Voice From The Back: Prisoners of want (2002)

The Voice From The Back Column from the March 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

Prisoners of want

“One hundred thousand pensioners in old people’s homes are living on allowances of as little as £10 a week. Most are not even receiving the £16 weekly payment to which they are entitled, according to new research. The revelation that legions of old people live on less than many prison inmates will greatly embarrass Ministers, who have boasted of tackling pensioners’ poverty. “We were shocked when we discovered this,” said Lorna Easterbrook, who carried out the study for Help The Aged. “There’s a huge sense of humiliation among these old people. Some are getting £10 of their due allowances, but others are getting just £3 or £4 a week after relatives or homes make deductions.” Observer, 20 January.

The Observer journalist’s view that the Labour government ministers will be “greatly embarrassed” is probably wide of the mark. Nothing could embarrass these vile supporters of capitalism. Fellow workers, this could be your future inside capitalism. If you live beyond your ability to produce surplus value for the blood-sucking capitalist class. A bed pan and a tenner a week.

No cause for celebration

Twenty years ago a British Prime Minister told the Sun, and other slimy tabloid newspapers to “Rejoice” at the victory of the British capitalist class against the Argentine capitalist class. No mention was made at that time about the loss of working class life. We have no figures about the deaths of Argentine workers, but twenty years on, we have some about British workers. 255 British servicemen were killed, but even more awful since that madness, 264 British servicemen, who were involved have committed suicide. (Figures from the Guardian, 19 January.) Excuse us if we don’t rejoice, Thatcher, at the deaths of members of our class in the defence of your system. There are many orphans and widows of the working class today in both Argentine and Britain whose tears make joy impossible.

They like it, My Lord

“A Trade Union Congress report out today estimates that four million people, 16 percent of the workforce, work more than 48 hours a week, the limit set by the 1998 (European Union) directive. Men work the longest weeks with one in four clocking up more than 48 hours; one in ten working 55 hours; and one in 25 working more than 60 hours . . . John Monks, the TUC General Secretary, said: “Britain’s long-hour culture is a national disgrace. It leads to stress, ill-health and family strains.” Times, 4 February. Not everybody would agree with the TUC, though. John Crickland, Deputy Director-General of the CBI offers a defence of the long hours. “Workers want the right to make their own decisions about extra working hours. Managerial workers often work longer hours because they want to.” This defence is rather similar to the Fox Hunting Lobby’s – “The fox enjoys the hunt.”

Science and the profit motive

Inside socialist society the pursuit of knowledge will be free to all. There will be no restrictions on scientific investigation. This is impossible inside capitalism, with its copyright laws and its profit motive. Sir John Sulston, one of the leading researchers in the Human Genome Project has shown how powerful the profit motive is in science-based commerce. “We can’t possibly prohibit discovery. But on the other hand to imagine that we should always exploit, especially if it makes extra money, is insane. I think most reasonable people, including those who run companies, would agree. The trouble is, once people get into a company boardroom, they have no other choice. They have shareholders. I am afraid you have to leave your principles at the door of the boardroom”, he says.” Guardian, 2 February.

Blair, bombast and bombs

At the Labour Party conference last year Tony Blair said: “The state of Africa is a scar on the conscience of the world”. Poverty, corruption, famine and war, he thundered like an Old Testament prophet, must be tackled. It went down big with the delegates. It is the sort of thing the Labour Party adore – talking about social problems in sanctimonious moral tones, and then doing nothing about it. But this time they were doing something about it – they were making it worse! “The government was facing condemnation from protesters against the arms trade last night after new figures revealed that the value of arms sales to Africa will more than quadruple by next year . . . High levels of spending on arms are seen as one of the main causes of poverty in Africa. A report by the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) reveals that in 1999 African nations received £52 million worth of arms in deals with British firms. That figure rose to £125.5m in 2000 and is set to top £200m next year.” Observer, 3 February.

Post-combat syndrome

A report in the British Medical Journal claimed that post-conflict symptoms had been suffered long before the Gulf War and stretched back as far as the 1889 Boer War. “They concluded: “Post-combat syndromes have arisen in all major wars over the past century, and we can predict that will continue to appear after future conflicts” . . . The researchers said the best way to tackle the illnesses, which have cost subsequent governments considerable sums in financial assistance, was to better understand their characteristics.” Herald, 8 February. Surely, a much better way to deal with the problem is to abolish capitalism, the cause of modern warfare. No conflict = no post-conflict syndrome. You don’t need to be a trained medical researcher to work that one out.

 

Pathfinders: Cheating the reaper (2025)

The Pathfinders Column from the December 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Here’s a dark and ghoulish story for your Christmas-time delight. Back in September, just before the wall-to-wall media orgy of the Charlie Kirk assassination, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un met up for a big military parade in Beijing, accompanied by their chums Lukashenko of Belarus, Pezeshkian of Iran and Min Aung Hlaing of the Myanmar junta. This self-congratulatory Comic-Con of the Marvel Supervillain Universe was chiefly notable for a ‘hot mic’ moment in which Putin and Xi were overheard talking about the prospects of human longevity. According to reports, the conversation went like this:

Putin (aged 72 at the time): ‘Biotechnology is continuously developing… Human organs can be continuously transplanted. The longer you live, the younger you become, and [you can] even achieve immortality.’

Xi (also aged 72): ‘Some predict that in this century humans may live to 150 years old’.

Ha ha, they wish. One of the few consolations of being an elderly worker in capitalism is that no matter how rich these capitalist bastards are, they can’t cheat death any more than you can. This little soundbite reveals that they are keenly aware of that fact too. It’s just not fair, is it? You go to all the trouble of demolishing democracy, crushing your opponents, cowing your population, and making yourself dictator for life, only to have death pull the rug from under you just like it does for the little people.

It’s not just the autocrats, of course. Donald Trump, while not believing in exercise or healthy food, nevertheless appointed ‘longevity enthusiasts’ including RF Kennedy to key health posts. Rich Silicon Valley tech bros like Peter Thiel and Jeff Bezos also harbour Methuselah aspirations, reasoning that if there’s any way to extend life, their money will find it . There are individuals like Bryan Johnson who are so obsessed with longevity that they will put themselves through the most punishing and joyless regimes in order to wring life out to the very last drop. Instead they are likely proof of the old joke that renouncing all pleasures doesn’t make you live longer, it just seems like it .

Though it’s still considered ‘fringe of the fringe’, there is a history of research into longevity, from plasma therapy to fusing old and young mice together, and even injecting pureed monkey testicle into the human scrotum. Instead of seeing death as the great leveller, why not treat it as a preventable disease like any other, for which treatments can be found? The Greenland shark can live for 500 years or more, and only starts dating at 150. There must be sound biological reasons for that, aside from living in a perpetual icebox.

The World Health Organization in 2018 included old age as a disease in its 11th edition of the International Classification of Diseases, until vigorous protest made them remove it again. For critics, pathologising a universal process involves serious ethical concerns, stigmatising old people as ‘having something wrong with them’ .

And there is the big picture. Death is the reason we exist. If animals didn’t die, there would have been no evolution and therefore no us. If humans became immortal, society might ossify, and you’d have to abolish children. But never mind big pictures and bleeding hearts, think of the profits. ‘They are interested only in the biomolecular and the monetisable… They seemed strangely uncurious [sic] about the enemy they have declared war on. Ageing to them is simply a technical problem that can, and will, be fixed’.

In any case, no one wants to make workers immortal, only the super-rich. Putin, famous for his ludicrous bare-chested-on-a-horse publicity photos, is fixated with being a ‘healthy strongman’, and goes everywhere with ‘an army of doctors’. He doesn’t drink or smoke, and has put billions into anti-ageing research, stem-cell cloning and organ transplant technology. It’s also scurrilously reported that he bathes in deer blood, a traditional Siberian shamanic ‘remedy’. In all this he is no doubt encouraged by his inner circle of hangers-on, who warmly appreciate that keeping him alive is their ticket to staying in power.

What’s the reality behind the hopeful hype? Professor of vaccine immunology John Tregoning points out that you can’t keep swapping out failing organs indefinitely because a) general anaesthetics are a calculated risk that increases with age and each operation, and b) there’s a high risk of MRSA infections, including sepsis, with every transplant op. Putin would be playing Russian Roulette, over and over. Cloned organs are not a thing, so you’d need a lifetime of immuno-suppressants, with an ever-present threat of fatal infections. There is not an endless supply of suitable organs, in fact there’s a world shortage. There is some state-of-the-art work using genetically modified pig organs, but if you survive six months after a transplant, that is considered an ‘amazing feat’.

Meanwhile, Tregoning adds, the rest of your body would still be ageing. The largest organ is your skin, and how would you replace that? ‘Even if you could replace all of the internal organs, you’d need to replace your muscles, your bone, your skin, everything is aging at fairly constant rates…. Just putting a new heart in is like taking a 1980s Ford Cortina and putting a brand new Porsche engine in and expecting it to run fine’.

On top of all that, brain connectivity declines over time too, and there’s no known way to reset that. There is some horizon research into a class of drugs called senolytics, which eat dead cells and scar tissue and may be a way to reboot the human body from the inside out, but for now they only work with fruit flies and nematode worms, and have toxic side effects.

Happily, today’s ruthless autocrats stand no chance of cheating the reaper. But new ones will replace them as long as capitalism survives. The world’s workers need to wield the political scythe where it would do most good.

Paddy Shannon

The Rat, the cage, and capitalism: how environment shapes addiction (2025)

From the December 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

In a YouTube video I watched a few years ago, a group of scientists conducted an experiment involving a rat. The experiment was based on the ‘Rat Park’ experiment conducted by psychologist Bruce Alexander and colleagues at Simon Fraser University, Canada.

In the first phase, the rat was placed alone in a basic cage. The enclosure contained only a plastic shelter, a chewable object, and an exercise wheel. The rat was provided with two water bottles: one filled with plain water, and the other with water laced with a small amount of cocaine. After several days, the scientists observed that the rat consistently chose the cocaine-laced water, barely touching the plain alternative.

In the second phase, the same rat was moved to a much larger and more stimulating environment. This new enclosure housed several other rats and was filled with toys and activities. Again, two water bottles were available—one with plain water and the other with a small dose of cocaine. This time, however, the rats, including the one from the earlier phase, showed little interest in the cocaine-laced water and overwhelmingly preferred the plain alternative.

This experiment offers a compelling metaphor for the impact of social environments on addiction. The first, barren cage can be seen as a symbol of capitalist society—isolated, deprived, and driven by the relentless pursuit of profit. In contrast, the enriched, communal enclosure (the ‘rat park’ of the title) represents socialism, where the means of production serve human needs rather than capital. Capitalism, by prioritising accumulation over well-being, fosters conditions that can lead to addiction and alienation. Socialism, by centring human needs, offers a much more humane and supportive way of living.

Matthew Shearn

Marxism, a Virile “Ghost” - Part 1 (1933)

From the August 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

According to an article in John O' London's Weekly, dated May 13th, 1933, "Marxism is Dead,” and though students of Marxian thought may feel ill disposed to mourn the loss of one departed spirit alone, we find the theories of Adam Smith coupled with those of Marx.

In passing, we should like to take the opportunity of mentioning that the number of times Marxism has been "appointed dead” during the last half century must surely surpass the number of times the world has been “coming to an end" since the going of Jesus Christ.

However, the death of Marxism having been “duly certified,” the writer of the article in question proceeds to the post mortem examination. But what does the analysis reveal? Lest Marxians should await the result of the analysis in fear and trembling, we hasten to disclose the findings of our journalistic analyst. Let us reproduce his own words. After suggesting that the two most important books ever written on political economy are “The Wealth of Nations,” by Adam Smith, and ”Das Kapital,” by Karl Marx, our critic says: — 

“The doctrines of Adam Smith and Karl Marx alike are, of course, discredited amongst modem students of economics for the simple reason that those doctrines left out the human factor."

It further appears that both Marx and Smith helped to bring their own works to disaster because of "their essentially materialistic outlook on the economic activities of mankind.”

What a revelation, indeed! We seem to remember hearing all this before, many a time. Anyhow, aside from the positively untrue and dogmatic assertion that Marx’s theories are discredited amongst students of economics (unless it is meant that they are discredited by those who oppose Marx’s theories, in which case we sympathetically agree). What, may we ask, is meant by the "human factor.” Presumably, since no details are given by our critic, we can but conclude that we have once again encountered that hoary objection to Marxism that it leaves no part to the influence of human behaviour in moulding the history of human society.

Now, were it not that this notion is so often stated in open or disguised form, even by pseudo-Socialists, we would feel impelled to act similarly to the Pharisee of old and ”pass by on the other side.” But, unlike the Pharisee, instead of thanking ”God” for not being "as other men,” we should confer the honour upon Marx himself. For even a casual study of Marx’s works is sufficient to dispel the illusion stated above. But perhaps a casual acquaintance with his writings is too much to expect from some of his critics.

Rather does it seem that the one indispensable condition for a criticism of Marxism is not to have read Marx at all. Or to have read him and ignore what he says. Significantly enough, in the same article from which we have quoted, the writer says quite bluntly: “It is safe to say that not more than a very small percentage of Marxian Communists have ever read ‘Das Kapital' or any of their master’s voluminous writings.” From which we gather at least one of the reasons for his criticism, for, if only a comparatively small number of Marx’s adherents are adequately acquainted with his writings, then it is fairly safe to make any kind of attack upon those writings. One may gain access to a “coward’s castle" at any time, where ignorance and credulity offer an easy passport.

However, what was the materialistic outlook of Marx? Did he fail to observe the operation of what is called the human factor?

These are questions which have often been replied to in the history of Socialist thought and will bear answering again in view of the continuously increasing interest in Marx’s theories.

At the moment we shall do well to let Marx speak for himself. When dealing with a series of events in French history during the nineteenth century Marx wrote as follows:—

“Man makes his own history, but he does not make it out of the whole cloth, he does not make it out of conditions chosen by himself, but out of such conditions as he finds close at hand.”

This is taken from a work in which, from first page to last, he proves how men acting upon the political and economic conditions of their time, exerted a considerable influence upon them. We refer to "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.’’ Again, when contrasting the materialistic views of some of his predecessors with his own, Marx declares in the most unmistakeable manner:—

“The materialistic doctrine that men are the products of conditions and education, different men therefore the products of other conditions and changed education, forgets that circumstances may be altered by men and that the educator has himself to be educated.” (Engels, “ Feuerbach,” appendix, page 130.)

What could be more dear and comprehensive than these two statements. Those who really want to understand will find in them the foundation stones, so to speak, of the science of sociology, the science dealing with human society, and the history of its development.

But to return to the matter of Marx’s materialistic outlook upon mankind. The materialist attitude of mind, both in science and philosophy, Which took definite form in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, was the result of a lengthy process of investigation made by thinkers over many centuries. Hence, apart from certain definite modifications introduced into materialist thought by Marx, materialism as a doctrine was no more the exclusive product of Marx’s brain than the general theory of organic evolution was that of Darwin’s. Historically considered, the foundations of materialism were laid by some of the greatest thinkers of Ancient Greece. Democritus, Heraclitus, Empedocles, Aristotle and Hippocrates, were among the ancient minds who formulated the rough and ready groundwork of all modern materialist methods of thought, despite the fact that they lacked the solid backing at the disposal o£ modern scientific workers.

Democritus formulated his world-renowned theory of the atom and indicated the general truth upon which modem science rests, namely: “Nothing comes from nothing, and nothing is ever annihilated.” In this view-point he was followed by a number of thinkers who endeavoured to explain the whys and wherefores of existence, aiming all the time to find the cause or causes of things within nature’s own operations. Some idea may be gathered of the influence these men had on the world of thought and understanding immediately around them, from that powerful poem of classical antiquity, ”Of the Nature of Things,” by the Roman poet, Lucretius. He attempted to explain the many phases of existence, including man himself, biologically considered, and the rise of mankind from the savage to the civilised state, by means of purely natural causes. Amongst his most notable examples in this direction are his suggestions on the origin of speech and language. Says Lucretius: —

“ But Nature ’twas

Urged men to utter the various sounds of tongue. 

And need and use did mould the names of things. 

About in same wise as the lack-speech years,

Compel young children unto gesturings 

Making them point with finger here and there, at what’s before them.

For each creature feels by instinct to what use to put his powers.”

Of course, modern scientific thought would not put it in quite this way, but it cannot be logically disputed that here, at last, are the germs of a rational interpretation of natural phenomena.

In effect, the whole mode of reasoning here referred to marked a revolutionary departure from the primitive and age-long method of regarding all manifestations of existence as though some power or powers outside and above nature guided and controlled existence. Those of our readers who are desirous of obtaining detailed information concerning the methods of enquiry of the Greeks, and even thinkers of recent times, should consult ”The Biographical History of Philosophy,” by George Henry Lewes. This work is easily one of the best of the nineteenth century’s productions.

However, it is not without significance that these early attempts at a true understanding of nature’s workings were suppressed or kept in the background by the tyranny exercised by and through the power of “Holy Mother Church," but a discussion of this need not detain us at this juncture.

But when the revival of learning and the spirit of “free" enquiry arose after the “long winter sleep of the Christian Middle Ages," the formulas of some of the Greek thinkers were revived and re-employed in investigation, but this time with the more ripened experience and accumulated knowledge of a later social advancement. Perhaps it will appear strange to some to learn that, in the words of Engels: “The original home of all modern materialism, from the seventeenth century onwards, is England." A nasty knock this for those who attribute the origin of materialism to Germanic sources in the attempt to preserve the illusion of “English respectability."

Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Hartley, Priestley and others form a band of thinkers who, by the scientific method of observation and experiment in their various fields of research, helped to furnish the truth of modern materialist thought. Further, the growth of the various natural sciences from the fifteenth century onwards until the explanation of the origin of species by Charles Darwin, in the middle of the nineteenth century, mainly settled the question as to whether natural phenomena had a natural or supernatural origin.

Astronomy, Physics, Chemistry, Geology and Biology were the sciences which, each in their turn, presented the world with a picture of nature's workings without the aid of any external power. In strict logic the “Gods" were consigned to the limbo of the dark and ignorant past.

Pierre Laplace, the eminent French astronomer and mathematician, truly summed up the position in his reply to Napoleon. Asked by the Emperor why he had not even mentioned the supernatural in his work, “Mecanique Celeste," Laplace replied: “Sire, I have managed without that hypothesis."

Nevertheless, despite all that had been accomplished in the physical sciences, the last stronghold of supernaturalism was, as yet, to be conquered, namely, human society and its history, the science of sociology was yet to be placed upon a sound foundation.

It was inevitable that as something approaching exactitude had been established in the natural sciences, human history and its modes of being mid becoming could not for long be left outside the general trend of scientific thought and classification. Unquestionably, it was no mean task to survey the history of human society and reduce its movements to the operation of ascertainable natural laws, for the simple reason that history had mainly presented itself as a “ crude heap of irrationality and violence." The great task consisted in discovering some sort of order in the seeming disorder of historic events and their relationship and interconnection with one another. Further, was human society and its mode of being always the same as it presented itself to the general view of the nineteenth century, or had it also experienced an evolution, a process of development, such as had been ascertained in the purely physical world? In other words, could the principle of natural causation apply here as elsewhere? An affirmative answer to these questions was finally given by means of the materialistic method.

Thomas Henry Buckle, the author of the introduction to “The History of Civilisation in England," is outstanding among a few historians who made noteworthy attempts to formulate the laws of social development. Buckle saw clearly enough that such notions as chance action, the alleged free will of man theory, the doctrines of predestination and supernatural guidance could account for nothing of value to the problem of history. Moreover, he openly said so. Buckle went direct to the purely physical surroundings of mankind to find an explanation. Climate, Food, Soil and the General Aspect of Nature were the agents chosen by him to explain the rise and growth of society and its institutions. Rightly or wrongly this was a method of historical research which cannot be said to be other than materialistic throughout. It sought the material background of human existence as the propelling force behind the rise of society from its earliest beginnings.

But Buckle's theory of physical geography fell short in its application to the major question to be answered. Granted that it could account for the background, so to speak, of human endeavour in its earlier stages, but since the conditions of physical geography remain fairly stationary over immense periods of time, they could hardly be said to account for the many remarkable changes in human society that have taken place in historic times.

The real explanation to the problem was discovered and most comprehensively stated by Marx, with Engels and the American Ethnologist, Lewis Henry Morgan, making the same discovery independently of each other. This explanation is now known throughout the world as the materialist conception of history. Briefly, it is founded upon the recognition of the simple fact of organic existence, not, by the way, disputed within the domain of biology, that the primary need of mankind is the acquisition of the means of subsistence, and, therefore, the manner by which these are produced and distributed, forms the basis of all social organisation, no matter how varied the form such social organisation may take.

Further, this theory ascribes the final causes of all great social changes, namely, the changes from one form of society to another, to the changes which take place in the means and methods of producing and distributing the wherewithal to live, whatever form they may take, at particular stages of social development. We respectfully ask readers to note the phrase, “final causes of social change," and not the sole causes as is so often wrongly conceived or stated.

However, this is the essence of Marx’s crowning "crime," to use the phrase of our critic, his "materialistic outlook upon the economic activities of mankind."

From what we have so far stated, it should be perfectly plain that materialism as a system of thought amounts to our accounting for the operation of natural forces, through "laws" of nature herself. Observation and experimentation with the facts of existence, with verification through experience, is ^the kernel of the materialist doctrine. As far as human knowledge extends, the principle of causation is seen to be operative throughout nature, in all its manifestations, and whoever seeks to overthrow the materialist method must produce from nature something without a cause. We leave to other minds, however, this attempt at miracle working.

Robertus.

(To be continued.)

Magic and Science (1956)

From the October 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

However, so far as the schemes for controlling events by magic were concerned, men have learned from bitter experience that nature does not work in that way.

Things do not happen in the world as if at the bidding of capricious sprites, but in an orderly manner as if in deference to fixed laws which have to be obeyed.

Night follows day, the seasons pass in due succession from seedtime to harvest, the events of human and animal life form a regular routine. The discovery of this Essential orderliness of nature marks the beginning of what we call science. Once men have reached the scientific stage of development, they realise that success in living does not depend upon coaxing or forcing nature to do what we want.

It depends upon understanding nature's laws, and in making use of them to serve human purposes. That is the principle underlying all the great inventions—steamships, airplanes, radio and so forth, which loom so large in the world today.” (The World of Copernicus, by Angus Armitage, C.Sc. Mentor Book.)

"Science, natural and social" (1950)

From the August 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

“. . . Today it seems that we are again in the process of launching a new phase of science—one in which social as well as natural phenomena are to be made amenable to scientific understanding and rational control.

“As with natural science, social science too has had its earlier stages. It too passed through the stage of trial and error, in which social organisation shaped itself under the influence of unconscious adjustment together with non-rational rules of conduct and non-scientific interpretations of human destiny. It also had its traditional phases, often tightly bound up with philosophical and theological interpretative principles, as, for example the climax of the Middle Ages. And it has had its birth of free speculative inquiry, parallel to the Greek phase of natural science—but two thousand years later, in the philosophers of the seventeenth and especially the eighteenth century.

“Finally, its modern stage now dawning has had. like the modern stage of natural science, its scattered precursors, its Roger Bacons and Leonardos—and it has had its precursor in the restricted sense, its equivalent of Francis Bacon in the Renaissance. Many, I am sure, would put Herbert Spencer in this position; but I believe that the true John the Baptist of social science is Karl Marx. Herbert Spencer, for all his academic knowledge, or perhaps because of it, was more in the position of an Old Testament prophet. His work was essentially analogical. He demonstrated that social science was an inevitable development; but his notions of what form it would actually take and what methods it should employ were vague and essentially erroneous.

“Marx, on the other hand, developed a system directly based on social facts and directly applicable to them. He did not just prophesy. A Messiah; he indicated THE Messiah. As natural scientists tend to undervalue Bacon because he himself did not make discoveries or work out experimental techniques, so social scientists tend to under-rate Marx because his system is a dialectical one, ready-made and complete with an answer to any problem, not sufficiently empirical and inductive for their scientific taste. But at least Marx, like Bacon, gave expression to a new outlook and a new method of attack, and helped materially to alter the intellectual climate so as to make it propitious for scientific work in his field . . . ”

(“The Uniqueness of Man”, by Julian Huxley. Pages 224—225).

Proper Gander: Realistically altruistically (2025)

The Proper Gander column from the April 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Radio 4’s The Infinite Monkey Cage has clocked up 32 series of ‘witty, irreverent’ conversations on science-related subjects, helmed by physicist Brian Cox and comedian Robin Ince. A recent edition asked ‘How selfish are we really?’, although the panellists focused on the flipside of selfishness: altruism, discussing the notion through the frameworks of psychology and evolutionary biology. Psychologist Matti Wilks and comedian Jo Brand give our usual definition of altruism as someone making an effort to be kind to another person with no expectation of anything in return.

Steve Jones, a professor of genetics, defines it in a more Darwinian way as an act which reduces someone’s fitness to survive (by using their time and energy on something they don’t directly gain from) and which increases someone else’s fitness. Superficially, it could seem counter-intuitive to do this, but as Steve clarifies, our genes will spread if we benefit our group overall, and our brains are wired to get a positive feeling when we behave in a nice way. In day-to-day life we don’t tend to think about altruism like this, and run with a general inclination to be helpful with a background assumption of ‘reciprocal altruism’, that if we act altruistically towards someone, then in future they will act similarly.

The panel ponders the extent to which this exists across the animal kingdom, particularly among our distant relatives. Steve says chimps engage in reciprocal altruism by picking lice off each other, although they also fight more than homo sapiens, which is why we’ve had the evolutionary advantage. Our ancestors went from living and collaborating in extended families to larger groups, and he adds that reciprocal altruism was later embedded by religions which have ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ among their principles, with problems arising because as he says wryly, religions hate each other. He mentions that the structure of The Bible and Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species are ‘remarkably similar’, both starting with describing origins and ending with ‘mysterious stuff which you don’t understand’.

Psychologists have aimed to explain altruism through research into our views and behaviour. Matti refers to studies which found that people are prone to empathise with and be altruistic to those they feel akin to, such as Americans giving money to victims of the California wildfires rather than to people in need elsewhere. Children have been understood to also be ‘parochial’ in their ethical outlook, although Matti’s own research has shown they can be more likely than adults to say we should help people in faraway places. This may be because they haven’t yet been socialised to see some people as ‘other’.

The programme doesn’t consider how the type of society we live in shapes relations between people and therefore how we behave altruistically, although it gives numerous examples of this happening. There is the ‘identifiable victim effect’, shown in tests when people gave more money to a charity which used a picture of one person in need than when a picture of several people was shown. While this ostensibly demonstrates that we find it easier to be empathetic and altruistic to individuals rather than groups, the effect depends on there being a context of scarcity and charity, and possibly notions of ‘otherness’ too. Any conclusions drawn about altruism in these studies only apply to this societal situation, rather than necessarily being basic truths of what it is to be human. Further research has found that we’re less altruistic towards large groups, and this could also be socially conditioned. When Matti is asked how altruism expands from small groups (where its benefits are most obvious) to bigger ones, she replies that psychology hasn’t done a good job of illuminating this. To give a socialist perspective not explored in the programme, perhaps wide-scale altruism happens when people see through the divisions between groups which capitalism encourages and recognise our common humanity. This may also explain something else which Matti says psychologists haven’t been able to sufficiently account for: ‘extraordinary’ altruists, those who are exceptionally altruistic to strangers without expectations of reciprocity, such as kidney donors.

Steve cites blood donation as a familiar example of a ‘purely’ altruistic act, at least in the UK, where the only payment the donor receives is a cup of tea and a biscuit. In America, people receive money for their blood, and commodifying the process at this point has meant that to minimise additional costs to profit-hungry healthcare companies, inadequate checks have been done to avoid infected blood being passed on. Matti says that elsewhere, introducing payments to donors has led to a reduction in people coming forward, as the ‘intrinsic motivation’ for doing so had gone when it became monetised.

Economic considerations with altruism are also acknowledged by Matti when she says that it’s a ‘position of privilege’ to be altruistic, meaning that people often can’t afford to give to others if they lack enough goods themselves. This isn’t a blanket rule, though, as levels of trust and compassion in a group affect the extent that altruism is the norm. To try and measure how much altruism there is, researchers have compared which groups have more or less expansive ‘moral circles’, which contain things considered to have moral concern. Trying to quantify these qualities is ‘not as pure a metric’ as comparing countries on their GDP, as Matti says. Asked which country is the most altruistic, Steve jokes that it might be Norway because there’s nothing else to do there.

Steve’s contributions from the perspective of evolutionary biology tell us that we’re primed to act in an altruistic way because this has been evolutionarily advantageous. Some sort of altruism is essential for us to be able to live in groups, especially harmoniously. How altruism is manifested, and how psychology attempts to explain it, are moulded by society’s structures. In capitalism, we are conditioned to view some groups as ‘other’, and behaving altruistically happens through the constraints which a market-driven, divisive society imposes.

Mike Foster

The scientist and war (1955)

From the September 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard 

“Do not reproach chemistry with the fact that nitro cellulose, of which the first application was to heal wounds and to advance the art of photography, was stolen away from these ultra pacific purposes for making smokeless powder and for loading torpedoes.

Do not curse the chemist when phenol, which revolutionised surgery, turned from the blessing to humanity into a fearful explosive when it had been discovered that nitration changes it into picric acid.

Let us hope in the meantime that war carried to its modern logical gruesomeness, shorn of its false glamour, deceptive picturesqueness and rhetorical bombast, exposed in all the nakedness of its nasty horrors, may hurry along the day when we shall be compelled to accept means for avoiding its repetition.” 

(Dr. L. H. Baekeland, in an address before the American Chemical Society, Seattle, Washington, 1915. Quoted by R. R. Butler in “ Scientific Discovery,” English Universities Press, 1947.)

Tiny Tips (2024)

The Tiny Tips column from the June 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

While Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola was watching his team play Real Madrid in the first leg of the Champions League quarter-finals on Tuesday, his watch was making headlines around the world. Guardiola was wearing an extravagant Richard Mille watch worth £1 million ($1.26 million) on his wrist at Madrid’s Estadio Santiago Bernabéu.

 (CNN)

Conspiracy theorists have for years now insisted that COVID-19 vaccines were the real killers, especially among young men — but a new study shows that there’s no data to back that up. 

(Futurism)

Actual science is the great accomplishment of mankind. The antidote to ignorance, superstition, religious zealotry, and nonsensical beliefs in general. An eclipse exemplifies, to even the lay-est of laypeople, just how advanced modern science is. We were informed by astronomers, years in advance, exactly when and exactly where the eclipse would occur — down to the second, down to the meter — and everyone in the path of totality could literally see how exactly right those predictive calculations were. We should be celebrating and emphasizing this to laypeople, because these same scientists are the same people who’ve been telling us for decades that we’re destroying our climate with carbon emissions. So here’s my “by the way” retort to Montúfar’s aside: how many astronomers today — not in “ancient” times — are also astrologers? Spoiler: the answer is fucking zero. 

(Daring Fireball)

… I am aware of the dishonesty and stupidity of choosing any side in any war, and I am aware that all wars are immoral exercises in folly and absurdity. The only real beneficiaries are politicians and weapons makers. The great masses of regular people on both sides of any conflict always have to pay the price. The unlucky individuals who get killed or come home from the pointless war with mangled bodies and fucked-up minds pay the biggest price. Furthermore, whatever outcomes result from a war, no matter which side “wins,” serve mainly to lay the groundwork for future conflicts and more wars. 

(International Clearing House)

South Africa has undergone a nutritional transition over the past 30 years characterized by the triple burden of malnutrition: households are simultaneously experiencing undernutrition, hidden hunger, and overweight or obesity due to nutrient-poor diets. The results of the first in-depth, nationwide study into food and nutrition since 1994, the National Food and Nutrition Security Survey, found that almost half of South Africa’s adult population was overweight or obese. While there was sufficient food to feed everyone through domestic production and imports, many families and individuals went to bed on empty stomachs.

 (Alliance for Science)

Thirty years after the former liberation movement won the first democratic elections, South Africa remains the world’s most unequal nation, suffering from high unemployment, rampant crime, widespread corruption and a stagnant economy. 

(AFP)

Rough sleeping increased in all regions of England between 2022 and 2023 despite a Conservative 2019 manifesto promise to end rough sleeping before the next general election. An estimated 3,898 people slept rough in 2023, an annual increase of 27% – the largest annual rise since 2015. The numbers are more than double (up 120%) those in 2010. 

(Guardian)

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

Pioneers of Science (1958)

From the April 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

Wherever Galileo turned his telescope new stars appeared. The Milky Way, which had so puzzled the ancients, was found to be composed of stars. Stars that appeared single to the eye were some of them found to be double; and at intervals were found hazy nebulous wisps, some of which seemed to be star clusters, while others seemed only a fleecy cloud.

Now we come to his most sensational discovery. Examining Jupiter minutely on January 7th, 1610, he noticed three tittle stars near it. . . Jupiter had moons like the earth.

News of the discovery soon spread and excited the greatest interest and astonishment. Many, of course, refused to believe it. Some there were who, having been shown them, refused to believe their eyes, and asserted that, although the telescope acted well enough for terrestrial objects, it was altogether false and illusory when applied to the heavens. Others took the safer ground of refusing to look through the glass. One of those who would not look at the satellites happened to die soon afterwards.

“I hope," says Galileo, "that he saw them on his way to heaven.”

Pioneers of Science: Oliver Lodge (Macmillan, 1928).

Science under capitalism (1950)

From the February 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

The annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science held its last session in January. After being considerably shaken early in the proceedings by Professor Einstein’s announcement of his new theory in the realm of physics, it proceeded to review the reports of new advances and discoveries made in other fields.

It heard details, for example, of the new evidence brought to light that cancer may be allied with certain type of fungi; that another substance. Compound F, has been isolated from the adrenal gland and appears to be as effective as Compound E in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis; and of the discovery of a new drug, neomycin, capable of killing the bacilli causing tuberculosis. The meeting also heard the confirmation of a simple blood test for the early diagnosis of cancer, and the invention of a device whereby people who are stone-deaf are enabled to hear through their finger-tips. Numerous reports of discoveries and inventions in other fields of science were also discussed, ranging from the discovery of a planet between Mercury and the sun one mile in diameter to the discovery of a glue-like substance in the teeth that prevents bacterial decay.

But just in case anybody has relaxed back in his chair marvelling at what science is capable of doing for the human race, even under the handicap of Capitalism, we should also state that there was much speculation during the meeting as to whether the American Government will decide, in the words of Alistair Cooke in the Manchester Guardian (3rd January, 1950),

“ To go ahead and make the monster atomic bomb that its Atomic Energy Committion now knows to be

practicable—namely, one achieved by the nuclear explosion of hydrogen. The Alsop brothers report this morning the debate on this grisly weapon—a thousand times as destructive as the Hiroshima squib—which is now disturbing the high policy men in Washington.”

“But inside the conference rooms,” he adds, “ most of the papers presented testified to the life-giving knowledge that is abundantly at hand,” following it with the cynical comment, “ if we can manage to stay alive to use it.”

It is a fitting comment on the relationship of Science and Capitalism that whilst one set of scientists is busy at work trying to prolong the life of mankind, another group is working like hell to shorten it.

Stan Hampson

Pathfinders: Christmas Crackers (2007)

The Pathfinders Column from the December 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Two of the biggest science news stories of the year, and possibly of the decade, broke in late November. One was the derivation of multi-purpose or ‘pluripotent’ human cells from simple skin (BBC Online, 20 November). Until now, the only known way to extract stem cells, cells which have the capability to turn into any of the 220 cell-types in the human body and thus potentially grow or repair any bodily organ or tissue, was from aborted human embryos. The moral issues around this have mired the science in controversy and, especially in the United States, have all but throttled research. Already a small culture of former skin cells has been grown into heart tissue which has begun beating. The consequences, if this technique works, are hard to exaggerate for many otherwise untreatable conditions, or for those people with little chance of a life-saving transplant, or for those with a successful transplant but facing a lifetime of immuno-suppressants and at risk from the mildest infection.

Of course, it might not work, but if does, it would take the worst kind of Christmas Scrooge to point out that this is rich-country technology to cure rich-country people, and which doesn’t do a whole lot for the several million kids who die every year because their mostly corrupt governments won’t spend one lousy dollar on their healthcare.

The other story concerns a Californian surfer and part-time snowboarding instructor, named Garrett Lisi, whose curious hobby just might make him as famous as Einstein (New Scientist, 17 November). For Garrett, when not surfing in Hawaii, moonlights as a theoretical physicist, and has just come up with an idea that might, from a physicist’s point of view, be the answer to life, the universe, and everything. The ‘standard model’ of physics has for the last thirty years or so made reliably accurate predictions about everything from the minutest particle to the largest galaxies, using its two main propositions, quantum mechanics and Einstein’s general relativity. The problem has been that these two propositions have never fitted together. While quantum mechanics describes three of the four fundamental forces in nature, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces, gravity is the odd one out, and can only be understood using relativity. Logic dictates that there must be an underlying law which unites the behaviour of these four forces, and intuition suggests they might even be aspects of the same thing, but despite all kinds of highly elaborate ideas, such as string theory and loop quantum gravity, nobody has managed to connect them.

What Garrett has done is to take a known, 8-dimensional mathematical pattern with 248 points, and map all the 40 known particles in their various ‘identities’ to one or other of those points, uniquely including particles representing gravity. Rotating the pattern then gives known and observed relationships between these particles, but also throws light on new unsuspected relationships. In addition, having 20 points left with no particles to put in them, Lisi has posited the existence of 20 new particles which, tantalisingly, might be found next year when the Large Hadron Collider comes online at CERN in Switzerland. If the LHC finds the missing particles, physics will have found its holy grail, a theory of everything, the greatest advance for thirty years, and Lisi, at the very least, will surf his way to the Nobel Prize. Lisi has even devised a curious video animation which you can watch here: http://tinyurl.com/25DPF9. It doesn’t explain anything very well, but it’s quite fun to watch.

Of course, the theory still might be wrong, but if it isn’t, it would take the most miserable seasonal grouch to point out that the greatest advance in physics for three hundred years still wouldn’t mean a damn thing if we’ve killed our planet off because of our collective inability to spend one lousy brain-cell on our social and planetary healthcare. And several YouTube cynics, after watching Lisi’s bizarre ‘confetti’ video, make precisely this point. One particularly concise offering sums them up: “All I want to do is figure out how to make a living without having to go to work. Is that too much to ask?” Well, too much for theoretical physicists, anyway. Pity they aren’t asking socialists that question.

However, 2007 hasn’t been groundbreaking in every department, and there have been a fair collection of silly stories around this year. Two now sadly untraceable stories seen this year involve, on the one hand, the invention of ‘space money’ for all those space tourists of whom the likes of Richard Branson are rubbing their greedy hands together in anticipation, and the intriguing suggestion that NASA’s proposed crewed moon-base, due to be ready in 2020, won’t use money because internal trading would be seen as divisive in the colony. Extreme efforts to locate this story have turned up nothing, so perhaps it was, after all, a figment of a fevered mind.

On firmer ground, there is the continuing argument over online copyright issues. On the progressive side, the band Radiohead recently released an album online with an invitation to ‘pay what you like’. With some paying nothing, but many paying approximately a ‘fair price’ and one clearly disturbed enthusiast paying over £700, other bands are likely to follow this innovation. As this column has previously noted, the fight to preserve copyright online is viewed by many as a lost cause, and many entertainers now seek to recoup through live appearances and promotions instead of through the music. Elsewhere, a wonderful initiative by a Canadian student resulted in thousands of previously unobtainable and out of copyright musical scores being placed online, for any budding pianist to have a go at. But, like the proverbial turd on a bowling green, an Austrian company has appeared on the scene with an international, and unprecedented lawsuit which, on the mere suspicion that there might somewhere be one manuscript still under copyright, has succeeded in closing down this free resource and depriving musicians everywhere of harmless fun (Link.).

Anyone who has ever sworn at a Satnav device will be interested in two conflicting stories, one of which asserts that Satnav is better and safer than using maps (New Scientist, 4 August), the other reporting a litany of building damage and road bridge demolitions resulting from large lorries being sent down totally unsuitable roads by their ‘eye in the sky’ (Link.). It might be wise to see in this perspective the breathless predictions of one robot engineer that humans will be marrying robots within the next 40 years (David Levy, Love and Sex with Robots, publishing date 6 November). Jaded socialists will conclude from the above stories that the human race is going off track in more ways than one.

Lastly, of more interest to those socialists interested in the science/religion debate, the second Beyond Belief conference of concerned scientists has just taken place at La Jolla, California. New Scientist (10 November) takes a surprisingly disparaging view of scientists like Richard Dawkins who refuse to accord respect to religion, and this may of course be due to their high-minded moral impartiality. Or it may be the fact that they have started taking two-page advertisements from the religious Templeton Foundation, that organisation which, as Dawkins has noted, are prepared to pay huge amounts of money to ‘any scientist willing to say something nice about religion’. New Scientist would presumably have no comment to make on what must be the oddest news story of the year (BBC Online, 14 September), in which, after huge protests, the Indian Government withdrew a report to the Supreme Court which dared to claim that a rocky formation lying between the Indian coast and Sri Lanka was not in fact a bridge built by the god Ram and his army of monkeys but was a natural geological feature. Work on the shipping canal project was disrupted for months and the Interior Minister’s resignation was demanded. Who said there’s no fun in fundamentalism?

Paddy Shannon

A quotation (1955)

From the November 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Two contrary laws seem to be wrestling with each other nowadays: the one, a law of blood and death, ever imagining new means of destruction and forcing nations to be constantly ready for the battlefield; the other a law of peace, work and health, ever evolving new means of delivering man from the scourges which beset him."

"The one seeks violent conquests, the other the relief of humanity. The latter places one human life above any victory ; while the former would sacrifice hundreds and thousands of lives."

Louis Pasteur. In 1888.

Telegram sent to the British Association for the Advancement of Science (1960)

From the October 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

Telegram sent to the British Association for the Advancement of Science at their September 1960 Conference in Cardiff.

TODAY YOU WILL DISCUSS WORLD POPULAT1ON PROBLEMS. MAY WE EXPRESS TO YOU OUR CONVICTION THAT THE PROBLEMS OF MASS STARVATION AND MALNUTRITION AMIDST POTENTIAL PLENTY CANNOT BE SOLVED UNLESS PRODUCTION IS CARRIED ON SOLELY IN ORDER TO SATISFY HUMAN NEEDS, UNFETTERED BY ANY CONSIDERATIONS OF FINANCIAL OR NATIONAL GAIN.

IN OUR VIEW IT IS UTOPIAN AND IRRATIONAL TO ATTEMPT TO SOLVE THESE PROBLEMS EXCEPT ON A WORLD-WIDE BASIS OF COMMON OWNERSHIP OF THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION. MEN MUST ORGANISE TO ABOLISH ALL CLASS AND STATE OWNERSHIP OF THE MEANS OF LIVING  – MONEY. THEREBY. BEING RENDERED REDUNDANT. AT LAST MAN COULD GRAPPLE WITH HIS PROBLEMS IN A TRULY HUMAN AND SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT. THE VISIONS OF BACON AND MARX WOULD BECOME THE REALITY.

 

SOCIALIST PARTY OF GREAT BRITAIN.

No royal road (1978)

Book Review from the October 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Social Change and Scientific Organization — The Royal Institution 1799-1844 Morris Berman. Heinemann.

The SPGB has always held the view that science is not an independent or self developing force which can be blamed for the problems that arise in society. On the contrary, science develops the way it does because it serves some particular interest, in modern society that interest is the profit of the capitalist class.

The above book is a study of the motives behind the establishment of the Royal Institution and its development as an organisation for serving capitalism. Despite the author’s misunderstanding of the nature of socialism and capitalism, notably the belief that the former has been established in some countries, he illustrates well the motives for the development of science, in the early nineteenth century. Whereas for most of the eighteenth century scientific institutions, like the Royal Society, were mainly concerned with amateur speculative pursuits, leaving practical techniques to individual innovators, by the end of the century some 'improving landlords’ sought to exploit the expanding market for agricultural produce through enclosures and the introduction of new methods.

But the problem for them was that this only led to an increase in the propertyless, who were forced to resort to the Poor Rate for subsistence. This Poor Rate was paid by the local landlords. Various ideas were dreamed up to try and eliminate this problem of the poor, which was a restriction on the landlords. But the Royal Institution was formed as part of an attempt to overcome the problem through the organised use of science. Scientific principles were to be used to prepare more economic food recipes for the poor, suggest how to build cheaper cottages, establish workhouses and soup kitchens, and also to educate the lower class to live more cheaply.

The development of this Benthamite use of science was frustrated by the differing interests of various capitalists and landlords. The industrial capitalists feared that the widespread use of their techniques and inventions would undermine the profitability of their products, and thus opposed the Royal Institution. Few joined it in its early years. The landlords wanted to use science to increase the yield of their lands, rather than to assist the poor, and with the fears of popular unrest growing the idea of a scientific education for the propertyless was soon dropped.

The outcome of this was that in its early years the science of the Royal Institution was directed to the interests of the landlords, and it was seen and described as a “society of husbandry”.

But it was also concerned with the study of minerals for mining, the tanning of hides, and other concerns which could benefit the landlords. Scientists of the Royal Institution, such as Humphrey Davy, inventor of the miner’s lamp, who was originally an amateur scientist in the eighteenth century tradition, soon found their scientific investigations being directed along paths consistent with particular class interests. However, the dominance of landlords in the Royal Institution did not last, as the changing social structure thrown up by the industrial revolution led to conflicts with other groups. The group of capitalists, merchants, and nabobs who wanted to exploit the resources and workers in the Eastern Colonies came into conflict with the landlords in the Royal Institution over whether the substance catechu should be developed for use in tanning leather (the landlords’ interest) or for adulterating tea so that it could be sold cheaply to the working class (the Colonial interest). In 1805 the Colonial group of capitalists broke away to form their own scientific organisation, the London Institution, with the aim of developing the type of science which served their particular interest.

By the 1840s control of the Royal Institution had slipped from the landlords’ grasp. After some administrative reforms the organisation became increasingly involved with serving the wider interests of capitalism. One way this was done was by supplying the ruling class with ‘scientific experts' to act for the government in their enquiries into some of the disasters created by capitalism. Such a disaster happened at Haswell Colliery in 1844 when a gas explosion killed 95 men and boys. It was Faraday, the founder of the science of electro-magnetism who conducted the scientific investigation. His report was used to give respectability to the coroner’s verdict of ‘no fault’ (accident) because it was supposedly based upon a scientific study, even though the scientific knowledge of mining at that time was negligible. The cause was put down to gas building up and the ignorance of the miners. The report contained an elaborate scheme for getting rid of the gas (which even the owners recognised as useless) and also called for scientific education of the miners. The reality of the situation was somewhat different. On the one hand, the introduction of Davy’s lamp did not make mining safer because it made the working of deeper and more dangerous seams profitable for the mine owners. On the other, the mine owners had the practice of working ‘rich’ seams and leaving the less profitable ones to waste. This often led to the sporadic release of gas from the abandoned seams into the worked mine, increasing the chances of an explosion.

The Royal Institution assisted in putting science at the service of capitalism both by helping to find ways of increasing the surplus value for the ruling class, and also in becoming a part of the ruling class ideology which sanctions the profit motive. The situation today is not fundamentally different.

MD

50 Years Ago: Telegram to British Association (2010)

The 50 Years Ago column from the October 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Telegram sent to the British Association for the Advancement of Science at their September 1960 Conference in Cardiff.

TODAY YOU WILL DISCUSS WORLD POPULAT1ON PROBLEMS. MAY WE EXPRESS TO YOU OUR CONVICTION THAT THE PROBLEMS OF MASS STARVATION AND MALNUTRITION AMIDST POTENTIAL PLENTY CANNOT BE SOLVED UNLESS PRODUCTION IS CARRIED ON SOLELY IN ORDER TO SATISFY HUMAN NEEDS, UNFETTERED BY ANY CONSIDERATIONS OF FINANCIAL OR NATIONAL GAIN.

IN OUR VIEW IT IS UTOPIAN AND IRRATIONAL TO ATTEMPT TO SOLVE THESE PROBLEMS EXCEPT ON A WORLD-WIDE BASIS OF COMMON OWNERSHIP OF THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION. MEN MUST ORGANISE TO ABOLISH ALL CLASS AND STATE OWNERSHIP OF THE MEANS OF LIVING  – MONEY. THEREBY. BEING RENDERED REDUNDANT. AT LAST MAN COULD GRAPPLE WITH HIS PROBLEMS IN A TRULY HUMAN AND SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT. THE VISIONS OF BACON AND MARX WOULD BECOME THE REALITY.

 

SOCIALIST PARTY OF GREAT BRITAIN.

(Socialist Standard, October 1960).

Socialism and ultimate origins. (1913)

From the April 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

How science is prostituted to capitalist interests. 

Every scientific discovery that helps us to understand Nature is of interest to the Socialist. Socialism is grounded in science, and being a comparatively new philosophy is forced to be complete because, when, by means of the Materialist Conception of History, the Socialist has explained the growth and development of Society, he is called upon to explain every physical and natural phenomenon, even to the existence of life itself. Biology has its materialist conception in the “struggle for existence” ; life and the resulting struggle being engendered by the conditions existing previously, that can also be explained from a materialist basis. In one sense the Socialist is only concerned with the “class struggle,” but the scientist, as well as the priest and politician, is in the pay of the capitalist, and is expected to perform his share of the general work of mystifying the working class.

For centuries the only explanation of life and nature has been provided by religion, but religion has lost its hold on the majority of the workers. Nevertheless, nature’s methods and laws still remain unexplained to them. The discoveries of scientists and the generalisations that follow them are filtered through the capitalist Press and cheap magazines with criticism and comment calculated to discredit them if they conflict with orthodox dogma.

To keep the workers ignorant on all questions is obviously to the interest of the capitalist class and those who serve them. For that reason the worker who seeks information should go to the actual authorities themselves. Darwin can only be understood from his own works ; those who have tried to improve on them, either through design or through incompetency, have invariably failed. Marx and Engels, the founders of scientific Socialism, have never been improved upon, because the working-class position as laid down by them was, and still is, complete. The S.P.G.B. is organised on that position, and up to the present has discovered no reason for the slightest deviation.

The scientist—for a consideration—endeavours to reconcile opposites : science with religion, The B.S.P., I.L.P , and Fabian Society attempt the same reconciliation with regard to Socialism and religion, and with the same object in view—a place in the sun, a seat in the House, or a soft job in some Government department. But in spite of their attempts at reconciliation, the original works still remain irreconcilable.

Scientific discoveries invariably go to strengthen materialist conceptions ; they sometimes bring the whole question of ultimate origins under discussion. At first the scientists range themselves on either side, some favouring while others oppose the materialist concept ; but what the worker is finally asked to believe (chiefly on trust) is that the discovery does not clash with original superstitions, but in reality strengthens and makes them more clear.

The supposed discovery by Sir W. Ramsey is an instance. He claims to have created matter out of “immaterial ether.” The “London Budget” published an account of the supposed discovery under the heading: “Turning Energies into Matter,” and summed up the whole question in the following paragraph.

“Rather the greater effect of results of researches in this direction would be from a pschycical and ethical standpoint, confirming what has been urged by small bands of advanced thinkers. That the materialist conception of not only science, but of the whole world is a fallacy. Mrs. Eddy’s contention that the material world about us is merely apparent and non-existent seems to be a long way vindicated.”

In other words, scientists have succeeded in creating matter; the existence of matter is a fallacy.

The pseudo, newspaper scientist, with an apparent and non-existent tongue in an unreal cheek, propounds theories on the origin of matter while discrediting its actual existence. No doubt his salary is just as unreal. His employer would certainly be justified in ignoring his existence when it was due, if he did not know that such piffle is written in his class interest.

The scientist accepts matter as he finds it; he never thinks of questioning its reality in the laboratory. To him matter is an aggregation of atoms. He knows the relative weights of the atoms that make up the different elements. Dalton was the first to observe that elements combine with each other only in certain fixed proportions by weight, and he concluded that their ultimate atoms must bear to one another the same relationship of weight. The atom of hydrogen gas is the lightest known, and is taken as the unit by which to measure the rest. The scientist utilises that standard of measurement and the results always justify its adoption.

Although disagreeing as to the nature of the atom, no scientist denies its existence. Professor Thomson affirms the existence of atoms when he says : “Within the last few years improvement in methods/giving more direct information of the atom was almost entirely due to the fact that we had electrified it.”

The students of Nature in the Grecian period came to the conclusion that all matter was the same matter, the difference in the elements being due to the difference in size, weight, and formation of the atoms that composed them. They arrived at this conclusion merely by common observation, without the methods and appliances of modern science. They saw that a garment soaked with water parted with it gradually when exposed to wind and sun, that a ring worn on the finger was reduced in weight, by friction, the particles lost being so small that they were unable to detect them. They found this process common to all substances and concluded that matter was composed of atoms. More than 2,000 years afterwards Dalton verified their conclusions by discovering a method of weighing atoms. To-day scientists are electrifying them. Both these performances have confirmed the truth of what was postulated by the Greeks—a glowing testimony to their powers of observation and deduction.

It does not in the least detract from their intelligence that the modern scientist claims to split up the atom itself into still smaller particles and suggests that they are merely centres of energy. For he only rings the changes and tries to prove that matter is a manifestation of force instead of force being a manifestation or property of matter. The existence of both matter and force is never called in question, on the contrary, it is affirmed, even by those who deny its reality.

The capitalist class, owning an apparent world, real or not, do not value it the less because pseudo-scientists and faith healers say its material existence is a fallacy. They know it is better to be capitalists than wage slaves. There is no fallacy about possessing a share in the means of wealth production and living by exploitation. It matters nothing to the capitalist whether the universe was created by a supreme being or whether Gustave Le Bon says that “the ether of the universe is apparent to us as matter when it is whirled and pulsated into vortex rings.” The essential point is always admitted—that matter is apparent and not “merely apparent,” whatever difference or distinction there may be.

Mrs. Eddy’s contention that matter is nonexistent is destructive of her particular religion, for there is nothing miraculous about “the faith that moves mountains” if the mountains are not real. The everyday actions of faith healers and pseudo-scientists are a direct contradiction to the doctrines they profess to believe and teach. They continue to act exactly as other human beings do, in adapting themselves to their material surroundings—material interests dominate all their actions.

From another quarter comes the assertion that mind is the only thing of which we are certain, of which we know anything at all; and with it also comes the admission that all we do know about mind are the impressions received by it of a material world. Thus is confirmed what Frederick Engels so ably recorded : we know a thing by its properties. The mind manifests itself by its peculiar property, conception. That conception is a materialist conception, and answers the test by results everywhere within our experience.

We are seriously told that “the scientist of to-day knows a million times more than the ordinary “human.” The same old tale ; the same priestly gag on the common sense of the workers. We know ; put your trust in us ; have faith, was their cry and is still their cry. Yet with all their knowledge, with all their ability and intellect, they cannot make out an intelligible case to the “ordinary human.” Whatever they know of ultimate origins, they trip and splutter like babies over their mother tongue. Their columns of trash are as worthless as polar expeditions. They assert and re-assert with provisos that are flat contradictions of their premises. Their own statements contain their own refutation. The “ordinary human,” gifted merely with common sense, would never contradict himself in one breath so obviously as did Dr. Alfred Wallace when he said that “he and Sir William Crooks knew of the existence of phenomena which proved the existence of life without matter, as it were, certainly without ordinary matter.” As if matter could be more or less matter because it was not ordinary matter !

The scientist’s concern may be with molecules, atoms, or electrons. Ours is with the necessaries of life. Theirs with the elements, the ultimate origins ; ours with substance and social arrangements and relationships. Their wants are supplied, their position secure. The working class are merely receptacles more or less filled with energy, to be emptied into the mills of the capitalists, piling up wealth to be used by them in luxury, vice, charity, suppression, what they will; in a word, for everything that is degrading to humanity—the senile decay of an idle class and the perpetuation of the most abject form of slavery the world has ever known.

Genuine scientific discoveries clear up the mysteries of nature. Those who understand nature know best how to conform to her laws and make the most of life. The working class are kept in ignorance of the significance of scientific discoveries ; numbed and bewildered by social forces they do not understand, they submit tamely to the yoke of capitalism. Though they are in the majority, and can snap their chains more easily and with less suffering than they experience by continuing their submission, they prefer the latter course.

Once the working class understand the real mature of capitalist society, they will realise how their lives are being wasted. Their united strength would become manifest to them, and the class that has to hire all its champions, from the policeman to the scientist, would shake with fear as revolution became, not “merely apparent,” but inevitable.

F. Foan

Socialism and Science. (1927)

From the October 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

Concerning the beginnings of the cosmic system, we are without knowledge. Science is concerned with the universe as we find it, and speculations as to beginning or finality would both be futile. The indestructibility of matter seems fairly established, and we therefore, only look for efficient causes to effect the changes that would bring about the forms we know to-day. There is evidence of a continuity of processes, the totality of which we term evolution. From astrology to astronomy, from alchemy to chemistry, supernatural creation to naturally selected species, such has been the unfolding in the branches of knowledge that has given us the concept of the universe as a totality of its relations : Before we can formulate a science upon any particular subject, we proceed by a certain method. That method is similar whether the subject matter be the Solar System or the Social System. First induction or the gathering of the facts by experiment and observation; second, the classification and generalisation of such facts into sequences or series, and finally the deduction from such sequences of a theory or scientific law which allows of no other interpretation of the facts than the one consistently derived. By such methods came the Atomic Theory in chemistry, the Law of Gravitation in Physics, the Germ Theory in Pathology, and the Labour Theory of Value in Economics. By such methods we are enabled to understand and explain the facts of experience, and also to supply the antidote to the numbing effects of Capitalist mal-education. Laplace, seeking material for his Nebulae Hypothesis found that he had no need for the God Idea. All science dispenses with such products of man’s ignorant fear. It assigns him his place in nature, and lays to rest for ever the belief in the supernatural. True, there are gaps that require filling in, but they are gaps in our knowledge, not in nature. Aided by abstract thought and the service rendered to one science by another, the gaps are filling. Worlds are not born except of pre-existing matter, and the astronomer has but to turn his powerful telescope toward the heavens, and, with the aid of the spectroscope, analyse, review and reconstruct the birth, growth and decay of solar systems like our own. Piecing together what was previously “explained” by childish theology (He made the stars) we learn that this earth was once a whirling gaseous mass thrown off the sun. Allowing for immense periods of time, cooling would take place, and condensation would bring with it a covering of water and ultimately the formation of oceans. From various sources, we know that primitive life must have begun in these oceans, and through the over-laid strata of the earth disturbed and altered though it has been, we piece together the history of plant and animal life from the geological order in which their fossils are embedded. We find the many extinct forms that were modified and evolved toward those that began life in a world like the one we know to-day.

It was upon this background that Darwin projected the results of his observations. It provided him with the eras of time in which to account for the differentiation of animals and plants from earlier times. It also enabled him to show that continual changing of the earth’s surface would beget conditions which, with the prolific nature in all species, would involve intense struggle for the limited available subsistence. Those species that acquired any advantage from one generation to another in the quest for food, and in the struggle against natural obstacles, would be the species that nature’s sifting process considered fittest to survive.

Those unable to adapt themselves as species would become extinct. Instead of plan and design, as talked of by the Christian, nature has been found to be one huge slaughterhouse of those for whom no place has been found. Darwin knew, of course, from his researches, that man must be included in his evolutionary process. He did not say, as so many falsely assert, that “man came from monkeys” : Man comes from his parents, they from ancestors, and they in turn from more primitive ancestors.

The evidence upon which Darwin relied to establish man’s development from lower forms was the close resemblance of primitive man in structure to the apes known as anthropoid. The resemblance is a much closer one than that between some living races of men. This structural likeness with many other similarities, is too close to be explained in any other way than by common ancestry at some earlier period. Man’s body, too, contains rudimentary parts which point with certainty to his lowly origin. Life begets life, and all biological forms evolve in a similar manner. From the simple cell stage to the most complex organism, plant, animal and man all develop alike, the cell is the unit. The human embryo commences with the union of the male and female cell, and the main history of the species is retold during its development, the last form it passes through before birth being that of the anthropoid ape. Man’s journey commences where he develops language and the ability to construct tools. With a mean power over nature’s materials, he was for thousands of years cradled in the crude communism of the tribe. With a subsistence so mean that it permitted of no idlers, it seems paradoxical that it was the very increase in productivity that made slavery possible. Slavery and class society arrive together. Says Karl Marx, the founder of the science of Socialism : “All history is the history of class struggles.” True to the scientific method, Marx assembled his facts, and answered his critics, with a patience and a thoroughness equalled only by his contemporary Darwin. He bequeathed to the workers an analysis of Capitalist society that has withstood the onslaughts of the paid Professors of the Universities for over half-a-century. In the monumental work Capital, the cause of working-class poverty, is made obvious and clear, and there is shown, that to understand the cause, is to understand the remedy. To remove poverty the workers must by class conscious activity take from the Master Class their means of life. They must commonly own these means which to-day are the Private Property of the Capitalist few. To enjoy the leisurely life, the modern powers of wealth-production make possible, Social revolution is necessary. In order to change the basis of society from a production for profit to a production for use one, the workers themselves must first have the revolutionary outlook. No amount of Capitalist evolution can bring the change to Socialism that is necessary to free the workers. Capitalism has the seeds of its own destruction, but the workers must be the seeds. Lewis H. Morgan, in his “Ancient Society,” after a life study of the development of human society, came to conclusions similar to Marx in quite an independent manner. He says (p. 562) :

“The dissolution of society bids fair to become the termination of a career of which property is the end and aim; because such a career contains the elements of self-destruction. Democracy in government, brotherhood in society, equality in rights and privileges, and universal education, foreshadow the next higher plane of society to which experience, intelligence and knowledge are steadily tending. It will be a revival in a higher form of the liberty, equality and fraternity, of the ancient gentes.”

Such conclusions the Socialist can endorse. From our own platform, and through our literature, can be obtained all the knowledge required by the workers for the establishment of that higher form of society. Time and truth will tell without empty slogans, or vote-catching reforms, but with the beacon-light of science we illuminate the road to Socialism.

W. E. MacHaffie