized on this and denounced British and other unions in the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions for their decision to give money to help the East German workers while not doing the same for the workers of France and Italy. But the Communists are actually taking up a still worse attitude. Some British unions have agreed to give financial help to the French workers, while the Communists, instead of helping the strikers against the Communist Government of Eastern Germany pretend that they were not strikes but “American-inspired riots.”

The real tragedy of the trade union movement in France and in the world generally is that most trade unionists allow themselves to be diverted from single minded concentration on working class unity because of their attachment to nationalism and to support of one or other forms of Government of Capitalism. Except for a brief spell after the first world war and again after the second world war the international trade union movement, which before 1914 was a single organisation paying at least lip-service to international working-class unity, has been divided into bitterly hostile camps, the W.F.T.U. supporting Russian State Capitalism, and the I.C.F.T.U. supporting Western capitalism; not to mention the Christian and Independent groups maintaining isolation.

One hopeful aspect of the strikes in France was the way in which workers in the three rival groups (Labour Force, Communist and Christian) came out on strike together, temporarily forgetting their rivalries. This, and the fact that the strikes in Eastern Germany have demonstrated the workers’ defiance of the Communist dictatorship there may give reason to hope for some future movement towards world working class unity.

In the meantime the divisions in the French trade union movement endangered the strikes. It is of great importance, especially in a more or less general strike, that there should be common action not only to come out on strike but to go back as a united body. It is equally important that such strikes should not be allowed to drag on until, under pressure of starvation, workers begin to drift back one by one. This danger was heightened in France by the efforts of some of the leaders of the three main groups to outmanoeuvre and discredit each other in the conduct of the strike and by the parallel tactics of the Government and the employers to play one off against the other.

The Passing Show: Our way of life (1953)

The Passing Show Column from the September 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

Our way of life

Mr. Blundell, leader of the European elected members of the Kenya legislature, has been devoting deep thought to the cause of the Mau Mau trouble. He has reached his conclusion: the disturbances stem from the fact that one section of the people in Kenya is trying to impose its rule on all the rest. Does this mean that Mr. Blundell is now an opponent of the rule of a small white upper class over all the original inhabitants of the country? Not a bit of it. This is what Mr. Blundell had to say:

The problem is one we have had since 1916. Since we brought British administration to this country, for more than fifty per cent. of that time we have had reluctance by the Kikuyu to accept the benefits of law and order and our way of life, with the prosperity which can stem from it, except on their own terms. This is a challenge by the Kikuyu people—whether actively or passively sustained—to impose their rule on all the other people this country. (Times, 25/7/53).

This accusation by a member of a ruling class which has recently come into Kenya and stolen the best land there, that some of the original inhabitants are trying to do what Mr. Blundell and his class have already done themselves, would be merely funny if its implications were not so serious. In fact the speech, by showing the attitude of mind of the whites in Kenya, goes far towards explaining the outbreak of violence on the part of the Kikuyu.

 

* * *

 

Reservation of amenities

 

While Mr. Blundell upholds the cause of white supremacy in Kenya, Dr. Malan upholds it in South Africa. The latter's policy of apartheid, when presented by a skilled exponent, can be made to sound almost harmless. All it means, it is said, is that the white people and the black people of South Africa are to keep themselves to themselves, and are to develop along their own lines in their own areas. No superiority is implied of one race over another, it is alleged. But recently some courts in South Africa have been taking this kind of propaganda at its face value, and have been refusing to convict Negroes of offences against the apartheid laws unless it was shown that amenities of equal comfort have been reserved for them in railway stations, trains, post offices, etc. Dr. Malan has now given his answer. His Minister of Justice (sic) has introduced a Bill which rules that “reservation of amenities for a particular race or class of people cannot be invalidated merely because no similar amenities have been reserved for any other race or class’’ (The Times, 4-8-53). This reveals the apartheid policy for what it is. The South African ruling class has the same feeling towards the working class it oppresses and exploits as any other ruling class has: it fears them, because they are in a numerical majority. But this fear has been developed to a higher pitch in South Africa because the workers there have a different racial origin, and a different colour of skin; and because, for historical reasons, the workers of South Africa have not yet achieved the level of education and the standard of living which the workers of Western Europe and America have gained. The desire of the South African ruling class to keep the workers in subjection, and to maintain inviolate the present class-structure of South

African society, bears fruit in the racial superiority theories, and the apartheid policy, of Dr. Malan.

 

* * *

 

Public ownership à la Morgan Phillips

 

In those industries which were taken over by the Labour Governments from 1945 to 1951, some changes were made, but the basic capitalist structure was preserved intact. Since the 1951 defeat and the loss of ground at subsequent bye-elections, the Labour Party have had to face the fact that the workers, having experienced what the Labour Party called “Socialism” —that is, nationalisation—are for the present less prepared to support them at the polls in sufficient numbers to return them to power. So they have been casting round for new ideas. And their new proposals show that they contemplate making even fewer changes in industries they take over in future. Instead of making (for example) the mining machinery and machine tools industries wholly state-capitalist, Morgan Phillips proposes that a future Labour Government should merely acquire a fifty-one per cent. shareholding in certain key firms within these industries (in an article m the August issue of the Labour Party magazine, “Fact”). Mr. Phillips continues to use the term “public ownership” to describe the projected organisation of such industries, but at least he is now more chary of calling such plans “Socialist.” And so he should be; the Labour Party is more and more revealing itself as merely another capitalist party.

 

* * *

 

The work-insiders

 

Incidentally, what of all those people who have told us in the past that they disagreed with us, but that they were going to join the Labour Party in order to “work from within,” and change it into a Socialist party? They are clearly failing to do this, as could have been forecasted (and was). There is only one party for Socialists, and that is the Socialist Party.

Alwyn Edgar

The Nature of War (1953)

Pamphlet Review from the September 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Must Man Wage War ?” by F. A. Crew. Thrift Books No. 18.
 C. A. Watts & Co., Ltd. 1952. Price 1/6.

After the news of the Atomic Bomb in 1945. scientists in general, and atomic physicists in particular, got rather hot under the collar because they had done the pioneering research work which led to that horror of horrors; now with the possibility of bacteriological warfare the biologists are searching their consciences. Professor Crew has much experience of both warfare and scientific research, as he served in the army in the first world war, was Director of Medical' Research at the War Office in the second, has been in the Territorials for 36 years, and since 1928 he has been a university professor of biology. He uses this experience and the data which is available on recent wars to analyse many aspects of war in this book. He has done this because, in his own words, “I have come to wish to be a citizen of the world, not of the world as it is but as it could be ” (preface). He divides his study into three chapters on the biological aspects of the causes, conduct and consequences of war.

The Cause of War

There are some people who suggest that warring is inherent in human beings, because we are born aggressive, and therefore there will always be wars. However the professor does not fall for that fairy tale, pointing out that,

“Aggressiveness may be inborn, but this attribute is expressed only when specific outside pressures are brought to bear upon the developing individual. He may be prepared to display aggressiveness, but there is no intrinsic need that he should ever be called upon to do so.”— (Page30.)

After examining the way people are brought up, and how aggression is fostered in this bitterly competitive world, he comes to the conclusion that,

"He can develop in a competitive world where men, wanting the same thing, fight for it ; or he can find himself in a world in which all things are shared."—(Page 32.)

When such arguments are pointed out to some people they will reply that although that may be true of “us civilised people,” there are other peoples, such as the Indians, for example, who are readily classified into warrior and non-warrior types, into those who by virtue of their genetic endowment come to display those attributes which distinguish the fighting man, and those who, because of a different genetic constitution, are inevitably timid and cowardly, and thus are unsuited for a military career. To such people, the professor, who is a specialist in genetics, the science of inheritance, replies simply,

“There is no evidence which proves beyond all doubt that one ethnic, political, or social group is, for purely genetic reasons, superior to another in respect of military attributes."—(Page 20.)

Having brushed away these mental cobwebs, he considers the structure of society, noting that in modern society,

"Certain groups exist which are in no way productive but live on the surplus created by the productive groups. The maintenance and reproduction of non-productive groups can only be achieved, therefore, by the maintenance and extension of power, of their dominion over the productive groups."—(Page 15.)

He goes on to point out that war began in earnest with class society and is inherent in a class society, concluding that,

"Wars are no longer waged for material things required for subsistence; they arise out of the productive relationships of groups concerning the acquisition of surplus."—(Page 36.)

This is because the ruling class, which is unproductive and lives on the surplus produced by the large majority of society, has something to gain from victory or lose by defeat, but the vast majority, the working class, gain nothing from war but sorrow, loss, and mutilation. However without their willing participation wars could not occur. Why then do they allow themselves to be persuaded to support it?

Noting that in capitalist society there is much human unhappiness, for millions of people spend most of their lives performing tasks which are both dull and tedious, giving neither physical nor mental satisfaction, and so live lives that are drab and featureless, he concludes that,

"Wars are made possible because the lives of so many individuals in the modem State are so grey and so dull, so complicated, and so unsatisfying.... War promises that which the individual has sought in peace and failed to find. It fills a life which has been empty. It unifies a people,... in short, war remains possible because in peace there so little to satisfy the creative urge of the mature and skilled and to enlist the energies of adventurous, restless youth.”—(Pages 34-5.)

The Conduct of War

Chapter 2 starts with an analysis of the way people are prepared for war, and then goes on to a description of a number of aspects of modern war. For example, he points out that in wartime hospitals are emptied of the tuberculous so that those injured by bombing, or on active service, can have the beds, and that in the army the men are exposed to conditions that lower their general well being, so making them prone to diseases such as tuberculosis. The result is that during the war the number of people suffering from this disease increased tremendously.

As germ warfare has been in the news in recent years and much has been written of it, but little substantiated, the following comments by an expert biologist are of interest.

“That it is possible to manufacture weapons of great lethality out of existing biological knowledge is beyond all reasonable doubt; that such a weapon already exists is highly probable} . . . the biological bomb could be used in such a way that it would surpass the atomic bomb itself as a weapon of mass terror; it is cheap; it could be produced in complete secrecy, no vast plant tucked away in the remote desert being required for its manufacture.

"Certainly it is not beyond the ingenuity of man to produce such a weapon. It must presumably take the form of a package of exceptionally virulent pathogenic micro-organisms or of parasites of one kind or another which, being deliberately let loose in the enemy’s country, initiates an epidemic among the human population, its animals of economic importance, or its crops."—(Pages 65-6.)

Some Consequences of War

There are some people who think that war is beneficial to the human species because it is eugenically selective. They think that the “stronger” eliminate the “weaker” so the “fitter” or “better” only survive, and in this way humanity rids itself of inferior types. On the other hand there are others who suggest that in war it is the most worthy who are the first to be killed, so that it is the “better” who are killed and the inferior types that survive in most cases. They suggest that it is because war claims the “cream of the youth” that economic crises and other evils of capitalism occur, as those left cannot cope with the difficult problems that occur. The professor points out that neither view is sound. The first because tactics and weapons are far more important in war than any possible slight difference in biological make-up; the second because it has never been established that it is the “betters” who are killed off. With the mass attacks on civilian populations, which have become commonplace in recent times, such arguments are rapidly losing any appeal that they may have had in the past.

He discusses colonisation by conquest and points out that in the last thirty years of the nineteenth century, Britain France and Germany each gained by conquest millions of miles of territory, and so extended their domination over millions more people. However, in the twentieth century all the lands of primitive peoples have been colonised, so war is between nations of more or less equal technological development, who come into conflict over raw materials and markets. Since the Great Powers are highly industrialised they produce weapons of a new and more terrible type, and so war becomes more and more horrible.

What of the consequence for the working class? He says that more than 27 million people were killed, by war, between 1914 and 1918. Some of these on the battlefield, but many by the general lowering of resistance to disease that occurred through worry, anxiety, long hours of work, and lack of nourishing foods. For example, the influenza epidemic of 1918 was greatly aggravated by war conditions, and even after 1921 the mortality rates were considerably higher than would have been expected if the war had not occurred. Having mentioned the 8,000 T.B. patients discharged from sanitoria in the second world war, and its disastrous effects, he goes on to consider how war breaks up homes and so leads to an increase in crime, and considers the statistics on the lack of housing. Then, with a few well chosen examples, he shows that although the British working class got nothing but misery, disease, violence, and premature death, from war, the plight of the workers of the other countries of Europe was even worse. Such is the lot of the worker in capitalist society; be always gets the dirty end of the stick!

The Prevention of War

After this powerful indictment of war he considers that,

"The prescription for prevention is the complete transformation of the social inheritance and of the social structure, which by its very nature must periodically yield warring. . . .  A unified world must be created in which in peace the needs of the bodies, the intellects,, and the emotions of all shall encounter the means of satisfaction." —(Pages 36-7.)

He concludes that,

“The only remaining obstacles to the achievement of this aim are those that reside in the minds of men."— (Page 38.)

He states that he will work actively to oppose war.

So far, so good, but how are we to go about this? Professor Crew gives no consideration to that very practical question. However, from the analysis we see that to prevent war, capitalism, the society of classes and therefore of wars, must be replaced by socialism, the society of human beings where war cannot exist. To do this it is necessary for the majority of the people of the world to understand capitalism and desire to introduce socialism. The change in human society will then be made by sending a majority of socialist delegates to the parliaments of the different countries with the mandate to make the required legislation, for parliament is not merely a “gas-house,” but is the seat of power. Then the power will be transferred from the ruling class, the capitalists, to all mankind. Such is the nature and purpose of the socialist revolution. The Socialist Party is the instrument fashioned by members of the working class, to carry out this historic task. 

Conclusion

The terminology used in this book has not the precision of the Marxist terms that the socialist is familiar with. Often the word State is used when country would be more accurate, nation is used when peoples are meant, and the capitalist, or ruling class, are often referred to as power groups. The author does, not seem to be sure of his analysis of the state capitalisms of Russia and Yugoslavia. As to formulating organised action on the basis of this analysis of society the writer gives us no lead, and in the preface he even supports the present armament drive and the present warfare in Korea!

However, this text of 81 pages is a powerful indictment of war, and the capitalist society that breeds it. Therefore it should be on every socialist’s bookshelf next to “The Socialist Party and War,” for it treats certain aspects of war for which there was not room in that pamphlet. We are glad that priced at 1/6 it is within reach of all workers.

R.J.J.

The dogs do bark (1953)

From the September 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

Lowly but surely the match sellers, street singers, hawkers and blind fiddlers are coming back. Not as many as in the past, because there is still no mass unemployment; the writer, raised in East London in the years after 1918, remembers beggars in every main street. Undisguised begging is, of course, legally prohibited (nevertheless, it is still done in every big city in the world); the mendicant has to have something to play or something to sell, or, as an extra indignity if he can afford neither, he must sing for his succour. The war, which provided jobs even for the unfit, and its aftermath, which gave gratuities to the soldiers and pickings to the spivs,, took away the beggars. Now there aren’t the jobs and there isn’t the money, and the beggars are re-appearing.

Begging today is a series of unenviable one-man businesses, lacking organization or enterprise. It was not always so. The heyday of beggars was in the reign of Elizabeth the First. They went in gangs, hordes and regiments, often highly organized, with their specialists and their hierarchies. Some unknown rhymester of the sixteenth century coined a jingle which went:

“Hark! Hark! The dogs do bark—

The beggars are coming to town.”

It was no children’s song then, but a piece of grim news.

The numbers of sixteenth and seventeenth century beggars are astonishing. In London there were twelve thousand among a population of less than two hundred thousand in 1600. Holinshed recorded that

“. . . there is not one year, commonly, wherein three hundred or four hundred of them are not devoured and eaten up by the gallows in one place and other. Henry the Eighth, executing his laws very severely against such idle persons . . . did hang up threescore and twelve thousand of them, in his time.”

It was the same all over Europe. Huberman claims that a quarter of the people in Paris in the 1630's were beggars. The Low Countries swarmed with them. In sixteenth-century Switzerland, according to Renard and Weulersse:

". . . when there was no other means of getting rid of the beggars who besieged their houses or wandered in bands about the roads and forests, the wealthy even organized hunting parties against these wretched homeless ones.”

And in Spain, books like “Lazarillo de Tonnes” and Quevedo’s “Great Rogue” described in minute detail the organizations of beggars.

Where did they all come from? Many were peasants, driven from their land by enclosure and rack- renting. In the fifteenth century they had pulled down enclosures, started fires, risen in impotent protest; now they became beggars. Others were soldiers, returned penniless but with a taste for plunder from the continental wars, or set adrift from the disbanded feudal armies. The dissolution of the monasteries added former servants and retainers—"abbeylubbers,” they were nicknamed—to the ragged hordes; and took away, too, the principal source of charity to vagrants. Then there were chapmen, strolling players, gipsies, ballad-mongers, scholars—Gamaliel Ratsey and Luke Hutton, the Elizabethan highwaymen, were University men— and ever so many more. There was no work to be had, and no charity; the new owners of the land had no tradition of generosity to the poor. It was beg, steal or starve.

By the 1570’s there were huge guilds and fraternities of vagabonds; he who joined had to undergo initiation and serve an apprenticeship. The vagabonds, like the law, saw no difference between vagrancy and crime. They had their own dialect, called Pedlars’ French or the Canting Tongue, a mixture of Elizabethan English with the varied contributions of soldiers, foreign beggars and vagrant monks; some of its words—cant, foist, booze, crank—are still with us.

The head of a beggars’ fraternity was known as the Upright Man—certainly nor uprighteous, for he usually had more than one mistress, and they were called Morts or Doxies. Plain beggars were Rufflers; then there were the Clapperdogens, who blistered their flesh with arsenic and herbs to gain pity.. The Counterfeit Cranks ate soap to feign fits and the Abraham Men pretended to be mad, while Dummerers folded their tongues in their mouths to be thought dumb. If a beggar got his bread by telling tales of misfortune, he was a Freshwater Mariner. Among the petty thieves, there was the Hooker or Angler, who carried an iron- hooked staff and “fished” to good purpose with it; the Foist, who picked pockets; and the Nip, who slit purses when their owners looked the other Way—“a knight of the knife,” Ben Jonson called him. Most common of all in London was the Coney-catcher, or confidence trickster—the forefather of the spiv. There were Upright Women, too; Mary Frith, known as Moll Cutpurse, was the head of a gang which for years terrorized the Shooter’s Hill area.

The administrators of Elizabethan England tried hard to solve the problem. In 1571, a census of beggars and rogues was attempted; the following year, the famous edict was published by which "lusty and valiant beggars” were to be

". .. grevouslye whipped, and bumte through the gristle of the right Eare with a hot Yron of the compasse of an ynche about."

This seems to have offered little discouragement, and in 1598 further measures were introduced, including the instruction:

"Every vagabond found begging is to be stripped naked from the middle upwards, and openly whipped, until his or her body be bloody."

At the second offence, a beggar became a felon, and was liable to be hanged.

Whipping, branding and hanging gave no solution. In 1601, alarmed by bad harvests and what Thorold Rogers describes as “a growing disaffection,” Elizabeth’s last Parliament passed the Poor Law Act which, in general principles, remained unchanged until 1834. It made relief of the poor the task of each parish, to be paid for by compulsory Poor Rates. Did it solve the problem? Well, three years later, James the First was condemning vagrants to be branded with a large “R” on the left shoulder and. on a second offence, summarily transported to Virginia.

Some people had their own ideas of a solution. Edward Hext, a west-country Justice of the Peace, thought the beggars were merely lazy:

"Work they will not, neither can they, without extreme pains, by reason (heir sinews are so benumbed and stiff through idleness, as their limbs being put to any hard labour will grief them beyond measure."

Others said that drinking and gambling caused all the trouble; still more people put it down to the growth of London, which doubled its population between 1558 and 1600. Parliament tried to check the metropolitan spread as unsuccessfully as it tried to combat the beggars.

It was the growth of capitalism that did it. In the sixteenth century the merchants were securing the accumulations which were the starting point of industrial capitalism; and at the same time the other necessity, the class of free labourers, was coming into being. Broken away from their former security of subsistence, the beggars were part of the nascent working class, coming face to face with poverty and the freedom to starve. Gradually, as urban life developed, the vagabond fraternities fell away; in their place came organized crime and disordered medicancy. The poor were to be always with us.

In eighteenth-century Scotland there was the same problem. Fletcher of Saltoun estimated—probably too lavishly—that there were two hundred thousand “sorners,” or sturdy beggars: a sixth of the population. Some, called “gaberlunzies,” were licensed by the Kirk Sessions to beg from door to door, in country districts they were the carriers of news and the repositories of folk-lore.

And so it went on. More Acts of Parliament (usually passed in emergency or as the result of panic); the stocks, prison and transportation for the beggars. Defoe, who had reported the lives of the indigent in “Moll Flanders,” asked for work-houses in “Giving Alms No Charity”; eighteen years later, in 1722, they were set up. The nineteenth-century Poor Law Act made the workhouses places of terror. Not surprisingly, people did their best to keep out of them. The legislators tried hard to stamp out begging. Vagrancy Acts were passed in 1824, 1838 and 1873, and in 1904 a committee was set up by the Local Government Board to enquire into the whole thing.

Legally, the following activities are banned. Begging in public, or causing a child to beg; having no home or visible means of subsistence, or being unable to give a good account of oneself; telling fortunes; exposing wounds to get alms; peddling without a licence; failing to maintain one’s family. The Vagrancy Acts brought into being the street singers, the unmusical musicians and the rest.

Consider, then, the beggar. Brought into being by capitalism as the “free” labourer, without work or hope; scourged, branded, killed, hunted and ridiculed— tramping and mumping his way through four centuries, sometimes violent, sometimes obsequious, the symbol of the dispossessed. He was an angry peasant in 1553, a ruffler in 1603, a fugitive from the workhouse in 1853, a legless ex-soldier with a barrel-organ in 1923, and is a kerbside singer in 1953. Consider, too, the failure of brutes and humanitarians alike to do away with him . . .  and then consider the world that could be.

Robert Barltrop

"What agonizing thoughts . . . " (1953)

From the September 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

What agonizing thoughts must sweep 

     The doubting Christian mind 

When reason waking from her sleep 

      Immortal God to find 

With drooping faith and frantic pain 

      Scans the wide universe in vain.

W. W. Ford.

Blogger's Note:

More information on W. W. Ford via his January 1958 obituary.

Betting and the clergy (1953)

From the September 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

That pious organization, the Churches' Committee on Gambling, has been getting quite hot under the famous collar, to judge by their annual meeting in London.

It appears that an enterprising firm dealing in football coupons had the audacity to send some of them to the Secretary of the above-mentioned organization, the Reverend J. Clark Gibson. He says: “They have been sent to me at my home quite unsolicited and unwanted. What would happen if I were bumped off one night and the police came in and these coupons were found in my home, I do not know." (Daily Telegraph, 27.3.53). Of course the reverend gentleman would not know, seeing that he would be as dead as mutton.

Other speakers complained of football pool coupons being sent to them. To illustrate that pool betting is a game of chance and not a matter of skill, the Reverend Clark Gibson brought to the Committee's notice a device similar to a child’s puzzle, with a glass front and fourteen horizontal divisions. In each division is a ball, and the top of the gadget is marked with 1, 2 and x. It is shaken and the coupon is filled in according to where the balls settle. All this, mark you, to prove that this sort of gambling is a game of chance!

Dr. Ellison had this to say: "The danger the country is faced with is the setting up of an industry of gambling. If the gambling habit were allowed to establish itself further it would bring moral collapse." Dr. Ellison should know that the gambling habit has been established for years. Presumably a "flutter" on the horses would be classed as gambling—in which case the gentleman in question should reprimand the British Monarchy, who are not above attending race meetings and, being human, may indulge in speculation. And then there are the gamblers on the Stock Exchange— but, of course, that is entirely different!

Another contributor to this jolly little gathering was Lord Ammon, former Labour M.P. and Member of the Government, who said: "Wages were never higher and we have full employment, yet never was so much being spent on betting and drink. These things indicate a rapid decline in moral standards." Full employment is a somewhat elastic term. Lord Ammon as one-time member of the National Dock Labour Board will know the uncertainty of employment for dockers under "full employment."

It is significant that not one of these guardians of our morals speaks of war being a danger to morals. Their voices are silent on the vilest form of gambling, juggling with human life for the capture of world markets and trade routes. They are more concerned with letters being thrust through their doors. A group of people sets up rules and calls them morals, and an inert mass obeys them.

Social life is largely governed by do's and don'ts. Our rulers and preachers would wish the people to obey these edicts to the letter. That some of them don’t is an ever-increasing anxiety to our rulers. How can society remain stable when there are such rebellious transgressors? It really is too bad, think the clergy. For their very existence is at stake. They must assert themselves at every opportunity, and the Churches' Committee on Gambling knows this.

When it comes to raising people's living standards, religion is usually silent. Practical work was never done by priests—they come in at the death.

J. Crowe.

Party News Briefs (1953)

Party News from the September 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

A last-minute reminder to members and sympathisers that our Autumn Delegate meeting is being held at Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London, on Saturday and Sunday, September 5th and 6th, commencing each morning at 11 a.m. A Dance will be held in the Conway Hall on Saturday evening and the usual propaganda meeting will be held there on the Sunday evening commencing at 7 p.m. London and Provincial speakers will address the meeting.

* * *

"Questions of the Day" in a revised and enlarged edition is now available in restricted quantities. Further deliveries are expected soon. Obtainable from branches or the Literature Committee at Head Office, price 1s. per copy or 1s. 2d. post free.

* * *

The Party held another of its week-end schools at “Treetops” Holiday Camp in June. This year the attendance was not large, probably on account of the weather. Several comrades who notified their intentions of attending, altered their minds at the last moment, making organisation very difficult. However, despite these drawbacks, it was a happy gathering. Comrade Willmott led a discussion on Anti-Dühring and Comrade Turner opened up on Trade Unions.

Phyllis Howard

SPGB Meetings (1953)

Party News from the September 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

Slings and Arrows: Famine, Death and Poverty (1953)

The Slings and Arrows column from the October 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

Famine, Death and Poverty

Has a millionaire ever died of starvation ? Among all the thousands of corpses cleared from the streets and villages of India during the great famines was there one of an emaciated capitalist ?

It is commonly held that when famine occurs in any part of the world all the inhabitants of that region suffer from its effects. Its causes are attributed to everything from floods to drought, from bad agricultural systems to the vengeance of God upon man’s wickedness. That this vengeance is wreaked always and only upon the poor would appear to be unjust, unless, of course, poverty is a crime and its victims are also its perpetrators. But the rich do not suffer the pangs of hunger during famine. While tens of thousands of Indian workers and peasants were dying in the streets of hunger; while Government transport was sent round to pick up the corpses to prevent the outbreak of disease, food speculators in Bombay and Calcutta, like obscene blow-flies, waxed fat on the profits they made out of the deaths of their fellow-countrymen.

The poor do not get fat When there are surpluses of food it is because of poverty and not because there is too much. The Observer, in its issue (6/9/53), writing a leading article, entitled “ Food,” says

". . .  if the efforts to raise living standards in the underdeveloped countries make headway, food surpluses will disappear: they exist because of poverty, not because everyone has enough to eat."

The latest report of the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations estimates the proportion of the world population subject to malnutrition to be 59 per cent. an increase of 50 per cent. on the pre-war figure. This, in spite of the fact that there have been exceptional harvests, even in India, the classic home of famine.

Further evidence of this comes from the Daily Express (26/8/53), whose reporter, Mr. James Leasor, writes: “For the first time in as long as anyone can remember, India has no food problem. If we were to conclude from this that all would be fed and all hunger satisfied, we would be hopelessly wrong. Mr. Leasor means that there is no failure of crops, although from the concluding remarks of his article he seems to be aware of the basic problem, that of poverty.

We could tell him

Mr. Leasor makes some very interesting revelations. He reports having met the Indian Food Minister, “a worried man . . . two years ago at the time of the Bihar famine ”on his tour of the country telling people that he has so much wheat" we don't know what to do with it.” Unfortunate Food Minister to have his worries over too little replaced by worries over too much. There is a simple solution to his problem, he could give the surplus away to those who need it, but, of course, so easy a way out would not occur to a Food Minister. And there are countless numbers who need it. Mr. Leasor concludes his article with the following

“It is a strange, sad irony that while for the first time India has a food surplus, probably just as many people will be as hungry as ever. Food is there in plenty, but the money to buy it is not Unemployment and the cost of living are still rising. And what satisfaction do full warehouses give if your stomach is empty ?"

Giving away the surplus would alleviate the temporary needs of the people, but it would not solve the problem. Charity is no substitute for Socialism. But this solution which would wipe out these anomalies and sufferings is not likely to commend itself to politicians and other apologists for a system which condemns millions to death for the sake of a ledger entry, a piece of appropriately printed paper or suitable embossed disc of metal

“A dog’s life”

In the same issue of the Daily Express, in an adjoining column to Mr. Leasor's article, and under the above heading, appears the following item. Comment would be superfluous

“In a Soho restaurant yesterday a woman put a plate of chicken down on the floor for her Pekinese.

“A peke’s nose is naturally well tumed-up. This peke managed to turn his up a bit further. The manager looked on, shrugged his shoulders, and commented: 'No salt, no pepper, no mustard, no wonder'. "

Weep for the Suffering Rick

Landlords are always complaining that they are losing money, yet none of them offer to change places with their tenants. Store magnates are always muttering about “overheads,” yet none of them will give up their "troubles” to lead the life of a mere worker. Nevertheless, the rich do have their troubles of which the poor have no conception and for which they have little sympathy. For example, which worker after buying a yacht, painted sapphire blue, has to spend two years seeking for a pair of sapphire earrings to match, as an American millionairess had to do ? Which docker, for instance, has had the bother of suing the Casino at Monte Carlo because he has been barred from there ? Not a single one, we dare to suggest

As if this were not enough trouble we now learn from a Dr. Reuben Kahn (News Chronicle, 12/9/53) that the rich are more prone to disease than the poor. In a series of experiments carried out by the doctor he has discovered that in poor countries people have more "natural antibodies—resistance—in the blood.” He refuses to speculate on the implications, but "some bacteriologists thought his research may give a medical reason for the decline of a civilisation.” The report continues: "As a nation grows richer, the bacteriologists argued, its population may grow less disease-resistant and the nation decline.”

Although Dr. Kahn may refuse to speculate, we will. If his theory is correct then by reducing standards of living, employers are bestowing great benefits on the workers by increasing their "resistance.” What self-sacrifice do the rich perform! They deny themselves the benefit of good health so that the poor may continue to enjoy that rich glow of well-being that “resistance to disease” brings. On the other hand, if they decide to be selfish, police will be required to control the queues of rich people waiting to sell what they have and give to the poor. One could hardly blame them.

The fact that disease flourishes in the poorer countries, as all statistics on the subject show, must be disregarded. It is true that sickness carries off more poor people than rich; it is true that the expectation of life among the poor is less than amongst the rich. But this does not matter. So long as they have more “natural antibodies" than the rich, then every poor man can die happy, if prematurely.

Bernard Shaw, in his preface to “Doctor’s Dilemma,” tells of a man who conducted an experiment to decide how long a horse would live if it had a leg amputated periodically. The horse died before the experiment was completed. The poor will go on dying, perhaps, before Dr. Kahn's experiments are completed and another scientific discovery will founder on the obstinacy of its subject 

 S. A.

The Eastern Scene (1953)

From the October 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

India: Sacred Jobs

Recent demonstrations in Lucknow by over 1,000 Uttar Pradesh primary school teachers, over wage demands and the non-payment of salaries (some being months in arrears), brought forth a peroration from the Chief Minister, Mr. Gobind Ballabh Pant on the sacredness of teaching. According to Janata (organ of the Praja Socialist Party, Bombay, 1/3/53) he is reported to have advised the teachers “to follow the ideals set up by the Gurus of ancient India and to take their jobs as sacred work for the progress of the country.” Mr. Pant stressed that it was the importance of their task that made the teachers the most important section of the nation. It is, therefore, he said, not dignified for those who had a sacred task to perform, to think of petty things. We can be sure that Miss Horsbrugh will take note of this, for the next Burnham report on Teachers' pay.

Despite Mr. Pant's exhortations to the teachers, there has been no cessation of their activities. On the other hand, we haven’t noticed that Mr. Pant has taken any of his own advice.

As most teaching is done by inculcation, perhaps the Minister thinks that the old maxim is true, “That empty vessels make most noise."

India: A Reckless Report

A report on India’s prison administration was recently submitted to the United Nations by Dr. Walter Reckless, an American criminologist on loan to U.N. (Janata, 1st March). Dr. Reckless thinks that the Indian prison system is in a parlous condition and needs reorganising drastically—too many Black holes and not all in Calcutta. The treatment of prisoners seems to be wholly punitive, with all of which our eminent criminologist disagrees. Not that he wants to abolish prisons, he just wants to make them better to live in! He wants to substitute corrective and rehabilitative training for the present punitive system, the idea (as if we didn’t know) being, that with training prisoners will face life anew, full of confidence, and that their bitterness against society will disappear. In other words, they won’t steal, any more property.

The amazing thing is that the report recognises that environment plays a part in the make up of a criminal, but contains no talk of changing the environment, only the prisoner. Many of the convicts in India’s gaols are there because they could not subsist outside without stealing.

There was no mention of that other class of criminals; the 10 per cent. who live on the plunder which they steal legally from the workers. But then who expected there would bet

Labourism in India

Mr. B. S. Mahador Singh, Chairman of the State Praja Socialist Party, a body roughly analogous to the British Labour Party, has been voicing criticisms of the Indian Congress Party Government which he and his followers helped to establish.

Speaking at the Fourth Annual Conference of the State Mazdoor Sangh early this year he said:—

"Any legislation that imposes restrictions on the right of the workers to strike, regardless of providing other avenues of settlement, will be strongly resisted by the Hyderabad State Mazdoor Sangh, for in the opinion of the Sangh the right to strike should be assured to all workers.” (Janata, 1/3/53.)

At the moment of writing the P.S.P. has only 22 seats in the National Assembly, which still does not bring them anywhere near the Communist Party’s total of 41 members and position as chief opposition party. Still the P.S.P. leaders have hopes of getting into power and, like Social Democrats throughout the world, are prepared to tell workers almost any tale (witness the above) in their endeavour to achieve this.

One thing they don’t tell workers, is that capitalism can only run in the interests of the capitalists and that all Governments put down strikes. Witness the Labour Party in this country, which engaged in strike-breaking when in office, although telling another story when out. We can be sure that if the P.S.P. ever achieves power they will do likewise and that Mr. Singh will forget the hot words he poured forth at Hyderabad.

National Bank of Egypt

We are often exhorted by various newspapers and political leaders in general not to scuttle from Egypt. The information below may give one of the reasons why our rulers are so keen to stay there.

The recently published report of the National Bank of Egypt, shows that a gross profit of £E2,317,817 was made for the year ending December, 1952. A dividend of 20 per cent. the same as the year before, was paid to the shareholders. The capital of this Bank is mainly British. (Manchester Guardian 10.4.53, Company report)

Israel. Soviet Jews

Mr. Ben-Gurion, Israel’s Premier, is reported as saying at a meeting of immigrants on April 5th, “That he hoped that the Soviet Government would now allow Jews in Russia to emigrate to Palestine and resume diplomatic relations with Israel.”

If this news manages to percolate through the Iron Curtain, the two and a half million Jews should not take it too seriously, for even if Malenkov and Co. were willing, it must be remembered that legislation was passed last year in Israel which limits immigration to certain categories. 80 per cent. of the immigrants must be under 35 years. The other 20 per cent., the over-35’s, must have trades or professions, or sufficient resources to arrange for their own accommodation. All immigrants must pass a medical examination, supervised by Israeli physicians (Manchester Guardian, 3.12.51).

This of course will exclude a large part of the Jews in Russia, and those who are eligible, are liable to think twice about giving up home and job to go to Israel where unemployment is rife. The above legislation makes a mockery of the hoary cliches which are still trotted forth by Ben Gurion and his supporters, such as the “ Ingathering of the Exiles.”

Many of those who are in the “National Home” are thinking twice about it. Up to December, 1952, 39,000 are reported to have left the country, and 25,000 people inside Israel have preferred to keep the nationality of the country they came from (Jewish Observer and Middle East Review, 12.12.52), which speaks for itself.

The S.P.G.B. has pointed out since its inception that Nationalist movements or for that matter any reformist organisation cannot solve the workers' problems; only the ending of capitalism and establishment of Socialism can do that Ben Gurion (who called himself a Socialist and refers to his Mapai Party likewise) is not interested in Socialism. He wants emigrants from Russia, or anywhere else for that matter, to help build up capitalism in Israel. Technicians, teachers, doctors, scientists and maybe a few Rouble millionaires will be more than welcome. But if aged over 35, sick, unskilled, or without financial .backing, the signboard says “No vacancies.” Which is capitalism all the world over.

Israel Jewish Unemployment

Unemployment as we all know, is one of the many horrible aspects of capitalism and has increased in many countries since Malenkov made his peace statement. Israel is no exception and has one of the highest (if not the highest) percentages of unemployed in the world. Out of a population of 1,629,000 there are twenty-five thousand registered as unemployed (Jewish Observer and Middle East Review, 12th December, 1952). This does not include part-time workers and those who would not register anyway; such as most of the Arab population which forms the largest part of the 179,000 non-Jews.

Working on the assumption that the average family in Israel has at least four members, it can be seen that a very large section of the population is affected.

The supreme irony of the situation, lies in the fact that many of these people dissipated their energies over the years in the Zionist movement and other “Jewish ” Nationalist organisations in the endeavour to form a “National Home,” only to find that they can suffer just as much in Israel as elsewhere. For Israeli capitalists are no different from the rest of their class and are quite impartial about exploiting either Jewish or Gentile workers.

Jon Keys

Human Nature and Socialism: 6—The Socialist Future (1953)

From the October 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

Continued from the previous issue.

6—The Socialist Future

The object of the socialist movement is not “political” in the sense of advocating one type of government rather than another. It is nothing short of an entirely new social set-up and, to a large extent, it means an entirely new type of human nature. This is not to say, as non-socialists are so fond of putting it, that it needs an entirely new race of human beings to make it work. It simply means that people living in the new society will be shaped by a socialist environment instead of, as today, by a capitalist one.

In what ways will people living under conditions of production solely for use be different from people today? This is a question that has appealed to the imagination and reasoning powers of men ever since the idea of Socialism first arose. The answers have been many and varied; some (in particular, the various utopian visions) have become outdated by the very developments of Capitalism itself, and others will doubtless take shape as the ideas of Socialism become fruitful and multiply.

What should be our concern is not so much to work out a detailed picture of the future—a castle in the air—but to construct from the materials at hand a solid socialist edifice. For example, we do not know enough about future material developments within Capitalism to foretell how people will travel under Socialism. On the other hand, we do know that, given conditions of common ownership, the phenomena which are exclusive to private ownership (buying, selling, stealing, etc.) will no longer exist. The people who now engage in these activities will use their energies in more socially useful and constructive ways.

Indications from the Present

Our method of discovering what the future can and will bring must be to ask ourselves what we know of

the present, its relationship to the past, and what we may call the directional lines to the future. What do most people want from their lives today? What are they seeking and yet faying to find? What do they desire to be rid of, and yet lack the knowledge of how to do it?

The answers to these questions will largely determine the sort of world which can be created when men at last start to make truly human history. Let us first consider what is basic to all societies—work, or productive activity. Marx has suggested that work will become, not merely the means to live, but itself a prime necessity of life.

Capitalism has so reduced the status of the worker, taken all the joy from his work and separated him from its fruits, that he has come to regard it as an evil necessity. Socialism will restore dignity to all human labour, remove its price tag, and make it fit the needs of human beings instead of those of machines or markets. People will work because they know it is necessary to the sustenance of themselves and society, and because they desire to work—or, in the case of those activities which in themselves are not pleasurable, because they desire the end product

We can gain some indication of the attitude to work that will prevail under Socialism from the way in which people regard certain of their activities today. A man may work far harder on his allotment to produce vegetables directly for his limited community (family) than he does on the job at which he works only for money and which he probably cordially detests. When you suggest to him that he likes work, he hotly denies it. But when you ask him whether he likes working on his allotment, he replies: “That's different. That's my hobby.”

It is significant, as Professor Nunn has pointed out in “Education: Its Data and First Principles,” that where spontaneity prevails, work and play become one and indistinguishable. When the socialist says that work in the new society will become as hobbies are today, he is not suggesting that people will adopt exactly the same attitude to all work as they do now to their hobbies. He knows that the influence of Capitalism extends beyond the hours of employment, and corrodes even the simplest pleasures and the most personal relationships.

Social Relationships

Yet a different facet of human nature is revealed in the behaviour of people under adverse conditions. Solidarity with those whom you recognise as being “in the same boat” as yourself, tireless and selfless work on behalf of a stricken community such as during the East coast floods earlier this year—all indicate the human potential, and even craving, for co-operative endeavour. This will attain fulfillment in a society in which there are no drawbacks to helping others, and no penalties for dropping the attitudes of self-defensive mistrust which a highly competitive system forces us -to adopt.

Social relationships will change from those of mutually antagonistic owner and non-owner, buyer and seller, employer and employee, to those where such antagonisms will no longer exist Instead of coming into conflict with those Capitalism makes your enemies, and even having to be "on guard” against your friends, all human relationships will be conducted in an atmosphere of social harmony, where the separate individuals who make up the social whole will be working with each other and not divided against themselves.

Under all forms of society one of the basic human desires is to seek and obtain acceptance from one’s fellows. Today this has become narrowly interpreted as seeking and obtaining acceptance from one’s boss, who is, in turn, supposed to be acceptable to someone or some institution higher up—the Monarchy, Church or God, perhaps. To question any of the “accepted” attitudes to these things is—well, it is not always easy and not always a sound policy if you seek success in the capitalist sense of the term.

With Socialism, however, social acceptance will not rest upon standards dictated from above. The absence of economic rivalries will mean the absence of social rivalries. “Keeping up with the Joneses” will give way to working and generally behaving in ways which help other people instead of seeking to get the better of them. From being atomised into millions of separate families, the world will become one vast human family. The marriage institution, based on the needs of property, will be replaced by associations based on the needs of human beings, and they will promote a wider love of humanity instead of seeking a refuge from its present vast impersonality.

Different Outlook

The absence of private property will have far-reaching effects upon all human activities and relationships. It is easy to see that many of the employments so necessary to Capitalism will have no place in a socialist society—armed forces, police, lawyers, gaolers, insurance and advertising agents, bank workers and many others. Another aspect not so often considered is the different outlook that people will have. Today, when someone whom we do not know makes a friendly advance or an unsolicited offer of help, we tend to look askance at him and ask ourselves: “Ah, what’s he up to?” Not that the caution is altogether unjustified, because in present society we are encouraged to regard those outside our own small circle as "fair game” and legitimate objects for passing on the kicks we receive from the hostile world. But with Socialism all this will be gone—the world will be a friendly place, because it will not cost anything to be indiscriminate in bestowing affection.

When goods and services are no longer commodities to be bought and sold and haggled over, it will bring different attitudes to these things or, rather, it will then enable the existing attitudes to be freed from considerations of profit-seeking. After all, even today the relationship between buyer and seller is not completely reduced to the cash nexus and dominated by satisfaction of self—there is usually a residue of concern that the other fellow is satisfied with the transaction. Socialism will enable this concern to be present in all human intercourse, and will free it from the calculations which now cramp the expression of generous feelings.

All manifestations of the insecurity that cannot be escaped in property society will become things of the past. It will no more occur to people to store up freely available goods in excess of their current needs than today to fill every available receptacle with water “because it is free.” No longer will people be worried, often to the point of mental illness, about what tomorrow will bring forth—whether they will lose their job, fail to find somewhere to live, go hungry, badly clothed or unwanted. They will be secure in the knowledge that the welfare of all, as society’s aim, will not be something talked about by politicians, but naturally acted upon by the whole people, who will have no inducement to do otherwise.

#    #    #    #

 

Since this is the concluding article in the series, it may be useful briefly to survey the ground we have covered. We started by discussing some of the misuses of the term “human nature,” explaining that it is his environment which makes man a creature of one society rather than of another. The myth that “you can’t change human nature” was exploded, and the role of the Socialist as an agent in the making of history was outlined. Then, in the fourth article, we saw some of the patterns of behaviour which Capitalism generates, and how it does so. The writings of social scientists (mostly non-socialists) were quoted to show how human nature varies under different social conditions, and how men acquire it through those conditions. Finally, we have been concerned with explaining the object of the S.P.G.B. by giving some indication of the socialist future.

Our aim, throughout all these articles, and indeed in all our propaganda, is to convince all people that Socialism is both desirable and practicable. If you still believe it is not desirable, we are ready to take some of the blame—perhaps we have not explained it sufficiently clearly, and you can help to put that right by questioning our case. If, however, you believe that Socialism is desirable but not practicable, then we can only suggest that you do yourself a favour and join with us to make it practicable.

Stan Parker

Human Nature and Socialism: 5—We Learn from Social Scientists (1953)

From the September 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

Continued from the previous issue.

5—We Learn from Social Scientists

People who criticise or object to Socialism because they think that human nature makes it impossible, assume that the characteristics they ascribe to human nature are fixed and unalterable. However, the science of anthropology (the study of human beings as creatures of society) shows that most of the characteristics are cultural acquisitions and have not been present in all societies. The importance of this to the case for Socialism lies in the fact that what is acquired culturally must change as the culture changes, and that the behaviour we are accustomed to think of as “natural” under Capitalism can and will be something entirely different under Socialism.

It is a commonplace that man is a social animal, i.e., that it is in human nature to be social. But it is not true in the sense in which it is commonly understood, namely, that our social nature is due to a social “instinct.” We were not born with our social nature; we acquired it. Likewise, we were not born with a certain sort of social nature, but developed it because of the sort of social environment into which we were born.

Each step man makes in his history alters his environment, each alteration in his environment changes that in which his fellow men and the oncoming generation live. The background of the child differs from that of the parent; in a changed social atmosphere men themselves react differently: they acquire new knowledge, new experience, new understanding. They value things anew. Human nature is itself transformed.

Nor should the inter-relationship of man and society be overlooked. Apart from his group, a man is a mere potentiality. He is developed in a milieu that fosters, modifies, or destroys his capacities. To explain the individual and discuss his psychology as something distinct from the society is a false dissection, by which structures are isolated from one another artificially and their organic connection destroyed. Society in its full sense is never an entity separable from the individuals who compose it. No individual can arrive even at the threshold of his potentialities without a culture in which he participates. Conversely, no civilisation has in it any element which in the last analysis is not the contribution of individuals.

Socialised habits

The life-history of the individual is first and foremost an accommodation to the patterns and standards traditionally handed down in his community. From the moment of his birth the customs into which he is born shape his experience and behaviour. By the time he can talk he is the little creature of his culture, and by the time he is grown and able to take part in its activities, its habits tend to be his habits, its beliefs his beliefs, its impossibilities his impossibilities.

People interpret the inevitability, under Capitalism, of economic competition as proof that this is the prime motivation that human nature can rely upon. The behaviour of small children, as it is moulded in our civilisation and recorded as child psychology, is the way in which the young human animal is “bound to behave.” It is the same with ethics or family organisation. It is the inevitability of each familiar motivation that is defended, with the attempt always to identify particular local ways of behaving with Behaviour, or certain socialised habits with Human Nature.

Let us take as an example the case of warfare. War is a phenomenon that may or may not be a feature of a certain culture. There are regions where organised resort to mutual slaughter never occurs between social groups. It may be impossible for a people to conceive of the possibility of a state of war. Rasmussen tells of the blankness with which the Eskimo met his exposition of the custom. Ruth Benedict tried to talk of dignity, uprightness, strength of character and courage warfare to the Mission Indians of California, but it was of these “barbarians" impossible. Their misunderstanding of warfare was abysmal. They did not have the basis in their own culture upon which the idea could exist, and their attempts to reason it out reduced World Wars to the level of alley brawls. We may conclude that if war is justified it is because people always try to justify their behaviour, and not because war will bear an objective examination of its merits.

Property

When we turn to the question of private property we can learn much from the reports of field workers who have lived in societies where communistic sentiments prevailed. When on the Banks Islands, W. H. R. Rivers worked out the history of a plot of land which was cleared about four generations ago. The greater part of the plot had been divided up between the children of the clearer, and had since been regarded as the individual property of their descendants, but part had been left for the common use of all the descendants of the original clearers. Rivers was told that disputes were frequent concerning the portions of the land which were owned individually, while there were never any quarrels concerning the part which had been left for the common use of all. Let this be a lesson to those who think that there will always be disputes over land and other wealth, and that if it were all commonly owned we should all grab as much as we could!

A comparison between the Melanesian and people in our own civilisation is enlightening. The Melanesian knows that were he to wander into the next tribe he must look out for himself. The next tribe are strangers and enemies. But he does not live among strangers as we do. He lives among friends. They have never sought to rob him, or cheat him, or slander him. If he is down, if he has bad luck, if he has nothing to eat, they will vie with one another in supplying him with food. They will make a point of going hungry themselves rather than he should. And they will not even make a virtue of it, and think how very noble they are and how grateful he should be.

There is little ground for the conflict of individual interests where there is little private property. Where all interests are in common, mutual assistance and goodwill are spontaneous sentiments. To assist others, to share with them and to protect them is as natural in “uncultured” societies as it is natural in individualistic communities to rob, to cheat, outwit and defraud.

Even today there are some remote parts of the world that illustrate in embryonic form the basic social relationships of Socialism. Hunza, a country of 26,000 people high up in the Himalayas, has no money, no police, no jails, no courts and no army. Without money there is no crime. It is not, let us hasten to add, an example of Socialism—there is a king, and it is a pre-property rather than a post-property society. But at least it shows that people can live without money and private ownership, and live quite happily and fully too. “ We are fond of sport, life and laughter. We work hard —then when the harvest is in, it is there for everyone,” Daily Graphic, 31/12/52. Engels’ description of the Iroquois is in the same vein, and he writes of the admiration inspired in all white people who have come into contact with unspoiled Indians, by the personal dignity, uprightness, strength of character and courage of these "barbarians."

Morality

If we study the history of human sexual relations we find that these have varied considerably with different types of culture. Sexual jealousy, a high esteem for chastity, sexual modesty, and the tendency to fall passionately in love with a single object (so-called “romantic love”) are such common and distinctive characteristics of civilised man, that not only laymen but frequently psychologists and naturalists take them to be inherent in man and inseparably united to his character. Nevertheless, these emotions are foreign to many primitive peoples. They have arisen in the course of the evolution of civilisation, and have been built up slowly and gradually as secondary characteristics under the influence of definite social conditions.

The technical use of morality—as a thing pertaining to the sex relation only or especially—is the application of our standards of sex behaviour, and our form of the sex taboo, to judge the folkways of all people. But all that can properly be said is that a great range and variety of usages, ideas, standards, and ideals can be found which differ greatly from ours. “Immoral” never means anything but contrary to the customs of the time, and place. There is no permanent or universal standard by which right and truth in regard to these matters can be established and different folkways compared and criticised.

It is now a moral principle that it is wrong to commit murder. But in early Judea to sacrifice the first born was not murder; in the 17th century “not to suffer a witch to live” was not murder; in the 20th century war is not murder. Abstract precepts are of very little significance in the ethical history of mankind; it is their concrete interpretation which has varied.

The ethical problem of selfishness v. social-mindedness (one that is so often brought into discussions about Socialism) is not in fact theoretical but practical. Its solution lies not in the construction of new ethical philosophies but in the creation of a new society. Every act which leads towards that new society is a contribution to solving the problem. When mankind has attained a state in which goods and services abound and exploitation has ceased, selfishness, having no longer anything important to do, will wither away.

Stan Parker

 

Some useful books to read:—

“Human Nature in the Making,” M. Schoen.

“Patterns of Culture,” R. Benedict.

“The Making of Man,” ed. V. F. Calverton.

“ Sin and Sex,” R. Briffault.

“ Folkways ” W. G. Sumner.

“ The Making of Humanity,” R. Briffault.

“ Man against Myth,” Barrows Dunham.

(Concluding Article: “The Socialist Future.”)