Will “The Last Hottentot” hold us back? (1948)

From the October 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

Among the many problems that hinder the workers from understanding Socialism the problem of how it is possible to establish Socialism, in face of the “backwardness” of sections of the world’s population, occupies a prominent place. It really springs from the same patronising root as the complacent idea, “Of course I can understand but the poor mutt next door hasn’t the mental capacity to do so.” The strange part of it is that, lumped in with this “backward” section, are peoples responsible for many of mankind’s most brilliant achievements during the last two thousand years or so, some of which were accomplished when the people of these islands were running about unclothed and with painted bodies; of such are the Egyptian, the Arab, the Turk and the people of India and China. The place of “honour,” amongst the “backward” sections, is occupied by the negro, and yet it is just the negro who explodes the fiction of racial grades of mental capacity. Let us take one or two outstanding examples of this.

Toussaint L’Ouverture, a West African negro slave, organised the slave revolt at Haiti in 1797 and revealed himself to be one of the foremost generals of his time, defeating an army consisting of 20,000 of Napoleon’s veteran troops, expelling the French, British and Spaniards from Haiti, and inaugurating a period of peace and prosperity on the island. His “cultured” Western opponents, unable to upset the negro regime, eventually invited him on board a man-of-war for a conference, under a solemn promise of immunity, but, when they had got him on board, put him in chains, and he died in captivity.

Booker T. Washington was an American negro slave boy who had no chance of learning the simple elements of reading arid writing until he was fifteen, after the Emancipation Act of 1864, and even then he only learnt from other negroes in voluntary classes; yet he became an accomplished writer of English and a lecturer on many subjects. In the opening lines of his book “Up From Slavery” he wrote that he did not know when he was born or where, but he had a strong suspicion that he was born at some time somewhere!

Within the space of a century, in spite of the multitude of disabilities suffered by the negroes in America after the abolition of slavery, they have produced front rank workers in the fields of industry, science, art and literature. The Maoris of New Zealand, and other “backward races,” reveal similar mental capacity when they are drawn within the social orbit of modern nations. While walking along one of London’s main streets, during the early part of the year, the writer saw a group of young men and women from West Africa who were in London attending a conference. The girls, who had typical African faces, were slender, beautiful and charmingly dressed—obvious products of advanced culture, no different from their Western sisters except in colour and vivacity. Comparing them with the pictures of West African women in travel books was like comparing a chic Parisian woman with a hardworking peasant woman of the provinces. It was obvious that the social circumstances of these African girls were not those of a backward community, and it was this that made all the difference.

There is no fundamental difference in mental capacity between any sections of the world’s population; there are only differences in the quantity and diversity of the information acquired, which depends upon the particular social circumstances. Take a group of babies from anywhere on earth, even from the Hottentots and Bushmen of Africa, put them in circumstances where they can acquire the requisite knowledge and they will rival the best the West can produce in achievement in different directions. Go into any main street in a thickly populated area and you will see crowds of people, all of whom can run, jump, sing and so on. Here and there some will run better, jump better, sing belter, but all are capable of doing these things if they are physically sound. So it is with thinking. All over the world there is a general average mental capacity which, given the opportunity, can quite competently acquire modern culture—and the elements of Socialism. The opportunity lies in the existence of social conditions favourable to the development of Socialist ideas.

The full span of human life is only a tiny fraction of the span, of organic life on this planet. In the womb of time it took millions of years for the earliest organism to develop into the human organism; in the womb of its mother months are sufficient for the embryo to pass through similar phases to develop into a child. From childhood to manhood the boy or girl can absorb the achievement of his own particular section of mankind. In the advanced nations they absorb what is advanced, as the miner’s or cotton-operative’s daughter or son, who has passed through a university, has proved; in the backward nations they absorb what is suitable to the way they live, much of which is outside the mental horizon of advanced nations. A Hottentot or a Bushman, armed with his few simple tools and weapons and his bush craft, can live in the African bush; a white man can only live there if he transports modern equipment and leans on the native. Transport a Hottentot baby, just after birth, to the centre of London, rear him in a family like other London children and he will grow up like them in mental culture. Transport a London baby, just after birth, to a Hottentot family and he will grow up like them in mental culture. The Hottentot only becomes what he is today because of his primitive surroundings, and traditions associated with those surroundings. A child born anywhere on earth is born with a brain of the average capacity of mankind. How the physical and mental capacities develop afterwards depends upon social circumstances; alter the social circumstances and the mental development is different. In other words the capacity is similar but the acquirements are different. All the basic discoveries of mankind which made civilisation possible, fire, tools and weapons, pottery, metal-working, agriculture, writing and so forth, were made by sections of mankind which, according to present standards, would be regarded as backward.

What are called backward races are not backward in mental capacity; they live in circumstances that are primitive compared with the circumstances of highly developed nations. While they remain outside the orbit of modern production, or only serve it from outside, they remain tied to primitive ways and traditions. Once they become absorbed into capitalist civilisation, that is to say, once they take part in building up capitalism on their own account, then they cut the cord that ties them to the past. The negro in America has done this, Japan has done it, Russia, China and India are doing it now. Japan became a first class modern nation and Russia is on the threshold of a similar condition. Everywhere native populations are stirring restlessly, struggling to cast off the shackles of the past in order to enter into the heritage of today; and it is being accomplished at a pace that increases in speed as time passes. One nation learns from another and the backward learn from the forward, borrowing not only capitalist methods and ideas, but also the aspirations of the working class that is subjected by Capitalism. What took the Western nations centuries to accomplish the East is accomplishing in decades. The old protest, that Socialism must wait upon the intellectual development of the backward nations, is losing power as the world is being transformed into one level of development and Socialist ideas are penetrating everywhere. In the last half-century vast areas of the East and West have made tremendous strides along the capitalist road, and the rate of progress multiplies; in thirty years Russia has developed from a ramshackle semi-feudal empire into a first class world power, India is undergoing the birth-pangs of a capitalist state which will transform its primitive village economy and obliterate the traditions associated with this economy, the same may be said for Burma, as well as other of the, until recently, “backward” areas.

One thing is clear. The main resources of the world are now contained within the boundaries of nations that are either highly developed capitalistically or are on the verge of becoming so. Even the primitive agricultural communities of India will soon be overwhelmed as India gets upon its capitalist feet. There is, therefore, nothing to hold back the inhabitants of these advanced nations from uniting in a world Socialist commonwealth. In such circumstances what would be their attitude towards groups that might have lagged behind? Quite obviously it would be one of helpfulness; supplying these backward groups with everything they needed, physically and mentally, to bring them up to the general level as participants in the new world social order; and the assistance would be given free, with a generous regard for the traditions and feelings of those who had not yet cast off the cramping heritage of the past.

No, it is not “backward nations” that are clogging the footsteps of social progress but lack of understanding amongst worker’s of the “advanced nations,” and part of this lack of understanding is comprised in the patronising view that some are endowed with a mental superiority that marks them out as the chosen people. All human kind are similar parts of one mental piece, and when they get the opportunity they show that it is so.

There are no fundamental mental barriers to the acquisition of knowledge essential to the establishment of Socialism. What are apparently mental barriers are in reality social ones. These are fast disappearing as the social system that has made possible the production and safeguarding of sufficient means of existence to provide comfort for the whole of the world’s population draws all the inhabitants of the earth into its orbit.

Gilmac.

The Plundering of Haiti (1945)

From the October 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Haiti was, on the eve of the French Revolution, the richest of all European colonies, for it accounted for no less than two-thirds of the overseas trade of France. Its wealth, drawn from its plantations of sugar, cotton and coffee, was derived from the merciless exploitation of half a million slaves. This island has always reeked of cruelty. The Spaniards exterminated a million natives before they had recourse to the African slave trade. The French were able organisers, but they, too, relied on the lash and reckoned that it paid them to work a negro to death in seven years." 

—H. N. Brailsford, Observer, June 17th, 1945.

War: Methods of Offence and Defence (continued) (1940)

From the December 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 2

While the Roman republic was carrying all before it the power of cavalry began to show itself, and in the latter part of the Empire it dominated the military situation as the supreme offensive weapon.

The hills and marshes of Italy were not an ideal training ground for cavalry. Like gunpowder, the new offensive weapon came from the East, originating among the Magyars and the Gauls, who developed their horsemanship on the plains of Hungary and the steppes of Russia. When these barbarians first overflowed the Roman frontiers they presented Rome with a military problem that was only solved ultimately by making these barbarians citizens of Rome and the basis of its army. But the solution was obtained slowly and occupied centuries in accomplishing.

It is an extraordinary instance of the cupidity, solidity and power of the Roman commercial class that, in spite of numerous disastrous defeats sustained by Roman arms, the wealth and influence of Rome extended and digested victors and vanquished indifferently into its predatory pursuit of riches. For the grandeur of old Rome was based upon the capacity of its privileged patrician and commercial class of merchants and financiers to contrive that all roads carrying wealth, sweated from slave and freedman, led back to Rome.

In the early years of the Roman republic, while its power was extending over Italy, the heavily armoured Roman soldier, fighting in the phalanx formation borrowed from the Greeks, was irresistible. When, however, Roman conquest spread beyond the borders of Italy the Romans came in contact with foes whose offensive equipment showed up certain weaknesses in the closely-packed phalanx.

The first shock received by the Roman military organisation was delivered by the Carthagenians.

While Rome had been conquering Italy, another State, Carthage, had risen to power in North Africa. The Carthagenian was a maritime power drawing wealth to itself through sea traffic. It was by far the wealthiest State in the Mediterranean area, and Rome and Carthage eventually came to blows because of the growing influence of Carthage and the fear this inspired in Rome that Carthage would obtain control of the narrow strait between Sicily and Italy and dominate the Mediterranean. It was a struggle between two nations whose privileged classes both drew their wealth from usury, commerce and exploitation. But whereas (in those days) the Romans fought Rome’s battles, the Carthagenians never fought theirs, relying upon the huge numbers of mercenary troops their enormous wealth enabled them to purchase.

In passing it is worth noting that there was one important difference between mercenary and native troops that the Carthagenian wars brought home so forcibly to the Roman Government that steps were taken in the course of the war to remedy it. The Roman levies were compulsory and had a tendency to melt away as the soldier-farmer learnt how his land was ruined or his farm legally and illegally taken from him by financiers while he was away on foreign service. The mercenary, however, remained as long as his pay was good, though in defeat he sometimes turned upon his paymasters. As will be shown later on the Romans got out of this difficulty by the revolutionary change of organising a volunteer army.

The first series of battles was fought on the sea the Romans being successful. They introduced a revolution into sea warfare. The old method of fighting was to ram and sink the opponent’s ship—hence the iron beak below the waterline. But the Romans were poor sailors, and to make up for this deficiency, and to take advantage of the fighting skill of their soldiers, they introduced the method of grapple and board. To effect this a narrow movable gangway with a sharp spike at the end was attached to the ship in such a way that one end could be raised into the air and dropped upon the deck of the enemy ship. The sharp spike pierced the deck and the Roman soldiers rushed down the gangway to engage the enemy in hand-to-hand fighting. Against the Carthagenians, who were expert sailors but poor soldiers, it proved very successful.

The Romans then carried the war into Sicily and Africa. Four years were spent gathering and equipping an expeditionary force to attack the city of Carthage itself, and eventually an army of twenty thousand infantry and five hundred cavalry was landed on the coast of Africa. The small size of the cavalry force shows what little reliance was placed upon cavalry by Roman tacticians.

This army was met by a mercenary Carthagenian army which had been carefully trained by Xanthippus, a Spartan in the service of Carthage. When the two armies met the numerous Carthagenian cavalry, which was stationed on the wings of the phalanx, swamped and drove from the field the small force of Roman horse, and then turned inwards on the Roman centre enveloping and almost completely annihilating it. Only two thousand escaped.

The weakness of the phalanx formation was that, if crowded in upon itself by a force striking from different sides and the rear while the front ranks were still engaged, the soldiers became too closely packed to raise their arms and use their long pikes. It was cavalry that showed up this weakness, and the battle in North Africa was the first important victory of cavalry over infantry. The Greek and Roman phalanx had always depended upon moving forward rapidly and keeping formation until they got af the enemy, but cavalry was too mobile to be reached in that way. However, the hills and marshlands of Italy were not good breeding grounds for cavalry on a large scale, and a compromise formation was later developed by the Romans to meet the new form of offensive.

After the struggle between Rome and Carthage had lasted for twenty-two years, the Romans gained a naval victory that for a time set a limit to the encroachment of Carthage. The latter suffered a further setback by the revolt of its mercenary army which was being treacherously hamstrung by its faithless paymaster. The terrible story of the ferocious crushing of this revolt is told by Flaubert in his novel, “Salambo.”

The next important phase in the struggle between Rome and Carthage for supremacy was the period of Hannibal’s march in B.C. 217 from Spain over the Pyrenees and Alps into Italy, and his conquering progress towards Rome. Again cavalry was the ruling factor in Roman defeats. Hannibal’s force, though inferior in size to the Roman armies, was immensely superior in cavalry, and Hannibal planned every battle to make the best use of this force.

Ultimately another crushing blow was delivered to the old infantry formation by cavalry when the heavy Gallic cavalry of Hannibal dealt its sledgehammer blow at the battle of Cannoe. The Roman infantry were again forced into a helpless heap and massacred by a much smaller body of horsemen. The experience of North Africa had been repeated and was to occur on a larger scale once again before the Romans recognised that the day of the heavily-armed infantry was passing and a more mobile offensive weapon had to be forged.

Hannibal’s final withdrawal from Italy was not due to defeat on the battlefield, but to blockade, guerilla and fortress warfare, and the jealousy and suspicions of the ruling groups in Carthage who eventually recalled him.

The next period of interest in this discussion is the time when the German tribes were threatening to overflow Roman frontiers. At first the Roman armies suffered overwhelming defeats. Then an army, raised and trained under a new system devised by the Roman general, Marius, was successful, and the invaders were driven off.

The new military organisation developed under Marius to meet the cavalry menace was a carefully trained volunteer paid force, with its infantry ranks spaced out in three sections grouped as a cohort (six centuries totalling 600 men). Ten of these cohorts formed a legion. The weapons of the legionary were a javelin for throwing and a short sword for close quarters, and his armour a helmet and cuirass. Thus the old armoured citizen-soldier of the phalanx with his pike was abolished and a professional army established in his place. The new legionaries were capable of building fortifications and roads and were the foundation of the system which carried Roman arms successfully all over the known world and built roads and fortifications that still remain famous. It has been asserted that the new army fought as much with the mattock and spade as with the sword. It met all the calls upon it successfully until it came up against the Magyar horse archers and finally the heavily-armed Gothic cavalry in the later days of the Empire.

The disaster that eventually rendered the Roman legionary obsolete was suffered at the battle of Adrianople where the Emperor Valens was defeated by the Goths in A.D. 378. It was the most crushing defeat since the battle of Cannoe and was brought about in a similar way. While the infantry ranks on both sides were engaged the Gothic cavalry, which had been foraging at a distance, received news that the fight was in progress, and, galloping on to the field, rode the legionaries down and forced them into a tightly-packed, helpless mass. Only a few thousand were able to escape.

This Gothic cavalry was a formidable force. With body and limbs clad in mail, and armed with a heavy lance, they were irresistible. There was also added to their equipment a heavy battle-axe which could be thrown or wielded and would penetrate Roman armour and split the Roman shield.

After Adrianople the Roman Emperor, Theodosius, commenced to enlist in his service every Teutonic chief whom he could bribe to enter his service. These war bands obeyed their immediate commanders alone. Thus order in the Roman world eventually depended upon the purchased loyalty of these Teutonic chiefs.

Henceforth for a thousand years heavy cavalry was the ruling power in war.

The limited nature of the subject under discussion prevents us from examining the internal constitution of the Roman Empire which had its share of responsibility for the poor show put up against the German hordes and also for the attempt to digest them into the Empire.

The armoured knights of mediaeval times and their part in the building up of Feudalism will be discussed in the next contribution—that is, providing bombs do not interfere with the production of it !

Gilmac.

Hero Worship: A Conversation With a Visitor from Mars. (Part 8) (1928)

From the July 1928 issue of the Socialist Standard

(Continued from June Issue.)

As the ‘magical’ rites performed by the 'medicine-man' are deemed indispensable to the prosperity of the tribe, our 'hero' gains great influence and repute, and often acquires the rank and authority of a chief or king. Later the time arrives when this position is made hereditary, and soon the 'magician's' wand becomes the sceptre of 'kingly authority'! And so we see, Marty, that the exalted origin of kings and emperors—the 'divine right of kings'—is the plausible, shrivelled-up impostor thought to be so powerful by my ancestors, but whose best performances to-day would scarcely attract the notice of a street audience.

"But, however bad the institution of monarchy has been for the human race, its effects have been negligible compared with the terrible superstitions called religions, which have grown up out of the 'magical’ rites performed by the medicine-man. The old mimicry and flapdoodle of these rites are still the stock-in-trade of our religions, but all the arts of civilisation have been called upon to gratify the senses of the devotees, to dignify fraud, to sanctify humbug and implant superstitious beliefs in the minds of the masses, and so resist the effect of revolutionary ideas engendered by the economic conditions endured by the enslaved majority. But happily the wide spread of knowledge, which the capitalist class has been compelled to facilitate, is steadily weakening the hold of religion upon the community.

"In enumerating the effects of this primitive 'hero-worship,' however, one must bear in mind that, as the antidote is never far from the poison, so the experiments of the witch-doctor with herbal concoctions mark the beginnings of medical science, his 'magical' rites led to the development of many arts and crafts, and his pretended study of the stars led (via astrology) to the science of astronomy. That is to say, the eradication of superstition led to honest enquiry.

"It may be relevant here, Marty, to comment upon another phase of 'hero-worship,' which appears to have been in being in the earliest stages of social development. Age seems to have been the first privilege to creep into society. In early communities we find the membership of the Council of the tribe was confined almost invariably to men of advanced years. This deference paid to old-age (perhaps originally due to some savage association of ideas connecting whiskers with wisdom!) went to ludicrous lengths during the Patriarchal stage, but although capitalism has brutally reversed old conceptions regarding senility, the old tradition is often hypocritically used by members of the ruling class and their agents as a valuable aid in the task of bemusing the minds of the workers. With what tragical frequency, for instance, does it happen that when some venerable ancient holding high office in a Trade Union, after years spent in beguiling and tricking the members, is exposed and denounced for his flagrant treachery, the members are deterred from taking salutary (and summary!) action by reminders of his past services. Such phrases as 'Be not hard on one who has grown grey in the Movement ’ or 'Do not forget that Wheedler has sacrificed the best years of his life in your interests,’ etc., ad nauseam, are repeatedly showered upon the duped men in supplicating tones, whilst the fact that Wheedler has also grown affluent and corpulent is not mentioned. The curse of whiskers . . .”

"Enough!” Marty imperiously exclaimed, at the same time fondling his really superb golden beard, "do not deteriorate into childish prattle. You have touched upon a subject which is interesting to me—the question of leadership. Now can you impart some information as to the effects of 'leadership' upon the various subject classes you have mentioned? And ”—here Marty winced perceptibly— "leave whiskers alone ! ”

Thus rebuked, I changed the trend of my remarks. "You may be surprised to learn, Marty, that it took centuries of the experience of chattel-slavery before the idea of 'leadership' was conceived. Tribal society was often engaged in warfare, but the military commanders were warlike men who received delegated authority from the tribe. During peace time such persons reverted to their ordinary occupations, and were without any special privileges. But although the idea of 'leadership' (as differentiated from delegated authority) arose out of the habits of obedience enforced under chattel-slavery, you must not suppose that the slaves themselves tamely submitted to their lot. On the contrary, the great empires of Chaldea, Egypt, Greece and Rome were at times seriously threatened by slave revolts. Thus in Rome (B.C. 73) a Thracian slave called Spartacus gathered a large body of followers and ravaged Italy from end to end, and defeated several Roman armies, until he was at last slain. Undoubtedly, Spartacus was a great leader of men, and the obedience rendered grudgingly by the slaves to their masters was willingly given to him. Accordingly, the slaves, having put all their hopes in the keeping of one man, these hopes perished with the death of the man, and the capable army became a mere rabble and was easily conquered. The bloody vengeance of the ruling class upon these rebels against slavery has no parallel in history—save, perhaps, the massacres after the Paris Commune. The terrible lesson of this vengeance was ever in the minds of the slaves, and no further revolts on such a gigantic scale occurred; and, as there was apparently no earthly saviour, they eventually succumbed to the teachings of the divine-man saviour (Jesus), later encouraged by their masters, who saw its usefulness in instilling earthly contentedness.

"In the history of my country, Marty, the rebellion of the peasants, led by Wat Tyler (1381), provides another example of the senselessness in placing all one’s trust and hopes in 'leaders.' The revolt was highly successful until Tyler was murdered, and then his infuriated followers were eventually mollified by the young king, who promised to be their leader and redress their wrongs. Of course, when the peasants had returned home, the ruling class opened its campaign of vengeance, and desisted in its slaughter only when it realized that it was reducing the number of wealth makers so grievously that any further 'displacement' of labour would send wages soaring.

W. J.

(To be continued).

Letters: Rebel Christian (2000)

Letters to the Editors from the September 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Rebel Christian

Dear Editors,

I have been reading Justus Weijagye’s article in the July Socialist Standard. I am sorry to find him perpetuating the view that Christianity is only concerned with an afterlife, and is socially reactionary. Undoubtedly great evils have been done in the name of Christ, not only by cults such as those in Uganda, but also by larger institutions, such as the Roman Catholic Inquisition. This no more discredits Christ, though, than the state capitalism of the former USSR discredited real Socialism.

Genuine Christianity has been socially progressive. For example, Robert Beckford, the Black Church historian, has argued that the Baptist missionaries in Jamaica helped make possible the slave revolt (the so-called “Baptist Revolt”) of 1831. This was actually a General Strike; the violence came from the authorities who suppressed it. The missionaries did not encourage the strike, but by informing the slaves of the movement for abolition back in Britain, telling them of their dignity and equality before God, and encouraging them to organise themselves into self-governing churches, they helped give the motivation for it and the means for bringing it about. They also tried to restrain the authorities in their reaction, and suffered for it, as they did in the later uprising (by now supposedly “free” slaves) in 1865. By contrast, the so-called “Christian Socialist” Charles Kingsley supported the suppression of the latter revolt. We can understand why Marx was so dismissive of “Christian Socialists” like that.

For my own part, I agree with the Object of your party, not in spite of, but because of, my faith in Christ.

Bob Allaway 

(by email)

Reply: 

Actually, we never said that Christians were only concerned with an afterlife. How could they be, since to survive all humans have to be practical materialists whatever their professed philosophical or religious views? But we would say that they must attach more importance to their imagined afterlife than to this, our actual—and only—life. Socialism can’t be that important or urgent compared to an eternal life “close to God”—or rotting in Hell. Because it’s the only life we’re going to get is why we should strive to improve our present life through the establishment of socialism, not because of faith in some supernatural being. But, as we said, all religious people, not just Christians, substitute faith for reason. Which is dangerous precisely because it can—and does—lead to events such as those in Uganda.

Whilst it is arguable that the so-called essence of Christianity is separate and different from what has actually been done in its name, it is the very essence with which we have a problem. A slave mentality is a prerequisite for worshipping a make-believe “benevolent creator” under pain of being tortured in hell forever if we disagree. This can only mean that God not only has a fragile ego but if he was human he would be denounced as an evil meglomaniac!

As revolutionary socialists we are for the abolition of modern slavery (wage slavery) and thus hostile to nay notion of submissive slave behaviour in whatever form it comes – Editors.

Let down

Dear Editors,

I’m glad to hear Robin’s local LETS scheme is hale and hearty (Letters, August), but my local scheme collapsed in disarray and has not revived after three years. Like Robin, I was quite enthusiastic at first. Disregarding the more outrageous claims, one could still see a social value in it. I worked hard at it, not minding in the least, and feeling that I was making a social contribution. I collected dozens of credits, but never used them. There was nothing to use them on anyway, since I didn’t want my dog walking and I didn’t need somebody to write me a poem, instruct me in Feng-shui or bake my bread. When the roof leaked, I still had to pay. When the plumbing broke, I had to do it myself. When I had a van, and offered its use, I was deluged with requests, but when I had no van, I had to hire one.

Finally I got tired of the middle-class bias of it all, the stripped-pine Guardian reading oh-so-nice pretend-liberalism that claimed to include everyone but clearly excluded most people. LETS never left the narrow and precious cultural womb it was born from, and it became for me increasingly twee and garden-party. What killed it was an exclusion issue, and the members’ inability to discuss anything and come to a conclusion. In a certain cultural milieu, it is bad form to have an open disagreement with anybody. Liberals hate “unpleasantness”. The LETS group were faced with an obnoxious man whom women wished to exclude, and the group toyed with “consensus” politics and “three-way votes” which caused chaos and prevented decisive action. The man left town fortunately. But so did most of the LETS goodwill.

I have heard that there are large LETS schemes in certain areas, and I wish them well. But for me LETS failed because it did not examine its own cultural assumptions, and confined itself to “nice” people who, unfortunately, were largely useless philosophy graduates who didn’t know one end of a screwdriver from the other. If socialists operated with similar class biases, we could write our entire membership on a jotter pad and install our Head Office, as our LETS scheme did, in somebody’s basement.

Paddy Shannon,

Lancaster

The economics of slavery in the West Indies (1988)

From the July 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Slavery has existed from the earliest records of human history. The ancient Egyptians used slave labour to build the pyramids from 4,750-3,000 BC; the Romans and ancient Greeks owned slaves and the geographical areas from which slaves were obtained had a history of owning slaves themselves. The West Africans had slaves and the Carib Indians of the West Indies raided Puerto Rica. Hispaniola and Jamaica for slaves. Slavery was such a basic feature of ancient societies that Plato, Plutarch and Aristophanes all retained slavery as part of their utopias, and even Thomas More, in his Utopia, as late as 1516, retained slavery as a punishment for crimes and adultery.

The slave trade of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries differed from earlier periods of slavery in that the number of people enslaved was much greater; the contradiction between the alleged Christian beliefs of the white slavers and the evils of the trade led to pseudo-scientific theories that their black captives were not really human, which, in turn, produced entrenched racist ideas which have persisted into the twentieth century.

The trade in African slaves to provide labour in the Southern states of the USA and the West Indies lasted for approximately 250 years and led to the transportation of an estimated forty million slaves. The Portuguese began trading in slaves at Lagos between 1440 and 1450 and by 1540 ten thousand slaves were being shipped to the West Indies from West Africa each year and. in addition, slaves were sold in South America and Mexico. Although slaves may have been brought to England as a result of the Iberian trade, the first group of African slaves to be brought to England by an English trader came from the Guinea Coast in 1555.

Britain's participation in the slave trade dates from 1564, when Sir John Hawkins made his second expedition to Africa in the flagship Jesus, with Queen Elizabeth's blessing, his first trip, two years before, having been highly successful. Manufactured goods such as textiles, iron, guns and spirits were shipped from Britain to the Guinea Coast and exchanged for other goods and slaves. These were exchanged for raw materials such as sugar and cotton in the New World which, in turn, were transported to England, completing the triangular trade. Jack Grates (The Great White Lie) states:

 Profits derived from the system found their way through reinvestment into other industries and agriculture, and it is not an exaggeration to say that they contributed substantially to the development of the Industrial Revolution on which Britain's nineteenth-century prosperity was based.

Liverpool was the main British port from which the slave ships sailed. In 1730, the port had 15 ships; in 1751, 53; 74 in 1760; in 1770, 96. and 132 by 1792 (Karl Marx. Capital).

The slave trade corrupted the African chiefs who bartered with the white slave traders. The insatiable demand for slaves led to an increase in tribal wars for captives who could be sold to the slavers. And by the middle of the eighteenth century the kidnapping of men and women of working age and in their most active reproductive years, the terrible loss of life resulting from the tribal wars and the spread of disease which accompanies foreign invaders, caused some areas of Africa to become underpopulated.

As the slavers pushed further into the interior of Africa the forced marches to the coast became more of an ordeal. Thirty per cent of the slaves died before they reached the coast to board the slave ships. And sometimes slaves who were rejected as unfit were killed by the black traders (Alexander Falconbridge, An Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa, 1788). Conditions on the slave ships were barbaric in the extreme: a captain in the Royal Navy made a famous drawing of the slave ship Brookes in Liverpool docks in 1787, which showed how 450 slaves were packed into the ship, allowing six feet by sixteen inches for every man and five feet by sixteen inches for every woman. This "tight-packing", as it was called. led to considerable loss of life during transportation and in 1788 to the British Parliament regulating the conditions under which slaves could be shipped. Although this made the transportation of slaves more humane, by regulating the trade Parliament had officially sanctioned it. Greed had led to the "tight-packing" of slaves but the higher survival rate of transported slaves after regulation may have been commercially just as successful and, by its claim to be humane, may have set back the campaign to abolish the trade.

William Wilberforce campaigned for the abolition of the slave trade from the formation of the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, in London in May 1787 to the passing of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act on 16 March. 1807. A number of myths surround Wilberforce. He was an MP and a wealthy factory owner who exploited child labour in his Hull factories. Contrary to popular belief he was opposed to the emancipation of the slaves, claiming that they were not fit for freedom.

When Earl Percy wanted to bring in a Bill for the gradual abolition of slavery in the West Indies in 1807, Wilberforce stated: "I and those who think with me not only abstain from proposing such a Bill, are ready to reject such a proposition when made by others". Wilberforce had a patronising attitude towards the slaves and was intolerant of Mohammedanism and Hinduism, which he wished to replace with Christianity.

The Prime Minister, William Pitt, also claimed to be an abolitionist but trading actually increased during his administration. It is thought that his opposition arose as a result of the sale of slaves by British merchants to foreign colonies, especially France, which although profitable in the short term was damaging to Britain's long-term interests.

After the abolition of the slave trade a million slaves remained in bondage in the West Indies and as slavery continued until 1833 slaves, therefore, had to be replaced. But the illegality of trading pushed up the price of slaves. To prevent illegal trading the British government provided bounty money for the capture of slave ships. As a full ship could command a bounty of £2,500 the naval squadron patrolling the African coast preferred to catch slave vessels at sea because it was more profitable than prevention. To evade the risk of capture the slave captains would put the slaves into specially prepared hiding places, so small that the slaves often died of suffocation or else they would be thrown overboard to drown or be eaten by sharks. The illegal trade was so profitable that if only one in three of the slave ships delivered its human cargo, a profit could be made. The European slave owning countries co-operated with each other to stop the slave trade but the USA refused to take part for a time and it was possible for a ship to avoid capture by running up the American flag.

The abolition of the slave trade provides a classic example of the futility of a reform that leaves the system intact and can sometimes lead to a worsening of conditions rather than an improvement. By the nineteenth century the industrial revolution had superseded chattel-slavery and feudalism in Britain. A new class of labouring poor with nothing to sell except their labour power had emerged in the industrial towns and cities. Slavery was becoming an anachronism. Slave labour was not free: slaves had to be maintained and, unlike the wage-slaves of Britain, they were expensive to buy. In Jamaica, in 1817, male slaves aged 20-40 years were valued at £139 and female slaves at £124 (B.W. Higman, Slave Population and Economy in Jamaica 1807-1834, Cambridge University Press. 1976).

As the work performed by slaves was usually of poor quality incentives were provided within the slavery system. In the French West Indies slaves had some legal protection against arbitrary punishments being meted out by their owners and. it is claimed, those islands were more profitable. In Jamaica slaves who had learned trades were able to amass fairly large sums of money. The ending of the slave trade led to a higher proportion of unproductive slaves as the owners were forced to breed slaves for themselves.

Further pressure was put on the slave system by a fall in the price of sugar which, by emancipation, was worth only about half of its value at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The Reform Bill of 1832 halved the planters' representation in the British Parliament which weakened them politically and the increasing number of slave rebellions culminated in the Jamaican rebellion on 27 December 1831 in which 20,000 slaves took part, killing 14 whites and destroying over £1 million worth of property.

In the face of growing economic and political problems the plantation owners opted for the compensation offered by the British government of 1833 which, in fact recognised the legal right of one person to own another. For the former slaves, emancipation changed their material lives very little; their former owners kept control of the courts and owned the land. As Tolstoy observed fifty years later:

 . . . the essence of all slavery consists in drawing the benefit of another's labour-force by compulsion, and it is quite immaterial whether the drawing of this benefit is founded upon property in the slave or upon property in money which is indispensable to the other man (What Shall We Do Then, 1885).

Chattel-slavery was a particularly vicious form of exploitation, although the condition of the working class under laissez-faire capitalism was also inhumane and squandered workers' lives. For workers all over the world the fight for emancipation against wage-slavery and its replacement with socialism still has to be won.

Carl Pinel

Islands in the Doldrums (1962)

From the June 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Oil and sunshine 

Keeps the Yankees looking fine: 

Oil and sunshine, 

With a glass of local wine

Oil, sunshine, and Yankees. Perhaps the composer of this recently popular calypso was more interested in the local wine, but he summed up the importance of the West Indies in the modern world neatly enough.

Trinidad’s oil is the most important mineral product of the West Indies. Sunshine and a satisfactory rainfall allow crops (the most important being sugarcane) which form the basis of most of the islands’ economy. Lastly, the American Government keeps a stern, albeit paternal eye on the Caribbean as an important “outpost of democracy” and guardian of the eastern approaches to the Panama Canal.

But what are the West Indies? The term is in fact little more than an abstraction. To British people they mean those collections of islands forming the West Indies Federation. The French refer to les Antilles and mean particularly the islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique and French Guiana. Then there are the islands of the Dutch West Indies, the ’‘independent” island of Cuba, the American Virgin Islands, the twin “independent” states of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and the American satellite state of Puerto Rico. And what about the neighbouring mainland countries: British Guiana and British Honduras, Dutch Guiana (Surinam), and the Central American states bordering on the Caribbean? Do not their strategic positions and trading potentials label them as parts of the West Indies?

The truth is that the West Indies are a widespread collection of islands (Jamaica and Trinidad are 1,000 miles apart), possibly associated with countries on the South American mainland, with different cultural backgrounds, with people speaking many different languages, and having different economic affiliations to European and American colonial powers.

Little wonder that a succession of fact-finding committees and international committees of experts, have been sorely tried to propound a solution, within the framework of capitalism, for the ills of this economic, cultural, and political hodge-podge. And, as we shall see, problems there certainly are, especially for that section of the West Indian population which must seek an employer in order to live—the working class.

If the West Indies’ future is uncertain and unpromising, at least their past may be described with some accuracy: a past that exemplifies colonial expansion, capitalist accumulation of wealth, and the subjugation of a working class, with all the romance and colour of a Hollywood movie.

Search for Gold

The recorded history of the West Indies starts with their discovery by Columbus at the end of the fifteenth century. Columbus believed, and claimed, that he had found islands off the coast of Eastern Asia—hence the name West “Indies.”

The islands were already inhabited by tribes of aboriginal Indians, the Arawaks and the Caribs. These unfortunate Indians (the only "original” West Indians, despite Negro nationalist propaganda) were either destroyed or subjugated by the European settlers.

Following Columbus' various expeditions, the then strong Spanish crown founded a Spanish empire in the Caribbean and South America. Cuba and Hispaniola (now Haiti and the Dominican Republic) were the bases from which forces sailed for the conquest of Mexico, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, and the lands in South America.

The driving force was the search for gold. More and more Spanish settlers arrived in quest of this, bringing with them the Spanish form, of municipal government (the cabildo), vestiges of which later continued under British rule. They also brought agricultural stock—rice, citrus fruit trees, bananas, and, most important of all, sugar-cane. Local crops were limited, the most important being maize, cassava (bread-stuff), and tobacco.

The search for gold proved fruitless on the whole but in the words of Parry and Sherlock, “The story of sugar is a continuous thread running through the whole history of the West Indies.” Because most of the West Indian islands are hilly and therefore have limited areas of arable land, the only economical crop was found to be one which gave a high yield per acre and a high price; it was mainly

because of these factors that sugar and not cotton became the staple crop. Furthermore, sugar can be grown by unskilled labour and does not exhaust the ground.

The shortage of labour (both skilled and unskilled) to grow, harvest, mill, and process the crop (sugar-cane must be milled and processed soon after harvesting) became a pressing problem for the Spanish land-owners: there were virtually no “free” labourers, very few “forced” labourers, and the Arawaks and Caribs were either extinct or unfitted for life as agricultural labourers. The first batch of Negro slaves from the West Coast of Africa to supply these labour needs were shipped by the Spanish to the West Indies early in the sixteenth century.

The forty-year period of economic and territorial domination of the West Indies by Spain was broken by the outbreak of war with France in 1536, and from that date France, Spain, Holland, and England were in more or less constant conflict over possession of the islands, trade routes, and trading rights. Admirals Drake and Hawkins were the most illustrious of England’s band of official pirates. Unofficial pirates, or buccaneers (the most famous being Captain Morgan), operated with the approval of colonial governors against Spanish settlements and shipping, and were paid by booty.

Islands were captured and re-captured. Barbados was the only island taken by England which never changed hands. Jamaica was taken by the British in the middle of the seventeenth century; this was a great prize, for a contemporary described Jamaica as “lying in the very belly of all commerce.” Trinidad was captured from the Spanish by the French, and by the British from the French in 1797, during the Napoleonic wars. Eventually, mainly because of superior sea power and possession of the only two naval dockyards (Port Royal in Jamaica and English Harbour in Antigua), Britain became the dominant imperialist power in the Caribbean.

The growth of the trade in sugar and the trade in men went hand in hand.

French and English settlers soon discovered that, along with cotton, West Indian tobacco (which was found to be inferior to the Virginian type) were not profitable crops; for reasons already given, and because the demand for it in Europe was growing steadily, sugar became the main crop.

Considerable capital was needed to establish a sugar factory, and a plantation had to be large enough to keep the factory supplied with sugar-cane; it is thus easy to see why the small sugar-cane holdings were soon swallowed up by large estates and why eventually the industry fell into the hands of a few capitalists. Today, for example, all the large estates and ail the factories in Trinidad are owned by Tate and Lyle.

Indentured Labour

There was soon a cry for labour to work the estates and the factories. First of all, indentured (“free") labourers were brought from Europe, with the promise of smallholdings at the end of their contracts (if they lived that long). When virtually all the arable land had been swallowed up by the large estates, the supply of indentured labourers rapidly dwindled. Political prisoners (“Royalists" and Irish) and convicted felons were shipped: these were dubbed “white slaves” by the Negroes and were treated as badly as, if not worse than, the Negro slaves. But these were not enough to satisfy the needs of the profit-hungry sugar owners and so, like the Spanish and Portuguese before them, the French and English planters had to buy slaves, mostly Negroes from the West Coast of Africa.

The slave traders were as anxious to sell their human commodities as the plantation owners were to buy them. By the middle of the seventeenth century a steady stream of slaves was leaving Sierra Leone, the Niger Delta, and the Slave and Ivory Coasts to face disease and death in the overcrowded slave ships, and an uncertain future of back-breaking toil at the hands of the rapacious sugar planters. Barbados had a few hundred Negroes in 1640, but by 1645 there were over 6,000, and in 1685 no less than 46,000.

There were few white sugar owners and overseers to control this rising black tide of resentful, sullen and undisciplined slaves, many of whom came from warlike tribes. Soon isolated uprisings caused severe penalties to be imposed; typical of such repressive acts of legislation was the French Code Noir.

The slave trade was one of the most profitable enterprises of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—for the owners of the slave ships. The death-rate among the crews of the “slavers” was usually about the same as among the slaves they carried. Although the Spanish started the slave trade, eventually four countries (Portugal, Holland, England, and France) gained control. There was much competition between the various powers over the monopoly of such a lucrative business and to put a stop to keen Dutch competition Charles II of England granted a charter to the “Company of Royal Adventurers of England Trading into Africa” in 1663. This slave-trading organisation later became the Royal Africa Company, about which Parry and Sherlock say: “Several members of the royal family were shareholders in this enterprise, which was to supply the English sugar colonies with 3,000 slaves a year at an average price of £17, or one ton of sugar, per slave. The purchase price in Africa at that time was about £3.”

The first European war to be fought over the West Indies began in 1739 between England, Spain, and France. It was frankly called a “war of trade,” and was dubbed “the war of Jenkin’s ear” after an English sea captain who complained to parliament of Spanish hindrance to his trading activities in the Caribbean. From this time the three powers fought intermittently until the end of the Napoleonic wars in 1815, and many islands changed hands. For the English ruling class, this was a golden opportunity to cripple French sugar production by destroying both crops and machines and by capturing slaves. This period of imperialist skirmishing (which included the Seven Years’ War) was influenced, to the disadvantage of the English ruling class, by the American war of Independence, which drew English military and naval reserves from the Caribbean.

Plantation System

Despite wars and rumours of wars, however, for the sugar owners in the West Indian islands, the eighteenth century was probably the period of greatest prosperity. But it was also during this peak period of “plantation economy" that the seeds of future economic problems were sown, problems which teams of economic “experts,” government committees, etc., are attempting to solve to this day. The most important defect in the plantation system was monoculture, the growing of one crop. Other features were slavery, absentee ownership (most plantation owners lived in England and left the running of their estates to bailiffs), and the dependence of the traders on markets in the outside world.

To make matters worse, economic problems in the Caribbean have periodically been accentuated by natural disasters (hurricanes, droughts, and epidemic disease, such as cholera and yellow fever), from which some islands have taken years to recover.

However hard the planters tried, they were powerless to prevent their slaves learning about the world outside the slave compounds. It was thus inevitable that at the turn of the nineteenth century “leaders” emerged from, the ranks of the slaves: men who had heard the rallying cry of the French Revolution. “liberty, .equality, and fraternity,” and preached that this slogan should apply to slaves as well as to the plantation owners.

Slave Labour

Unrest and rebellion spread among the slaves and in 1791 the slave population of the northern plain of Saint-Domingue (later to be renamed Haiti) revolted, systematically firing some fields and houses and murdering the white inhabitants. Out of this bloody rising, during which both sides acted with the utmost savagery, arose the first Negro slave leader to prove himself competent both as a military commander and as a politician—Toussaint "L'ouverture.”

Movements for the abolition of slavery and the slave trade had for some years before the uprisings also been gaining strength in liberal circles in Britain. Various governments declared the slave trade illegal between the years 1808-1820 and slavery was abolished in all the West Indian colonies, except the Spanish, by the middle of the nineteenth century.

The erstwhile slaves soon found that they had exchanged one form of slavery for another. As one historian points out, “the Act which abolished slavery did not emancipate the slaves . . . As a social institution slavery disappeared . . . and it came back as a system of industry, the negroes . . . having to work as slaves for so many hours a week.”

Slavery was also a very mixed blessing for the plantation owners. It is true that the owners were reasonably assured of a constant supply of labourers who could not leave the plantations: following “emancipation” many ex-slaves left for more congenial work or to run smallholdings. But slave-labour was not very productive and the slave owners were bound to feed, clothe, and shelter their slaves. Sugar farming is largely seasonal. but the owners could not dispense with their slaves after the crop was harvested and processed as they now can with their wage-workers.

Michael La Touche

[To be concluded]

About Books (1953)

Book Reviews from the January 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

Spartacus was the leader of the third, and greatest, slave revolt against Rome (about 73 B.C.). A Thracian by birth and a gladiator, he rallied an army of slaves and, over a period of years, by adroit generalship, he defeated army after army of Roman soldiers sent against him, until the revolt was finally suppressed with great cruelty.

It was almost inevitable that a writer like Mr. Howard Fast, who selects the subjects for his novels from the struggles of exploited peoples against their oppressors, should eventually write a book about this revolt. His latest book, “Spartacus,” published by The Bodley Head (13/6) may not be such a gripping story as some of his earlier writings, but it is splendid reading and is to be recommended.

This story is not a chronological history of the slave rebellion. It is more in the nature of a symposium, the story being told through the mouths of a variety of characters each of whom views the revolt from a different angle. Licinius Crassus, the Roman general who led the army that eventually defeated the slaves; Lentulus Gracchus, a shrewd, successful Roman politician; Lentulus Batiatus, who kept the school for gladiators at Capua from which Spartacus escaped; Marcus Tullius Cicero, who later became the famous Roman philosopher, writer, politician, orator and consul; David, a fictitious Jewish rebel slave who in the book was closely associated with Spartacus from beginning to end of the revolt; these are some of the characters who tell the story and discuss the problems of chattel slave society.

A number of these problems have their parallel in present day capitalism, as, no doubt, Mr. Fast intends us to realise. Instance, unless the slaves could destroy the chattel slave system there was nowhere for them to go and nothing for them to do but to struggle until they were either killed or driven back into slavery. So it is with wage workers. Unless they abolish capitalism, struggle how they may, they will remain an exploited class.

The author gives a clear analysis of the Roman republic. It was a world in which the majority had nothing whilst a few had almost everything. Those who owned so much, needed protection from the slaves who produced it for them. The Roman soldiers, in the main, were peasants who had been driven from their land in order that slave plantations could be developed. The slave plantation had turned them into landless paupers. They had no more to defend than the rebel slaves whom they were sent to fight against. Those who owned nothing, who possessed no slaves, had to march their feet off, live in filth and squalor, wallow in blood and die fighting the slaves, in order that the slave owners could live in comfort and luxury. Had the Roman soldier but realised it, he had more to gain from a slave victory than from a slave defeat.

The job of the Roman politician was to be an illusionist, to convince the landless Romans that they had power, that they were the strength and glory of Rome, that they were free and that their freedom was precious, that they controlled their civilisation by their vote, to make them feel proud and superior because they were not slaves. Then, no matter how they stank, how hungry they were or where they slept, they felt proud and ready to defend the society that kept them in that condition against those who were their companions in misery—the slaves.

The horrors of crucifixion and gladiatorial combat, the depraved morality of the Roman leisure class, the comradeship within the many-tongued slave army and the hopes and fears of the slave leaders are splendidly dealt with in this book. It is well worth reading.

In an introductory note the author tells that, with the help of friends, he had to publish this book himself in America. Owing to the political temper of the times no commercial publisher would undertake the publication and distribution of such a book in the U.S.A.

Penguin Books are publishing a new series on the development of English society. It is to comprise eight “Pelican” books with the following titles:

1. Roman Britain.
2. The Beginnings of English Society (From the Anglo-Saxon Invasion).
3. English Society in the Early Middle Ages.
4. England in the Late Middle Ages.
5. Tudor England.
6. England in the Seventeenth Century.
7. England in the Eighteenth Century.
8. England in the Nineteenth Century.

All except the first of this series have been published. Each book is by a separate author and each author is a specialist in the period about which he, or she, writes.

The authors have had a free hand with their work, with the consequence that each has put his own emphasis on different aspects of social development, but, in general, the series is good.

Certain chapters in these books are complete essays in themselves and very useful essays, too. Instance the chapter “John Wesley and the Road to Salvation,” in “England in the Eighteenth Century,” by J. H. Plumb.

The influence of Wesley’s early life and his parents is dealt with. When, after 1738, he started to preach his Methodism and to build the organisation of Methodist chapels he was helped by the fact that the newly developed industry in this country was creating a number of new towns which had no churches. The tie-up between the Anglican church organisation and the state was such that the Anglican church ignored the new towns and so Wesley had a clear field. He had a violent dislike for radicalism and preached that the people should have no share in government. For him, the way to reform the evils of society was to transform the will of the individual. He preached thrift, abstinence, hard work and concentration. It was the Puritanism of the previous century shorn of its political radicalism. To an embryo capitalist class, striving by thrift and frugality to accumulate greater capital this teaching had a great appeal.

Wesley was intensely superstitious. He believed in witches and the possession by devils. His teaching called for no exercise of the intellect and appealed to his uneducated working class audiences. The owners of the workshops and factories that were growing up all over England, following the inventions of Savery and Newcomen, Arkwright and Hargreaves, the Darby’s of Coalbrookdale and others, were demanding more and more child labour. Poverty stricken workers had need of the few pence that their children could earn. Wesley taught that play was unworthy of a Christian child, that a child’s sole education need be only a knowledge of the Bible and the Catechism, that for the sake of its everlasting life a child should be at work. So, a Methodist could regard his overworked children with complacency. Methodism flourished through discipline and toil in the ugliness of suburbs and the industrial villages of England.

But the Methodist teaching destroyed its own objective. Wesley himself wrote, at the age of 84. that, through diligence and frugality many of his disciples were increasing their wealth and, as their wealth increased so did their pride, their anger and their desires of the flesh. Although the form of Methodism remained, the spirit was vanishing.

This Pelican History of England is, in total, very useful. There is another Pelican book entitled “Pre-historic Britain” which, although not one of this series, is a useful addition to it as a prelude to the series proper.

W. Waters