Labour's 'social justice' (1969)

From the September 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Labour Party has recently published an interim report of a study group on discrimination against women. It is called, Towards Equality—Women and Social Security.

They use the word ‘Socialism' in at least one of these documents (unusual for the Labour Party these days), but make no attempt to define or explain what it means. Misrepresentation of the Labour Party as a party standing for Socialism has over many years caused untold confusion. The term they more often use and have been peddling for some time is ‘social justice.’ They do not attempt to define this either, which is just as well, as there is no such thing.

Under capitalism, a class divided society resting upon the exploitation of wage-labour, social justice is a contradiction in terms, a vague platitude, a mere piece of political phrasemongering. So-called justice and injustice co-exist within the framework of the private-property relationship of capitalism and are conditioned by the class interest of the people involved. Justice from the standpoint of the capitalist class must equate to the legal recognition and enforcement of their minority monopoly of the means of production. Since this leaves the working dais without means of production, a socially inferior class compelled to sell their physical and mental energies in order to live, the whole edifice of capitalism rests upon built-in privilege and inequality. 'Towards Equality . . .' therefore can only mean making further attempts to distribute poverty more evenly among the working class (in this case, between men and women) and has nothing to do with removing the fundamental inequality between the capitalist class and the working class.

What is really happening of course is that the Labour Party is making advanced preparations for the next election. Having got hopelessly bogged down in the dirty business of running capitalism, they know an election could happen at any time, so they have to dust off all the high sounding phrases and try to refurbish their badly tarnished image.

The Tory Party will, no doubt, study the various proposals made and lift anything they think to be a likely vote-catcher. The reforms and promises of capitalist parties are virtually interchangeable and none of them has patent rights. Also it should be noted that none of the proposals commits the Labour government to anything; they are merely suggestions put forward by a study group.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain has always maintained that even if all the promises and reform proposals of the Labour Party (and all other reformist parties) were carried out the poverty and insecurity of workers would remain. In fact it is the continuing poverty and insecurity of the working class despite all past reforms and legislation that repeatedly prompts further reform demands to try to keep the worst excesses of the situation under control.

The Labour Party claims that “during the past 50 years an economic and social revolution has taken place. People are infinitely better off, and the darkest stains of severe poverty which disfigured our national life has been removed". This talk about social revolution is just so much bunk. Now, just as 50 years ago, about 10 per cent of the population own 90 per cent of the wealth. The working class still have to sell their physical and mental energies to the capitalist class in order to live, and profit remains the motive force behind production. The only meaningful use of the term ‘social revolution’ is in the context of abolishing this set-up. The Labour Party are in a more contradictory position than usual here; are they arguing that capitalism has been abolished, or that a social revolution has taken place which has left capitalism intact? Words lose all their meaning. To make matters worse for themselves they go on to claim that the Labour Party “was mainly instrumental in bringing about this transformation”. Since over the last 50 years they have only been in power for 15 years the mind boggles. Are we to believe that between periods of Labour government the Tories are in power running Socialism? At what point during the last 50 years did this ‘transformation’ start; was it during the 1929-31 Labour Government while they were presiding over nearly 3 million unemployed? Was it during the war while they were in coalition with the Tories participating in the slaughter of tens of millions of workers? Or perhaps during the post war Labour Government while they were using troops to break strikes, carrying on their wage squeeze and developing nuclear bombs?

Kiss of death

A line-by-line review of Labour Party literature would produce an epic of cynicism and hypocrisy. In their cheap appeal for membership for example, they say “Labour’s belief in the dignity of human life knows no frontiers. It embraces all mankind”. This ‘belief’ was not permitted to stand in the way of their support for two world wars, including the atom-bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Their ‘embrace’ is like the kiss of death in places like Korea and Vietnam.

It is vital, in order to learn the futility of reformism, to remember that nearly a quarter of a century ago the National Health Service was heralded as a great new dawn. Poverty would disappear and a free health service with pension benefits would be available to all. Quite apart from the overcrowding and chaos in hospitals, the appalling indignities suffered by nurses, repeated increases in contributions and prescription charges, it must be emphasised that all the Labour Party now proposes is a series of modifications along essentially the same lines. Reforms beget reforms. While claiming that the Beveridge Plan was designed to abolish poverty and insecurity, they envisaged another 20 years or more with the pattern of social ‘security’ set by their earnings-related scheme. We could give several quotes from their own report admitting continued poverty, but for space reasons one will have to do:

  "That the present social security position of the unsupported mother can be summed up by saying that more often than not she is condemned to poverty without dignity . . ."

They give examples of many other groups in the same position and give figures in the appendix showing that in 1965, over 1 million women were on National Assistance. So much for the abolition of poverty, generations of reformism and their purported belief in “the true dignity of human beings”.

All this tinkering with effects leads nowhere. After all the wasted years with workers deluded into thinking that capitalism can be made to work in their interest, and the manifest failure for it to do so, the Labour Party seeks to waste more years in the futile pursuit will-o’the-wisps. It still remains for the workers of the world to understand and establish Socialism.

Harry Baldwin

Revolution not reform (1969)

From the September 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

On all sides the corruption and futility of the capitalist social system is exposed. In Vietnam, Nigeria, and the Middle East there are wars which draw out in a consuming agony and defy all the efforts of politicians and diplomats to end them. On one hand we hear of wealth being destroyed because there is no immediate market for its sale, and of resources being lavished on moon flights. On the other we know that one half of the world’s people goes to bed hungry each night. Even in those countries which are under no present threat of war or starvation the people are oppressed by a constant grind of poverty; harassed by insecurity, by bad housing, by the ever-increasing pace and intensity of exploitation.

Plans and promises

In the United States, for example, which claims to be the most advanced of all capitalist states, there is desperate want and the running sores of ghetto life inevitably produce a crime rate which is mounting as fast as any rocket to the moon. In Russia, which claims to have undergone a revolution for Socialism, we know that there is a massive and oppressive police machine bolstering the position of a privileged class and a mighty military organisation which has it in its powers to wipe out much of civilised life on the earth.

Wherever we look, we see politicians of all parties struggling in the toils of their own impotence in face of the anarchy and conflicts of capitalism. When a party is out of power it produces a mass of plans and promises, all of them professing to lead to the solution of the problems of a country, if not indeed of the world. But if that same party wins power it is a different story. The plans are seen as puny flutterings against the almighty power of capitalism’s innate disorder, the promises exposed as meaningless mouthings designed to nurture ignorance and capture votes.

We have seen this happen in America, where the working class have turned, in revulsion at the enduring monuments of corruption and dispute left by the Johnson administration, to the Republicans — whose reputation for honesty and for keeping their promises is no better than that of the Democrats. We have seen it in Britain, where the latest experiment in Labour government bids fair to outdo all its predecessors for cynicism and disaster.

We are seeing this all over the world today and we have seen it many times, in many places, before. The lesson is clear. Reformism is reactionary and futile. Revolution alone provides the answer to society’s ailments. Only a revolutionary party can point the way to a freer, saner, more abundant society.

What, then, is a revolutionary to do? The first essential is that he should be aware; he must sharpen, and keep sharp, his revolutionary knowledge and conceptions of society. He must clearly understand that the problems of capitalism spring directly from the system’s basis and can be eliminated only by fundamentally changing that basis — in other words by ending capitalism and replacing it with Socialism. The revolutionary must aim, without wavering or compromise, at this fundamental social change. He must not opt for anything less than Socialism, nor accept any postponement of the revolution in favour of tinkering with capitalism now. His watchword must always be — Revolution, not reform.

Talents united

Next, the revolutionary must be organised. By himself he can do valuable work propagating the case for Socialism but in unity with other socialists his strength is disproportionately increased. his voice more powerful, the resources at his command more extensive. An organisation can hold propaganda meetings, prepare and publish literature, publicise the case for Socialism. It can unite many talents and experiences under a single banner and use them to maximum effect. It can perform the vital task of tangibly proclaim ing the existence of the revolutionary idea, the idea that there is a lasting alternative to the bestiality and degradation of capitalism.

But even more important, an organisation can aim at something beyond the scope of any individual, no matter how fervent and determined he may be. An organisation can be the political weapon which a socialist working class will wield to take power to refashion society in the interests of the entire human race.

The road to Socialism is political; if the working class aim at less than political power — if they aim at industrial takeover or armed insurrection or sabotage — then they will provoke the might of the capitalist state. That might must be controlled and this can be done only by taking away the capitalists’ political power. For this, socialists must be united in political organisation.

But of course it is not simply one nation’s state machine we must aim at. Socialism is worldwide, which means that the socialist party must be international. At present we exist in an organised fashion in Austria, America, Australasia, Great Britain and there are other groups of socialists in the West Indies, Scandinavia. and so on. We are all linked by our common political consciousness and our determination to work for the revolution. The international socialist parties can, by their exchange of ideas and experiences, continually confirm that the malaises of capitalism are international and cannot be cured in one country, or as long as the system lasts.

Workers of the world, unite! We have nothing to lose but our chains — and we have a world to win!

Man: Ape in Wolf’s Clothing? (1969)

Book Reviews from the September 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Naked Ape, by Desmond Morris. (Corgi, 5s.)
Violence, Monkeys and Man, by Claire and W. M. S. Russell. (Macmillan, 63s.)
Man and Monkey, by Leonard Williams. (Panther, 8s. 6d.)

Perhaps the most famous of scientific frauds was the fake Piltdown Skull of 1910, a “missing link” fabricated by a person unknown. That anonymous joker put together an ape’s jaw with a human skull. Desmond Morris has grafted the most ignorant fairy tales about human society onto a body of basically sound ideas about human biological evolution. The Naked Ape is a barefaced hoax.

As a gimmick, Morris pretends to describe the human animal just as it would be pictured by a zoologist if it were a newly-discovered species. “Naked ape” is a clinical term (like “black-footed squirrel”) which is supposed to denote men’s most noticeable characteristics: their lack of fur. But evidently, Morris has become a rich man because to millions of his readers, nudity is a novelty. It should be obvious that the most important thing about human animals is not that they are naked, but that they are clothed. In other words, they produce what they consume; they turn the artificial into the necessary, and (like Morris) sometimes confuse it with the natural.

His book is a hymn of praise to modern capitalism. All the current practices, preoccupations, superstitions, myths and manners are, according to Morris, highly admirable. Furthermore, they are natural because they stem from man’s past as a wolf-like, monogamous, predatory killer. Frequently this approach becomes so manifestly silly that we are tempted to suspect the author of perpetrating a spoof, a sarcastic attack on the ludicrous legends of human nature:

One of the essential features of the hunt is that it is a tremendous gamble and so it is not surprising that gambling, in the many stylised forms it takes today, should have such a strong appeal for us.

We can safely wager that not one of the fish-eyed zombies who stand for hours in front of a fruit machine has yet thought of defending his addiction with the excuse that it stems from the bloodthirsty excitement of his prehistoric past. Derision is the only intelligent response to this sort of foolishness, yet Morris seems to be serious. Anyone with a smattering of education knows that societies have changed historically, and that customs vary geographically. But according to Morris, only capitalist man is truly human:

The earlier anthropologists rushed of to all kinds of unlikely corners of the world in order to unravel the basic truth about our nature, scattering to remote cultural backwaters so atypical and unsuccessful that they are nearly extinct.  They then returned with startling facts about the bizarre mating customs, strange kinship systems, or weird ritual procedures of these tribes, and used this material as though it were of central importance to the behaviour of our species as a whole. The work done by these investigators was, of course, extremely interesting and most valuable in showing what can happen when a group of naked apes become sidetracked into a cultural blind alley. It revealed just how far from the normal our behaviour patterns can stray without a complete social collapse. What it did not tell us was anything about the typical behaviour of typical naked apes. This can only be done by examining the common behaviour patterns that are shared by all the ordinary, successful members of the major cultures – the mainstream specimens who together represent the vast majority.  Biologically this is the only sound approach.

In other words, don’t talk to me about filthy savages. Of course, biology has nothing to do with it. There is no evidence that different cultures are due to different biological endowments, and plenty of conclusive evidence against this. People from “all kinds of unlikely corners of the world” have been educated to be perfectly competent under advanced capitalism. Sometimes, even, the more backward the better: as in many parts of Africa, where people from stateless societies (such as the Ibo) have caught on to capitalist values much quicker than people from near-feudal societies at a more advanced stage of social evolution. For that matter, it is common knowledge that the peoples in the most advanced societies today (the Anglo-Saxons, Japanese, Russians, etc.) were for thousands of years scattered in “remote cultural backwaters” while highly successful empires sprouted in what are now wretched deserts. Morris would be very contemptuous about the “bizarre mating customs, strange kinship systems, or weird ritual procedures” of his European ancestors of 2000 years ago.

Tightly blinkered

Not that he is a racist. His point is that “the characteristics that the earlier anthropologists studied in these tribes may well be the very features that have interfered with the progress of the groups concerned”. But to say this is to gloss over the weak point in his argument. If the development of civilisation has been social and not biological, then why stop the clock at one point in time and say that this particular stage of society corresponds to an inborn pattern? Is it not clear, instead, that man is capable of a very wide range of cultural behaviour, and that the modern set of conventions in marriage and politics is just one of many, all equally compatible with any of man’s inborn characteristics?

Not to Morris. He constantly refers to his society as “mainstream”, “healthy”, “go-ahead”, “natural”, and “typical”. His reasons for this judgement are mainly two: that capitalism has the biggest population, and that “the naked ape is essentially an exploratory species.” Morris is thus a typical example of an individual tightly blinkered by the capitalist system, inside which he has been brought up. It never occurs to him that his own value judgement in placing a massive population and an exploratory drive above all other considerations is itself a result of social conditioning.  It would seem to him extremely “bizarre”, “strange”, “weird”, and “typical” to judge a society by (for instance) whether its population is happy, or whether its exploratory drives are harnessed to the satisfaction of human needs. He cannot avoid recognising the danger of capitalist war:

We are, to put it mildly, in a mess, and there is a strong chance that we shall have exterminated ourselves by the end of the century.

And, as one whose mind is open to every myth and delusion in popular circulation, Morris believes that there is a danger of world “overpopulation”, so it might seem surprising that he should consider a large population the primary badge of success.  But he has an answer for this:

It looks very much as though, during the next century or so, we are going to have to change our sexual ways at last.  But if we do, it will not be because they failed, but because they succeeded too well.

Therefore, although the 20th-century predator is a marvelous piece of work (Morris claims his approach isn’t a moral one, but his strong approval shines through every page), the writer can have it both ways. We are a tremendous success because of our animal nature; our colossal failure is due to our animal nature. He has further room for manoeuvre in man’s twofold origin: that of a vegetarian primate which descended from the trees and became a hunter. Anything which cannot be “explained” by man’s predatory nature can of course be quietly slotted into his primate nature. Morris’s strategy is to assume that all modern man’s behaviour is caused by his “nature”, then to look into the current theories of man’s evolutionary origins for the most plausible tie-ups with his present-day activities. Naturally they can easily be found, and this approach then becomes circular, “proving” itself. Since Morris is quite good on biology, his obvious expertise in this field seems to give his elfin portrayal of society some authority. It is a widespread superstition that an expert in one field carries some weight in all fields, and Dr. Morris has exploited this to the full. Latter-day Original Sin merchant Robert Ardrey was overjoyed to find some apparently scientific support for his utterly discredited “Man the Killer” fantasies, and commented on The Naked Ape: “This spectacular book by a master scientist is what every naked ape has been waiting for.”

Dislike of facts

Actually Morris is more than just a specialist who imagines the universe is part of his speciality. He, along with Ardrey and Lorenz, is part of a very definite “backlash” against social science. The problem is that modern sociology and social anthropology, even though sponsored by the capitalist state, have proved up to the hilt what socialists have long insisted: that man’s most sacred institutions are not the product of his nature, but of his changing social environment. There is a very powerful and widespread dislike of this well-substantiated (and rather elementary) fact, which manifests itself in a strong appetite for the output of anyone who can undertake to “prove” the opposite.  Anthony Storr wrote in the Sunday Times recently:

"One quite certain principle of sociology is that very little, if any, human behaviour is inherited”. This extraordinary statement must arise from the idea that man is perfectible by altering his social institutions: a delusion to which only very old-fashioned Communists can now subscribe. We know very little about the fundamental patterns of human behaviour, but we know enough to be sure that man is not infinitely adaptable, and that we neglect biological factors at our peril.

This passage bristles with interesting details: Storr’s coy recognition of the apologetic political function his views serve, the meaningless but ominous-sounding “neglect biological factors at our peril”, the casual admission that “very little” is known about the subject of his heated denunciation, the unjustified use of the alarm-word “extraordinary”, and amid this wordy dust-storm, the one definite statement: that man is not “infinitely adaptable”, which no-one ever suggested.

Actions learned

At the risk of labouring the obvious, let us point out that all of man’s behaviour results from a combination of environmental and genetic factors; that man is the most adaptable of all animals all his deliberate actions are learned; that historically and geographically societies have varied very greatly in their systems of marriage, leadership (if any), property, religion (if any), and status, and that these diversities are not due to genetic differences; that to call any of these systems innate is exactly as ridiculous as to say that the grammar of the English language is innate.

The very fact that the whole human species has spent a very brief period of time (a few centuries) in Morris’s “mainstream”, while it spent the vast majority of its career (many tens of thousands of years) much closer to his “remote cultural backwaters”, should dispel any notion that capitalism’s conventions are inborn. But on one point we agree with Morris. Capitalism is the most advanced system the world has ever seen. For our part, however, this not a moral judgement.  On the contrary, capitalism appeared upon the scene drenched in blood from head to foot; it sent its hideous scourges, Jesus and VD, into all “remote cultural backwaters”, as the advance guard of murder, pillage, and profit. Under capitalism, genocide has become commonplace; misery the very air we breathe.

But when we say that capitalism is the most advanced social system, we mean that its potential for satisfying human needs is greater than that of any previous order.  Capitalism is still a tremendously dynamic society, a society of unparalleled achievement, but of unparalleled waste and destruction also. Only Socialism can put the “exploratory urge” of capitalism to the service of human happiness.

The Naked Ape does contain some well-established facts, and some reasonable speculations (though even the zoological data cannot be entirely relied upon. Some of Morris’s sweeping generalisations about sex in non-human primates are falsified by Leonard Williams’ observations of woolly monkeys). Furthermore, even in 1969, many workers still have a religious, sentimental view of man, refusing to believe that everything about human beings can be explained scientifically. The book may therefore do a good job here, in stripping away mystery and confusion.

Monkey myths

The Russells' volume explains itself at the outset:

First, we have tried to show that violence is not the result of an innate propensity to aggression irrespective of conditions, but a response to stress in societies. Second, we suggest that violence is part of a complex of responses evolved to achieve drastic reduction of a population that is in danger of outgrowing its resources.

Here we have the familiar Malthusian view of human violence, linked up with observations of the behaviour of overcrowded captive monkeys. The main error is the confusion of overpopulation with overcrowding. In the world today there is plenty of overcrowding but no overpopulation: the general trend is the depopulation of some areas, together with the cramming of large masses of people into gigantic cities. There is plenty of room in the world.

Overcrowding does place terrible strains on workers, leading to outbursts of violence, but these must be seen in association with all the other oppressive features of life inside capitalism.

Interesting is the summary of research into monkey violence. In 1932 Zuckerman published The Social Life of Monkeys and Apes, based on observations of baboons in Regent’s Park:

The notion of violent aggressiveness as an inherent quality of monkeys (or at least of baboons) was impressed upon a generation of scientists. By the fifties, when the crime returns from the affluent societies began to hit the headlines. the apparent results of Zuckerman’s work may well have influenced a wider public, and helped to bring about the resurgence of the unconditional view of aggression. Alike in monkeys and man, it seemed, the improvement of living conditions is no guarantee against violence; aggressiveness is human nature, monkey nature, a fact of nature in the most fundamental sense.

Only in recent years have researchers begun to study apes and monkeys in the wild, though they have done so with their heads full of prevailing capitalist myths about “human nature” and hence “monkey nature”. These scientists have been astonished at the peaceable behaviour of wild monkeys, and at first tried to write it off as exceptional or “unusual”, but they have finally had to face the unpalatable fact that healthy monkeys and apes in the wild hardly ever fight.

The author’s conclusion is that “all monkeys are peaceful in some conditions, and violently aggressive in others. Violence is a property of mammalian societies exposed to stress.” They apply this to human beings, and refute the theory (held by Morris) that man’s nature has been predominantly moulded bya wolf-like hunting experience. For by far the greater part of the evolution of man’s ancestors, after they came down from the trees, it would be truer to term them “scavengers” rather than “hunters”. In any case, adaptation to a hunting life would not necessarily make any creatures more aggressive within their own society,

Man and Monkey is a strange book: an idiosyncratic account of the author’s relations with woolly monkeys, combined with a theory of history and society which is a mish-mash of undigested bits of Hegel, Freud, Nietzsche, Lorenz and, yes, Marx. Here we see again the naked ape syndrome, of mixing up half-baked, gossipy opinions with hard facts, in the hope that the latter will add some conviction to the former. A couple of samples: “We are all agreed that the fate of humanity depends on whether the strength of morality can cope with the instinctive drives of man.”  “History shows that aggressive races possessed more initiative and energy than their passive neighbours.” Williams generally does reach opposite conclusions to those of Morris: he finds modern life profoundly unnatural.

One very clear conclusion from both Violence, Monkeys and Man and Man and Monkey is the horribly cruel treatment of our cousins the apes and monkeys, both in zoos and in the pet trade, in the interests of profit.

Steele.

Human Nature and Human Behaviour (1969)

From the September 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

“What about human nature?” is a common reaction among those hearing the case for Socialism for the first time. To a certain extent, no doubt, this reflects a healthy scepticism amongst ordinary people towards so revolutionary a new idea. But there is more to the human nature argument than this. Behind it is a clever but false theory touching on the subjects of biology, anthropology, and sociology.

Because man is lazy and greedy and aggressive, runs the human nature objection, he could not live in a society where work was voluntary or where there was free access to wealth. If work were voluntary, nobody would do it; if goods were freely available, there would be a free-for-all as people fought each other to grab as much as they could.

Let us be clear about what this says: that certain patterns of behaviour are innate and are inherited from genera­tion to generation by all human beings.

Highly adaptable

What evidence has been brought forward in favour of this view? Only the way men actually behave in present-day and in many previous societies. It is true that men sometimes are lazy or aggressive, but this is not in itself strong enough evidence for concluding that this is because they are born that way. Because, if this were so, all men would exhibit these characteristics at all times in all societies.

Since this is what the human nature argument asserts, it is sufficient to disprove it to produce examples of men behaving in a hard-working or a friendly way. This is easy. At times most human beings will feel lazy; at others they will undertake extremely hard work because they enjoy it. At times they will be aggressive, but at others friendly and helpful to their fellow human beings. The fact is that everyday experience of life today disproves the human nature argument.

So does the evidence of the past. There are traveller’s tales going back to ancient times of human communities based on common property with equal or fair sharing of what little there was to go round. Witnesses have testified to the consistently friendly and co-operative behaviour of the members of these communities. Anthropologists studying present-day survivals of primitive social systems — like the Eskimos, the Bushmen of South West Africa, or the aborigines of Australia — confirm this. In fact all the evidence amassed on human society and human behaviour suggests no rigid or consistent pattern. Quite the reverse. It points to man being a highly adaptable animal who can survive in and adjust to an immense variety of different circumstances.

So we can list the evidence against the human nature objection to Socialism:

• That there have been societies based on voluntary work and free co-operation.
• That some work today, for example the dangerous work of manning lifeboats, is done voluntarily.
• That there have been societies where there has been free access to some of the necessities of life.
• That those things, such as water from a public drinking tap, that are more or less freely available today are not grabbed or hoarded.

What is more, there is no evidence from genetics, the branch of biology concerned with heredity, that complicated behaviour patterns like being greedy can be inherited. The mechanism by which certain characteristics are inherited is now fairly well known. The sort of characteristics that are inherited are those governing the physical make-up of man. Since the brain is part of the human body this too is inherited, but ideas and complicated patterns of behaviour are not transmitted along with the brain. Each normal human being will inherit a brain that can be trained to think abstractly just as he inherits hands that can be trained to use tools and make things or a voice that can be trained to speak and sing.

A picture of man’s real nature is now emerging. What man inherits are certain physical features and certain capacities. The physical make-up of man merely defines the limits of what he can do, but within those limits man can learn to do anything. We have now come again to the conclusion that man is an immensely versatile animal who can learn to live in many different circumstances.

So, from the points of view of both sociology and biology, man is an adaptable animal. Behaviour patterns like aggression are not inherited but learned as are behaviour patterns like friendliness. Man can be and is both aggressive and friendly; it depends on social circumstances, not on his biological make-up.

The anthropologist Ashley Montagu’s book The Bio-Social Nature of Man well sums up that man is part of nature (biology) but that he develops only it and through society. That man is by nature a social animal, in the sense of developing his capacities only through society, is an important point.

Self-alteration

What distinguishes human beings from other animals are such features as the ability to think abstractly and the ability to use and make tools. All these thought, speech, and tool-making — are linked. All of them could have developed only through society. It was probably through working to satisfy his basic needs that pre man developed his brain and his hands and so became man or homo sapiens. Indeed, the basis of al human activity and thought is the way men organise themselves to satisfy such needs as food, clothing and shelter. Human society develops, and human behaviour changes, as the methods men employ to produce wealth develop. Since it is men themselves who change and improve the technical methods and the social organisation of production, we can say, as in the title of another book by the archaeologist V. Gordon Childe, that Man Makes Himself. Man changes himself by changing the environment in which he lives. Such too will be the change from capitalism to Socialism This will be the product of conscious human activity; in changing their environment from class to common property men will at the same time be changing the way they behave or, if you like, changing themselves.

There is nothing in the make-up of men that would prevent their freely working together and then freely taking from the common store what they need.

The human nature argument thus out to be, frankly, nonsense. But it is not only false. It is also part of the ideology by which class society and its coercive state machine are justified. Recall what the argument says — that man is lazy, that he is greedy and aggressive— and think what it would mean if it were true.

If men are lazy and will produce wealth only when they are forced to, then if human society is to continue, some men must be in a position to force the rest to work. Thus it is natural that human society be divided into rulers and ruled.

If men are greedy then they must be denied free access to the fruits of their labour and allowed only so much as will keep them working. Again, it is natural that society be based on private property and divided into exploiters and exploited.

If men are aggressive then they must be restrained, if human society is not to break up amid chaos. There must be a public power of coercion in the hands of a ruling minority. Thus the state machine and government over people also are natural.

What a convenient theory! Class society, exploitation, and oppression justified as natural! Of course this is no accident. The human nature argument is a ruling-class idea. As long as people believe that Socialism is impossible and that only class and property society is practical the ruling class is safe. Marx pointed out that in a non-revolutionary period the ruling ideas in society are the ideas of the ruling class. The human nature argument is so widespread today because it is a ruling class idea in a pre-revolutionary period.

Lenin Twists Marxism (1969)

From the September 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Marx and Engels, as anyone who has read their writings knows, used the terms ‘socialism’ and ‘communism’ interchangeably to describe what they stood for. They did not think of them as separate systems of society but merely as different names for a system based on the social or common ownership of the means of production. Why they used one and then the other was explained quite clearly by Engels in one of the prefaces he wrote to the Communist Manifesto. Nevertheless the myth still persists that Socialism and Communism are not just different names for the same system of society.

Most of the common distortions of Marxism can be traced back to Lenin, and this one is no exception. Until 1917 Lenin and the Bolsheviks regarded themselves as Social Democrats and called the stage in social evolution that would follow capitalism — a wageless, moneyless, stateless society based on common ownership — Socialism. If pressed they would have agreed that another, if somewhat dated, name for this society would be Communism.

The support given by the rest of Social Democracy to the first world war came as a shock to Lenin and led him to decide that a complete break with them must be made. On returning to Russia in April 1917 he suggested that the Bolsheviks change their name to ‘Communist Party’, and that they prepare to seize power for Socialism in the immediate future.

In the course of explaining his proposal to change the party’s name Lenin advanced a curious argument. Our aim, he wrote, was not just Socialism but eventually Communism also:

  From capitalism mankind can pass directly only to socialism, i.e., to the social ownership of the means of production and distribution according to the amount of work performed by each individual. Our Party looks farther ahead: socialism is bound to pass gradually into communism, upon the banner of which is inscribed the motto: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs (Selected Works, Vol. 6).

This was the first hint that Lenin saw any distinction between the meanings of the two words, but this theme was to be developed in more detail in his abusive, dishonest, and confused pamphlet The State and Revolution, written: in August and September of the same year.

However, the part of his April Theses, as they were called, which attracted the attention was not this but his call for the Bolsheviks to get ready to seize power and establish Socialism. Until then the immediate political aim of the Bolsheviks had been the establishment of a democratic republic in Russia, not Socialism. Like the more orthodox Social Democrats, the Mensheviks, they had accepted that, on any understanding of Marx’s theory of social evolution, Russia was not ripe for Socialism.

This sudden about-turn did not go without comment from Lenin’s opponents. “In aiming at power for Socialism now”, they told him, “you are abandoning Marxism; anybody can see that the economic conditions for the establishment of a socialist society do not yet exist in Russia”. Lenin’s reply was ingenious but typically dishonest. “You are talking about Communism”, he told his critics, “but we have never said we were going to introduce that; our immediate aim is only Socialism”. Till then, however, nobody else who called himself a Marxist had been aware of any difference between Communism and Socialism. Lenin’s reply, in which he redefines Socialism so as to be able to call the Bolsheviks’ immediate programme ‘socialist’, reads:

  Actually, when a learned professor and following him the philistine, and following him Messrs the Tseretelis and Chernovs, talk of unreasonable utopias, of the demagogic promises of the Bolsheviks, of the impossibility of ‘introducing’ socialism, it is the higher stage or phase of communism they have in mind, which no one has ever promised or ever thought to ‘introduce’, because it generally cannot be ‘introduced’ (The State and Revolution).

Without batting an eyelid at his trickery Lenin went on: “and this brings us to the question of the scientific difference between socialism and communism . . .”! How Lenin got away with this is difficult to understand, especially since in the earlier part of his pamphlet he himself falls into his old habit of using ‘socialism’ when, according to his own distortion, he should have used ‘communism’.

Three phases

Let us now have a look at Marx’s views on this question since this will expose Lenin’s twisting better. Marx held that capitalism paved the way for a classless society based on common ownership which, as we saw, he and Engels called either communist or socialist. Marx also held that this new society could only be set up by the political action of the working class. The period between the winning of political power and the final establishment of common ownership (or Socialism) Marx sometimes called “the dictatorship of the proletariat”, because during it state power (dictatorship, which had not yet come to have its modern meaning) would be used by the working class (proletariat). During this period the workers would be using the state to transform society from capitalism to Socialism by taking various measures, depending on the circumstances of the time, aimed at abolishing private property in the means of production. This done, Socialism had been established and the need for a coercive state machine gone. Marx also suggested that in the early stages of Socialism there would have to be some restriction on the amount of wealth people could take from the common store. Eventually, however, when the means of production had been sufficiently developed, Socialism could go over to the principle: from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.

Thus, for Marx there were three different circumstances:

1. A political—i.e., with the state still existing — transition period between capitalism and Socialism.
2. An early stage of Socialism, i.e., with the state gone, without full free access.
3. A later stage of Socialism with free access according to needs.

We must add here that further political and economic developments since Marx’s day e.g.—and we give a fairly full list so you can get some idea how far-reaching these have been — universal suffrage, political democracy, continuing centralisation and concentration of industry, vast technical advances like the development of electricity, the motor vehicle, aviation, radio and TV, plastics, computers, automation, nuclear energy, and space travel have, in our view, meant that Marx’s political transition and his early stage of Socialism can be passed through very quickly.

Marx’s first stage of Socialism was still Socialism. The political transition period from capitalism was over so that class property, the state machine, money, buying and selling, wages, and profits had already disappeared. The basis of society was the common ownership and democratic control of the means of life and the aim of production was solely to meet human needs. Only, for a time until plenty for all could be produced, there would have to be some democratic social control over the amount of wealth individuals took from the common store in order to ensure that the temporarily limited supplies were shared fairly. This, and only this, was the difference between Marx’s first and higher phases of Socialism/Communism.

Lenin’s so-called Socialism (which was supposed just to be another name for Marx’s “first phase of communist society”) was radically different from this. For under it, Lenin explained, the state would still exist:

  All citizens are transformed here into hired employees of the state, which consists of the armed workers. All citizens become employees and workers of a single nationwide ‘syndicate’. All that is required is that they should work equally, do their proper share of work, and get equally paid (The State and Revolution).

Lenin’s trick should now be obvious. He has deliberately confused Marx’s political transition period and his early stage of Socialism, trying to make out that they were one and the same. Only thus can he reach the absurd conclusion that in Socialism there would still be a coercive state and still be employees getting wages. What Lenin was advocating the Bolsheviks should introduce in Russia in 1917 was actually a form of state capitalism, though ironically this phrase too was to cause him trouble later when he made state capitalism yet another stage in the supposed transition from capitalism to Communism!

Once you realise that Lenin was not a Marxist and that the Russian social system is state capitalism then there is no difficulty in recognising, along with Marx and Engels, that Socialism and Communism are just two alternative ways of referring to a society based on common ownership.

Adam Buick

50 Years Ago: Andrew Carnegie, brain sucker (1969)

The 50 Years Ago column from the September 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

On the 12th of August the death of Andrew Carnegie was reported, and all the capitalist newspapers united to diffuse an odour of sanctity around the man whose fortune—like all other great fortunes—was built up by the sucking of other men's brains.

It was on the shoulders of others that Carnegie climbed to affluence. Unscrupulous, alike in his dealings with his fellow capitalists and his workmen, he crushed out all who stood in his path, until he came up against a more powerful combination than his own, then he stepped quietly down and out of business, leaving Morgan, Rockefeller & Co. a clear field.

Carnegie came at the first flush of the era of speculation and "high finance" in America, and the tide swept him along with it. The keystone of his success was his ability in appropriating the product of other men's brains (as well, of course, as the product of their hands), or, as he himself repeatedly expressed it in relation to his managers, finding better men to look after his interests.

The man who is set up as a model of "self-help" was helped by others all his life. The only direction in which he exercised self-help was in helping himself to the the product of the work of others. A quotation from the full-page effusion on Carnegie's life in the Daily Telegraph (Aug. 12th) gives in a nutshell the story of his life and the cause of his success.

He began the world without a penny. He retired from business sixty years after one of the richest men in the world—to put it no higher—with a fortune of some £90,000,000 . . . It was won by a man who had no training for his life-work. The greatest of iron masters knew nothing of metallurgy.

(From an article 'The Passing of a Brain Sucker' by G. McClatchie in the Socialist Standard, September 1919).

20 plan to launch 'Socialist Party' (1969)

From the September 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

A conference of May Day Manifesto supporters held in Leeds over the weekend of July 19-20 passed a resolution by 20 votes to four (with eight abstentions) which commits them to initiate “the formation of the Socialist Party and the organisation of a coherent socialist candidature at the next general election." This represents a clear advance on earlier positions taken up by the May Day Manifest groups when many of them saw themselves as little more than dissident members of the Labour Party. Now they recognise that “the source of Labour’s repeated failures as an agency for Socialism" lies “not in the personalised betrayals of leaderships, nor in the abstract virus of ‘Right- Wing Labour', but in the concrete limitations of Labourism"; in other words. Labourism must be broken with entirely and an independent Socialist Party organised.

Confused demands

This view was, of course, pioneered by the Socialist Party of Great Britain and we are pleased to see that other workers are now coming to accept it. But nevertheless the May Day Manifesto supporters do not intend to join the Socialist Party. In fact, their rejection of what they call the ‘subordinate reformism' of Labour is linked with a criticism of ‘maximalist revolutionism’—by which they mean the confused, reformist demands touted by the various trotskyist sects! What they propose as an alternative is a "strategy of graduated ends", a fancy name for yet another reform programme. Little wonder then that a visitor from Bradford asked in bewilderment at one stage of the conference, “What in this new party means it’s going to be different from other parties?”

Supporters of the suggested new party also seem to be firmly under the spell of the other common leftist delusions. During the conference breaks members of the Socialist Party discussed these issues with some of the May Day Manifesto members. Their most frequent objections to our Party were that we are too small to be taken seriously and that by preaching pure Socialism in the form of 'abolition of the wages system’ we are out of touch with the working class. Now as a matter of actual fact the Socialist Party of Great Britain completely dwarfs the May Day Manifesto groups, and as for the proposed new ‘Socialist Party’, at this stage the chances of it reaching triple figures seem infinitely remote. Of course, what really makes us unacceptable to all shades of leftists is not our admittedly tiny organisation but the fact that we do not pretend that we are going to ‘lead the masses’. But their other objection is richer still. Socialists certainly have no illusions about the difficulties involved in getting ideas like a world without money across to workers steeped in capitalist values, but at least we recognise that Socialism is a simple idea which it is quite possible to express in simple language. Contrast this to May Day Manifesto phraseology. The documents they were debating at their conference bristled with passages like:

  Further, it demands that the goals be articulated together in a strategic vision, and that as the struggle progresses, pressing on to the structural limits of the system, it gains not only in breadth, but also in depth. Such a dialectical development of the struggle presupposes a pre-existent socialist intention among the masses, (etc. etc.)

And they say we are out of touch with the working class!

John Crump

Socialists and the Irish question (1969)

From the September 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

  So far as the working class were concerned all that was accomplished by the achieving of national independence and self-government for 26 of the 32 Irish counties was a change of masters.
  Only Socialists can give a clear-cut answer to the “Partition question” and be consistent in it: the removal of “the Border” will not remove one social evil from which the working class suffer; and so, it is obviously not a problem which concerns the working class.

— Manifesto of the (World) Socialist Party of Ireland, 1949.

Food to rot while people starve (1969)

Editorial from the September 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

It’s about to happen yet again. They’re going to let food rot while millions go hungry. At the beginning of August representatives from the five major wheat exporting countries (America, Canada, Australia, France, and Argentina) met in London to discuss the so-called wheat crisis. It was just over a year since their International Grains Agreement carved up the world wheat market between them. This carve-up, which was supposed to apply for three years, is in danger of breaking down because of what is callously called a "world surplus supply situation in wheat”. By which is meant, not that there is more wheat than people need, but more wheat than can be sold profitably. This arose partly because of two bumper harvests on the run and partly because Russia, China, India, and Pakistan have cut down on their imports.

Press reports sum up the situation. America, according to The Times (July 28)

  will have a larger supply of wheat available this season in spite of a forecast of a 9 per cent drop in new production this year. Over 810.6m. bushels of old crop wheat was left when the season ended on June 30; this reflects a sharp fall in sales, particularly in the export market.

Canada, too, is in trouble:

  She started the crop year with an unsold inventory of some 665m. bushels which is more than the entire crop harvested in 1968. It Is estimated that at the end of the crop year today she will have more than one thousand million bushels of unsold wheat on her hands (The Times, August 1).

But it is from Australia that the most amazing proof of the absurdity of capitalist production for profit comes:

  The Government estimates that more than 150m. bushels of wheat will have to be left on the farms when the present crop is harvested. It has been told by wheat farmers that unless it provides thousands of pounds in extra subsidies to pay for special storage the grain will either rot or be ravaged by vermin (The Times, July 17).

One Minister has already blamed the farmers for growing far too much! The wheat will probably rot because the warehouses are already filled with last year’s unsold stocks. Besides, the law says the surplus above the farmers’ quota cannot be sold.

Trade war

The International Grains Agreement laid down minimum prices, but with things as they are these have been under pressure. America, accusing France and Australia of getting round the agreement, announced that it was openly reducing some of its prices below the agreed level. Canada followed suit and France (through the Common Market) has retaliated by subsidising wheat exports. The prospect of a trade war in wheat while millions starve is on the cards.

But it is not the hungry millions that worried The Times. They were more concerned about the effects such a price war might have on international monetary arrangements. Something must be done, declared an editorial in their business section on July 31; wheat production must be curtailed:

  It has to be accepted by everyone that an outright price war will not expand the volume of wheat trade. Misunderstandings between nations of each other’s policies have to be removed and limitations will need to be agreed on future production. There is evidence that the wheat producers have been misled into over-producing by the buoyant markets of a few years ago. Some of this may be due to technical progress in obtaining bigger yields from the same acreages. But the long-term factors which led to a doubling of the world’s wheat trade in the past 15 years have spent their force.

The attitude of the Financial Times was even more outrageous. After stating that “a solution of the crisis except by natural disaster seems a long way off”, their agricultural correspondent, ignoring the fact that up to half the world’s present population could do with more food, concluded:

  Until world population rises sufficiently to increase the demand for wheal, land will have to be put to other use or lie fallow, perhaps for many years (August 6).

Production will of course be curtailed. The US Department of Agriculture is already predicting a drop in world wheat production:

  It estimated total wheat production in the major exporting countries of Australia, Argentina, Canada, France and the US would be down by about 7 per cent cent from last year’s 3,500m. bushels . . . The Department noted that stocks in major exporting countries continued to increase. A rise of around 620m. bushels during the 1968-69 season to an estimated 2,000m. had caused ‘some countries’ to review their policies on wheat production, it said. (Financial Times, July 30).

Within capitalism, where production is geared to the market rather than to human needs, this is the obvious answer. Farmers will not grow wheat they know they can only sell at unprofitable prices, if at all. Production must be cut down for a while so that some of the huge stocks piling up in the warehouses can be cleared, thus making wheat-growing profitable again. Of course this will only be temporary. In a few years time, there will probably be another so-called wheat glut and the whole sordid business of irate farmers, worried Ministers, price wars, rotting food, and hungry people will be repeated. It is just part of the way capitalism normally works, a striking proof that capitalism is inherently incapable of operating in a rational way so as to serve human needs.

This is why under capitalism giving away the alleged surpluses to people who need food is no solution. This would in fact make matters worse by further disrupting the world wheat market and lengthening the time it takes to recover. Besides, it is less expensive to let the food rot than ship it to where it is needed. The logic of capitalism (which puts profit before human need) points rather to absurd measures like the American policy of paying farmers not to grow food or its Australian alternative of letting the food they have grown rot on their farms. If, in a world where half the population go to bed hungry, these measures seem inhuman, that is because capitalism is an inhuman, anti-social system.

Oxfam: the alternative (1969)

Book Review from the September 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Food Resources: Conventional and Novel by N. W. Pirie Penguin, 5s. 

Dr Pirie is head of the biochemistry department at Rothamstead Experimental Station. His short book gives brief indications of some of the possibilities for developing food production in such fields as polar agriculture, distillation of sea water, and the farming of the sea.. He also mentions research on new crops which could revolutionise farming (and eating) as much as the potato did in its day.

But Dr Pirie recognises that there is more to the problem of world hunger than simply producing more food. After all, what is the point of building vast glasshouse systems to grow vegetables during the brief but hot summers in such places as Alaska or Tadzhikistan when in the United States more than 33 million acres of fertile land is now withheld from agriculture because of ‘overproduction’? Or what is the point of India soon having the potential to produce 1.9 million tons of fertiliser a year when the road system throughout the sub-continent prevents efficient distribution ?

As a trained scientist Dr Pirie understands that “the work of charitable foundations such as Oxfam is magnificent and it has relieved a great deal of human suffering, but it is essentially palliative and does not get to the root of the matter". What is really needed, he says, is political action. So why is he donating all the profits on the sale of his book to Oxfam? Presumably because up to now he has seen no worthwhile political alternative to Oxfam’s well-meaning but feeble attempts to palliate capitalism.

This, then, is our job. To explain to thoughtful and involved individuals like Dr Pirie that only Socialism will liberate man's ability to produce a world of abundance—and also to make use of the information which experts like him can supply us with. In their way, books like this are bombshells to capitalism—and socialists have the detonator.

John Crump

Capitalist reformism (1969)

Book Review from the September 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Functional Socialism: A Swedish Theory for Democratic Socialization, by Gunnar Adler-Karlsson. Bokforlaget Prisma, Sweden.

This is an unusual pamphlet. For it is actually a defence of the reformist policy of the Swedish Social Democratic party in the name of Socialism. This party of course is no more a socialist organisation than the British Labour Party and has managed the affairs of Swedish capitalism for the past 35 years.

What Adler-Karlsson calls 'functional socialism' is basically what was put forward here by Labour Party anti-nationalisation thinkers in the 1950s. Ownership, the argument goes, is made up of a set of functions which the capitalists exercise. If we control these functions in the interests of society then there is no need to formally take all industry into state ownership. "We have", claims Adler-Karlsson on behalf of Swedish Social-Democracy, "limited the rights of the owners of the means of production to use their goods in an unsocial way" and he instances measures like profits taxes, state control of banking, anti-inflation moves, etc., etc. All we can say is that if this is socialist then the Tories must believe in so-called functional socialism too.

The whole argument is absurd. When the modern state intervenes in economic affairs and limits the activities of individual capitalists it does so in the interests of the capitalist class as a whole. This has nothing to do with Socialism. Besides, it is based on the false premise that nationalisation is Socialism. Once you realise that it is only state capitalism then you can leave it to the reformists to argue among themselves as to the desirable degree of state ownership and control in a particular capitalist country.

We will leave Adler-Karlsson arguing with the supporters of Russian state capitalism. Unfortunately, he wrongly believes them to be genuine Marxists with the result that his own references to Marx are mostly inaccurate.

The pamphlet ends with a call to "strip and divest our present capitalists of one after another of their ownership functions". We are sure that, after 35 years of Social Democrats rule, Swedish capitalists like the Wallenberg family are trembling at the prospect!

Adam Buick

Obituary: Tom Garfield Davies (1969)

Obituary from the September 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

With regret we report the death of Tom Garfield Davies of Swansea Branch. Garfield, as he was affectionately known to Party members, joined the Party just after the last war; finding as he put it the “political party he had been looking for all his life”.

Although never very active in the Party he was nevertheless a keen and able advocate of the socialist idea, once succeeding in getting the socialist case clearly expounded in the radio programme ‘Any Answers’. His work as a male nurse brought him into direct contact with human suffering. Qualities of kindness and understanding coupled with a keen sense of humour equipped him well for this task; it also convinced him of the rightness of the socialist case.

We extend our deepest sympathy to his relatives and friends. He will be sadly missed.

Swansea Branch

Social Evolution (1969)

Book Review from the September 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Man's Rise to Civilisation as Shown by the Indians of North America, from Primeval Times to the Coming of the Industrial State by Peter Farb. Secker & Warburg, 55s.

Those whose ideas about North American Indians have been moulded by Western films and novels will find Peter Farb's book a revelation. The author takes his readers on a three-dimensional trip, north to south, east to west, and past to present, calling on all the familiar names like Cheyenne, Apache, Pawnee, Seminole, Iroquois, Eskimo, and Aztec, as well as lots of lesser-known ones. He sheds a lot of light on their customs and behaviour.

When 'white' men invaded America they met a confusing babel of languages and a multiplicity of different social organisations. They experienced varying reactions from the different groups of Indian natives. Some were warlike, others peaceful; some honoured agreements, others broke them; some were passively resistant, others fled; some were regarded as noble red men and others as ignorant savages. Some were organised under powerful chiefdoms with strong military institutions. Some were groups of families which looked to a senior member for advice which they did not necessarily have to take, and in consequence did not consider themselves bound by agreements supposedly made on their behalf. Some had well-defined social classes with a state machine to protect the interests of the the privileged class. Farb classifies these under four main headings: 1. The Band, 2. The Tribe, 3. The Chiefdom and 4. The State—the first two with sub-headings.

Farb shows that the stage of social organisation to which each Indian group had evolved determined its attitude to the white explorers and invaders, from Columbus and Cortes to the Puritan pilgrims and the westward-thrusting farmers and traders. He also explains the effects of the white man's institutions on the native organisation: how fur trading affected the communal organisation of the Indians in the Hudson Bay and Labrador areas and how the introduction of the horse and the gun affected the Plains Indians.

The book attempts to explain social evolution by cultural development and Farb understands culture to be "that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom and other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society." Those 'other capabilities' must include technology; in fact, Farb says so later in his book when he refers to cultural reasons as "social, political, economic, and technological" ones.

To explain social organisation by cultural development is like explaining that the reason a man crosses a road is to get to the other side—it leaves us wondering why he wanted to get to the other side. For a more complete understanding of social organisation we must isolate one part of the culture, and without ignoring the other parts see how its influence is decisive in determining social development.

If we isolate the technological aspect we can see how a social group has been able to extend its control over nature by the discovery and invention of tools and processes and we shall see how this aspect is the foundation of all human activities, determining their condition and defining their limits.

Peter does not miss the technological aspect, far from it, but by failing to emphasise its fundamental importance he lessens the weight of his words. By lumping it in with what we would call 'the social superstructure' he blurs what would otherwise be an excellent definition. 

With the advantage of an additional hundred years of archaeological research behind him, Farb shrugs aside the classifications of men like Lewis Morgan and Frederick Engels as being too general to be useful. We appreciate that when people at different levels of social organisation come into contact they absorb aspects of one another's culture and this makes the pieces of the historical jig-saw more difficult to piece together.

Man's rise to civilisation has not been determined by his laws, arts, customs, religions, etc. but by his increasing inventiveness and adoption of more efficient tools, machinery and techniques of production. Although much of what Morgan, Engels, and others of their day wrote is outdated, the historical milestones they uncovered are still there to point the way. If history is to have a meaning it must reveal the motivating factor of social development so that we may gauge progress into the future.

Just as the digging stick and the rabbit snare were fundamental to the social organisation of the Shoshonean Indians, so modern methods of production are fundamental to capitalism and are the driving force towards Socialism.

Farb may be able to prove that man has not travelled the road to civilisation by a strict rotation of steps, there may have been leaps forward or steps backward, but he cannot prove that the type of social organisation of any people has not been limited by the technology of the time and place.

The latter chapters of the book deal with the recent aspirations of the Indians and the attempts at a cultural revival. These read like the story of the Maccabees and other people who have been swamped by a society at a higher level of social development. They looked for a messiah to lead them back to the good old times. But Farb's portrayal of Karl Marx as a messiah, Lenin as a prophet, and Stalin and Trotsky as disciples is amusing.

W. Waters

Bolshevik primer (1969)

Book Review from the September 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

The ABC of Communism by N. Bukharin and E. Preobrazhensky. Penguin, 8s.

For half a century Bolshevism has been a blight on the working class movement. But recent years have seen an important tendency, especially among many young workers, not only to recognise Russia as state capitalist but also to question Bolshevik methods and the theories from which they are derived. To do this many have been going back to the classics of Marxism and Leninism and it is no accident that over the last few years several major works which have been unavailable for decades have suddenly been republished as commercial propositions. So the very fact that Penguin now find it profitable to bring out from its mothballs the ABC of Communism is significant.

Bukharin and Preobrazhensky belonged to the generation of old Bolsheviks which was systematically murdered by Stalin in the 1930s. After allying himself with Stalin against the opposition led by Trotsky and Zinoviev, Bukharin ended up as one of the defendants in the Moscow trials and was shot in 1938.  Preobrazhensky was expelled from the Bolshevik party along with Trotsky in 1927, but after 'recanting' he was readmitted for a short period in 1929 — only to be arrested and executed later.

Their ABC, however, was written before this (in 1920) as a commentary on the programme adopted by the eight Bolshevik party congress in March 1919. Over the next ten years it was accepted as "an elementary textbook of communist knowledge" and was published by Communist parties throughout the world.

The ABC now stands as a monument to the utopian dream of Lenin and and his comrades in the early days of Soviet Russia. World socialist revolution was the order of the day — "What Marx prophesised is being fulfilled under our very eyes. The old order is collapsing. The crowns are falling from the heads of kings and emperors. Everywhere the workers are advancing towards revolution . . ." But it is more than this — it also shows that, for all its defects, their understanding of capitalism and Socialism was far more penetrating than that of their latter-day disciples. So Bukharin writes that a fundamental "characteristic of the capitalist system is the existence of wage labour" and, referring to so-called "state socialism", that "here, likewise, there is no trace of socialism. We have state capitalism, based upon forced labour". Contrasted to this is "proletarian communism (or proletarian socialism)" — "a huge co-operative commonwealth". "The communist method of production presupposes  . . . that production is not for the market, but for use": " . . . we no longer have commodities, but only products". 

It is also interesting to note that while most would-be Bolsheviks now talk in terms of 'generations' before the wages system could be abolished in Socialism, Bukharin — even though he was influenced by Russia's industrial backwardness and low level of production — merely writes that:

At first, doubtless, and perhaps for twenty or thirty years, it will be necessary to have various regulations. Maybe certain products will only be supplied to those persons who have a special entry in their work-book or on their work-card. Subsequently, when communist society has been consolidated and fully developed, no such regulations will be needed.

So we can warmly recommend the ABC of Communism as required reading for all sub-species of neo-Bolshevik. Although it contains numerous theoretical errors, it should introduce many of them to certain basic socialist ideas — which they have certainly shown no signs of being familiar with up till now.

John Crump