Sting in the Tail: The Ancient Bill (1989)

The Sting in the Tail column from the September 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Ancient Bill

In a recent Parliamentary debate Douglas Hurd, the Home Secretary, revealed that only three out of ten crimes reported in London are likely to be followed up by the police.

This gave Roy Hattersley, Labour's home affairs spokesman an opportunity to berate the present "crime screening" system, whereby priority is given to those crimes most likely to be solved.

Nothing special about this you may think, It is the old parliamentary game of the opposition criticising the government and pretending they could do a better job. But Hattersley went further than this. He was concerned that this would lead to "a decline in trust between public and police."

This view is based on the fallacy that in the past the public had trust in the police. Those workers who took part In the miners' strike would doubtless have something to say to Mr. Hattersley about that!

But distrust in the police force is no modern phenomenon. The first police force in Ancient Athens had to deal with the same problem:

But this gendarmie consisted of SLAVES. The free Athenian considered police duty so degrading that he would rather be arrested by an armed slave than himself have any hand in such despicable work.

Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State by Frederick Engels.

Left-Right Farce

Are you easily confused ? Do you find politics a bit of a mystery ?

If so then don't worry because you're not alone. Jacques Delors, President of the European Commission and obviously a mighty thinker, doesn't know if he is "on the extreme right of the Left or the extreme left of the Right" (The Guardian 16 June).

And according to the media the left wing Labour Party has a right wing (Hattersley, Gould, etc.) while the right wing Tories have a left wing (Heath, Gllmour, etc.).

What all this shows is that different labels cannot hide the basic sameness of outlook of both the "Left" and the "Right".

Source of Value

The price of gold In 1980 reached 850 dollars an ounce but is now around 370 dollars.

Reasons for this collapse include investors' money being lured away from gold by the strong dollar, high interest rates and the recovery of stock markets.

Of course these factors could change tomorrow and gold's price would rise again but there are more fundamental reasons for its decline.

One is the worldwide discovery of new goldfields which have sharply increased its supply. Another is that gold is simply not so valuable nowadays because the amount of labour necessary to produce it has been cut by more efficient mining methods, and labour is what gives every commodity, including gold, its value.

Inflation and Enoch Powell

The government spokesmen are at It again. They are running around the country talking about "inflationary wage demands". The recent increase of 8.8 per cent awarded to rail workers has been greeted with cries of "inflationary wages".

This is of course nonsense. It is not trade union action that causes inflation of the currency. It is governments that cause inflation.

One of the few politicians who recognise this and is not afraid to state it is, surprisingly, Enoch Powell. In the magazine Intercity of July/August he puts the position clearly:

The guilt is not with the public who persist In spending a depreciating currency. The guilt is not — even the suggestion has an old-fashioned sound nowadays — with the trade unions and the workers who obtain "inflationary'’ wage rises or with the employers who pay them.

Guilt there has to be, however, as guilt there will always be when money Is debauched: and the guilt, as usual, Is political, the guilt of politicians who use the power to manipulate the money in pursuit of objectives which, if they were candidly avowed and debated, would be publicly rejected.

Short Memories

Some people have short memories. During a debate in Parliament on the NUR's industrial action, Norman Fowler, the Employment Secretary, told Labour MPs:

The fact is that, however damaging or irresponsible any Industrial action is, you will always support it.

The Guardian 19 July

If Fowler had been dealing with Labour's attitude to strikes when in opposition then his outburst could be excused, but he must know Labour's record when in government.

For example, did Labour governments support strikes by the Dockers in 1949 and 1950, the Seamen in 1966, the Firemen in 1977 or public service employees during the Winter of Discontent ?

These and many other strikes were condemned and the strikers vilified, and this probably explains why no Labour MP told pipsqueak Fowler that no matter the issues in any strike, his party will always support the employers.

In view of these anti-trade union actions by both Labour and the Tories isn't it crazy that the vast majority of trade unionists will vote for them at the next election ? Some people certainly have short memories.

Money Makers

Victor Keegan usually writes clearly about economics in The Guardian so it was disappointing to read his piece of 17 July on the attempted takeover of BAT Industries by James Goldsmith and his cronies.

Keegan writes that the £3.7 billion which the bid added to BAT shares in just three hours ". . . must surely be the fastest bit of wealth creation ever recorded".

A slip of the pen? Not a bit of it, because he goes on - "The Increase in wealth is real in that if the bid succeeds then the shareholders in BAT will be that much richer . . .".

So they will, but the buyers of the shares will be that much poorer so what has that to do with wealth creation?

For Victor Keegan's information, the financial activities of Goldsmith and his ilk merely MAKE MONEY and they are perfectly happy to leave wealth creation - the production of the goods and services society needs - to the useful majority.

A Brave New World

All of us from time to time have tried to envisage what the future will be like.

However it is doubtful if in our worst nightmares we could have envisaged a future such as planned by the Adam Smith Institute. This bunch of hard right Tory headbangers have been turning their collective genius to the problems of crime.

In a report in The Independent dealing with a book "Streets Ahead” published by the Adam Smith Institute we learn:

The quality of city life would be improved by residents "privatising" their streets, mounting security patrols and putting gates at the end of the roads to keep out traffic, according to the Adam Smith Institute.

The only advantage that we can see in the scheme is that we would be able to repel, at our own privatised Checkpoint Charlie, such socially undesirable types as rent collectors, bailiffs and Tory Party canvassers!

Letters: A few questions (1989)

Letters to the Editors from the September 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

A few questions

Dear Editors.

Perhaps you could briefly deal with a few questions and criticisms that often arise when I introduce people to socialist politics. They include things like:

1. Isn’t abundance impossible, especially when there's an environmental crisis to avert?
2. How can you convince the majority that socialism is necessary when now they are so complacent and conservative?
3. What do you do when dictatorships like China dis-enable free speech, voting, etc.?
4. Won’t the state crush this emerging socialist movement before it's too strong?
5. Will a socialist economy be better than the price mechanism in allocating resources efficiently or is democracy in such detail impossible?

Allen Cullen, 

London, N.17

Reply:

1. The establishment of socialism presupposes the existence of a potential for abundance to enable free access to work. We believe that this has been a possibility for some considerable time now. We also argue that this could be achieved on a sustainable, non-polluting basis. Estimates of the number of people who could be fed and clothed adequately vary. Colin Clark estimates that using currently available methods the world could support 27 billion people (that is, five times the present world population).

The current environmental crisis is not caused by population growth nor by industrialism but by capitalism's need to produce for profit at almost any cost. Thus people go hungry while food rots in warehouses or is physically destroyed, because the poor do not represent "effective demand". The Earth's life-support systems are stressed almost to breaking point because the cost of implementing known solutions might render an undertaking (state-owned or private) less competitive and therefore less profitable on the world market.

Only socialism can ensure that the world’s resources are used rationally to fulfill human needs without causing environmental degradation.

2. If we were to rely only on the efforts of a small minority of socialists to convince the majority of the need for socialism it might well be considered an impossible task. However, aiding us in our task is the experience workers all over the world have of capitalism and its inability to satisfy their needs. Far from being complacent millions of workers are actively engaged in attempts at combatting its evil effects either through their work, through trade unions or through voluntary and charitable organisations. Unfortunately, these efforts are misdirected at trying to deal with effects rather than tackling the cause. Nevertheless some people are beginning to see that most of the problems of capitalism are world problems and as such require world solutions.

A vigorous, growing world socialist movement would be better placed to put forward at every opportunity the case for abolishing capitalism and establishing socialism—removing the cause rather than tinkering with the effects.

3. Resistance to dictatorship exists even under the most repressive regimes. Dictatorships do not extinguish ideas about having things organised differently—nor can they as recent events in China show. For much of the 19th century socialist ideas were repressed in Europe but it did not prevent the ideas of Marx and Engels spreading. In the forty years following the publication of the Communist Manifesto in 1848 this stirring call to revolution was translated into more than half a dozen languages despite fierce opposition and repression by the ruling class at the time

The development of glasnost ("openness”) in Russia today shows a growing recognition among the Russian ruling class that the free discussion of choices between various courses of action is a more efficient way of running capitalism than the imposition of administrative Diktat. Capitalism works best when it has the support of the vast majority. Pressure on the South African regime to include black workers in the political process by extending the franchise to them is coming increasingly from the capitalist class within South Africa itself.

4. What is meant by "too strong "? If the ruling class, through their control of the state, were intent on crushing the emerging socialist movement the time to do it would be now. By the time the socialist movement had grown strong enough to be of significance it would already be too late for the ruling class to crush it by dictatorial means.

5. Socialism will mean free access by all to the goods and services necessary for life. Capitalism, on the other hand, rations access by money and the price mechanism. This is an extremely inefficient and wasteful system. Time, effort and resources are spent on a whole range of activities (buying and selling, banking, insurance and so on) which the establishment of free access will make redundant. Effort is needlessly duplicated by enterprises competing for a limited market. In addition, the waste of resources dedicated to armaments and preparation for war, necessary under this system to defend minority class privilege and plunder, could go a long way to remove poverty. In his book The Hunger Machine Jon Bennett tells us that:

The money required to provide adequate food, water, education, health care and housing for each individual on earth would be about US$ 21 million a year. This is as much as the world spends on arms every two weeks (His emphasis)

The abilities of millions currently engaged in these wasteful activities would be freed to undertake useful work, giving of their ability and taking according to their need.

Not only is this eminently possible but it is also urgently necessary if we are to live useful and fulfilling lives in a co-operative and peaceful world community.

Editors.

What causes inflation?

Dear Editors,

Since the 1960s this country, and indeed the rest of the world, has been in the grip of rising inflation. The government attributes this phenomenon mainly to the level of wage demands; keep wages to a minimum they tell us and inflation will be brought under control.

The Socialist Party, on the other hand, holds that inflation is brought about by the printing and putting into circulation of an excess amount of paper money, and that it is this excess which causes prices to rise. This in turn starts a fresh demand for wage increases and the whole inflationary cycle continues to spiral.

If inflation is caused by an excess of paper money in circulation the question I would like to ask is: why doesn't the government cure inflation at one fell swoop by ceasing to print excess paper money? Inflation between the two world wars, with a few exceptions, was to all intents and purposes zero. What has changed to make inflation the rule rather than the exception?

Governments presumably print excess money in order to help finance the management of the economy—paying for the social and health services, defence spending. etc. But it did all these things between the wars, perhaps not on such a lavish scale, nevertheless the amounts would not be much greater if this expenditure was taken as a proportion of gross domestic production. In any event socialists maintain that all government expenditure is met from taxation, and in the last resort only the capitalist class pays taxes.

Puzzled,

Belfast

Reply:

We suggested some reasons why all Labour and Tory governments since the war have inflated the currency in the article on Thatcher's Economic Policy in the May Socialist Standard. First, sheer ignorance of the economic laws governing the circulation of paper money: the universities which turn out those who fill the top posts in the Treasury. Bank of England, etc. teach that the amount of notes and coins in circulation makes no difference to the general price level. Second, inflation tends to favour borrowers and the government itself is a major borrower. It would, however. not be true to say that governments have printed excess currency in order to help finance their spending. Government expenditure on social services, health, education and so-called defence is way in excess of the face-value of the extra paper money that is printed: expenditure in these fields is overwhelmingly financed from taxation and borrowing.

Editors.

Caught In The Act: High Hopes (1989)

The Caught In The Act Column from the September 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

High Hopes

There is little doubt that the Labour Party’s mood of self-congratulation at what they see as their impending take-over of power is premature. Whatever optimism they can dredge from recent election results it would still need the kind of swing in voting preferences unknown in recent times for the Tory majority to be overturned. This last happened over forty years ago. after the exceptional intervention in capitalism's affairs which was the 1939-45 war. To begin with this postponed at least one general election and then wreaked havoc on Tory strongholds and on the complacency with which they had been defended. Even the most fervently deluded of Labour supporters is unlikely to think that it is worth another world war in order to get Neil Kinnock into Number Ten.

Another factor is that the recent rise in Labour’s electoral fortunes may be an effect of the Tories going through a bad patch; there is no reason to suppose that this will necessarily affect mass voting patterns at the next general election. Most governments in mid-term are assailed by doubts and desertions among its supporters. Trying to run capitalism, unpredictable and crisis-ridden as it is, means that every government upsets the people who have voted for it. However much these supporters may kick over the electoral traces, this is expected to be little more than a nudge of discontent which can be indulged in while there is no chance of turning the government out. It is a different matter, when a general election comes and the party faithful return to voting for the method of running capitalism with which they feel most comfortable.

To be blunt. this is all a matter of ignorance. Not that the people who vote Labour or Tory or SDP or whatever are unable to read or write or do their sums. It is a matter of failing to come to grips with the realities of capitalism. Class conflict, poverty, environmental pollution are typical of capitalism because they are rooted in the system's basis of private ownership of the means of production and distribution. That is why the system is out of control; no matter how fervently a government may wish to abolish social problems it is powerless to do so. Anyone who grasps that fact will almost certainly join the struggle for a social revolution. Those who—like the Tory doubters, like the Labour celebrants— have not grasped it will continue to misunderstand how capitalism really works and so will devote their time to a futile pursuit of the unattainable. In comparison, a kitten chasing its tail is a model of sanity.

Sellafield sex symbol 

The Labour Party stand to gain, or lose, from that ignorance according to which direction the prejudices are pointing at any time. At present, for example, they are assuming that the growing Green vote can be persuaded without too much difficulty to switch to supporting Labour. If that were true it would indicate a serious lack of consciousness. not to say of consistency, among the Greens, for the record of Labour governments on the issue of pollution and the environment is no better than that of the Tories and should certainly not impress anyone with any concern about the planet and its survival. Indeed, when Labour was last in power there was a general failure even to acknowledge in any useful way that the environment was under threat. While the Labour government was obsessed with the more intense exploitation of the workers, the more efficient production of goods and the more competitive bid to capture markets, it was left to a few derided eccentrics to voice warnings about what all this was doing to the environment and to socialists to carry this case farther, to the conclusion that it was one of the counts on which capitalism stood indicted and one of the reasons for abolishing the system.

So the Labour Party—not for the first time—is in some difficulty over a matter in which human interests really leave no room for argument. Their problem is neatly encapsulated in the person of their Shadow Environment Minister, Dr Jack Cunningham. A few years ago. in a fit of desperation remarkable even for them, the Labour Party publicity machine tried to inflate Cunningham as a public persona with gusts of spurious glamour. Here, apparently, was Labour's next election winner In what was clearly meant to be its master stroke, the campaign described Cunningham as a political sex-symbol (Saatchi and Saatchi would have been aghast). The problem for the sex-symbol, however, is that while he is Shadow Environment Minister he is also the MP for the seat covering the Sellafield nuclear power station which, after its disastrous fire in 1957 and its consistent murder of the local beaches and of the Irish Sea, is not considered to be environment-friendly. As his job is to police the environment Cunningham might be expected to support the move to shut Sellafield down but to do so would assuredly cost him the votes of the workers there, who would have to find some other employer to exploit them if the plant shut. So Cunningham has to walk a thin, swaying tightrope on the issue—and, it must be said, does it with the kind of skill required for survival in the cynical and degrading art of deception Sexy Jack's job is to keep one eye on the environment and one on his votes and it is all too clear which of these has the higher priority for him.

Low Tories

While we are on the subject of sexual allure—or rather what passes for it—we might remember that it is not long ago (during the last election, actually) that we were being told about Thatcher's sexuality and how she applied it to get her own way. Those were the days when it seemed she could do no wrong in the business of capturing votes for capitalism, even lecturing the Russians on their own TV about how to run the system over there. Things have gone somewhat awry for the Tories since then so that their present preoccupation is with stiffening their wilting supporters, who suddenly have doubts about the glories of the Thatcherite paradise of privatisation. Thatcher's contribution to this process of stiffening has been, in spite of her reputation for being daringly innovative, rigidly traditional. She has. in other words, reshuffled her government, sacking a few ministers here, promoting a few there and stringing the process out over two days so that it got the maximum publicity. The idea behind this, apart from clearing away a few more dissidents, is to convince the workers that Downing Street has the situation under control and that whatever the current problems, it only needs some changes of personnel for them to be alleviated.

Also traditional is the Tories explanation for the reshuffle: that their policies remain effective but have not been properly publicised so that the people have misunderstood what is happening to them. The unemployed have been imagining that they are out of a job: people who depend on state benefits for their survival have not really experienced cuts in their income or found it even more difficult and baffling to get the money. The growing army of homeless workers are not actually without anywhere to live. It's just that the Thatcher government have been let down by their public relations. Now that bumbling Geoffrey Howe has been replaced as Foreign Secretary by thrusting, self-made John Major we shall all be consumed with gratitude for the bounteous age of Tory government

The ministers sacked by Thatcher went on their way in remarkably compliant mood. Not a hint of thwarted ambition nor of jealousy for preferred rivals disfigured the letters in which they grovelled in gratitude for being chopped. In reply. Thatcher wrote to them with great dollops of praise for their brilliance, their skill, their strength and deep regret at their departure from the government. It was almost as if Thatcher had not been responsible for them being sacked. And if they were so successful and indispensable, why were they thrown out?

In fact the letters were not written to the sacked ministers but to the millions of workers who are regularly duped into voting for capitalism and considered to be fit subjects for this kind of blatant deception.

Ivan

Between the Lines: The Patriot Game (1989)

The Between the Lines column from the September 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Patriot Game

"Come all you young rebels, enlist while I
 sing

For the love of one's country is a terrible 
thing.

It banishes fear with the speed of a flame


And makes us all part of the patriot game".

These are the opening lines of a song called The Patriot Game, written by Dominic Behan who died last month. The love of countries is, indeed, a terrible thing. It makes fools out of all patriots; it takes noble sentiments of home and community and equips them with guns and bombs. First Tuesday (ITV, 1 August. 10.35pm) allowed the voices of British troops in Northern Ireland to be heard. There are 10,000 of them on active service there: the mugs and thugs who do the dirty work for the British ruling class.

"If you're going to Ireland and afraid of being shot, then you're not doing your job", declared a Second Lieutenant in the Royal Green Jackets who exhibited the kind of wisdom that would not qualify him to look after my cat, let alone a pile of machine guns. Thankfully, most of the workers in uniform interviewed were not as desensitised as that they were frightened—petrified. They did not want to be there. Choice had not brought them: most were economic conscripts. making big money by taking big risks. "You get a load of bull when you join . . . you get told it's a good life, so you believe it". What was most striking about these soldiers was their immaturity. Listening to them, it was quite obvious that most had a conception of conflict which had not developed beyond the traditions of the school playground and the more juvenile antics of the football terraces. They were like puerile gang members: They try to wind us up, you try to wind them up”, explained one young keeper of the peace. He explained how they told him that his mother was sleeping with a black man. so he made them stand in the rain for ten minutes for a security check. They call it the war of nerves; well, they wouldn't call it a war of brains.

What was sickening about this patriotic parade was the brutal deference displayed towards violence. Said one soldier of his gun. “We take better care of it than a woman. Without it you're defenceless’. This

must have explained a lot to his wife if she was watching. But, more importantly, "without it you're defenceless"—the piece of designed killing machinery upholds life. It is little wonder that one of the officers, with more than a touch of perverse pride in his voice, declared that the IRA are the best terrorists in the world. Well, there's a compliment, from a man who gets paid and given medals for being a legalised Queen's terrorist.

By contrast—but not by contrast at all— Families At War (BBC1, 7 August, 9,30pm) was about Shane O'Doherty who became a volunteer for the IRA. Because of the state censorship law forbidding interviews with current members of the IRA the BBC had to interview O'Doherty, who has now denounced violence as being counter-productive. It must be said that O'Doherty came across as a much more human being than the current practitioners of armed brutality in the British army. Silly old British state: they pass a law preventing themselves from depicting the sick views of Irish Nationalists who really believe in the nobility of blowing up their fellow workers. O'Doherty had become a victim of the romantic folly of the patriot game by the time he was eight years old: at fifteen he joined the IRA and within a short time was indulging in such 'liberationary" acts as planting a bomb at Baker Street station in London. I bet he treated his gun better than any woman. They all do. And they go to sleep dreaming of piles of dead bodies on the other side. Their minds have been screwed up and they are victims of war; the gun. though pointed away from them, has inflicted an immeasurable injury upon their dignity and decency.

Shooting from the mouth

Whoever said that the pen is mightier than the sword was right. And talking is more potent than shooting. The present writer would not fancy a fist fight with the uniformed dummies in their Irish barracks, but in a debate they would be bloody slaughtered. A Gift Of The Gab (BBC2. 8 August, 9.50pm) was an interesting three-part series by Ludovic Kennedy about the art of oratory. As expected. Kennedy made some highly perceptive points in his first programme (the only one seen at the time of writing), but the series seems in danger of concentrating too much on the well-recorded oratory of parliamentarians and Presidents This emphasis misses a point: the main impetus for public speaking is the need to communicate beyond the available channels. The MP can go through the motions of repeating sterile speech-making formulae and the trade union leader can wave his arms in the time-honoured fashion, but it is the dissident, denied all opportunity to relate to a big audience except through the wit of holding them with his or her words, who usually makes the most intriguing speaker. To be specific. Churchill might have carved out a reputation as a brilliant pro-war orator, but that skill amounted to little compared with the brilliant eloquence of the orator whose dissenting words shout out against the popular support for warfare. "The love of one's country is a terrible thing" and to extinguish such fool's love is a skill to be admired.

Steve Coleman

50 Years Ago: The Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939 (1989)

The 50 Years Ago column from the September 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

The London newspapers of Tuesday. August 22nd (except the Communist Daily Worker, which was busy ringing Moscow) reported with astonishment the announcement from Berlin that Germany and Russia had negotiated a non-aggression pact, and that Herr von Ribbentrop, the German Foreign Minister, was flying at once to Moscow for the formal signature of the Treaty. This announcement. which came immediately after the completion of a trade agreement between the two Governments, was confirmed by the official Russian Tass News Agency in the following terms:

After the conclusion of the Soviet- German trade and credit agreement there arose the problem of improving political relations between Germany and the USSR.

An exchange of views on this subject. which took place between the Government of Germany and the USSR, established that both parties desire to relieve the tension in their political relations, eliminate the war menace, and conclude a non-aggression pact.

Consequently, the German Minister of Foreign Affairs, von Ribbentrop. will arrive in Moscow in a few days for corresponding negotiations. (Evening Standard, August 22nd. 1939.)

The Pact was duly signed in Moscow on August 23. thus realising a possibility suggested in these columns more than once.

[From an editorial "Birds of a Feather: The Russo-German Bombshell", Socialist Standard, September 1939.]

SPGB Meetings (1989)

Party News from the September 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Freud and Marxism (1) (1989)

From the September 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Fifty years ago this month one of the century's most controversial figures died: Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. He has been celebrated as a genius or condemned as a charlatan, but one thing is certain: he cannot be ignored.

Freud's influence has been overwhelming. His views have informed issues and debates in every field of knowledge dealing with human affairs, and have contributed to forming present-day 'common sense'. His views have influenced many of the institutions that are a part of our social world. Child care clinics and a whole apparatus of systems to intervene in the family have been established in the belief that a healthy child requires certain sorts of experiences. Other institutions that deal with the problems encountered by adults, such as psychiatry, social work and clinical psychology, have been influenced in how they conceive of the problem and its treatment.

It would be false, however, to believe that Freudian views have swept all before them. This is far from the case. Freudian ideas and practices exist within fields in conflict with other viewpoints which claim that psychoanalysis is invalid. This is so within Marxism.

Freud's Life and Ideas

Sigmund Freud was born on 6 May 1856 in Freiberg, Moravia, a small town some 150 miles north-east of Vienna, in present-day Czechoslovakia. Although tine family was Jewish, orthodox practices and beliefs were not emphasised. When his father’s wool business began to fail in 1860 the family moved and settled in Vienna.

Freud remained there, except for brief visits away, until 1938 when the Nazis invaded Austria. It was then that he moved to London, dying there on 23 September 1939, aged 83. Freud showed early academic promise and, as an adolescent his interests were broad and varied. The rampant anti-semitism in Vienna severely restricted the opportunities open to Jews. Freud chose medicine primarily because of the openings it provided to science. In 1873 he entered the University of Vienna and in 1882 entered practice at the Vienna General Hospital.

In 1885 he managed to get a travelling grant which allowed him to go to Paris to study with the famous French psychiatrist, Jean Charcot, at the Saltpetriere. The contact with Charcot marked an important watershed in Freud's intellectual development, as it led to the beginning of his concern with the psychical rather than the physiological basis of neurosis. At the time nervous diseases (neuroses) were treated by physical means such as electrotherapy. However, Charcot had shown that the use of hypnotic suggestion could be effective in recovering the lost function (such as vision or walking) in hysterics. This work was highly controversial and when Freud gave a presentation of it to the Vienna Society of Medicine it was met negatively.

On his return from Paris, Freud married and set up in private practice. He used hypnosis to enable patients to recall forgotten events and for making suggestions to change their behaviour. In doing so, Freud was using a technique developed by Josef Breuer whom Freud had known from his days at the University of Vienna.

An account of the case of one of Breuer's patients. Bertha Pappenham, together with the varying interpretations of Freud and Breuer, was published in Studies in Hysteria in 1895. This can be considered the founding publication of psychoanalysis. Through further experience with his patients and his own lengthy self-analysis beginning in 1897 Freud came to focus attention on childhood experiences and the role of early sexual development in the formation of neurosis. The Interpretation of Dreams was published in 1900. In it Freud presented his theory of the unconscious and of repression. Dreams were seen as the royal road to the unconscious. Freud's views on the development of the sexual instinct from infancy to maturity, and the link between early development and sexual perversion and neurosis in adulthood, were presented in the Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality in 1906. Freud was beginning to gather around him a group of followers: Alfred Adler, Carl Jung, Sandor Ferenczi, Otto Rank, Karl Abraham, Ernest Jones and others. He had also been appointed to a professorship. International recognition was growing and psychoanalysis was establishing a vigorous institutional foundation of congresses and journals. In 1910 the International Psychoanalytical Society was formed. However, with the growth and development there was also conflict and dissent. Adler left in 1911 and Jung in 1914.

Freud continued to refine and develop psychoanalytic theory and extend his analyses. The theory of psychoanalysis had expanded from a therapeutic technique based on clinical observation into a general account of neuroses, and into a theory of psychological processes in general. Finally, it had become a system in which most phenomena in body, mind and society were explained.

Psychoanalysis was always a source of controversy. But 1933 saw a new way to oppose it. When Hitler came to power Freud's writings, along with those of Einstein and H.G. Wells, were heaped on blazing public bonfires. Freud was reported as saying: "What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me, now they are contented with burning my books".

Freud's Geography of the Mind

Freud's views developed and changed over the years. It was in 1923 in The Ego and the Id that he presented his final account of the structure of the mind in terms of the Id, Ego and Superego. These, combined with the concepts of the unconscious, sexual energies and repression, form the basic framework of psychoanalysis.

One of the earliest findings for Freud was that the real motivation for an act may be disguised even to the person who performs it. Unconscious processes are the most important and the least accessible. Since these processes are outside awareness they can only be understood by way of their practical effects (for example, dreams, slips of the tongue). Unconscious processes can not be controlled by consciousness.

Of the three regions of the mind Freud described in 1923, the id was the most fundamental and basic aspect of the personality. It was the source of all the instinctual energy and was rooted in the biological characteristics of the human species. The id was governed by the pleasure principle and the immediate gratification of desire. The infant personality contained no other structure. The id was entirely amoral and incapable of making judgements of right and wrong. It pulsated with greed, envy and desire.

Out of this evolved a portion of the mind devoted to reason, the evaluation of external conditions and self-activity. This was the ego. Eventually, it became the executive of the personality, controlling the demands of the id and the super-ego. Whereas the id was shaped by instinctual forces, the ego was shaped by conscious perceptions and contact with the external world. The ego was governed by the reality principle.

The super-ego developed out of the ego as the child took on the standards of the parents. In the child's early development it had to learn right from wrong. This was done through the rewarding and punishing practices of the parents. As this was incorporated the super-ego was formed, and the child took on these parental functions by itself. The super-ego was just as unbending and unreasonable as the id. It would not tolerate any deviation from its rigid code of morals. If these morals were broken the super-ego produced a feeling of guilt in the ego, and if they were met a feeling of pride. The super-ego was governed by the morality principle.

In Freud's account of the structure of the mind the concept of energy was important, as it was this which he held quite literally fuelled the three systems and allowed for their development. All energy originated in the instincts, in the id. Of especial importance as a source of energy was the libido which consisted of the sex instinct. This differed from other instincts in that it could be diverted from its biological aim (sex) and sublimated or canalized into cultural activities and work.

The concept of the unconscious does not make much sense without the notion of repression, to help explain the relationship between the id and the ego. For Freud, the psyche (mind) was in a continuous state of conflict. In the middle of this conflict was the ego balancing the demands from the id, the super-ego and the external environment. This produced a state of anxiety which the ego attempted to ameliorate. The process whereby it achieved this was defence. The most pervasive and significant of the defence mechanisms of the ego was repression. Impulses from the id which might be disturbing to the ego and super-ego were shut out of consciousness. Repression was not a conscious process. Once repressed the material did not remain static, but attempted to break through to consciousness in a disguised form in fantasy, dreams and behaviour, often related to the original conflict.

In his account of the sexual development of the child, Freud argued that the child passed through oral, anal and phallic stages. In the phallic stage at 4-5 years of age the child turned to the genitals as a source of erotic gratification. It was at this age that male and female sexual differences became significant. Up to this time psychosexual development had been much the same for both sexes. But now the feelings of the boy towards the mother became more erotic. These feelings were complicated by feelings of rivalry with the father and a fear of loss of love and castration. This conflict Freud called the Oedipus complex and he believed it was universal to human development.

Marx or Freud?

The relationship between Freud and Marx's views has been one that has been a topic of controversy for half-a-century—and is likely to continue for some time. Those who favour an integration of Freud and Marx, and those who argue that there is an incompatibility between the two, are equally determined that theirs is the correct viewpoint. There does not seem to be a prospect that one or other will win the day. This tension, however, is not without benefit; it ensures that the issue of the role of the person in socialist theory remains a topic of debate, and not an arena left solely in the hands of the ideologues of capitalism, to be used to argue that socialism suppresses the individual. In fact, it is socialism that will ensure the free development of the individual. But this will not "just happen"; it is something that needs to be consciously produced. And that requires a valid theory of the individual.

Those who favour a Marx-Freud partnership, with Marx providing the social theory and Freud the psychology, are attracted to Freudianism on a number of grounds. First of all, they point to the dialectical quality of Freud's theorisation, with its emphasis on contradictions between the psychic regions, a quality they see as paralleling Marx's social dialectic. But this similarity is surely an inadequate reason to justify integration.

Perhaps the most important reason why Freud is chosen from the vast range of psychological theories is that he seems to offer an explanation as to how capitalist ideology can have such a hold on working class consciousness. For Marx, being determines consciousness, and the early Marxists assumed that as the means of production developed to the point where they came into contradiction with capitalist relations of production, so socialist consciousness too would develop in a relatively automatic way. However, the participation of the working class in the First World War. the rise of fascism and Stalinism, and the apparent decline in the ability of socialist ideas to attract support, cast doubt on this relative optimism; matters were far more complex. Freud's concepts of the unconscious as a realm of irrationality and of repression seemed to offer an explanation of how capitalist ideology buried deep into the personality beyond the control of the "rational conscious. Freud also offered a mechanism of how this occurred—in the early years of family life. It seemed as if the unconscious determines being.

However, Freudian theory has not remained unchallenged. both by academic psychologists and by Marxists. Not only has the tripartite division of the mind into id. ego and superego been seen as an idealist fiction derived from a religious tradition rather than an authentic materialism, but it has also been seen as giving too much emphasis to unconscious processes. Certainly Marx refers to events which people are not conscious of and of the unintended consequences of actions. But to explain these he does not refer to the unconscious wishes of individuals, but to the character of the social structure and of our ignorance of its mode of operation. Moreover, socialism was to come about not through the power of the unconscious, but through the development of consciousness within the working class. Revolutionary social change will be a result of the awareness of the contradictions of capitalism and not because of the libido.

Perhaps the most fundamental criticism of Freud concerns his concept of mind. For him the mind was an entity that could be separated from society. The mind had its own laws independent of society. Certainly Freud recognised that there was an interaction between mind and society but the mind nevertheless remained for him an individual phenomenon. To understand an individual it was not enough to know the history of the observable interactions of that individual's mental apparatus with the world.

In opposition to this dualism, a Marxist view sees mind as a relation and one that is embedded in specific, historically-determined social relations. In one sense, there is no theory of the individual in Marxism; there can be no Marxist psychology. This is because the individual-as-such is only an abstraction. For Marx, the individual is a concrete individual in a society of a certain kind characterised by a certain mode of activity. Thus a Marxist theory of the individual must have a basis in a different conception of psychology than that Freudianism shares with most other theories. This is a psychology that defines the object of study not as the individual, but as the study of the specific interactions of the "individual-m-relationship-with-the-world”.

Ed Blewitt

Part 2 can be read here.

Editorial: Our 1939 anti-war manifesto (1989)

Editorial from the September 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

In this, our first issue of the Socialist Standard since the declaration of war, we have the opportunity of reaffirming the socialist attitude that we have consistently maintained since the formation of the party, including the war of 1914-18. With the increasing international tension of recent years we have again and again pressed home the undeniable truth that as long as the world is organized on a capitalist economic basis the never-ceasing rivalries will continue to produce conflicts ranging from mere diplomatic crises to gigantic armed struggles spreading over the oceans and continents of the world. The Socialist Party of Great Britain re-affirms that the interest of the world working class—on whom the untold misery and suffering of war inevitably falls—lies in abolishing the capitalist economic system.

The present conflict is represented in certain quarters as one between “freedom" and ‘‘tyranny" and for the rights of small nations.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain is fully aware of the suffering of German workers under Nazi rule, and wholeheartedly supports the efforts of workers everywhere to secure democratic rights against the powers of suppression, but the history of the past decades shows the futility of war as a means of safeguarding democracy. After the last Great War—described as the war to end war, and as a war to make the world safe for democracy—the retention of capitalism resulted in the building up of new tyrannies and terrorisms through the inability of the capitalist states to solve the problems created by the system of private ownership of the means of production and distribution and the competitive scramble for raw materials, markets and control of trade routes. So little did the last war achieve its alleged purpose that the man who was prominently associated with the Allied victory and the claim that that war would be the last—Mr. Lloyd George—now has to confess that even this war may not be the last war. Writing in the Sunday Express, September 10th. Mr. Lloyd George says:

  It is only just over twenty years ago that France and Britain signed the armistice with Germany which brought to an end the bloodiest war in history. They are now fighting essentially the same struggle again.
  Germany is again the aggressor. Once more it is a fight for international right—the recognition of the equal right of nations, weak as well as strong, to lead their own independent lives so long as they do not interfere with the rights of their neighbours.
  This conflict has gone on periodically since the dawn of history. It will go on for many centuries to come unless and until mankind accepts that principle as one of the irrefragable commandments of humanity.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain calls on the workers of the world to refuse to accept this prospect, and calls upon them to recognise that only Socialism will end war.

Among those who support the present war is the British Labour Party, who long ago declared that the peace treaties of the last war contained the germs of a future war. At one time the Labour Party, in its Labour Speakers Handbook 1922, declared that the “unjust territorial arrangements" of the Peace Treaties must be rectified, including the return of Danzig and other Polish territory to Russia in accordance with the principle of “self determination".

The Socialist Party of Great Britain holds that neither the doctrine of “self determination", which the Labour Party then claimed had been violated by the Peace Treaties, nor the German claim for a new carving-up of Europe, nor any other policy for settling minority problems and international rivalries within the framework of capitalism, is capable of bringing peace and democracy to the peoples of the world. Another war would be followed by new treaties forced on the vanquished by the victors, and by preparations for further wars, new dictatorships and terrorism.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain therefore pledges itself to continue its work for Socialism, and reiterates the call it issued on the outbreak of war in 1914:

  Having no quarrel with the working class of any country, we extend to our fellow workers of all lands the expression of our goodwill and socialist fraternity, and pledge ourselves to work for the overthrow of capitalism and the triumph of Socialism.

The Executive Committee, SPGB 

September 24th 1939.

Nothing to worry about, claim farmers (1989)

From the September 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

By now most of us have got used to various organisations declaring designated days, weeks or even years that are devoted to highlighting some problem or other. Events such as No-Smoking Day. TUC Health and Safety Week and UN Year of Peace.

However, this year a problem is not being brought to our attention. In fact quite the opposite. This year the National Farmers Union are trying to convince us all that a problem does not exist. This is "British Food and Farming Year" and down here in Wiltshire they are celebrating in style. Every month there are two or three events, not to mention all the coverage in the local media. All this is going to cost the NFU a lot of money but they regard this as required "to fund a major advertising and public relations campaign to ensure that the message reaches the widest possible audience and creates a massive impact". At a time when more people are questioning the effects of capitalism on the food we eat and on the environment we live in, the NFU are hoping to convince us that ". . . a sea of fiddles, hand-outs, corruption, environmental destruction and food poisoning" simply does not exist.

Of course for the NFU some problems are real. Like how to keep the profits coming in at a time when food prices should be tending to fall due to "over-production" This problem is to be countered by paying farmers to take land out of production, by having quotas for the amount of food produced, and by simply destroying food or storing it in huge quantities. According to NFU President, Simon Gourlay: "It infuriates me that there is still talk about excessive profits. In most sectors the return on working capital would give an industrialist nightmares". Meanwhile millions of people starve to death every year or suffer preventable disease as a result of malnutrition.

The wage slaves working on the farms won’t be celebrating, as Ivan Monckton explains in the April edition of The Landworker:

  We have nothing to celebrate. We are still at the bottom of the wages heap, still having to cope with a far lower level of services. still living in many cases in the poorest housing, still suffering from an appalling health and safety record and still treated as mere chattels by those who would have us all believe that the thing closest to their hearts is not their wallets but the preservation of the countryside and its rural communities.

By its very nature capitalism is incapable of solving these problems. The answer is really quite simple. The land should belong to all and food be produced to eat and not for sale with a view to profit. Now that will be something worth celebrating.

Mike Tavener

Competing for Capitalism (1989)

From the September 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

During August, the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham was host to the 1989 International Youth Skill Olympics. 450 apprentices and young trainees up to the age of 22, took part in internationally-agreed work standard tests enabling the countries taking part to compare techniques and training. As in the sporting Olympics, the winners received gold, silver and bronze medals. Working to strict timetables, the competitors were tested in some 34 skills ranging from bricklaying to hairdressing.

Employment' Secretary Norman Fowler said about the event:

If this country is to become world class, training is of the essence. This is why the Skill Olympics are so important They focus the attention of employers and public alike on this nation's performance and allow them to compare it with its competitors. Individuals, employers and the nation in general stand to benefit from them. (Employment News, February 1989)

Fowler was being slightly economical with the truth in his remarks. In the present system of society, capitalism, it is the working class, the vast majority who are forced to sell their labour power to a minority property owning class in order to survive, who have all the skills necessary to run capitalism on behalf of capitalists. The capitalists have the political and economic power necessary to ensure that workers continue to produce commodities for profit rather than for need.

Capitalism is a world-wide system where there is intense competition between different capitalist economic units, or countries, to appropriate as much profit as they can from their particular working class. The value-creating unpaid labour of the working class is converted into money-wealth when the commodities produced are exchanged on the market. The ability of the working class to generate technological advances for their capitalist masters, thus reducing the cost of commodities and increasing profits, is of great importance to capitalists.

Fowler's attempt to invoke national pride on behalf of British youngsters "going for gold" has more to do with the ruling class's need to accumulate even more capital than in any real pride in the youngsters abilities and talents. If capitalism can no longer exploit them for a profit the winners of any medals will be thrown on to the scrapheap. even when a real social need exists for their skills.

Treated Like Mushrooms 
The personal roads that lead to becoming a socialist are many and varied. None of us tumble from the womb shouting. "Hey mum. I'm a socialist." For some the route may lead from activity in one of the political parties committed to reforming rather than abolishing capitalism. Others, active in trade unions perhaps, come to realise that although it is necessary to fight the everyday economic battle against the capitalist class, the war will only be won through concerted political action on the part of a class-conscious working class. Some, like myself, start off as apolitical, but when confronted with the case for socialism agree with that capitalist class fighter, Mrs Thatcher—there is no alternative.

Once engaged in the struggle for socialism, it soon becomes apparent that hundreds of years of capitalist conditioning cannot be easily overcome within five minutes. Every new socialist experiences the shock of discovering that others fail to agree that socialism is the only viable alternative there is to this insane capitalist society. However, attitudes and opinions do change, and it is capitalism itself which creates socialists.

It is normal capitalist practice for small businesses to be swallowed by larger ones. This has just happened to the company which buys my labour power. During the time preceding the take-over. I and the rest of the wage-slaves here were treated, as usual, like mushrooms—kept in the dark and shit on from a great height. Although my work-mates hold deeply entrenched capitalist values, royalist, nationalist, racist and conservative, the threat to their livelihoods from the takeover has resulted in a drastic change of attitude. This doesn't mean they have all become socialists. Far from it. But they have done something which a few months ago would have been unthinkable for them. They have joined a trade union.

If a class struggle between a minority who own most of the wealth, and a majority who are forced to sell their labour power in order to exist, was not taking place then trade unions would be unnecessary. Despite all the capitalist propaganda to make unions unpopular with a large number of the working class, and the futile involvement of the unions themselves in political action through the Labour Party, the only wav that the working class can even the odds a little is through economic strength and solidarity.

Socialists, wherever possible, belong to unions. Besides needing to defend ourselves as workers against employers, there is a need to balance the overwhelming insistence on the part of most trade union activists that support for the Labour Party is the only thing that is in the interest of the working class. The Socialist Party does not, unlike Leninist-Trotskyist organizations, believe that workers are only capable of attaining a "trade union consciousness”. but we don't believe either that it is industrial struggle that will politicise workers. While unions are still fighting for a fair day's pay for a pay day's work, socialists fight for the abolition of the wages system.

Dave Coggan

Time running out, say scientists (1989)

From the September 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

   Humans would have to make wide-reaching changes in attitude and lifestyles quickly if they are to survive the changes begun by pollution and deforestation. scientists told an Auckland symposium at the weekend.
   Scientists and researchers said the human race might die out without a new spirit of co-operation and collectivism. They said it was becoming increasingly likely that the planet would reorganise its systems to rid itself of pollution, the greenhouse effect, and ozone depletion. While the planet would survive, there was a fair chance the human race would not, they said.

So opened a news item that appeared on 27 March in the Wellington newspaper The Dominion under the heading "Scientists issue 'last chance' warning". Professor John Morton was quoted as saying that it looked as if humanity was likely to fail while another lecturer. Edward Goldsmith, was equally pessimistic. Economic and industrial policies, he said, had caused "the most terrible soil erosion and deforestation and were altering the ozone layer and climates", adding that “if our policies remain unchanged there is no question about it. there is no way man can survive another forty years".

The seriousness of the threat facing the human race right now needs no further comment. What does is the implication of the comments of the scientists that "policy" is the problem and that “policies" are the cure. Despite commendable scientific endeavour in their special disciplines, they have yet to apply it to humanity in general. What we have is a particular system of society which has evolved from the relatively short historical period of private property society that is in its closing stages.

Far from the policies of governments dictating the way in which wealth is produced and distributed, it is in fact the reverse. Policies are dictated by the world-wide system of capitalism. A way to look at this is to think of a boat being tossed on the waves of the ocean, the boat is the human race and the ocean is the market system (the buying and selling of goods).

Goods are produced for sale and not for direct consumption to satisfy human needs. The competition to sell goods causes a constant vicious circle which goes like this: Profits falling due to overproduction — introduce new technology to reduce costs (spend a large proportion of profits on new capital) — sell goods in larger quantities by undercutting competitors' prices because of reduced costs — competitors forced to introduce new technology — back to the same situation where started — introduce more technology, expand capital base.

The incessant drive to maximise profits means that enterprises generally will strive to reduce costs. The disposal of wastes is a large cost to enterprises, and they will try to do it as cheaply as possible — they will bury it in trenches, pump it into the waterways, exhaust it into the air. and a variety of other polluting methods. This is not from any malicious intent but because competition forces this upon them.

Often because of political pressures governments will try and legislate to prevent pollution. In some cases this has worked, but more often it is ineffectual. Also, to worsen the problem, enterprises and governments when faced with a choice of raw materials and producer goods are forced to take the least expensive route, again due to competition. This often means that the more environmentally harmful substances are used.

To sum up, we are faced with the most serious problem ever to confront the human race next to the nuclear war threat, and workers are continuing to support a system of society which is the basic cause of both problems.

If the scientists were forced to sit down and apply their techniques of scientific investigation to human society and its evolution. they would come up with only one answer: the establishment of a system of society where production will be for direct use, goods and services will be free to all, and where all will have a direct democratic input because they are social equals. Only then can we make rational decisions concerning production and our environment without the shackles of the market system. But then it is up to us and not the scientists to establish this system.

Dave Tildesley
World Socialist Party of New Zealand

Workers dig garbage in Philippines (1989)

From the September 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Smokey Mountain in Tondo, Metro-Manila, is a mountain of garbage. It is the largest of several open dumps that receive the 2,700 tons of trash per day produced by the highly urban province of Metro-Manila. It is also the home of thousands of workers, many of them children, who make a living from what is thrown away by others. Along the nearby Honorio Lopez Boulevard there are hundreds of shops whose line of business is recyclable junk, ranging from bottles to paper, and from hardware to scrap metal.

Garbage is first searched by street scavengers, who push carts around residential districts and search garbage cans. Many of them work at night in order to reach the garbage cans before the garbage collectors, who collect during the day. The garbage is first searched by the garbage collectors themselves. Only afterwards does the garbage reach the dumps. The workers who live and work in Smokey Mountain consider themselves lucky, because scavenging is an honest living. There is a local saying: "While there is garbage. there is hope”.

Such a life would not exist if everything were free. However, for everything to be free, we first need to own the means of producing and distributing the things we need. The people who own these means (such as factories, farms, ships, etc), the capitalists, will only pay workers to operate them if the products can be sold at a profit. This is not because they are bad people, but because that is the only way they can remain capitalists, and therefore retain their comfortable life-style. If they were to give the products away, they would go bust, and a competitor would take over. There is nothing they can do. Only the workers have the power to change things.

So, workers dig garbage in order to find things to sell for money to pay for food while food is stockpiled in warehouses in the pursuit of profit. The price of that most basic food in the Philippines, rice, has soared There is no real shortage of rice. Rice distributing cartels have been hoarding it. The government has been forced to import rice from the USA to increase the supply on the market (and therefore bring the price down) in order to prevent food riots. At the same time there are many unemployed agricultural workers. Most of them move to Metro-Manila to find work, only to end up squatting in places such as Smokey Mountain. 

In a socialist world everything will be free, because you do not need to pay for something if you already own it. We will be able to choose to produce things with very little waste. We will be able to choose to process our waste in a clean environment. We will be able to make these choices because we will own and control the means for producing and distributing the things we will use. Smokey Mountain will fall, and never rise again.

Kaibigan

War, history and revolution (1989)

From the September 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Fifty years ago a cold sense of apprehension was creeping over Europe. The first feelings of relief following the 'peace in our time' agreement between Hitler and Chamberlain had passed. By March 1939 Hitler had already moved to crush Czechoslovakia. On 1 September his victim was Poland. The Second World War had begun. 

It does, of course, serve the interests of capitalism to deflect the blame for the horrors of war on to the actions of particular individuals such as Hitler. So, in this fiftieth anniversary year of the outbreak of the Second World War, beware the rush of books, articles, films and television documentaries in which historians and journalists will, no doubt, concentrate on the personalities and motives of key individuals. They will be following the traditional view that history is somehow determined by the personal whims of caesars, kings, queens, prime ministers and führers. 

Not Made by Great Individuals 

If it is simply the personalities and motives of leading individuals that make history, then historians face the practical impossibility of knowing these personalities and motives with any degree of certainty. Some might claim authority for their fanciful speculations by resorting to Freudian psychology, but it is hard enough to be sure of the personal motivations of close acquaintances without trying to understand the psychological complexities of someone who is long dead and buried. 

Those taking this approach can only fill in a lack of knowledge from their own bias and imagination. By arbitrarily giving the power to shape events to a few 'men of destiny', they exclude the vast majority of men and women from a role in history. With the materialist conception of history, on the other hand, Marx and Engels showed how we must look behind people's conscious aims, intentions and motives to the economic development of society in which everyone is involved. As Engels wrote: 

When it is a question of investigating the driving powers which lie behind the motives of men who act in history, it is not a question so much of the motives of single individuals, however eminent, as of those motives which set in motion great masses, whole peoples, and again whole classes. To ascertain the driving causes which are reflected as conscious motives in the minds of acting masses and their leaders . . .  is the only path which can put us on the track of the laws holding sway both in history as a whole and at particular periods in particular lands. (Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical-German Philosophy, chapter IV). 

For Marxists, history is about what the whole of humanity has done, not just a few "great men". It is in the economic development of society that we discover the laws of history which regulate the changes in the material circumstances within which people make history. Marx's historical materialism reveals the social and economic causes of history for all to see. What is important is objectively decided by its bearing on economic developments, not by the prejudices of writers who interpret history in the interests of the ruling class. 

Hitler and Economic Necessity 

The important thing to recognise about the Second World War is that it was fought between rival groups of capitalist states over trade routes, markets and sources of raw materials. It was not about good or evil, democracy or fascism. Certainly, no single individual can be held responsible. 

The sad fact is that while even fifty years ago the productive forces were such that the needs of the world's population could have been satisfied, the irrational and competitive nature of capitalism prevented this. Seeing no alternative to capitalism, workers were led to believe genuinely that they could only satisfy their needs or protect their 'way of life' by war. 

It is true that the decision to invade Poland, which started the Second World War, was Hitler's. But it is also true that as early as 1932 the German capitalist class and their political representatives had decided that Germany's only real way out of economic crisis was to gain control over Central and Eastern Europe. 

Once such a course was set in motion two things made war inevitable. First was the rearmament of Germany's main capitalist rivals, Britain and the United States, who sought to prevent Germany's rise as a world power dangerous to them. Second, the deepening financial crisis in German capitalism caused by its massive rearmament. It was impossible to continue the rate of arms spending, and public spending in general, without additional material resources from outside Germany. Hence the need to plunder the surrounding economies and to seek continental scales of industrial organisation. 

So, while the decision to unleash war was Hitler's, the unstoppable collision-course towards war was determined by economic necessities. On the one hand, Germany had, like Japan and Italy, developed too late to acquire a 'place in the sun' which corresponded to its importance as an industrial nation. On the other hand, the capitalists in the established colonial powers, Britain and France, as well as the US with its huge population and natural resources, profited from their privileged access to markets and raw materials. In 1931 Japan had already used armed force to set up a trading monopoly in China. Italy had used force to get an overseas market in Abyssinia in 1935. German capitalists saw the only way out in the conquest of an empire of their own in Europe. 

As an historical figure Hitler was the product of social and economic developments. Even his mania about the Jews must be seen in the context of widespread theories of subversion, pernicious and ridiculous as they were, which held Jews responsible for an international conspiracy to undermine the economic stability of whichever country they lived in. 

The Case of Churchill 

Almost all historians see Churchill's rise to the head of the coalition government in May 1940 as a major turning point in the war. Churchill might indeed have represented the determination of the British capitalist class not to give another inch to their German rivals. But by romanticising his personal qualities, rather than starting from an analysis of the larger economic and social forces, historians continue to fall into the trap of having to guess and explain his personal motivations. 

The central question is not what made Churchill, as an individual, more decisive than Chamberlain but why Churchill was suddenly able to unite most of the capitalist and working class behind him years when he had been a political outsider. After all, until 1939 the policy of appeasement followed by Chamberlain had been widely accepted. Britain, as an international trading power, had far more to lose from world war than Germany, but capitalists could not go on indefinitely a blind eye to the actions of their German rivals. Once war had been declared, and at a time when Germany winning, Churchill was the ideal choice to carry out the new policy of combatting German capitalism by military rather than diplomatic means. 

No conspiracy theory is necessary to explain the economic and social determinants behind the rise of leaders. In capitalist society the institutions that mould individuals include the patriarchal nuclear family, the education system and the organisations which selectively promote politicians (political parties of the right and left, businesses and companies, old-boy networks, employers' associations, and the like). These are the forces of social conformism which produce individuals to suit the needs of the dominant class at any particular moment. 

To recognise that the rise of individuals such as Hitler and Churchill is socially shaped is to acknowledge a scientific fact. Value judgements about their actions are unnecessary. Marxists do not cloud the issues with blame: they explain. 

The Necessity of Socialism 

As these examples from the Second World War show, the materialist conception of history demolishes idealism which seeks to explain history from the ideas held by prominent individuals, directing us instead to developments in the material world of wealth production and distribution. It is this which gives historical materialism its contemporary significance. It is applicable to the here and now. It enables us to understand not only the causes of past events, but the causes of events now taking place and therefore how the real needs of the majority of people today can be satisfied. 

Always when the capacity to produce has outstripped what the productive relations allow, it becomes necessary to change those relations in a social revolution. Such necessity impelled the bourgeoisie to sweep away feudal obstacles to the development of capitalism in revolutions like the French Revolution two hundred years ago. Such historical necessity is an objective fact, independent of anyone's desires or intentions. It has nothing to do with mere aspirations, but is an actually existing state of human relations. 

Capitalism has long contained such a necessity—the necessity of advancing to socialism. The Second World War was a tragic symptom of this need for change. Within capitalist society the working class is the only force that can carry out the task. This too is a fact, whether it is recognised or not, whether socialists are many or few, or whether anyone does anything about it or not. Marx and Engels did not invent the need for revolution; they discovered it. 

Today's historical task of advancing to socialism is simply waiting to be fulfilled and the working class must win political power to fulfill it. This will only be achieved when a majority of workers are informed by a scientific knowledge of the need for change; a majority that refuses to be excluded from history, a majority that puts back into history the countless millions of individuals who slaved to produce the surplus that allowed the "men of destiny" to operate outside the productive system. It will, above all, be a majority with self-respect and confidence, gained from a scientific socialist understanding, to control its own destiny, making sure that catastrophes like the Second World War can never ever happen again. 

John Dunn

What made me oppose the war (1989)

From the September 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

I was born on 22 February, 1914, a few months before the start of the Great War (as it came to be called), the youngest of an Anglo-German family of five children, two girls and three boys. My eldest brother, Edward, was killed on the Western Front in the last month of that war, after having survived its whole course on active service.

He volunteered for the army at the onset, being then aged sixteen. After about two years' service he was discharged from the armed forces because of war wounds, but immediately rejoined another regiment. Over the years I have often wondered about this conscientious heroism of his. When asked why he had re-enlisted although medically unfit, he would always say that he would have been letting his comrades down who were still fighting in France had he not done so.

Some considerable time before I became a socialist I had come to the realisation that warfare was completely inimical to the human condition. As I became older my reaction to the reality of capitalism was to become a rebel without a cause. A combination of particular experiences, and a process of learning by those experiences and coming to conclusions about them, without (as yet) having an all-embracing philosophy.

For example, my mother had to convince the War Office that my brother Edward would have become a major bread-winner for the family, had he not been killed fighting for King and Country, before they would "award" a compensatory pension. After about a year of legal wrangling, the War Office awarded a sum of seven shillings and sixpence a week (in terms of present coinage this would be 37. pence). Such was the reward of a grateful king and country. With hindsight it came to be considered fortunate by the family that this war pension of 7/6d was allocated to my mother and not my father who died relatively young, aged 56; in which case the pension would have died with him, whereas my mother lived to the age of 75.

Another circumstance which profoundly affected my thinking, something that I learned years later, was that in the section of the Western Front where my brother was killed two of his uncles were serving with the opposing German army in that same section at that time. It is not inconceivable, therefore, that my brother could have been killed by them. These were the kinds of experiences, together with my concern for all of the victims of war, which determined my developing an emotional opposition to war and everything connected with it, rather than an opposition based upon a rational understanding of the material causes of social antagonism and war (this came later in my development).

In the late 1920s when the subject of war came up in conversation, I was often asked by relations and others what I would do in the event of war. My reply was that I would oppose its prosecution, to the best of my ability, and refuse to take part in it as an individual. Their reaction to this was usually to say that it is easy to oppose war in peace-time, but that I would probably change my attitude if war should come.

Another factor in my development from childhood was my experience at school. At the age of five I started my "education" at a church school in London which in those days was a school attached to a parish church with an independent board of school governors, but which was funded by the then LCC (London County Council). The lessons at this school were (with overtones of religion) directed towards teaching the children to read, write and count, so that they would be able to appreciate the benefits of patriotism and blind loyalty to their King and Country, and a willingness to die for them and the market economy they represented if necessary. This included the presentation of history as the past battles and wars in which "their" country had been involved. As a pupil I was very unpromising. I was so slow to learn that I was more or less ignored by the teachers and only had any real contact with them when it was a case of receiving punishment for some misdemeanour I had committed.

There were two days of the year in the school curriculum which were regarded as special events in which the whole school took part. These were Empire Day and Prize-giving day. On Empire Day the whole school was assembled in the playground to sing patriotic songs like "Land of Hope and Glory" and to listen to the reciting of the hackneyed sentiments of a Henry Newbolt poem in which an imperialist bloodbath somewhere in the empire was equated with a game of cricket played by "public" school boys on the playing fields of Eton or Harrow. The proceedings were then brought to an end, until the next year, with a homily on God, religion and the Empire given by the vicar.

In the early thirties I became convinced that the Socialist Party's analysis of capitalist society in general and the causes of war in particular was the only valid explanation of the world's social problems and demanded a world-wide solution. I therefore became a socialist ideologically, but I did not join the party until 1946. The reason for this was that I had decided  to object to military service, and my joining the only anti-war political party in Britain might have been seen as merely a personal anti-war tactic and not a complete opposition to the continuation of capitalism, in peace or war. My refusal to perform military service lasted over a period of about two years of close arrest, court martials and prison sentences, terminating in my discharge from military service.

Harry Walters