Peru and England. A Comparison. (1912)

From the August 1912 issue of the Socialist Standard

The world has lately been startled by the publication of sensational reports of the methods by which a British rubber company, operating in Peru, obtains its rubber.

The nauseating details which have found their way into the papers do not by any means exhaust the catalogue of atrocities inflicted upon the company’s Indian victims, or sap the infinite variety of the tortures used to terrorise these poor people into superhuman exertion in the collection of rubber ; nor do those widely publicised details touch the limits of ferocity laid bare in the Government Blue-Book.

This, however, is not meant in the sense of the degree of physical suffering involved, for it is inconceivable that the agonies of roasting the feet over a slow fire (as quoted by the newspapers) can be transcended, even where the torturers go the length of smashing up a man’s organs with a stick, or inserting burning brands in a woman’s body in a part which even a Blue Book only dares hint at. But these details which the British Press even cannot lift the veil on, add to all the other horrors some inkling of the filthy-mindedness that goes hand-in-hand with British capital, to win dividends for British Christians and the like.

It is not the purpose here, however, to treat the public to a recital of the sickening story of mutilation and murder reported by Consul-General Casement, but to direct attention to horrors no whit lees sickening which are mere everyday affairs much nearer home than the forest glades of Peru. Those who are so startled and shocked to find that the inhumanities which make the names of the old-time Spanish “conquerors” stink in the nostrils, still survive in British capitalism; those who are horrified to discover that the tale of the Congo has been re-written with but varied detail in the solitude of Western forests, those who have observed with pained surprise, the agonised convulsions of a harmless and innocent people being done to death in Southern America, transforming themselves into the sensational throbbing of rubber shares in Throgmorton Street at the time of the great “rubber boom,” do not need to throw their imagination half way round the world in order to find something to move their “bowels of compassion” or stir their righteous—very righteous—indignation.

As a matter of fact murder and brutality—like charity, according to the account of those who know all about it—begin at home. Not only, mark you, the murder of the Peruvian Indians, whose doom is pronounced in the London board rooms by silk-hatted directors and cosmopolitan financiers. We do not have to turn to the diocese of the Bishop of the Falkland Islands (who is now in England trying to raise funds to further the interests of British capital in Peru and the vicinity, instead of being in his diocese supervising the decent burial of the corpses British capital is providing there), one does not, I say, have to go to that Bishop’s diocese to find matter for “thrills” and “shocks.”

No, there is not one of the atrocities related in Blue Book Cd. 6266 that cannot be paralleled in the diocese of the Bishop of London, or in the diocese of any other English Bishop. There is not one page of this voluminous report, reeking with bloody tragedy, that might not have been made to carry as tragic and as bloody an inscription by any faithful hand that should have set itself the task of chronicling the history of any single day in any of the great manufacturing towns of highly civilised, free and Christian England.

Capitalism is very much the same thing in all its operations and in its every sphere of influence. What is good or evil under it is determined only but its result upon profits—by its effect upon ruling interests. Capital, as Marx says, comes into the world dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt. And one Dunning many years ago wrote :—

“With adequate profit, capital is very bold. A certain 10 per cent. will ensure its employment anywhere ; 20 per cent. certain will produce eagerness ; 50 per cent., positive audacity ; 100 per cent. will make it ready to trample on all human laws ; 300 per cent., and there is not a crime at which it will scruple, nor a risk it will not run, even to the chance of its owner being hanged, if turbulence and strife will bring profit, it will freely encourage both.”

So outrage is inherent in the system—nay, that is but half stating the case : outrage is the foundation and corner-stone of the system. The great primal outrage is the seizure by those who rule under the system, of every means by which men might support themselves in any form of independence. Upon that great, tragic outrage—the closing of every avenue of life against the worker, the whole system of robbery, violence and violation rests. And that robbery, that violence, that violation, is as complete, cruel, and shameful here in England as anything Consul-General Casement travelled so far to put on record.

Violation of Indian girls ! It is common enough in any factory district in England for girls to have to submit to the bestial attentions of their foremen and male overlookers. They have to choose between that and starvation. It is a fact well known to the employers, who do not interfere (as has been admitted) because it smooths the way to prostitution, which is the necessary adjunct to the low wages paid by the factory masters. It is a fact also well known and confessed by our legislators, as is proven by the provision made for its interdiction in a projected Bill.

In offices things are much the same, and in large drapery establishments every “encouragement” (such as locking the girls out in the street all night if they are not in by a specific time) is held out for their girl assistants to resort to certain means of augmenting their scant wages.

Notwithstanding that the method is differed the violation at home is as brutal and shameful as that in Peru. In the latter case the weapon made use of is physical force: in the former starvation In the one case the tormentor has possession of the woman’s body, in the other case of her means of livelihood. The compulsion is pretty complete in both cases.

We must not allow ourselves to be led astray by the old capitalist defence that “this is a free country.” The freedom of these girls to leave their employment is merely the freedom to starve. That is the freedom which belongs to every wage-slave. It is the freedom which followed naturally upon the enclosure of all land and the seizure of all the means of living. The capitalist has no need to hunt the forests of this country for workers : he has shut them out of the fields and forests, and left them only the freedom to starve. This freedom the capitalist would not interfere with if he could. It is the greatest asset he has. The slave has not got it, hence the slave must be fed, cannot be trusted with delicate machinery, cannot be speeded up to the requirements of the modern factory system. The lash never has been able to compel anything but the quality of labour most nearly approaching that abstract conception, the “purely physical”—it cannot induce the exercise of “gumption.” Only when the workers are free to starve, and liable to be thrown out on the street to do it, do they become fit and proper instruments for the economical manipulation of the modern machinery for producing commodities.

Hence the masters cherish the workers’ freedom to starve even more than do the workers themselves. It is the basis of all their exploitation, their standby in every difficult situation.

And similarly it is the basis of the whole awful position of the workers. Because this freedom is their only alternative, they present themselves for sale in the labour market. Because they have only the freedom to starve they face death in the mine and torment before the battle-ship’s furnaces. They give up their whole lives to unrewarded drudgery in sordid and bestial conditions, submitting to the vilest prostitution of their labour in the performance of slave tasks, all because they may starve if they don’t.

And at every turn they are offered the same alternative by which it is pretended the women may save themselves from violation, but which, nevertheless, cannot save any workingman from handing over his body, nay, his life, to exploitation, cannot afford one of them escape from a prostitution as vile (if we could only see it thro’ the unaccustomed eyes of the savage) as any that women are subjected to through their sex.

The other atrocities reported from the rubber districts all have their parallels in any capitalist country. The police brutality at Liverpool and Manchester and year ago, when scores of people of both sexes and all ages were maimed for life; the murders at Tonypandy, Belfast, and other places, the kicking of pregnant women quite recently at Canning Town, show very plainly that when it comes to dealing with resistance to their plundering, the master class know not the slightest difference between the Indians of Peru and the working class of England. Rubber is not more bloodstained than coals. Dying Indians are not more contemptuously thrown into the bush to expire than are our miners bricked up in the blazing pits to burn. The Waste of Indian life is no more extravagant than that of shunters on British railways, and callous brutality cannot anywhere outdo that displayed in certain capitalist hospitals, where healthy working-class children are innoculated with filthy diseases and reduced to noisome masses of corruption—because they are cheaper than calves. And where, in the whole of the Consul-General’s report, can a more stupendous crime, a more ghastly butchery, be found recorded than has been recently witnessed in the streets of London, where the shipping masters have deliberately set themselves to crush a hundred thousand men into submission by starving their wives and children ?

Let us be clear in our comparison. Let us get the true perspective. The Indians, the evidence in the report tells us, are so used to being flogged that they do not so much mind it. Let us make sure that our familiarity with the brutality of our daily existence does not blind us to its real horror. The Indians, while they have their forests, have to be hunted and captured. This, as we understand it, is illegal. But generations ago the workers of this country were captured by depriving them of their means of living. Hence if they won’t submit to the masters’ terms they are legally free to starve. It is this illusive difference in the aspect of the cases which blinds us to their essential similarity. Under the cloak of legality the workers of the whole civilised world are enslaved and starved and bludgeoned and raped to satiate the lusts of a parasite class, and when we see our own condition reflected in a savage race, and only revealed because the savage, having his means of livelihood in his native wild wood, has to be exploited by “illegal” means, we are astonished and shocked.

The only remedy, both for ourselves and for the Indian, is to take away from the capitalists the means of life and make them the property of the community, first capturing the political power by which they hold their sway.

A. E. Jacomb

50 Years Ago: Vice - 1913 Version (1963)

The 50 Years Ago column from the September 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

In February of this year—within three months of the White Slave Bill being passed—Hull was excited about the arrest of “a leading citizen,” named Edward Buckton Cargill. He was the Chairman of the Hull Steam Trawlers Owners Company, of the Humber Conservancy Board, was chosen by the shipowners of Hull as a representative of the fishing trade of the port, and was appointed by the Board of Trade on the North Sea Fisheries Committee, besides holding many other leading positions in the property owning world.

He was charged with offences against several girls under 16 years of age. He obtained the services of several noted K.C.S and other lawyers and detectives to help him, and they scoured the cities to try and get matter whereby the girls could be seen in the worst light—morally. Needless to state, the girls belonged to the working class.

When the judge ordered him nine months hard labour the poor dupes of Liberalism and Toryism thought it showed the sincerity, and wisdom of our governors—But—wait and see!

He was sentenced at the end of February. At the beginning of May, or shortly after two months had elapsed, the Hull Press announced the release of Cargill on the ground of indisposition. He was removed to his home, prison life not agreeing with this tender plant. And a member of the town council ventured the opinion that if he had been a poor man he would have been in prison yet.

They were going to deal with “the great traffickers in human beings.” They were going to strike at “the international ring of procurers.” Ah, yes! a story of going to do. When, owing to an oversight, no doubt, a sumptuous flat in Piccadilly was raided, the flat keeper, calling herself Queenie Gerald, was charged with procuring girls. In the course of the evidence at Marlboro' Street, however, it transpired that prominent men were associated with the business—and the usual thing took place.

The case came on at the sessions watered down to one of "exercising influence over the movements of prostitutes for the purpose of gain.” At the police court she had pleaded not guilty, but now she answered: "Guilty!” the result being that no evidence was taken against her on the charges made, the jury were not sworn, all in spite of the fact that Mr. Travers Humphrey, the prosecuting counsel had at the Police Court stated that (vide "Daily Telegraph,” June 21st) “There were a large number of letters which made it quite clear that, apart from the prisoner's earnings herself, and apart from what she received from the girls, she was carrying on the trade of a procuress.”

The public were excluded from the Court and the Press representatives were told they were only there as a privilege, and were to report no names and be careful not to let much leak out. They were ordered not to divulge the real name of Queenie Gerald—and all for what reason!

BECAUSE LEADING MEMBERS OF MODERN SOCIETY WERE PATRONS OF THIS PICCADILLY FLAT.

Conclusive evidence of procuring was given earlier at the Police Court proceedings, but that didn't stop the charge being dropped at the Quarter Sessions. One of the letters written to “a gentleman at the Ritz Hotel” ran as follows:

“Your friend wishing to meet a few society ladies. I can arrange for three on Sunday. They are the real thing and frightfully expensive. Will you ask the Prince what he is prepared to give.”

From the Socialist Standard, September, 1913.

Political schizophrenia (1989)

From the January 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

ON THE ONE HAND, all over the world people are deeply saddened by the magnitude of the Armenian disaster. 100,000 workers, many living in matchbox housing built on the cheap, were killed in what insurance companies call an "Act of God". (Sure must be a good god who puts on these murderous acts.) The thought of men. women and children, just like us and those we know, being killed instantly or left in the rubble of collapsed cities and towns makes us weep.

ON THE OTHER HAND, the same people who weep over 100,000 Armenian dead vote for a "defence" policy based on the principle that "our" security can be best achieved by threatening to bomb the Russian Empire (of which Armenia is a part) and kill hundreds of thousands of workers. The Armenians live and die under a state dictatorship; they do not vote for their foreign policy. But most British workers vote on the basis that it is quite reasonable to murder men, women and children and turn the towns and cities in which they live to dust.

ON THE ONE HAND, democracy means that a majority is allowed to have its way. We would not call an election democratic if 10 percent of electors voted for A and 50 percent voted for B — and A won.

ON THE OTHER HAND, Britain’s “freedom-loving" government has passed a Housing Act which calls a democratic election one in which the views of the minority can prevail. If a local council wants to sell off its council estates to private landlords, the new law states that a referendum must be taken of the tenants involved. Votes in favour of selling to a private landlord may be far fewer than those against, but those tenants not voting at all have their votes added to the "fors". so that a majority of "againsts" can be defeated by a minority of “fors" plus the abstentions. Torbay Council has already conducted a referendum on the basis of this new definition of democracy.

ON THE ONE HAND, the government is in favour of the deregulation of franchises for TV channels. They say that the public should be allowed to decide what they view. To the allegation that running TV on the same basis as the press will lead to TV barons producing tabloid trash, the government says that people are free to watch what they like.

ON THE OTHER HAND, the government has banned the advocates of certain ideas from being allowed on TV because viewers may be taken in by them. This act of censorship is defended by those who say that workers' minds should not be exposed to the defenders of illegal terrorism.

ON THE ONE HAND, prices are supposed to be an indication of what people need. All economics text books explain that without prices, high and low. to reflect demand for goods there could be no rational allocation of resources.

ON THE OTHER HAND, 15 million children starve to death annually in a world of food mountains. They cannot afford the price of food. In the eyes of the market they are invisible because they cannot pay the market price and give the food owners a profit. “Rational allocation" under the profit system equals mass starvation, while farmers are paid not to grow food.

ON THE ONE HAND, all decent people deplore child abuse, particularly of a sexual nature. The News of the World (6 December) — went into the horrific details of how twisted men indecently abused a young teenage girl.

ON THE OTHER HAND, the same issue of the newspaper displayed a virtually nude photograph of a thirteen-year-old girl who readers are told has exciting sexual fantasies. For whom was such a picture included, if not the very men who regard children as sexual objects?

ON THE ONE HAND, defenders of capitalism say that socialism could never work because human co-operation runs contrary to human nature. Despite the fact that whenever there is a social disaster floods of workers rush to help the victims, they say that humans are basically selfish and anti-social.

ON THE OTHER HAND, defenders of capitalism are constantly asking workers to act more co-operatively towards their bosses. They point out, quite rightly, that capitalism would not be able to make profits without workers agreeing to behave in a relatively selfless, co-operative, social spirit.

ON THE ONE HAND, psychiatrists define schizophrenia as an illness involving the perception of contradictory realities in the one mind.

ON THE OTHER HAND, the ideas which defend capitalism seem to fall into exactly that category. You can only defend the ideas of this crazy social system if you push all of your more reasoned, experience-based ideas to the back of your mind. Capitalism does not refer to such thinking as a psychiatric disorder which needs to be remedied; it sees such ideas as "common sense" and encourages workers to entertain such absurd contradictions in their minds.

SOCIALISTS

- offer sympathy to the victims of the Armenian catastrophe, but do not advocate a policy of killing even more Armenians at a later date.

- maintain that democracy means the majority having its way, always doing its best to make room for the wishes of the minority in any situation.

- favour TV output which will give viewers free access to all ideas and images they may choose to see. and oppose all bans on what we are allowed to see.

- reject the economics of capitalism, which assert that we need buying and selling and prices to determine what people need; priceless, free access to all goods and services for everyone is the only way to allocate goods efficiently.

- are sickened by the abuse of children, and by millionaires like Murdoch who make a profit by selling child porn in their so-called newspapers.

- repudiate the myth that humans are inherently anti-social and uncooperative, and state emphatically that human nature is no barrier to a sane, socialist society.

If you think the same way. then why not find out more about The Socialist Party with a view to joining us?

Steve Coleman

50 Years Ago: Up in arms (2021)

The 50 Years Ago column from the April 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

If the success of a movement is to be judged by the amount of popular misconception about it, then Women’s Liberation Movement have almost won. Discontented women have traditionally been a target for lewd contempt from gentlemen, and any dissatisfaction with their social conditions is often treated as a projection of sexual frustrations. Thus any woman who has ambitions above being a shorthand typist at work, a housewife at home, or a sexual vehicle in bed, is liable to be dismissed as a shrivelled spinster, or a hairy lesbian, or at any rate someone in need of a good, cleansing orgasm.

It was this sort of contempt which gave such licence for the maltreatment of the Suffragettes, who could be kicked and punched and mauled by the police and subjected, by the gentlemen of London, to such indignation as would under other circumstances have earned a court appearance for indecent assault. When the last Miss World contest was disrupted by a few Women’s Lib members Bob Hope, who is not a famous anthropologist or psychiatrist or sociologist, but who was earning a few bucks as compere to the flesh parade, could attribute the incident to the only possible cause that the demonstrators were junkies. Of course, Hope was in trouble; his gag writers had not supplied him with material for such an eventuality. (…)

The aims of the Women’s Liberation Movement—a free association between men and women, pure of the contaminations of capitalist society—can be attained only when capitalism is no more. Conditioned as we are to capitalism’s degradations, it is difficult to imagine what the freedom of socialism will be like. How it will feel, for a woman and a man to associate only because they like and respect each other. How it will be when sexual activity is not a matter of conquest and possession, not a suppressive neurosis too easily exploited to sell cars, hair sprays, washing machines, suitcases, toothpaste, politicians—but a pleasure. To reach that we need all of us to be conscious of our role in society and the reasons for it. From there we will not be far from the will to change our roles by changing society.

(Socialist Standard, April 1971)

Pathfinders: Dirty Secrets (2014)

The Pathfinders Column from the February 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

The post-Savile paedophilia purge is continuing to create headlines not seen in the UK since the year 2000, and this time without the poison stirring spoon of Rebekah Brooks and the News of the World.  Experience then showed that it didn’t take much to whip up a lynch mob, and lo and behold, vigilante groups are now operating on the streets of Britain. In September last year one such group, called Letzgo Hunting, lured a Leicester man into a meeting and then publicly branded him a paedophile, after which the man hanged himself. In October it was reported in Bristol that a disabled gardener, attempting to photograph youths attacking his plants, was denounced as a kiddy-fiddler and promptly battered and burned to death in the street. This is significant, as burning is what you do to witches. Significant also that the newspapers universally described him as ‘innocent’ of the charge of paedophilia, the implication being that the murder would have been excusable otherwise.

The wave of moral outrage has been further fuelled by the appalling case of singer Ian Watkins, who described his 13 child sex charges, including an attempt to rape a one year old baby, as ‘mega lolz’. Meanwhile one after another crumbling octogenarian is manhandled out of the grave and into the dock to answer charges committed half a century ago in a swinging sexist society that did everything to encourage such behaviour.

On the modern assumption that all men are potentially paedophiles, schools have turned into fortresses. The intended effect is that paedophiles no longer have easy access to children, but instead covert child sex trafficking has become big business. So too has online child porn, a fact not lost on many Filipino families who, it was reported last month, have been hiring out their children for online pay-per-view sex and rape sessions.

Last November an online sting involving a 10-year old Filipino girl called ‘Sweetie’, who supposedly engaged in sex acts with adults while online viewers paid a fee, helped to collar over 1,000 paedophiles around the world who flocked to the alluring Sweetie like moths to a flame. What was clever about this sting was that it was created in a Dutch computer laboratory. ‘Sweetie’ was a computer graphics construct, not a real child. What was stupid about the paedophiles is that they didn’t even try to cover their tracks, which makes one wonder how many smart paedophiles remain undiscovered. Watkins’ computer porn, for example, was so deeply hidden that the police had to call in GCHQ to decrypt it.

With the witch-hunting mania in full spate reason is cowed into reticence and constructive debate hardly seems likely. What should socialists say, if asked about this problem?

Paedophilia is defined as adult sexual attraction to prepubescent children up to the age of 11. Sex with a person under 16 in the UK is defined as statutory rape, for which the offender is placed on the sex offenders register. In the popular press this makes them a paedophile and a rapist by definition.

The problem with this is that the age of consent is an arbitrary line in the sand. A recent proposal to lower this to 15 had David Cameron running away in shivers, yet Europe-wide the statutory age varies from 13 in Spain and 14 in Italy and Germany through to 18 in Turkey (in 19th century Britain it was 12, in some American states 10, in Delaware 7).

Another problem is that capitalism has no qualms about sexualising childhood in order to sell products to young wage and pocket money earners. Remember the Peek-a-Boo Stripper Pole Dancing kit (age 6+) sold in Tesco’s toy section? And let’s not forget the push-up bra (age 7), the Playboy Bunny school merchandise or Bratz Hooker Babies (age 9), dolls made up as prostitutes with high heels and leather thongs.

Notwithstanding any of this, what society wants is not to accommodate or contain or neutralise or even understand paedophilia but to destroy it root and branch, as it once did (and still does elsewhere in the world) with homosexuality. Whether that’s possible, medically speaking, is an open question. The scientific research into paedophilia is not as extensive as public concern would seem to demand. Various causes are identified and various treatments proposed including cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), hormone treatment, and physical castration. Such treatments are limited because much child abuse is not caused by sexual impulses but by other motivators such as anger or a desire to control. In addition, it is the opinion of some doctors that a cure has not been found because scientists aren’t really looking. In capitalist terms, the market isn’t there. Nobody wants to cure witches, as the disabled Bristol gardener found out.

Might there be paedophiles in socialism? At present the science can’t tell us. Paedophilia is a broad spectrum condition, with biological as well as social factors in play. Whether any of these biological factors have a genetic base remains unestablished, but even if they did, genetic factors never work alone but always interact with a particular set of social conditions.

What we can say with more confidence is that those many forms of sex and child abuse based on obsessions with power would find no nourishment in socialism because the structures of oppression, dominance and impotence would no longer exist.

Be that as it may, if a problem existed socialism would have to deal with it, and the first priority would be to protect children. Studies suggest that many paedophiles have no desire to hurt children but a minority do, and there seems little room for doubt that in socialism dangerous paedophiles would, like any dangerous and out of control individual, have to be kept under restraint for the common good, though not for the purpose of punishment but in order that a successful and humane treatment could be found. For the rest, there would have to be a democratic debate about what was acceptable sexual preference and what was unacceptable medical condition. It could have implications for civil liberties, freedom of movement, sexual licence, levels of supervision of children, equality status of individuals. We can’t say today how it would proceed or how it would turn out, but it would be an informed hunt for solutions, not an inflamed hunt for witches.

Paddy Shannon

Proper Gander: The Extremes of Exploitation (2017)

The Proper Gander Column from the March 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the many signs that society is shifting into an even nastier variant of capitalism is the growth of slavery, something it’s easy to think of as obsolete since the 19th century, but which has never gone away. Today, the number of people kept as slaves worldwide could be between 21 million (according to the International Labour Organisation) and 46 million (Global Slavery Index), an accurate figure being hard to find in what is, by definition, a shadowy, underground industry. 13,000 people in the UK are thought to be living in slavery.

Slavery involves using fraud or coercion to recruit, harbour, transport or provide someone for forced labour, including prostitution. People might be enticed to accept a job, perhaps from overseas, only to then have their documents withheld by their new employers and be made to work under the threat of violence. They are usually kept in cramped, dilapidated accommodation owned by the slave masters.

As slavery has increased in Britain, so has awareness of it. Channel 4’s recent documentary The Modern British Slave Trade (Channel 4) was a useful, no-frills insight into the police investigation of two cases: a family-run slave camp of block-paving workers in Gloucestershire and a Cambridgeshire-based gang who exploited farm labourers.

The traffickers target people who need money and who are living on the fringes of mainstream society. In the UK, some of those kept in slavery travelled here from Eastern Europe or Vietnam hoping for a better life after having been given empty promises about work and accommodation. In Cambridgeshire, Eastern Europeans gather in Wisbech town centre at night waiting for the vans which take them to farms to work. In Scotland, especially, some nail salons are staffed by Vietnamese workers paid little and kept in squalor. Other recruits for the slave trade come from within Britain, vulnerable through poverty or isolation. Some traffickers target homeless people because it’s cheaper and easier to use them than paying to transport people from overseas, and also because they’re less likely to be missed. Vans regularly turn up at soup kitchens or outside homeless hostels looking for desperate people who haven’t heard the warnings. Women are a ‘very valuable commodity’ who are often coerced into sham marriages and sex work, after being threatened with having their organs ‘harvested’ so the alternatives don’t sound as bad.

Working days are as long as 19 hours, without any rights or safeguards. The police investigators film one of the slaves being beaten up; punishments are a constant threat. What wages the slaves receive are taken back by their owners through extortionate rents charged for sub-standard housing. Added to this are charges for food, transport to work and other spurious expenses, leaving the slaves with a few pence, or nothing, or in debt. The shared houses and camps don’t tend to have locked gates or high fences, but escape is prevented by threats of being killed when recaptured. Many people wouldn’t have anywhere else to go anyway. Slaves from abroad are unlikely to get another source of income (including state benefits), and if their ID has been taken, then they would find it even harder to cope in an unfamiliar country. Slavery, in a twisted way, gives them a place in society. Some of those no longer seen as any use end up getting ‘fly-tipped’. It is thought that this is what happened to a slave whose body was found outside the Gloucestershire camp.

In the programme, the slave masters’ plush, expensive homes are raided by the police and they are arrested. 289 offences were prosecuted in England and Wales under The Modern Slavery Act 2015 in its first year. The Act consolidated and amended existing slavery and trafficking legislation, originally dating back two hundred years. Some experts criticised the Act for not focusing enough on the needs of victims, who are likely to need counselling and rehabilitation. A few safe houses are available for slaves who have been rescued or escape, but they still face an uncertain, difficult future. Adjusting to a different life, whatever it is, may be a struggle, especially if they have been trapped for years or even decades. When questioned by the police, some deny they have been kept as slaves, through fear of being deported, or reprisals, or having been brainwashed in to thinking their life is acceptable.

Slavery is the most extreme way in which people get exploited. Profiting from someone else’s labour power is built in to the system, of course, so the difference between slavery and ordinary employment is one of degree, not kind. The vast majority of us are commodities to be bought and sold on the labour market, of which the slave trade is part. Slavery is possible because society makes some people vulnerable and desperate enough to fall into it, and others greedy and cruel enough to exploit them.

Mike Foster

Letters: Taboo (2018)

Letters to the Editors from the December 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

Taboo

Hi there!

Yesterday, I went to an Anti Racism conference in central London. On my way home, I popped into a bookshop (Housman’s) , found your magazine and bought a copy.

Let me start by saying that I don’t neatly fit anywhere politically but it’s important to me that everyone has access to the wealth created by this country and contributes to wealth creation in a way that is aligned with their skills, passions and experience. I think that socialist values play a part in that.

I’m writing to you because I was really disturbed by the article on the October magazine on ‘Taboo and Criminality’. You mentioned an acquaintance with someone who was found guilty of sexual crime with an under age female who, after serving a prison sentence and was hounded out of his job by an internet campaign.

The article suggests that serving the prison sentence somehow draws a line for the perpetrator of the crime.

I too know someone found guilty of sexual crime and many, many victims. The man got away with it for decades and it involved children as young as five.

What I would say is that, some victims never, ever recover from sexual abuse. Their whole lives they suffer. It can stand in the way of their ability to really let go in loving relationship, love themselves, their bodies, be happy, whole, functioning people. Recognition of the decades long impact of sexual crime has may be one reasons that your friend was hounded out of his job. I don’t know your friend of the circumstances.

This whole world, irrespective of political leaning, has hypocrisy embedded into it.

I can’t see how a living in a socialist society will remove the activity of sexual exploitation and abuse. Your article didn’t work for me. Hope you can see why.

Rozi.

Reply:

It is in the nature of social taboos that they arouse intense emotions. The abuse of the weak by the strong is repugnant to most of us but it can only be understood if we put aside our outrage in an attempt to comprehend it rationally. Your contention that ‘this whole world, irrespective of political learning, has hypocrisy embedded into it’ implies some type of irreversible evil in human nature, which we don’t accept as being based on the scientific evidence. But if we accept instead that child abuse, like many other destructive behaviours, constitutes an abuse of power then it becomes necessarily a question of politics, i.e. the origin and nature of that power. We contend that authoritarian social structures and hierarchies both motivate abusers and then facilitate their activities. The sexualisation of power is at the root of such behaviour and exists in nuclear family units, religious organisations, public schools, prisons, the military and so on. All of these institutions are part of and reflect the capitalist hierarchical social structure.

Prisons primarily exist to punish rather than to rehabilitate (which, of course, is infinitely more expensive) so we would consider that they typically make matters worse rather than ‘draw a line for the perpetrator’. If in spite of all of this the offender truly regrets their behaviour and tries sincerely to rehabilitate themselves then does he or she not deserve a ‘second chance’? We know, however, that many abusers were themselves abused and so we acknowledge the difficulties involved for both the community (including the victims) and the offender. These are tricky issues and it is possible that some individuals (hopefully small in number) are so scarred by capitalist society and with such fundamentally anti-social behaviour patterns, that they have to be kept away from others if rehabilitation doesn’t work.

But because socialism addresses unequal power relationships at their source, we believe that it can certainly help to ‘remove the activity of sexual exploitation and abuse’, along with all the other examples of this type of social relationship within capitalism, and it is one of the reasons some of us are socialists. – Editors.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Anger

Dear Editors,

Many times on hearing news like the bombing of a bus in Yemen carrying children, and of other atrocities, frustration and anger has made me feel like throwing a few petrol bombs about too, or somehow getting hold of an AK47 and attempting to assassinate the chairmen/shareholders of the arms companies profiting from it.

But I don’t think it’d help. Do we really want to become another RAF/Baader Meinhof terrorist organisation? Bombing the (somehow depopulated) arms factories would perhaps stop it in the short-term, but new ones would be quickly built, and we’d likely as not end up rotting in prison cells.

Same goes for the assassination game. New parasitical fascist scum would soon replace the old. Plus killing isn’t my idea of fun, and I don’t see how brutalising and dehumanising ourselves, by turning ourselves into murdering dogmatic fanatics would help anyone.

We could, I suppose, divert our energies into making working for these people socially unacceptable (I for one wouldn’t work for them, even if it meant starving on the street) but then we’d become nothing more than a mere anti-war party/protest group. And despite years of futile campaigns CND still haven’t managed to ‘ban the bomb.’

We have never been, and I sincerely hope we never become a party pursuing ‘single issues’.

Another consideration is that the people who are born into the ruling class didn’t choose to be any more than we chose to be born into the working class. From birth they are as subjected to their own idiotic ideology as we are.

So who is culpable? Who is to blame? It could be argued we all are: the workers for swallowing the bullshit and not getting up off their lazy arses to end this tragic farce, and the owners, for being both subjected to, and perpetuating a brutal inhuman ideology.

So what is to be done? (As a vile mass murdering dictator once asked)

I am still haunted by the memory of a starving child in Africa (the Ethiopian famine of 1973, I think) who wanted nothing more than to taste a piece of bread for the first time. As a 9-year old child I remember crying to my parents ‘please let me send him my bread’ before the TV reporter announced that even though he was in hospital being treated, he still couldn’t have his dearest wish fulfilled, as eating bread would have overwhelmed his severely malnourished system. Having never tasted bread, that child later died. While the EEC was paying farmers to leave fields uncultivated/fallow, and storing wine lakes and butter mountains.

Eleven years later, in 1984, another tragedy began to haunt my dreams. The image of a dead child’s face, lying staring open eyed through the rubble of the Bhopal disaster. Another easily preventable disaster – if only the safety of people, and the planet we call home, could have been put before profit and the bottom line.

I have been cursed with the burden of a socialist worldview/conscience for 37 years now, and have yet to find a better way forward than ‘Agitation, Education, Organisation’ until we meet a critical mass and undertake the revolutionary change required, whether that be by the ballot box, or some other (peaceful) means. If any one can think of some other strategy/quicker way forward, without compromising our core principles, I for one, would be more than willing to consider it.

Malcolm Ian McKay, 

Cumbernauld.

Throw Away the Stick (2017)

From the November 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last month's headlines were dominated, to the surprise of many, by the revelation that a Hollywood producer was in the habit of using his position of power and influence to get aspiring young hopefuls to have sex with him.

This can't have been news to anyone but the naive. Theatre like everything else in capitalism has been reduced to a squalid money business where the rich exploit the efforts, and sometimes the bodies, of young people desperate for advancement and not rich enough to say no. Actors are workers and workers have to sell themselves as commodities on the labour market. That labour market is nearly always a buyer's market, and when the buyer is a man who has sex instead of scruples on the brain, it's not hard to grasp what is likely to happen.

Some of the online comments from readers of these news stories accused the women who had spoken up of being prostitutes, who had been willing to sleep their way to riches and were now hypocritically whingeing about it. Many of these comments were from women. The anger and bitterness behind such trolling is all too obvious. To poor people, there's no such thing as a rich victim. The fact that male actors can get ahead without supposedly resorting to prostitution didn't enter the debate.

What became plain, as the story grew, was how widespread the problem is. Women often experience harassment in some form, whether it's being whistled at, groped, or inappropriately chatted up. They generally keep silent because they feel powerless. Society generally keeps silent because it doesn't care. And this is just the everyday stuff. Underneath this culture of silence lies a nightmarish landscape which includes rape, domestic abuse and murder. Any woman living in this terrifying landscape is almost bound to think that the world is primarily defined by male power and dominance.

Historically there's no question that this has been true, and still is in many parts of the world where the hangover of the pre-capitalist past still hangs heaviest. In advanced capitalist countries the trend has been more towards political, legal and economic parity, partly so that employers can cherry-pick exploitable workers from the largest possible bowl. But these limited freedoms have been offset by an intensifying commodification of women through advertising, the media, and the film and music industry, a commodification now also turning its attention to men. We are not even human beings anymore, just products with a package and a price and a sell-by date.

If society is primarily patriarchal, as some think, then most men are doing astonishingly badly out of it. This is really because they, along with women, are ultimately in thrall to a higher power, a tiny fraction of people who own and control all of society and most of the world. What is decisively important about this power elite is not actually their gender at all but their property portfolio.

To socialists, it doesn't matter what colour or gender you are. What matters is that you are a worker. The politicisation of gender, like ethnicity, helps keep the working class divided and thus too weak to break out of its own misery. Capitalism is a master at instilling its oppressive and divisive structures at an early age. The task of revolutionaries is to identify and break those structures. And we can do it, so long as workers are willing to try to understand each other. Women have been speaking out, and must continue to do so in order to lift the veil of silence. For their part, men need to understand that ignoring women's subjective experience of patriarchy is the same as perpetuating it. Either you are fighting oppression or you are complicit in it. When a man suffers rage, helplessness and frustration, he is experiencing what it means to be a worker. But when he takes his rage out on a woman he is doing the bosses' dirty work for them and he is a class traitor. A class that wants to be free also has to know how to take responsibility. Socialism is not possible otherwise.

There is, incidentally, nothing in the rules of capitalism that forbids it from being gender-neutral. In a gender-neutral capitalism, workers would still be poor, overworked, exploited, powerless and bitter.  And capitalism would still be hell-bent on self-destruction through war and environmental damage. The identity of the oppressor can and has changed among and between cultures and over time. What hasn't changed, and what will never change in capitalism, is the ability of some to oppress others. This is one reason why socialists call for the abolition of the property-owning principle. Private ownership is a big stick, whoever wields it. If you don't want to be beaten, you need to throw away the stick.

Paddy Shannon

Forcible Entry (1986)

From the May 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

The number of reported rapes in Britain rose last year by 29 per cent (Home Office Statistical Bulletin on Notifiable Offences) and the National Society for the Protection of Children estimates that reported cases of child sex abuse rose by 90 per cent in the same period. As with all crime statistics, such figures should be treated cautiously — some of the increase in the rape statistics is likely to be due to a greater willingness among women to report sexual attacks. However, given the widely accepted fact that reported rape and sexual attack is only the tip of the iceberg, it seems reasonable to assume that the incidence of sexual violence is alarmingly high.

The response of the government and the judiciary has been to advocate harsher penalties for rapists and to suggest measures that will afford greater protection to rape victims. The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Lane, recently issued sentencing guidelines to judges which are intended to result in more uniformly severe sentences for convicted rapists. Such measures may lead to more women reporting rape; they will almost certainly lead to more rapists being imprisoned. But they will almost certainly not lead to fewer rapes or sexual assaults. The call for tougher measures represents little more than a knee-jerk response to the problem — the need to be seen to be doing something — and reflects a lack of understanding of the causes of sexual violence. Despite the ritual cries of the right, moralists of all political hues and the law and order lobby, rape is not a new phenomenon. It is neither a consequence of a "decline in moral standards" nor a result of the so-called permissive society. Rape has been a feature of most societies throughout history, but what constitutes rape has changed with time, as have the attitudes to both rapist and victim.

Women’s bodies — men's property

The idea that women are (or ought to be) independent and autonomous individuals is a relatively recent one, that is still far from being accepted among much of the world's population. In general women are economically, legally and socially inferior to men. In many parts of the world women have no legal title to property — they themselves are the property of their fathers or husbands. In such situations rape is likely since there is little respect for women, who have no real rights over their own bodies. But the "victim" of a rape is seen to be the father or husband, since it is their goods that have been stolen or damaged by the rapist.

In feudal times peasant women were subject to the rule of both their fathers or husbands and of the feudal lord. The practice of jus primae noctis (the right of the first night) was common in much of Europe. The feudal lord had the right to take the virginity of the bride of any of his vassals or serfs unless the couple paid a certain amount of produce in redemption dues. This practice must have amounted to rape in many instances but was not treated as such because of the nature of the prevailing property relations. More recently in the American South a similar practice was common among white slave owners. Black women were often forced by their masters into sexual relations against their will. Such rapes must have been common knowledge and yet no action was taken against the rapists. In Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries domestic servants were frequently the victims of the unwanted sexual attentions of their employers. There was no direct ownership relationship between the servant and the employer — she was in theory free, an employee not a slave. And yet to refuse her employer might mean the loss of her livelihood. (To agree and risk pregnancy would also effectively mean the loss of her job. Pregnant maids were usually sent packing, many were forced into prostitution as the only alternative means of earning a living.)

The idea of women as property to be sexually exploited continues to the present even though the law in most modern westernised nations formally recognises women as independent. Sexual harassment of female employees by their male employers is commonplace. Again women are faced with the choice of suffering in silence or risking losing their jobs. The idea of women as men's property is reflected in the fact that in many countries rape within marriage is not a crime. The marriage contract is such that it is considered to effectively represent permanent consent of the wife to her husband for sexual relations. In the recent Ealing vicarage rape case the tabloid press seemed to regard the offence as especially despicable (and hence newsworthy) for a number of reasons. Firstly, the woman who was raped was a clergyman's daughter and therefore "respectable"; and secondly the rape took place in front of her boyfriend and father an affront not only to her but to them. Implicit in the reporting was the idea that they had suffered an injury not just because they were forced to witness a despicable act and themselves suffered physical injury, but because the rapists were taking something that rightfully belonged to them.

A weapon of war

Throughout history rape has featured significantly in war. Although in recent times rape of women by an occupying army has been officially outlawed, it is often unofficially ignored, condoned or even encouraged. The examples are numerous and provide a ghastly indictment of the brutalising effects of war.

During the First World War. as the Germans advanced through Belgium and France in 1914, their progress was accompanied by a deliberately mounted campaign of terror: looting and burning of houses and rape. If these tactics were intended to cow the "enemy" into submission then they partly backfired since the Allied powers used the rumours of the "depraved Boche" as a useful propaganda tool to stir up nationalistic sentiment among workers and encourage them to enlist in defence of "their women" against the Germans. During the Second World War the ideology of fascism led more directly to an acceptance of rape: the exaggeration of masculine values, the frequent depiction by the Nazis of Jews (and also Slavs) as weak and effeminate and the denial of humanity to these racial groups, made rape almost inevitable. Mob rape of Jewish women made its first appearance during Kristallnacht in November 1938 but as the German army moved through Europe, homes were looted and women raped despite the fact that sexual relations between Germans and Jews were officially prohibited on grounds of racial defilement. For some German soldiers a conflict was created as a result of their acceptance of the ideology of racial superiority: on the one hand it dictated that they remained separate from Jews and on the other it dictated that since Jews were sub-human they were fair game for all sorts of brutal behaviour including sexual humiliation and rape. A woman survivor from Bergen-Belsen describes the consequences of such conflict. Held at a police station in her German-occupied Polish village, she was forced to strip in front of the Gestapo, was knocked about and then dragged by one man into an adjoining room:

    I was in a small office and the German had a long heavy whip in his hand. "You don’t know how to obey. I'll show you. But I can't have you. scum, because you're Jewish, and filthy. What a shame! He swung the whip across my breasts. "Here's what you can have for being a dirty Jew — instead of me — this!" He lashed the whip again and again and I fainted. (Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will, Penguin, p.51)

Sexual humiliation and violence of this kind was commonplace to men and women. Jewish and non-Jewish, both inside the concentration camps and outside.

But it was not only the Axis armies that raped during the Second World War. When the Allied forces moved into Europe driving back the Germans, women were again raped, but most especially in Germany. As the Allies occupied Berlin rape was so common that one commentator wrote: The fear of sexual attack lay over the city like a pall'' (Brownmiller. p.66), and there are accounts of German women who dressed in army uniforms since they felt it would be safer to be mistaken for a German soldier than a German woman.

The use of rape as a weapon of war combined with the traditional view of women's bodies as man's property in the war in Bangladesh — with tragic consequences for the women concerned. During the nine month conflict an estimated 200,000 Bengali women were raped by Pakistani soldiers. Husbands and fathers in village societies frequently ostracised the raped women — they were now defiled and regarded as damaged property and therefore unmanageable. Many were pregnant as a result of their attack and were forced to leave their villages.

During the war in Vietnam the South Vietnamese army did rape but fewer attacks took place while they were fighting in "their" country than occurred during the invasion of Cambodia in 1970. Among the Viet Cong there were both stern injunctions against rape and severe reprimands for those who did. The reason was that as a guerilla army the Viet Cong were dependent on villagers for food and protection. They could not risk alienating villagers by raping the women.

For the American army in Vietnam rape and prostitution were inextricably linked. Most US army bases had military brothels nearby, set up in the full knowledge and with the full support of the officers. The women who worked in them were South Vietnamese for whom prostitution was an economic necessity. (Economic need is almost as effective as physical coercion in forcing women to have sex with men against their will). Brownmiller writes:

   . . . as the American presence in Vietnam multiplied, the unspoken military theory of women's bodies as not only a reward of war but as a necessary provision like soda pop and ice cream, to keep our boys healthy and happy turned into routine practice. And if monetary access to women's bodies did not promote an ideology of rape in Vietnam, neither did it thwart it. (ibid. p.92)

Rape then has been, and continues to be. a horrifying aspect of war. The maleness of the military, the total environment of violence and the brutalising effects of that violence are breeding grounds for rape. But rape in war has an important symbolic quality too: it is a symbolic occupation, a forced humiliation and imposition of subordinate status. Rape is the act of a conqueror and women's bodies merely part of the spoils of victory.

A culture of rape

Most men see rape as an offence committed by other men — sick, pathological deviants. But rape is at one end of a continuum of sexual behaviour much of which is characterised by, at best, insensitivity and at worst brutality and coercion, and forms part of a masculine sexual culture. Sexual success measured in terms of the number of "conquests" and the frequency of the act, rather than the quality of the experience, is an important element of what it is to be "a man" in our society. Most men don't live up to the macho image and hide their own fears and insecurities about their sexual relations behind a mask of sexual bravado. To admit to fears or anxieties about their sexual relations would only compound the feelings of inadequacy: the expression of emotion is considered a sign of weakness for men.

For most men this may have no more effect than to make them unhappy or anxious. For others sexual relationships become less risky if the emotional content is removed — the aim of relations with women then becomes a quick screw rather than a relationship which recognises that a woman is a person, not just a vehicle for sexual pleasure. For some men pornography serves a similar purpose — safe sex from a distance. Not only emotions are removed from the experience but women themselves are disembodied passive objects available for men's use. But for some men the conflicting feelings about sexuality and their emotional response to women will be acted out through sexual violence or abuse of women (or children). Rape represents the end of this continuum of impersonal sex — the emotional content of the sexual relationship removed entirely or distorted into something like hate, the feelings (and indeed, in many cases, the identity) of the woman irrelevant; the woman herself dehumanised. This is not to say that there is a necessary causal relationship between, say, pornography and rape, but that they form part of a total sexual culture which encourages rape.

In a society where relationships between people in general are dehumanised — employer and worker, buyer and seller it is not surprising that sexual relations too are so often dehumanised. Sex becomes just one more arena for the expression of conflict or the exercise of power. In certain situations like that produced by war; in societies where women are still regarded as inferior to men, in cultures where racial superiority is part of the dominant ideology, then rape is likely to be prevalent. But in our society too. rape is an implicit part of our sexual culture. Think of the language used to describe sexual relations (men talk of "having" a woman); the depictions of women in tabloid newspapers (sexually available and passive objects for male pleasure); the jokes that are told which are demeaning to women and glorify aggressive masculinity; the popular wisdom that is handed down — that women say "no" when they really mean "yes", or that women play hard to get; the comments made by judges hearing rape cases (that women contribute to the offence by wearing certain clothes or by being in a certain place at a certain time); and finally the stereotypes that we are brought up on — the passive, yielding female and the aggressive male driven by uncontrollable sexual desire. All these factors contribute to a cultural environment in which rape and other forms of sexual abuse and violence are likely to occur.

It is not only rape that we should be concerned about but the whole spectrum of sexual behaviour. And we cannot begin to understand that until we understand the nature of the wider society from which it is derived. Sexuality is natural but there is nothing natural about the ways in which we express that sexuality: it is shaped and conditioned by the society in which we live and the kinds of sexual expression that are considered acceptable are a product of particular cultures at particular times. The fact that so many people in our society express their sexuality in ways that are twisted, coercive, violent and brutal should make us very concerned about the nature of the society that produced that sexuality.

Janie Percy-Smith

Capital's Augean Stable. (1926)

From the January 1926 issue of the Socialist Standard

We do not profess a special indignation over the degrading sex relations Capitalism begets. We fail to see that the degradation of armies of women in this respect is worse than that of their sister domestics or of those in the Jam Factory, the Mills, or the Millinery and Dressmaking sweat dens. The recent Morris case is an instance of the contempt in which our Masters hold the Workers and serves to emphasise our claim that social evils have their being in class domination.

It was the necessity of obtaining a living that placed these hapless girls—and children—in the toils of this wealthy roue. The evidence showed that the dazzle and display of wealth coupled with threats of dismissal, served to weaken the resistance of his Working Class victims in order that he might gratify such desires as a wealthy idler would consider it an impertinence to question. It may be claimed that such cases are unusual, but disclosures made on past occasions, together with the evidence forthcoming as a result of recently raided West End night clubs, show that there is an organised ‘“traffic” drawing its clientele from those in the “best social positions.” Society people crowding the divorce courts bear striking witness to the words of Marx, written over 80 years ago :—

Our Bourgeois not content with having the wives and daughters of their proletarians at their disposal, not to speak of common prostitutes, take the greatest pleasure in seducing each others wives (Communist Manifesto).

It is interesting to note the difference in sentences passed upon Morris and his accomplice, and that upon a man and woman for burglary with violence reported in the same issue of the “Daily News” (18-12-25). The latter appealed unsuccessfully against seven and three years’ penal servitude respectively, the man to receive twenty lashes with the cat. In the latter case the violence consisted of gagging and binding with threats, but it was a crime against property, and it is well known in legal circles that the punishment for such crimes is relatively greater than that for crimes of other natures. Even the smug “Daily News” Editorial (Ibid) says “‘the contrast between the two sentences constitutes a challenge to the common sense and to the moral sense of the community.’’ The truth is that it is the contrast between the standards that exist in private property society.

Labour Leaders like Mr. J. H. Thomas ought to display great moral indignation considering that when Colonial Secretary he justified the procuring of native girls for the use of the navy in the brothels of Hong Kong on the grounds that it would afford protection for European white women. We wonder how he and his Capitalist friends would have liked their own daughters to suffer a like fate or how they would have liked them to be protected by a “white man” as was the fate of these working class girls in the Morris case. Only the Social Revolution can free women, like men, from economic servitude with its consequent evils. Then no woman will need to sell her sex and no man will have power to coerce her affection. With a ruling class whose mentality is circumscribed by the buying and selling nature of their plundering system, relations of sex cannot be understood by them beyond those that exist as a result of the present private property basis of society. Like the Christians, they treat such subjects either as unclean, or with hypocritical silence. The Free Love of mutual affection that must arise as a result of the removal of property and class domination is therefore ever an enigma to our would-be moral reformers.

W. E. MacHaffie