The Socialist Forum: Can Russian Peasants be Industrialised? (1932)

Letter to the Editors from the April 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard

A correspondent writing from St. John (New Brunswick) asks some interesting: questions about the possibility of making efficient factory workers out of the Russian peasants:—

Isaac Don Levine, author of the “Life of Stalin,” … in a recent article in the New York Scribners’ Magazine, would have us believe that a Dictatorship such as the one in Russia can by no manner of means create a proletariat, capable of working in machine industry in anything less than several generations or centuries. He implies that the Slav is racially an inferior type, not amenable to factory discipline, and a clumsy animal in other respects.

If it is true that an agricultural population is not of a type that can readily be adapted to machine production, and it takes generations of workers coming originally from rural districts to make mechanics, how can we account for the remarkable rise of German industry in the space of forty or fifty years up till about 1914? The majority of Germans, prior to 1860 or 1870, were villagers and farmers, and in a very few years after coming to the cities, turned out lo be capable mechanics, and this same thing happened in other places. Any number of Polish, Hungarian and Balkan peasants who arrived in the United States prior to 1915, took their place in machine industry without any experience, and fitted right into the scheme of things, their children even more so, after them.

If the Soviet Government succeeds in obtaining the required number of capable technicians and foremen to manage the factories and shops built and building, in this five-year plan, what is there to prevent the transformation of millions of mujiks into machine tenders as has happened in other countries?

Yours, etc.,

M. Wasson.

Reply

Not having seen the article by Mr. Levine we do not know what evidence he adduces to show either that Russian peasants or Slavs generally are incapable of being trained as industrial workers.

It is true that some employers (e.g., Ford Motors) in their selection of workers give preference to American or Canadian born, or to immigrants from Great Britain, Germany, etc., and often reject applicants from the more backward European States. There is, however, no evidence to show that the latter are unsuitable because of racial characteristics. An explanation is that some countries, having reached a fairly high level of capitalist development, have framed their general and technical education in a way which produces workers suitable for up-to-date factory work. Workers from backward countries and rural areas are unlikely to possess the qualifications of training and education needed.

It is interesting to recall that in Great Britain, in the early days of the factory system, employers found the same difficulty in compelling handicraftsmen and peasants to fit themselves into the discipline of machine production.

The whole question of racial differences is discussed very thoroughly by Friedrich Hertz in his “Race and Civilization” (Published by Kegan Paul, London, 1928, and by the MacMillan Co., New York). He shows how old are the theories of racial superiority, and how completely they cancel each other out; for there is no race that at some period has not cherished the illusion of its own innate superiority. Hertz deals with the capacity for social progress and reached this conclusion :—

“The differences between distant groups of one and the same linguistic family or race are greater than those between any two ‘unrelated’ races as a whole. This assertion can be proved up to the hilt. Therefore it follows from this that it is not racial character which has prevented the backward from progressing, but environmental influences.” (P. 259.)

He gives a neat answer to the belief in the superior fitness for industrialism supposed to be possessed by non-Slav races by pointing out that early in the 19th century it was said that the Germans also were inherently a backward race. He quotes Genovesi as having written in 1820 that the Germans would never be able to develop a trade and commerce or produce a population like the French and English. A German writer when he first heard of railways being built was of the opinion that such things were of no good to Germany, because the German character was too easy-going (p. 59).

In Hertz’s book there are a large number of illustrations of stupid theories of racial superiority being encouraged by ruling classes for their own interests. He shows, for example, how these theories were used by the Governments during the war.

As regards the Russian Five-Year Plan, the Soviet Government have banked very heavily on early success of their industrialisation schemes. The slowness with which peasants can be trained to equal the efficiency of workers in advanced capitalist countries is likely to present a very difficult problem to the Government there, hardly less difficult than the problem would be if—as Mr. Levine suggests—the Slavs could for racial reasons never be industrialised. The Russians themselves claim, with what justification we do not know, that they have every reason to be optimistic about their ability to produce skilled workers. According to Mr. J. C. Crowther (an English scientist who visited Russia) :—

“The Russians have evolved their own system. They say a raw worker can become as skilled in six months by this training as he would in four years casual work as an artisan’s mate in the shops. They propose to put 700,000 workers through such courses in 1931” (“Industry and Education in Soviet Russia.” Pub. Heinemann, 1932).

Ed. Comm.

World Socialist Radio - What the Fascist Needs (2026)

From the Socialism or Your Money Back blog

What The Fascist Needs by The Socialist Party of Great Britain

This episode argues that fascism and fascists are symptoms of deeper social and economic decay under capitalism — not just isolated groups of extremists or caricatures of “jackbooted thugs.” It dismisses simplistic responses like beating up racists on the streets, noting that violence alone won’t change the underlying conditions that breed fascist sentiment. Instead, it emphasises that many people drawn to fascist politics are alienated, fearful, and frustrated by their position in society under a profit-driven system, and that their attraction to nationalism and hatred stems from this sense of powerlessness rather than coherent political ideas.

The real answer to fascism isn’t merely opposing its street-level activism but challenging and transforming the social conditions that give rise to it — particularly the inequalities and crises inherent in capitalism. Working-class education, solidarity, and unity against nationalism and division are needed to undercut fascist appeal. Only broad social change, rather than repression of individuals, can address the root causes of fascist movements.

Taken from the February 1993 edition of The Socialist Standard.

World Socialist Radio is the official podcast of The Socialist Party of Great Britain. We have one single aim: the establishment of a society in which all productive resources – land, water, factories, transport, etc. – are taken into common ownership, and in which the sole motive for production is the fulfilment of human needs and wants.

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New pamphlet on Racism (1966)

Party News from the November 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

A new Socialist Party pamphlet, entitled The Problem of Racism, is available. The previous pamphlet on this subject, The Racial Problem, published in 1947 has been out of print for some time. The Problem of Racism is not just a revision; it is a completely new pamphlet. In 1947 it was the Jewish Question that was prominent. Today it is the Colour Question. This change is taken into account in the new pamphlet which examines the colour question in Britain, America, South Africa and Rhodesia. There are chapters too on the scientific theory of race, the historical origins of racist theories and on African nationalism.

There is one unfortunate error. The reference on page 41 to Guyana should, of course, be to Guinea.

Pamphlet obtainable from Socialist Party, (Dept. SR), 52 Clapham High St, London. SW4. Price 1/6.

Why Jew-baiting? (1938)

From the October 1938 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is nothing new about Jew-baiting. As a pastime and a political subterfuge it has been practised since the Jews became distributed over the world's surface. Likewise, the arguments advanced in defence of this time-honoured practice are far from original. They have been trotted out with monotonous repetition for centuries. The Jews are represented as money-grabbers, sweaters of labour, price-cutters, and unscrupulous exploiters, and their suppression is advocated in order to prevent these practices. There is no lack of evidence to prove that Jews indulge in these undesirable practices. The tailoring sweat-shops in the East End of London, and the many cut-price shops with Jewish proprietors, are the illustrations usually given. What the “Down with Jews" advocates overlook is that these practices are not confined to Jews. There is no monopoly of. exploitation by any particular Jewish confraternity. It is the prerogative, of any native or alien, if he owns sufficient wealth, to use that wealth in the exploitation of others, and the degree of such exploitation is in no way determined by the race, nationality or religion of the exploiter.

Unfortunately, many workers are prepared to give a willing and attentive ear to the passion-inflaming hocus of the anti-Semitics. The natural resentment of the worker towards exploitation, being himself a victim, makes it a comparatively simple matter to enlist his sympathy in an attack upon any particularly vicious aspect of his greatest grievance. Knowing this, there are politicians and political parties prepared to pander to working-class sentiments in this direction in order to further their own ends. In this way the vilifying and. howling out against Jews has become the chief means employed by the Fascist parties to attract attention and support to themselves.

Most workers realise that they are exploited, but what they do not realise is the process of that exploitation and in what way it is possible to. remove it. The worker, owning nothing more than his ability to work, must, perforce, sell that ability in order to acquire the needs of life. When he is fortunate enough to find a buyer for his energies he receives, as the price of those energies, a wage. The wages of the working class must be less than the total of the values added in the process of creating wealth. Workers, by applying their energies to raw materials, create wealth which has value. If the wages received were equal to the values produced, then, quite obviously, there would be nothing for the purchaser of working-class energies. It is the amount of values created, over and above the amount received by the creators in the form of wages, which constitutes the surplus that is taken by the non-producing class, the class that owns the raw materials and the machinery which is used in the process of production. Here we have the process by which the worker is exploited.

The capitalist class, having taken the surplus value, then proceed to divide it amongst themselves according to the particular form of the wealth which they have invested. The landlord, the industrialist and the financier, each struggles for a larger share of the spoils of working-class exploitation. In their attempts to score over one another they strive for control of the political machine, because that control means power to the section which wields it. To obtain control of the political machine the support of the working class is needed, particularly at election time, and to get the support of the working class it is necessary to promise to ease the degree of exploitation.

One group of capitalist interests will represent other groups as being the villains of the piece. At one time the industrialists will claim that the high rent taken by the landowners is crippling their industry, and that, in consequence, wages must be low in order that their trade may not suffer. They advocate the subduing of the landowner and the royalty-taker as a means of improving working-class conditions. At another time the financier is the villain who, by the extortion of a high rate of interest on the money he has advanced, is slowing up the wheels of industry and causing unemployment and increased poverty.

The Jews, because they have become dispersed throughout the world, and because in the past they have been, to a great extent, kept on the move, have had to convert any property that they have acquired into some portable form. Money is the most portable form of wealth, and, as many Jews have accumulated money, they have become moneylenders. Financier is the modern name for a moneylender on a large scale.

In most capitalist countries a number of Jews will be found among the finance section of the capitalist class. Also, in most capitalist countries, a far larger number of Jews will be found among the working class. The Jews, just like the English, or the Americans, or the Hindoos, are divided into classes, exploited and exploiting. They differ, in that respect, not a bit from any other nationality or race (it is difficult to define them as either). The fact that a few of their number are to be found amongst the most wealthy and powerful groups of capitalists means little to the workers.

The other instances of excesses, such as price-cutting and labour sweating, are likewise not confined to Jews. All cut-price shops are not owned by Jews, and all Jewish-owned shops are not cut-price shops. Price cutting is an inevitable consequence of the competition of capital. That the tailoring trade is a sweated one is not due to the fact there are many Jews engaged in it but to the competition and other factors which prevail. Many of the sweated ones are themselves Jews.

All political parties are but the expression of class interests. All political parties that have not as their object the overthrow of the capitalist system must represent, to a greater or less degree, the interests of capital, even though the members do not realise it. For the workers to take sides in the struggles of different groups of capitalists for the spoils that have been wrung from themselves will help them not a bit. It is very much like a man taking sides in a struggle between a group of pickpockets, who have robbed him, to decide which of die thieves should have the lion's share of his property. Of course, if the thieves can enlist him on one side or another he can become a great help. His real concern should be to regain his property. An attempt to do that would unite the thieves against him.

The dividing line between capitalist sectional interests may not be so dear as in days that are past, but they still remain. Hiding these interests behind promises of reforms which are supposed to benefit the workers is an old game. So is the trick of cloaking the struggle behind religious or racial differences. That is what is being done by those who attempt to inflame workers against Jews. The discontent of the working class, instead of being marshalled into channels where the workers would become Socialists, where they would be converted from rebels into revolutionaries, is turned to serve the purpose of one or the other conflicting interests of the capitalist trinity, rent, interest or profit.

The claim of the Fascists that the Jews in this country constitute a state within a state is nonsense. Such an idea can only arise from a misconception of the nature and function of a state and an exaggerated notion of the purpose of Jewish organisations. Any group of nationals in a foreign land, if they are persecuted, will seek to protect themselves and attempt to organise for the purpose. Such organisation does not constitute a state, neither does it necessarily imply a hostility to the state of the country in which they reside.

If the proposals of the rabid nationalists of the world were carried to their logical conclusion, and all aliens were deported, there would be a terrible crush when all the Britons from abroad were returned to their native shore.

From whatever angle the arguments of the anti-Semitics are examined, they will reveal nothing which will materially benefit the working class. The political activities of workers are side-tracked. Instead of organising consciously for the overthrow of capitalism, they fight one another within the framework of that system. Their masters sit tight and enjoy the privileges which accrue from the system. Racial, national or religious differences count for nought. The fact that men and women are members of a dispossessed class gives them a common cause. The converting of the means of wealth production and distribution to the common ownership of society as a whole is the cause, and the Socialist Party of Great Britain works to achieve that end.

W. Waters

New pamphlet on Racism (1966)

Party News from the October 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

A new Socialist Party pamphlet, entitled The Problem of Racism, is available. The previous pamphlet on this subject The Racial Problem, published in 1947 has been out of print for some time. The Problem of Racism is not just a revision it is a completely new pamphlet. In 1947 it was the Jewish Question that was prominent. Today it is the Colour Question. This change is taken into account in the new pamphlet which examines the colour question in Britain, America, South Africa and Rhodesia. There are chapters too on the scientific theory of race, the historical origins of racist theories and on African nationalism.

There is an unfortunate error. The reference on page 41 to Guyana should, of course, be to Guinea.

Pamphlet obtainable from Socialist Party (Dept SR), 52 Clapham High St., London, SW4. Price 1/6.

Blogger's Note:

Unfortunately, the text of The Problem of Racism pamphlet is not currently on the SPGB website. Hopefully that can be rectified in the future.

Awakened, not Woke (2025)

Book Review from the February 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Going Mainstream: Why Extreme Ideas are Spreading, and What We Can Do About It. By Julia Ebner. Ithaka £10.99.

The basis for this book is that far-right ideas have become mainstream and so more widely accepted. The author investigated a variety of movements, on-line and in person, to find out what made people accept the views in question. She also spoke to opponents of such positions and, for instance, presents arguments for the reality of climate change. She also says that trans rights and feminism are not mutually exclusive.

The groups dealt with here are incels (involuntary celibate women-hating men), climate change deniers, transphobics, white nationalists, anti-vaxxers and sympathisers with Putin’s Russia (among other things, Russia’s state propaganda machine fuels conspiracy myths). The internet is a fruitful recruiting ground for such groups, especially messaging apps such as Telegram. Online harassment of people they disagree with is common, and some Extinction Rebellion supporters have received death threats.

One point made is that adopting one conspiracy theory makes a person more likely to accept others too, and there are plenty of people who belong to more than one group. For instance, there is a sizeable overlap between white nationalists and climate change deniers, and also with anti-vaxxers. Many of those who support conspiracy theories see themselves as ‘awakened’, having seen through the lies of the establishment and the traditional media. Online groups in particular foster a feeling of belonging among people who are alienated and perhaps lack social skills. Vested interests and right-wing organisations provide sizeable funding for those who attempt to undermine the scientific consensus on climate change.

One of the nastiest organisations examined here is in the UK, Patriotic Alternative, where practically everything is seen as ‘white genocide’. By 2066, supposedly, ‘indigenous people’ will be a minority in Britain (the date is presumably not a coincidence). White Lives Matter sees white people as being victimised, while All Lives Matter fails to acknowledge discrimination against black people, and has only evolved as a movement since the rise of Black Lives Matter.

The final chapter deals with what can be done to fight against the spread of extreme ideas. It includes such suggestions as dealing with the sources of discontent, not just symptoms, and ‘prebunking’ disinformation (empowering people to spot factual distortions before they occur). The interesting part of the book, though, is the exploration of extremist views and why people are attracted to them.

Paul Bennett

Letters on Socialism (1997)

From issue 13 of the World Socialist Review

The following two letters, written by socialists to their local newspapers, found their way into our mailbox not too long ago. We reprint them here to show that, even with a tightening corporate lock on the free expression of opinion in the media, it really is possible to put the case for socialism before thousands of readers who have never before heard of it. Any other comrades who writers to editors (whether or not they get them printed) can send copies on to the World Socialist Review, and we will print them too.

The first letter is addressed to the editor of the Santa Maria Times (California), and the second, to the Arizona Daily Star of Tucson, Arizona.

Marx may have been right*

I’m going to garner a few passages from a book written 150 years ago . . . I write in response to the article, “Working with nothing to show.”

The “division of labor” has been going on for more than 150 years . . . One author explained what was happening and what would continue to happen, and I quote, “the special skill of the laborer becomes |worthless. It is changed into a monotonous force which gives play to neither bodily nor to intellectual elasticity, his labor becomes accessible to all.” He goes on, “In the same measure, therefore, in which labor becomes more unsatisfactory and more repulsive, in that same proportion, competition increases and wages decline.” And again, “the capitalists vie with one another as to who can discharge the greatest number of employees.”

He adds a little humor: “If the whole class of wage-workers were annihilated by machinery, how terrible that would be for 'capital,' which without wage-labor ceases to be ‘capital’.”

“Thus the forest of outstretched hands entreating for work becomes ever thicker, and the arms themselves become ever leaner . . . Crises increase and become more violent.”

The author whom I have been quoting was Karl Marx, and of course we all know that the owners of the communication networks would never give any supportive information about him.  . . I simply write to let you know that the present conditions were forecast many years ago and they will certainly get worse.

No one can fix Capitalism.

—William Hewitson 

* Heading added by the editor.

The Classless Society

I can still recall my first encounter with racism. It occurred many decades ago at an English elementary school when I was called “Jew-boy.”

But I also recall that throughout my life there has not been one day without either a major or minor war. Poverty (which is the economic status of the working class compared to that of the capitalist class) has been continuous and pervasive worldwide — together with unemployment, insecurity and, of course, racism.

All these social evils have been, and always will be, impervious to reformism for their eradication.

I ask the rhetorical question. What is there so sacrosanct about capitalism that the accusing finger is never pointed at it as the culprit and cause of all these prevailing miseries — except by only a handful of the population?

As long as the vast majority does not understand how capitalism functions, scapegoats and racism will flourish as red herrings, diverting the working class from its historic mission — the peaceful and democratic elimination of capitalism.

Technologically, wealth can be produced with comparative ease to satisfy the needs of all. Buying, selling and profit are therefore no longer required. They should be replaced with production and distribution solely for use with free access to all goods and services, eliminating money and the wages system.

This will never happen until the world working class realizes, amongst a multitude of other concepts, that the society’s fundamental problem is its division into classes — not races. We all belong to only one race — the human race, and we merit a new system of society worthy of our potential and intelligence.

—Samuel Leight

Routine and complex labour (2007)

Book Review from the December 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

How to make opportunity equal: race and contributive justice. By Paul Gomberg. Blackwell, 2007.

The author of this slimmish book is a black American philosophy professor. He discusses race or racism on nearly every page, at one point making the extreme claim that “Race is class made visible and vicious.” But race is arguably not the main theme of the book. Gomberg believes that “we need to share labor, including the boring work most of us like to avoid, if everyone is to have an opportunity to develop all of their abilities.”

The good news is that the author knows something about socialism and appears to like the prospect: “Imagine a society without markets and their insistence on productive efficiency. Production may be oriented toward meeting needs, not producing whatever can be sold profitably to those with money.” And “We each benefit from the production of needed things because we each receive from the common stock.”

But the bad news is that other passages in the book reveal his confusion about what socialism means: “Market socialism does not abolish this norm [that each advances economically by their own efforts] but shifts the locus of responsibility from the individual to the worker-run firm.” And Gomberg writes about “large working-class socialist and communist parties” in Europe, parties that may be given those labels but actually support some form of capitalism.

Gomberg writes much about what he sees as the division between routine and complex labour, but leaves us unclear about what this distinction is and how it affects society. At one point he says the “division between the organization of labor tasks and the execution of those tasks is the division of society into a class society of laborers and those for whom they labor.” – in short, a society divided into workers and capitalists. But elsewhere he claims that “the division between complex and routine labor is primarily a division within the working class.”

This contradiction can be resolved only if we accept that within capitalism there are two kinds of distinction: between the owners and non-owners of capital and a distinction (perhaps better described as a gradation) between those who supply routine or complex labour, unskilled or skilled, at lower or higher rates of pay, giving orders to other workers or not doing so.

Gomberg’s front cover features a black worker sweeping the stairs. Socialists living in the capitalist world often have to do unpleasant work in oppressive conditions to get money to live. When work is done to meet the needs of people not capital there may be some horse-trading about who does what and for how long. But sociable volunteering, not monetary compulsion, will be the name of the game.

Stan Parker

This Superiority Notion (1963)

From the June 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

It should be obvious, really. Whenever they test another H bomb, or run into another economic crisis, or whenever a politician opens his mouth and puts his foot in it, or whenever we think about the strain and ugliness which are the modern substitute for living, it should be obvious. Capitalism, is not a desirable or a sensible method of running human affairs.

But instead of being obvious it is infuriating. There are the facts, there is the mass of evidence, all screaming for attention. Yet the message gets through, if at all, only slowly. For one reason or another the working class still like capitalism. This is not to say that they like war, or any other problem that capitalism brings with it. They think of these things almost as elements outside human control, like the weather. But capitalism they do like, they support the system which leaves the ownership of the means of life to a very few of the world’s people. They support the system of rich and poor, of palaces and prefabs, of ripe pheasant and Spam.

If at any time the workers have to think about why they like capitalism they may say that it gives everyone his chance and that it is our own fault if we are not all like Paul Getty or King Saud. Or perhaps they will offer some equally inane reason. But mostly the working class do not think about why they support capitalism. They absorb the ideas of the system effortlessly. As if by instinct they build up a wall of ignorant, indefensible ideas which all play their part in sustaining1 the social system of destruction and insecurity. And that can be very infuriating.

It would take up many issues of the Socialist Standard to enumerate every one of these ideas. In any case, they have all been dealt with at some time in the past. Let us now take a look at just one of the strange notions with which capitalism is supported on its pedestal of ignorance. This idea is a popular one among the working class. It is also, in some ways, a surprising idea. Let us call it the Superiority Notion. It is, simply, the conviction which many workers hold that they are in some way better than anybody who comes from another working class group.

In one of its most easily identifiable forms, the Superiority Notion is. race prejudice. White workers think that they are better than coloured workers; even if they do not want to discriminate against Negroes they often feel sorry for them, just as they would for someone who had cancer. Colour prejudice is so widespread partly because its victims are most easily recognised. Race prejudice itself extends beyond mere white-against-black antipathy, reaching out to embrace anyone who is “foreign” It is almost a tradition among English workers, for example, to distrust some types of foreign workers. (Some, on the other hand, they may trust; many English workers think that Chinese people are naturally honest.) They are content at one time to blame the troubles of the world onto French temperament, at another onto German belligerence, at another onto American irresponsibility. (Although we should notice that this particular fallacy has its fashions. Young workers nowadays think it glamorous to be Italian, but that is not what their fathers, in 1941, thought.) In England, in other words, many workers think that the only person who can be trusted, the only person who makes a desirable neighbour or workmate, is English, while and gentile. In other countries they have their own version of this particular prejudice. A popular idea on the Continent is that everyone in England is a horsey fop.

The Superiority Notion does not end at race prejudice. It is common for workers in one part of a country to think that they are better than those in another part. In Southern England they think of the North as an endless slag heap, with flat-capped dinosaur-brained inhabitants to match. In the North they think the South a cissy lot, a pretentious bunch who sound their aitches alright but are strangers to a good day’s work. This feeling can even extend to different parts of the same town. There is at least one dilapidated area in London, dissected by a dirty canal, in which the slum-dwellers on one bank think themselves better than those on the other. These examples could go on for a long time.

The basic ingredient of the Superiority Notion is that, no matter how depressed a worker may be, he can always look down upon somebody else. Even those who are themselves the victims of widespread prejudice have their own Notion. Some Negroes look down upon other coloured people: some Jewish workers regard Negroes as inferior, and so on. And if we ask why the Notion is so popular, is the answer that the working class occupy such an inferior situation in society, and eke out such restricted lives, that it is practically essential to their peace of mind to be able to console themselves with the idea that somebody, somewhere, is lower than they are?

The Superiority Notion is booming, for example, in Southall in Middlesex. Southall has a rubber factory, a massive lorry works, a cereal factory, a canal, a gas works and a ten pin bowling alley. It also has a large Indian and Pakistani population, who have taken some of the jobs at the rubber factory and the gas works for which it is now difficult to get white workers. So Southall also has a race ignorance problem because, apart from any personal objections there may be to the immigrants, there is also the usual deep-rooted opposition to strange men whose skin is a different colour and who speak a language which sounds incomprehensible.

So the Southall workers feel superior. Yet a walk around the place quickly puts their Notion into perspective. Street' upon street, the dingy houses stretch away. Sometimes they are houses which were built in the 18th. Century; sometimes those which were built since 1900. Some are even post-war. But the drab sameness, the cheapness and the restrictions, are all there. These houses, standing in the richly combining vapours of the molten rubber, the exhaling gas works, the oozing canal and the roasting cereals, each day feed the local industry with its supply of human ability. To be blunt, Southall is one of the dreariest imaginable working class areas. It is a problem to appreciate how anybody who lives there could keep up the pretence that he is better than anyone else. But the Southall workers manage it.

There is only one way to deal with this ridiculous situation and that is to cut right through the middle of it with the facts. Socially, there are only two types of people living under capitalism. One type is the capitalist who can live without going to work because he owns places like the gas works and the canal and he gets the profits from them. The other type is the worker who does not own any factories or anything like them and who can only live by working for a wage. For the worker, capitalism is an unpleasant system. It brings him problems like war and insecurity and the ever present strain of balancing his budget. It puts him to live in places like Southall.

But capitalism does something else. It separates and illuminates the fact that all workers all over the world, whatever language they speak and whatever the colour of their skin, are suffering the same sort of problems. The capitalist world has innumerable Southalls—and many worse places besides. Thus capitalism makes it plain that the interests of workers everywhere are the same; to get rid of their problems, to get rid of capitalism. To do this, they must get rid of their Superiority Notion, in all its forms, and of the other baseless, ignorant ideas which keep capitalism going. Capitalism itself, day by day, piles up the evidence in favour of its own abolition. It stares the working class in the face.

It should be obvious really . . . But this is where we came in.

Ivan.

World View: Is Marxism Eurocentric? (1996)

From the June 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

Racism remains one of the main features of Western capitalist society. It is institutionalised in the systematic discrimination which black people experience in jobs, housing and the education system, and the harassment they suffer at the hands of police and immigration authorities.

A striking development in European politics since the East European events of 1989 has been the resurgence of racism, expressing itself in the rise of the fascist and racist parties which have been able to make significant electoral gains, especially in France, Italy and Germany. This development has not surprised us.

Black Nationalists argue that “black liberation can be achieved only by black people organising themselves separately from white anti-racists and Socialists". Socialists, by contrast, regard racism as a product of capitalism which serves to reproduce this social system by dividing the working class. It can be abolished, therefore, only through a socialist revolution achieved by a united working class in which blacks and whites join together against their common enemy.

A major difference between socialists and black separatists is that black nationalist intellectuals tend to see Marxism as a Eurocentric political tradition, as a body of thought so deeply rooted in European culture that it is simply incapable of identifying with the plight—and expressing the aspirations of—the oppressed black masses, both in the Third World and in the advanced capitalist countries.

Black Separatists wrong

The resulting conflict between Marxism and Black Nationalism is systematically explored by Cedric Robinson, an American scholar associated with the Institute of Race Relations in London, in his book Black Marxism. Robinson’s basic thesis is that Marxism is, in the very way in which its concepts are ordered, a Eurocentric ideology.

Marxism, Robinson claims, isn’t only European in its origins, but in its “analytical presumptions, its historical perspectives, its points of view”. It consequently has failed to confront a recurring idea in western civilisation, namely racism, and in particular, the way in which racialism inevitably permeates the social structure emergent from capitalism. Socialists reject these arguments and are well aware of the links between racism—all over the world—and capitalism.

It is often claimed that racism is as old as human nature, the implication being that we can’t get rid of it. On the contrary, racism as we know it today first developed in the 17th and 18th centuries in order to justify the systematic use of African slave labour in the great plantations of the new world which were central to the original emergence of capitalism as a world system. Racism, that is, was formed as part of the process through which capitalism became the dominant social and economic system.

Thus racism today arises from the divisions that are fostered among different groups of workers whose competition on the job market is intensified by the fact they often come from different parts of the world and are drawn together within the borders of the same state by capitalism's insatiable appetite for cheaper labour power.

Racism serves to set workers against each other, and to prevent them from effectively fighting against the bosses who exploit them all, irrespective of their colour or national origin. It operates against the interest of all workers, white and black alike. A divided working class harms even those workers who are not the direct victims of racism. White workers should identify their interest with those of black people who suffer racial oppression and black separatists are wrong when they dismiss all the white working class as an irredeemable racist rabble. Racism has grown up with capitalism and helps to sustain it; its abolition therefore depends on socialist revolution and the abolition of capitalism and that will break up the material structures with which it is bound up.

Fighting Racism

Fighting racism depends on understanding its causes. This is essential if the hold of racism on white workers is to be broken. Racism appeals to white workers because it offers an imaginary solution to the real problems—poverty, unemployment, exploitation and so on.

Socialists are anti-racists not only because we despise racism for the obscenity that it is, but because a  class movement which does not confront racism will not be able to change capitalism to socialism. Breaking down the social barriers which this process helps erect between different groups of workers is a necessary condition of any successful socialist revolution.

The charge that Marxism is “Eurocentric" made by Black Nationalists such as Cedric Robinson is mistaken. Marxism indeed emerged in Western Europe in response to the appearance of industrial capitalism, the capitalist mode of production in its developed form. At the centre of Marx's theory was his analysis of this unprecedented phenomenon. In the Communist Manifesto and the Grundrisse in particular he stressed capitalism's universalising role, the way in which it dragged humankind willy-nilly into the first genuinely global social system in history. But he also recognised how private property society engenders competition and exploitation at the same time. Marx was equally clear-sighted about the terrible suffering this entailed, especially for the peoples of what is called now the Third World—"the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the indigenous population of [America] . . . the beginning of the conquest and plunder of India, and the conversion of Africa into a preserve for the commercial hunting of black skins are all things which characterise the dawn of the era of capitalist production” (Capital, Vol. I).

Marx crucially maintained that only a society of common ownership could provide the framework for the eradication of racial prejudice in its entirety. Capitalism and racism go hand-in-hand—only socialism can abolish both.

Michael Ghebre

Socialists against racism (1992)

From the March 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Traditionally, racism has been seen as an ideology, a system of beliefs, which held that white people were superior to black people. It was an ideology of crude racial superiority and, as such, was used to justify the conquest, enslavement and pillaging by European nations of most of what is now called the Third World. This type of crude bigotry is still promoted by members of fascist groups throughout Europe and the USA.

The so-called new racism, on the other hand, is essentially a theory of “human nature" and “human instinct" the most important of which is supposed to be the desire for the company of the same kind. The idea that there exists such a human instinct is now widespread among right-wing politicians. For example, in The Meaning of Conservatism (Penguin 1980) Roger Scruton claims that:

Illiberal sentiments . . . are sentiments which seen to arise inevitably from social consciousness: they involve natural prejudice, and a desire for the company of ones own kind.

What bonds people together, what makes up “one's own kind" according to new racism, is “a shared way of life” which includes not just language and customs but also beliefs and feeling, in short a “culture”; and, the new racists continue, while there are many groupings, the most important way in which people who share a way of life come together is in a "nation" in which they identify themselves as who and what they are.

As with the old racism, science is called in in support of such an "instinct" to "prove" that it is “natural" for people to be hostile to "outsiders”. The idea of an innate and natural hostility towards those who are perceived to be different is something which runs through the new racism. But that biological differences determine other, cultural characteristics has been discredited by scientists for years. What are called "racial differences" is something which is socially defined. For example, groups which are classed as "outsiders" in one period or in one country may be defined as insiders in another.

Prejudice

According to the Daily Telegraph (23 September 1991), the former French President Giscard D’Estaing takes a tough line on immigration. He suggested a referendum to make citizenship a "right of blood” rather than a "right of ground"—in other words, he wants nationality to be determined by "race" and ancestry rather than by place of birth. In his article he wrote of an invasion by "unwanted aliens", an opinion he shares with, indeed derived from, his rightwing rival Jean Marie Le Pen and his National Front.

In the 1990s' economic recession many racist workers are blaming problems on immigrants who happen to mainly come from the so-called Third World. Their racism arises from fear that someone else is competing with them on the labour market and for housing, education and other social services.

The nationalistic and fascist ideas of the 1930s of Mussolini and Hitler such as xenophobia, nationalism and contempt for democracy are now at work again in Western society. Organisations like the National Front, the BNP. German and French neo-nazis and other European fascists have been churning out propaganda. aimed particularly at young people, to foster antagonism between black and white. In recent years minority ethnic groups have suffered an increasing number of racially-inspired attacks. Temples, mosques, synagogues and cemeteries have been vandalised and daubed with fascist slogans and emblems; people have been attacked in the streets and abused with racist insults. This alarming trend is only the tip of the iceberg of popular and institutionalised racism.

The problem of racial tensions is usually approached by the main political parties from the assumption that plans should be devised to enable "different races” to exist co-operatively. Although on the face of it this is an anti-racist attitude, it is in fact quite the reverse. There is of course only one race—the human race, and no-one comes from any pure "racial” stock. The peoples of the world enjoy many diverse cultures, but there is no necessary link between race and culture.

Todays so-called “British stock” in fact traces its ancestry to a great variety of groups who settled on this island including the Celts, Romans. Jutes. Angles, Saxons, Vikings and Normans. Each of these groups was, similarly, the result of a mixture of people of different geographical and cultural origins. So, many of the philanthropic reformers who today advocate measures like “positive discrimination" as ways of improving the relations between the "different races" are in fact proceeding from the same fallacious racial assumptions as their fascist opponents.

Ignorance

The profit system doesn't operate on any moral code, and we can not say that as capitalism continues it will progress to smoother and more harmonious ways of working. Governments will tend to discourage or promote racism to suit the requirements of the profitability of industry. During the last World War much of industry and many services were destroyed. After the War there was much reconstruction work to be done and. with about 30 million workers killed in Europe, there was an acute shortage of labour. The capitalists needed an enlarged workforce quickly, and they were not fussy about where the “hands” came from. In the Economic Review of 1947 the government set out its policy:

Foreign labour can make a useful contribution to our needs. Foreign labour is the only substantial additional source of manpower which is open to us, especially for the undermanned industries. The undermanned industries have to be filled by the immigrant labour force mainly from the Colonies of West Indies, India and Africa.

Now Britain, along with other industrialised countries, is in economic crisis—and "swamping our culture", scaremongery and measures like the Nationality Act and the 1991 Asylum Bill have come back on to the agenda.

From the Jewish fundamentalists, who proclaim they are the “chosen people”, to the neo-nazis who believe that that honour is theirs, all racism feeds and flourishes upon ignorance. But the fact is that today the most significant division between people is that by which a small minority (from all cultural origins) own and control the means of life, while the overwhelming majority of us (from all cultural origins) create wealth and run society primarily to produce profits for the rich.

Michael Ghebre

Racism (and race) is bunkum (2007)

From the February 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists stand for a system of society based upon the principle of providing each individual with what they need, as a pre-condition of social activity. That is, securing for each human being the clothes, food and housing they need, as well as the cultural and social goods of life, should be the first priority of any sane society. Of course, providing each with what they need means that different people will get different things. People are, of course, born with different needs, and people from related communities and extended families may well have a higher chance of having certain needs than others. That is, some people share genetically inherited features, such as susceptibility to particular diseases, which are passed on through human reproduction.

Genetic features, though, can be mixed and changed by the same process – there is no essential correlation between, say, skin colour and disease. Merely, there is a chance that the genes for these two separate features will be passed on from parent to child. Just as there is no specific correlation between skin colour and facial features, or eye colour and hair colour. That these features seem to belong together is an effect of the fact that each parent passes on half their genetic characteristics to their off-spring, and that historically people of similar appearance (and roughly common descent) have tended to breed with one another in similar climates.

The fact of the matter is that any human being from one of these groups could breed just as well with a member of the opposite sex from another group as they could with one from their own. We are all members of the same republic of genes, all related very closely to one another no matter what side of the globe we hail from. We are the surviving descendants of some less than 20,000 early humanoids. We share a common genetic trait, traceable back through the ages to just one female, many thousands of years ago.

It’s also a fact that we developed as a species to be dependent upon one another for our needs; but also able to communicate and co-operate with one another to meet those needs. Yet, today, we live in a society in which the needs of a great many people go unmet. It’s clear to Socialists that the ideas surrounding race and racialism are bunkum, un-supported by the scientific facts. We can point to the history of the development of capitalism, to show how the misapprehensions surrounding race developed along with the needs of capital to expand and control the globe, and to build loyal armies in pursuit of such conquest. Yet, they continue to do harm and deny our common humanity in the modern world. Socialists, as materialists, need to account for how such mistaken ideas can continue to exist in the world today, in the face of the evidence of the facts.

On the one hand there is the continued existence of poverty fed by ignorance, which nurtures the desire for people to cling on to what little they have, instilling in them a fear of a threat from apparent strangers. On the other, capital’s drives for efficiency, the need to cut out anything that interferes with or reduces the profit-making capacity of the industrial machine, which means that worker’s whose needs cause costs (such as dealing with language and cultural differences) are squeezed out in a ‘one size fits all’ approach.

What socialists propose is a different world, wherein everyone has more than enough of the things they need, so they need no longer fear to lose it; where meeting and exploring our different needs becomes a past-time and an end in itself; where without conflicts of power and dominance – because we co-operate voluntarily and democratically – there is no limitation set on, nor distortion of, our endeavour to understand what it means to be a part of the human race. In short, socialism will allow us to be treated as unique individuals, rather than as a bureaucratically allocated race on an equal opportunities monitoring form.

New pamphlet on racism (1966)

Party News from the September 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

A new Socialist Party pamphlet, entitled The Problem of Racism, is available. The previous pamphlet on this subject The Racial Problem, published in 1947 has been out of print for some time. The Problem of Racism is not just a revision it is a completely new pamphlet. In 1947 it was the Jewish Question that was prominent. Today it is the Colour Question. This change is taken into account in the new pamphlet which examines the colour question in Britain, America, South Africa and Rhodesia. There are chapters too on the scientific theory of race, the historical origins of racist theories and on African nationalism.

There is an unfortunate error. The reference on page 41 to Guyana should, of course, be to Guinea.

Pamphlet obtainable from Socialist Party (Dept. SR), 52 Clapham High St., London, SW4. Price 1/6.

World View: Religion, racism and class (2002)

From the August 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

The absurd claim of racism is that people’s behavioural, physical and cultural traits conform to a certain fixed and immutable pattern; and this determines the superiority or otherwise of a group in relation to others. This is an outlook that has been used to justify some of the most unspeakable and horrendous crimes against humanity, sometimes leading to killings of genocidal proportions.

In Eduardo Galegno’s Open Vein of Latin America, he recounts that before foreign conquerors set foot on the soil of the land the Indians totalled no less than 70 million. But a century-and-a-half later, they had been reduced to 3.5 million; and in 1685 only 4,000 Indian families remained of the more than two million that had once lived between Lima and Paita. Yet Archbishop Linan by Cisneros exposed how some of the church elders had perfected lies into a fine art. He said: “The truth is that they are hiding out, to avoid paying tribute, abusing the liberty which they enjoy and which they never had under the Incas.”

Racism however is flawed on a number of counts, not just for its barbarism and irrationality. Its fundamental arguments are basically weak. Where are those people who conform to racial purity, let’s say in terms of colour? You will meet a lot of dark-skinned people in Africa, but you will no doubt also come across light-skinned types in southern Africa and eastern Nigeria. How can one also argue that the Yanamani Indians or the Bushmen of the Kalahari desert are less intelligent than people in Norway or Japan. The two groups live in different material conditions, and these varied environments impose on them tasks and solutions that respond to their peculiar circumstances. In spite of the gaping loopholes in racists’ theories racism has been used together with religion to justify the enslavement of other people.

Islam, Christianity and Hinduism 

The Arabs and their Muslim counterparts, according to Dais Brion, were the first people to develop a specialised long-distance slave trade from sub-Saharan Africa. They were also the first people to view blacks as suited by nature for the lowest and the most degrading form of bondage. Rotter’s pioneering work and the research of Benard Lewis reveals that for medieval Arabs the blackness of Africans suggested sin, damnation and the devil. Arab scholars most of the time also invoked the biblical curse of Canaan to explain why the sons of Ham had been blackened and degraded to the status of natural slaves as punishment for the sins of their ancestors.

By the 10th century some Muslim writers asserted that Ham begot all blacks and people with crinkly hair and that “Noah put a curse on Ham according to which the hair of his descendants would not extend over their ears, and they would be enslaved wherever they were encountered”. Benard Lewis also quotes a 13th century Islamic historian from Iran who concluded that the Zanj (blacks) differed from animals only because their two hands are lifted above the ground and that many have observed that the ape is more teachable and more intelligent than the Zanj.

In the 17th century Father Gregorio Garcia detected “Semitic blood” in the Indians, because like the Jews, “they are lazy, they do not believe in the miracles of Jesus Christ, and they are ungrateful to the Spaniards for all the good they have done to them”. When Bartolome de Las Casas upset the Spanish court with his fiery denunciations of the conquistadors’ cruelty in 1557, a member of the Royal Council had replied that Indians were too low in the human scale to be capable of receiving the faith. Another justification for holding other people as slaves was found in Leviticus 25:44 which said, “Both they bonds-men and they bonds-maid, which thou shalt have, shall be the heathen that are round you; of them shall ye buy bonds-men and bonds-maids.” But the most popular text on the matter is found in Genesis 9:25 which says, “Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be to his brethren.” Some slave-owners went beyond the bible arguing that it might be wrong to enslave Christians, but that the Negro was not a human being and therefore could not become a Christian. One pious lady said, when asked if her Negro maid was to be baptised, “you might as well baptise my black bitch.” While Bishop Berkeley put the same idea into philosophical language when he said, “Negroes were creaturs of another species who had no right to be included or admitted to other sacraments.”

Similarly, racist sentiments are expressed in the Rig Veda, the Hindu scriptures of ancient India. Indra, the God of the Aryans, is described as “blowing away with supernatural might from earth and from the heavens the blackskins, which Indra hates”. The account further reports how Indra “slew the flat-nosed barbarians, the dark people called Anasahs. Finally, after Indra conquers the land of the Anasahs for his worshippers, he commands that the Anasahs are to be flayed of (their) black skin.”

The first distinctive feature to be noted in religion and racism is their appeal to a two-category system which presupposes a basic division of mankind into an “in” group and an “out” group. In addition, this fundamental division is supported, initiated and sanctioned by God himself. God has a special concern for the “in” group, and it receives his sustaining aid and grace. By contrast he is indifferent or hostile to the “out” group. In the final analysis God does not value all men equally, consequently he treats them differently. And this difference is not accidental but central to his will and purpose. The two-category system is correlated with an imbalance of suffering in which the “out” group suffers more than the rest of the people. In the account of the Rig Veda, for example, we know that God has less affection for the Anasahs because they suffer more than the Aryans. It is also evident from holy books like the bible and the Rig Veda that God’s favour or disfavour is correlated with the racial or ethnic identity of the group in question. God’s wrath and hostility are sometimes even directed at the physical features of a particular ethnic or racial community.

In the bible Yahveh often sides with the Israelites in the murderous campaigns to grab land from the Jebusites, Canaanites, Philistines, Amalekites in the same way that he was used to justify colonialism. Similarly in African traditional religion the God of a particular ethnic group assists it to overcome its enemies and brings prosperity to the “in” group. It stands to reason that whilst there is no rock-solid evidence to support the claim that God created man, there is enough justification in the materialist assertion that God is an invention of man. This is grimly illustrated by the fact that while Saddam Hussein was calling on God to help the Iraqis in the Gulf War, George Bush was doing the same thing. No God caused the death of the young men who were slaughtered; but the misguided beliefs and the greed of the ruling class.

Production and production relations 

Consequently the “out” and “in” scheme of analysis has nothing to do with God. It is a manifestation of the concrete and material world of humans reflected in their consciousness in the process of the production and distribution of wealth. Ultimately, production and production relations determine the ideas individuals have about themselves as a group, and about society at large in matters of morality, religion, metaphysics, etc. And it is only when we have identified and understood the material assets and constraints of a society, how it produces goods to meet its material needs, how the goods are distributed, and what type of social organisation sprouts from the organisation of production that we would have come a long way to understanding the culture and religious views of that society.

If the production relations are such that makes it possible for a minority to appropriate the end-product of the labour of the majority the views of the minority become the dominant ones in society, whilst the opinion of the majority are suppressed. The ownership of the means of production is thus important in understanding people’s perception of social phenomena – religion, philosophy, art etc. Bearing this in mind, we shall find that religious perceptions in any class-divided society are not neutral, but a tool in the hands of the dominant class in its struggle to maintain its control over economic surplus. Religious and all manner of spurious ideological theories are contrived by the ruling class or its representatives in the intellectual community and church organisations to keep the downtrodden perpetually entrapped in the vicious circle of exploitation.

As children in a predominantly Catholic community, we used to be told that God was surrounded by a host of angels with archangels. God was the boss and each angel and archangel had a specific assignment to perform in heaven. This was a world-view that sought to give blessing to the master-servant relationship that existed in the feudal era and class society in general.

Some quotations in the bible are also anti-worker if applied in today’s circumstances. Take for instance the saying, “But I say unto you, that ye resist no evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on thy cheek, turn to him the other also.” I suppose that when the Accountant General’s Office slashed as much as a 100,000 cedis from my salary in March, I should have responded: “Please my Lordship why are you so generous with me? Take 400,000 cedis more.” This would have been submissiveness stretched to its idiotic limits, and an invitation to exploitation and despotism. It could mean an acceptance of wage slavery, a system that is inimical to working people’s interests.

The New Testament also advises us to despise and deprecate worldly things in lieu of heavenly rewards. What would this mean for those who have already made material gains here on Earth? If people like Bill Gates are also God-fearing they would have a double reward; one on Earth and the other in heaven, whilst the God-fearing poor will have only one. As for the poor who are not God-fearing the extent of their loss and damnation is inestimable. The end result of these teachings if employed in a class society makes the working people docile and facilitates their exploitation by the owning class.

Convenient smokescreen

But this is not all. It also calls forth the other forms of alienation which are not strictly economic, but are organically linked to it. It is important to note that racism and religion tend to elevate the culture and other virtues of the dominant class; and denigrate that of the oppressed. But the class character of this domination especially becomes difficult to unmask if the oppressor class has a different racial background from the oppressed, as was the case during the heady days of apartheid and colonialism. Skin pigmentation and other physical characteristics subsume the class dimension of the problem, and exploitation is seen through the binoculars of race. One therefore develops a superiority or inferiority complex, depending on one’s physical traits; and the fundamental issue which is class exploitation is lost. Given these circumstances racism becomes a convenient smokescreen with which the ruling class masks its exploitation of labour. Eventually the attention of the working class is diverted from the real causes of its predicament; and a section of it becomes a pliant tool of the ruling class in its attempt to entrench the capitalist system.

The effect on that section of the working class which does not share similar physical characteristics with the owning class is to deny itself as different from the dominant class. It identifies and shares the convictions, doctrines and other attitudes of the dominant class which oppresses it. Guilt and an inferiority complex promoted by the dominant class and imbibed by the oppressed become the result of this process. Consequently the attempt to escape this inferiority by denying and condemning oneself becomes a lifelong struggle.

Let’s consider this for one moment. It is important to note that for many Christians, the traditional African religious individuals is superstitious and worships idols and several gods; there is only one God, though he has a son begotten by the Holy Spirit. This god is white, his angels are white; and when the saved finally go to heaven, they will wear white robes of purity. But the devil is black; his angels are black; sin itself is black and when the sinful finally go to hell, they will be burnt to black coal. It is surprising that the African converts sing in pleading terror: “Wash me Redeemer, and I shall be whiter than snow?” And is it any wonder that some Africans buy skin-bleaching creams to lighten their dark skins? Is it also surprising that so-called educated and enlightened women often buy red, blonde or brunette wigs to hide their black hair or spend hours on end in hair saloons trying to make their hair curly and long?

Christianity even denies the African the right to their name. A name is a simple symbol of identity. But the African convert would normally be required to discard his African name and give himself such good Christian names as Smith, Verwoerd, Robert, James, Julius, Ironmonger, Winterbotham, Elizabeth, Summer, Winter and sometimes Autumn. This business of getting new names has its roots in slave property relations, where the person of the slave was the property of the owner to be disposed of and used as the master deemed fit. So slaves were branded with the master’s name.

The same story is true in art, dance, music, drama etc, but the ultimate objective in class society is one – to control the productive forces and appropriate economic surplus irrespective of the exploiter’s race or tribe. Economic control however is much more difficult to attain without political control. Political control is therefore established through proxy governments. Even then the vampire system finds that economic and political control are incomplete without cultural and hence ideological control. So the system employs religion and bogus theories like racism to ensure the mental castration of the worker be he European, Asian or African.

Adongo Aidan Avugma

The Politics of Hate (1959)

From the July 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger' Note:

A bit of context for this cartoon . . . especially as the language employed in the final panel is so jarring. In the printed edition of the July 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard, this cartoon — which may have been drawn by Alwyn Edgar — immediately followed the front page article, Race & Violence, which was about the recent 'race riots' in Notting Hill.

New pamphlet on Racism (1966)

Party News from the May 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

A new Socialist Party pamphlet, entitled The Problem of Racism, is published this month. The previous pamphlet on this subject, The Racial Problem, published in 1947 has been out of print for some time. The Problem of Racism is not just a revision; it is a completely new pamphlet. In 1947 it was the Jewish Question that was prominent. Today it is the Colour Question. This change is taken into account in the new pamphlet which examines the colour question in Britain, America, South Africa and Rhodesia. There are chapters too on the scientific theory of race, the historical origins of racist theories and on African nationalism.

There is one unfortunate error. The reference on page 41 to Guyana should, of course, be to Guinea.

Pamphlet obtainable from Socialist Party, (Dept. SR), 52 Clapham High St, London. SW4. Price 1/6.

Not Just Festivals (2022)

Book Review from the July 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Afropean: Notes from Black Europe. By Johny Pitts. Penguin £10.99.

Pitts was born in Sheffield, to a white mother and black father, but he is not keen on the term ‘mixed race’, on the grounds that everyone is a mixture and there are no ‘pure’ races. Here he reports on a tour around some of Europe’s cities, Stockholm to Marseilles, Moscow to Lisbon, in search of ‘the banal humanity of everyday life’, rather than just street festivals and carnivals. Among other topics, he also discusses the history of Portuguese colonialism and the life and ideas of Frantz Fanon (for more information and background, see afropean.com and johnypitts.com).

In France many poor people, especially immigrants, have been shunted out to the suburbs, away from city centres. Pitts visited Clichy-sous-Bois, an area of Paris not served by trains or the Métro, and which is far worse than any deprived estate in Britain. For instance, the unemployment rate there is almost one-third, much higher than the national average. Some people live in dilapidated tower blocks where many of the windows have no glass in them. Second-generation black immigrants are angry as they are treated as foreigners, despite being taught to believe they are French.

The largest ethnic community in the Netherlands is Surinamese, the descendants of people brought by Dutch slave ships from West Africa to the north coast of South America. Many live on the Bijlmer estate near Amsterdam, where they squatted because few others wanted to live there. When black people complain about Dutch racism, some of the rest of society feel victimised, since the Netherlands is of course not a racist country.

Berliners pride themselves on living in a ‘super-open society’. But carnivals seemed to be more about young people having fun, while genuine resistance by black people had a more dangerous hue to it. The city does have an Afropean area, with lots of different kinds of restaurants and music.

There are many African and Asian students in Russia, carrying on a tradition from the USSR. But in Moscow they may be spat at or attacked, are reluctant to be seen out with white friends, and prefer to stay in at night. (As a girlfriend later reminds Pitts, solo female travellers generally also have to be careful where they go and to look out for unwanted attention.)

The worst behaviour that he encountered was from British men, such as stag-dos in Amsterdam and drunken football supporters on a train in the south of France (he was addressed as ‘Mr Afro-man’). His book provides a personal and depressing picture of the lives of so many black workers in Europe.

Paul Bennett

Transplant organs for sale? (1999)

From the August 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Even Margaret Thatcher balked at the sale of kidneys but now it is being discussed as a serious possibility.

When BBC2’s Newsnight programme broke the story about Northern General Hospital in Sheffield accepting a stipulation from a donor’s relatives that his organs could only be used if they “didn’t go to a coloured”, the debate that raged afterwards concentrated on whether racist pre-conditions should be tolerated given the severe shortage of transplant organs. And whether medical staff accepting such ifs and buts might be breaching the Race Discrimination Act. Did anyone in the media realise this issue was not fundamentally about ethics or legality, but class?

What is it that suppresses natural altruism in people to the point that this may necessitate compelling organ donations through a new involuntary arrangement? What causes next of kin to see donor organs as exclusive property to grant or withhold, rather than collective property from which anyone may benefit? And what makes those who do behave unselfishly towards others get called “losers” and “saddos”? Might it be a materialistic, dog-eat-dog, I’m-all-right-Jack mentality necessary for survival and “success” under capitalism?

The source of people developing a hatred for other human beings with merely a darker skin colour is also found in the competitive market. Those desperate to find a reason for, and an escape from its poverty, unemployment, housing problems, inadequate welfare benefits etc, can readily blame any group that they are led to think of as being different and outsiders. Such thinking will generally be toned down or encouraged—depending on whether the economy is doing well or badly—to fit in with the capitalist class’s needs to increase available labour and boost workforce competitiveness or to divide society and divert blame. But sometimes as in this case racist thoughts can rebound on the ruling class.

A kidney transplant costs around £10,000 just once, whereas haemodialysis costs the state (funded by businesses) £25,000 every year per patient. If “different” ethnic groups start attaching conditions to donations, other non-racial provisos will creep in; administration will become more difficult and expensive; would-be donors will be put off, and fewer transplant operations will result. And with organs already in increasingly short supply, both the pressure on government to act and the financial burden on capital could only get worse. But any New Labour solution is bound to involve hypocrisy.

Already, Frank Dobson has blustered “I haven’t been an opponent of apartheid all my adult life to see it being introduced in the NHS. It never occurred to me that a rule would be necessary to keep racism out of blood transfusions and donations.” Maybe the Health secretary will explain later why his new rule, while not allowing people to choose who gets hearts, lungs and kidneys according to colour, will allow any capitalist to choose the best food, goods and services according to money. Preventing discrimination against the differently coloured with desperate clinical needs, but permitting discrimination against the poor with desperate social needs exposes the iniquity of a private property society and its requisite two-faced laws. Dobson won’t have costly racism in health care, but “apartheid” in access to enjoyable work, the best food, decent housing, utility services . . . That, too, has “never occurred” to him—and probably never will.

Class ownership of vital assets is behind divisions in society, but because those who govern capitalism have no intention of tackling this root cause of racism, its political servants now instead merely put on a concerned act, conduct sham enquiries and plan to tinker with its laws to avoid the controlled majority behaving too much like the dominant asset-owning minority.

But why are so many people in dire need of organ transplants in the first place? How much smaller would be their number if those in various industries (chemicals, oil, tobacco, pharmaceuticals etc) had not poisoned and polluted our bodies for profit for decades?

Some media writers actually suggested that if the poor were encouraged by payments to sell organs to hospitals while still alive, then both they and those in desperate need of transplants would benefit.

The Guardian’s Polly Toynbee asked:

Why shouldn’t the NHS buy organs for its patients? . . . ask the tough question—if it’s OK for us to let millions of people die around the world with hardly a thought about it, why isn’t it OK for some of those people to choose to sell a kidney in order to improve their families’ chances of survival? The medical risk of donating a kidney is relatively low while the cash reward would be enough to change a family’s condition beyond all recognition . . . If the world cannot give them the means to survive, why should they be denied the right to sell the only thing they have of great value? (9 July).

In Toynbee’s mind, the “means to survive” is money, while in reality such means are industries, utilities, natural resources etc which, if directly and collectively owned by us all—and not a privileged ruling minority—would bring about an end to all those millions of deaths from deprivation.

And if she thought harder, Toynbee would realise that poor people selling bits of themselves would not escape the gutter, as the capitalist market that she tolerates—and regularly cashes in on with reformist let’s-tinker-with-it-this-way and that-way articles—will always find buyers at the most competitive prices. And with billions world-wide possessing sod all, that’s what organ purchasers will be able to pay then as the going rate.

Legally, we don’t even own our bodies. According to the Medical Ethics and Law Department at Imperial College (Broadcasting House, BBC Radio 4, 11 July), the seventeenth century philosopher John Locke established the principle on which the law still operates. They pointed out “we don’t own our bodies because didn’t create our bodies. Locke said God did”. Consequently, “we can own things that we have created through our labour . . . that we have property in our person, but definitely not in our bodies”. This is doubly daft, since not only did some supreme being never make us, but we manifestly do not have full property rights in what we create through our labour, otherwise exploitation by employers for profit would be impossible.

However, such exploitation will end—together with all today’s others social miseries—when we perform a transplant operation on capitalists at the ballot box, and shift organs of production from their persons to ours.

Max Hess