Definitions of Socialism (1952)

From the April 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

Those who are comparatively new to the ideas of the Socialist Party will perhaps wonder why we attach great importance to terminology. Unless there is agreement over terms, misunderstandings must follow. We don't wish to be pedantic, but the history of political movements indicates the enormous amount of confusion caused directly through the lack of satisfactory definitions. Because of this the Socialist Party always makes a point of defining what it means by socialism in every publication which goes out from the party. When we claim that the Labour Party is not a socialist party, and that the Communist Party is also not a socialist party it is because we have at least a clear idea of what we mean by socialism, and from this we don't intend on departing for any momentary political gain. Socialism has been defined by others as “The state control of exchange and a system of equal wages for all.” Such a definition we could not accept for four reasons. Under socialism there will be no state, for the state exists as an organisation for suppression, and for maintaining existence of a class or hierarchy. Secondly there will be no exchange under socialism, for exchange signifies buying and selling mid therefore ownership. Thirdly there will be no wages under socialism, because the wage system signifies that somebody is being exploited (and not getting the real fruits of their labour). And fourthly there will be no money under socialism, because money will not be needed. So for all these reasons we could not accept such a definition of socialism.

Von Scheel has defined socialism as "The economic philosophy of the suffering classes.” Such a definition is very inadequate; at all events the suffering classes have no philosophy in common even though they have poverty m common. G. Belot's definition was “The common entente with a view to social welfare. ” There are many such vague definitions. Even Wm. Morris was also vague in “The realisation for the purpose of satisfying the requirements of all these equalities.” and Hyndman "Socialism is an endeavour to substitute for the anarchical struggle or fight for existence an organised co-operation for existence.”

Chas. Bradlaugh who was a champion of free speech was never a Socialist, by his own or others definition, and said “Socialism denies individual private property and affirms that society organised as the state should own all wealth, direct all labour, and compel the equal distribution of all products ”

John Stuart Mill in his “Political Economy” gives us “Socialism is any system which requires that the land and instruments of production should be the property not of individuals but of communities or associations of the government. ” This definition comes a little nearer to the ideas of Socialism which we hold. Marx on the other hand wrote that socialism was"Substitution of conscious development of humanity for the unconscious development.” This is of course more of a philosophical than an economic definition not designed for use in day to day socialist propaganda and because of this could not be used by an organisation as the Socialist Party. Engels’ definition was also a bit philosophical “Mental reflection of the conflict existing in reality between the productive forces and the modes of production.”

A. Schäffle in “Quintessence of Socialism” writes “The Alpha and Omega of socialism is the transformation of private and competing capitalism into united collective capital.” Such definitions, which are common enough, have been the cause of a large amount of real confusion between nationalisation and socialism, and have been deliberately fostered by the labour parties throughout the world, as indeed it is their idea of socialism. Ramsay MacDonald was equally confused in his “Socialism is the application of mutual aid to politics and economics.” Proudhon's definition was likewise inadequate “Socialism is every aspiration towards the amelioration of society.” We might all argue with justification as to what constitutes an amelioration of society. Bebel in his “Woman and Socialism," invokes science and takes us up into the clouds with, “Science applied with clearer conscious and full knowledge to every sphere of human activity.” In “Le Mouvement Socialiste," T. De Wyzewa defines socialism as "A doctrine which demands the suppression of the proletariat and the complete control of wealth and power by the collectivity.” Such an adverse definition savours of influence from Russian Bolshevism. Another from K. Diehl in “Uber Socialisms, Kommunismus und Anarchisms,” “Negatively Socialism is the abolishing of private property in land or capital; positively it postulates personal income derived from labour only, and the abolishing of private possessions of capital” Again the Socialist Party could never work on such an inadequate definition.

There have been no lack of adverse definitions of socialism, and although these are not accepted except by anti-socialists, a few are interesting and can be given to show that even socialists have a sense of humour. “Socialism, like every other social system, when stripped of its emotional trimmings, gets down to a formula for living without work.” The author, was perhaps a little biased for it was Henry Ford. Mrs. Fawcett authoress of a little book on political economy renders the follow amusing verse.

“ What is a Communist?

Why one that hath yearnings,

Of equal division of unequal earnings,

Idler, or bungler, or both, he is willing,

To fork out his penny, and to pocket your shilling!” 

Winston Churchill left one to go down in history after him, when he declared a few years ago that, "Socialism was the equalisation of poverty and the organisation of misery.”

One of the most curious was perhaps Lenin’s serious definition that “Socialism is Soviet Power plus Electrification.”

So when you read our literature again we hope you will appreciate the very sound reasons why we always print our definition and declaration of principles in all party material, and we don’t mind being pulled up on them because they are what we believe.

Horace Jarvis

Letter: Right of reply (1991)

Letter to the Editors from the February 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Right of reply

Dear Editors,

I refer to the review of my book Althusser and Feminism by SC (Socialist Standard, December 1990) which. I am sad to say, contains more by way of gratuitous insult than serious critique.

I would like to point out that the first three chapters of the book were largely written whilst I was a member of the SPGB (as it was then known) and when the writings of Louis Althusser were having a profound effect on many people on what those outside the Socialist Party call "the left”. Althusser, a prominent member of the PCF in the Sixties, set out to "revise" Marx’s historical materialism in such a way as to make it compatible with the occurrence of a "revolution" in Russia in 1917, but incompatible with the rise of "Stalinism". His "non-economistic" (as it became known) reading of historical materialism struck a cord with many radicals, feminists and members of the working class in France and England in the Seventies. I set out, from an SPGB perspective, to counter Althusser’s claims to have remained true the "spirit" of Marx's thinking. I argue in the book:

(a) that Althusser's "structuralist” re-reading of Marx is incompatible with some central tenets of this theory;

(b) that his "non-economistic" interpretation of historical materialism does not conform even to the spirit of Marx’s writings; and

(c) that his view of human needs is misguided.

I then go on to consider the implications of Althusser’s thought for an outlook on feminism that is inspired by my reading of Marx’s historical materialism.

SC’s insulting claim:

it is a pity that philosophers who want to offer abstruse language and cleverly-formulated abstract propositions as signs of their own brightness do not stick to writing about Aristotle or Descartes.

implies a philistinism about theoretical readings of Marx that will do little to advance the cause of the Socialist Party. Political activity, as Marx was well aware, takes place in the theoretical domain as well as on the streets and the soap boxes. Theoreticians are members of the working class.

There are only two— extremely minor—points of substance made in SC’s review:

1. that I refer, mistakenly, on page 35 of my book to “the working classes”; and
2. that the back cover refers to Foucault but the book does not.

The first point is my mistake and it should be corrected. As for the second, if SC read the back cover—the publishers’ blurb—properly, he (for I know it is he) would realise that the publishers are describing a school of thought, and no claim is made that all members of that school are dealt with in the book.

I write at such length because, despite my non-membership, I am broadly sympathetic to much of the case of the Socialist Party, and I am sad to see that two of the reasons for my resignation in the early Eighties—a certain arrogant philistinism about theory and an insulting manner of expressing this philistinism; and an antipathy towards feminism—seem to be manifested in this review.

Alison Assiter 

London, WC2

Reply:

Readers interested in the development of our theoretical position on feminism should study our tape “What Socialists Can Learn from Feminist Theory” (price £3) and the chapter on “What’s Wrong With Feminist Theory” in our pamphlet Women and Socialism” (price 55p), both available from our Head Office.

Editors.

Blogger's Note:

I have to say it: that is a rather underwhelming response from the Editorial Committee. Actually, rather dismissive, if truth be told. The reviewer, 'SC', was Steve Coleman, and Alison Assiter wrote under the name 'Alison Waters' when she was a member of the SPGB.

Book Review: An Economist on Marx. (1915)

Book Review from the August 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

Historic Materialism and the Economics of Marx, by Benedetto Croce. Geo. Allen & Unwin, Ltd. 5s. nett.

One of the advantages of being a University Professor, or a Lecturer at a College, is that one may write arrant nonsense and pass it off for great wisdom on the uncritical reader.

The net result of the various essays forming the above volume is to leave the student with the conviction that the elder Weller’s statement can still be applied with force when he asked whether “it was worth while going through so much to learn so little.” Words, words, words, my masters, but little of real ideas or thoughts represented by these words and still less of any real criticism of Marx’s works.

The essays dealing with “Historical Materialism” are in the main an attempt to criticise Labriola’s writings on this subject. Labriola has replied to some of them in a new edition of his work, Socialism and Philosophy, so we need not cover the same ground here.

In their attempts to answer certain questions, Marx and Engels found that all the old theories and explanations taught at the Universities failed to give any satisfactory reply. Hence they were forced to re-examine the basis for themselves. And note the result. For this re-examination compelled them to abandon all their early training in philosophy, including their Hegelianism, as these furnished no answer.

It was in the facts of history they had to look for, and finally found, the answer to their questions. This was that the conditions of production and distribution of wealth formed the basis of, and gave the explanation to, the general form and structure of society. Now it should be evident that if there is a “structure of society” on a given basis, the factors of this structure will have a modifying effect upon the direct movement of the base. Perhaps an illustration may make this clear. Due to the fact of Gravity water will descend from a hill-top to a valley. The Gravity is the basic factor. The actual path will depend upon the kinds of soil, and obstacles met upon the way down. The stream seldom follows a straight course, but it still remains true that the only explanation of the water’s main movement is the force of Gravity.

In the case of social development the matter is of course not only more complex in itself, but we are far more ignorant of the factors and their properties than in the case of the soils in our illustration. The interest of the ruling class in hiding or falsifying certain of these factors is no mean stumbling-block in our way.

The discovery of Marx and Engels was independently rediscovered by Lewis H. Morgan from the Ethnological side. But in neither case was it pretended that it gave an automatic answer to every petty little incident in history. At best  it only supplied the answer to the question of fundamental changes in society, and as Lafargue pointed out, it became a splendid instrument of research into history, not a ready answer to little puzzles. Marx himself applied the discovery twice with conspicuous success—first in the Eighteenth Brumaire of Napoleon III, and secondly in the pamphlet on the Commune of Paris, called The Civil War in France. But Marx was at a serious disadvantage compared with our ”professors.” He had to work for his living—often a poor one—in the midst of his other labours. Hence the incompleteness of many of his writings, particularly on this subject.

Yet how do his critics deal with those writings? At first they ignored them. Then it became the fashion to treat them as nonsense easily disposed of by a sneer. Unfortunately for these beautiful methods the working class is taking up the study of Socialism in steadily increasing numbers, and, despite the admitted difficulties of the form in which Marx wrote, are more and more reading his  books.   So the “latest and lovliest” method is to adopt the attitude of “revising” and “improving” Marx. It is now admitted that he was a giant intellect—hence the greater credit in “putting him right”—and that his works are important contributions to our knowledge—or rather they will be when properly “revised.”

Just here, however, the student finds himself laced with a pretty problem. No two of these “critics” are agreed upon what is wrong in Marx’s writings, if we leave out the question of value for a moment. Who is he to follow ? Many of these “critics” are Professors or Fellows of Colleges. They have written in some cases ponderous tomes, more difficult to understand than Marx and for a sufficiently obvious reason. In the volume under review the author claims that “Historical Materialism” is a “mass of new data, of new experiences, of which the historian becomes conscious.” (p. 12.)

Indeed! what are these “new experiences” and “data” thus supplied? Croce cannot tell us because they don’t exist.  On page 77, however, he tells us “Historical Materialism if it is to express something critically acceptable . . . must be simply a canon of historical interpretation.” This “canon” he describes as an aid in seeking results—an utterly nonsensical definition to English readers, as they understand the word  “canon” to mean a standard  for measuring or comparison.

By far the most audacious claim of this Italian critic is his discovery that Marx was really a metaphysician and idealist! True! this was charged against Marx when his Critique of Political Economy first appeared, so let us look at Croce’s grounds for this claim.

On page 50 he says: “the capitalist society studied by Marx is not this or that society, historically existing, in France or in England, nor the modern society of the most civilised nations, that of Western Europe and America. It is an ideal and formal society, deduced from certain hypotheses, which could indeed never have occurred as actual facts in the course of history.” If it were not for the fact that the phrase might seem discourteous we should feel inclined to call this statement an absurd fabrication; instead we merely remark that every line of Marx’s works flatly contradicts Croce’s claim.  Indeed, on page 79 he says “Marx was addicted, in short, to a kind of concrete logic”! ,

His general view may be stated as that Marx only examined one fact in history and this is so overlaid and interconnected with other facts that though it may be important it is not a dominant one.  It may be “rich in suggestion”; it may be the road “along which the solution must be sought of some of the greatest problems of history,” but it is only a metaphysical abstraction. From his high and pure position he can look down and smile at both the Marxians who regard the research into so-called “pure economics” as absurd, and at the various critics who have all failed to see in Marx what was left for Croce to discover.

If it were possible the essays dealing with’ .Marx’s economics are worse than those dealing with historical views. Once more the “abstract”  and “metaphysical” charges are made without the slightest evidence to support them. Croce agrees with the “utility theory” of value formulated in its modern form by Jevons and appropriated by the so-called “Austrian School” without, apparently, being aware of how completely the theory was crushed by Marxian criticism, in the land of its birth. In the only chapter in which Croce attempts to come to close quarters with Marx’s economics—the one on “The fall in the Rate of Profit,” he attempts to build up a case by maintaining that, according to Marx, when a number of labourers are displaced by improved methods of production, they are not discharged but kept on and production increased accordingly. Croce says that usually the production remains the same, the men are discharged and therefore profits rise with the alteration in the composition of capital. As the base of his criticism is false—for of course Marx has worked out the result of such a condition— his house of cards collapses.

According to the publisher’s note, a Mr. A. D. Lindsay has written an “illuminating introduction.” The thing most illuminated by this introduction is Mr. Lindsay’s ignorance of Marx’s writings. For he refers to “the laws of supply and demand which alone affect all things that have economic value” and says that the pure economist “finds little difficulty in refuting Marx’s theory,” in complete ignorance that Marx had shattered the so-called “Law of Supply and Demand” in Value, Price and Profit as well as in Capital. His reference to Socialism as an “automatic working out of economic laws” is too childish for farther consideration to-day.

However, as he admits at the end of his introduction that his knowledge of Marx and of economics is too small to allow him to judge Croce’s appraisement of Marx’s work, we may be thankful for small admissions.

Despite Croce’s attempt to forestall the criticism he feared would come when he states (p. 64) that he does not consider an explanation adequate and appropriate “which resolves itself into accusing a large number of students of allowing themselves blindly and foolishly to be overcome by passions alien to science; or, what is worse, of knowingly falsifying their thought,” it still remains the only explanation of these various falsifications of Marx under the cloak of “criticising” or “revising” his works. Unless, indeed, he would desire us to flatter their honesty at the expense of their intellects.    

Jack Fitzgerald

A Search for Truth (2024)

Book Review from the March 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Alfred Reynolds / Reinhold Alfred. By Richard Headicar. 2023. ISBN 978-1-3999-6772-3

Alfred Reynolds was a philosopher and poet from Hungary who fled to Britain in 1937 after being arrested for allegedly subversive political activities. A Social Democrat and former ‘Communist’ who was at one point accused of Trotskyism there, he was a radical who was a long-term critic of totalitarian political formations, both Fascist and Leninist.

Because of his linguistic abilities he worked as an interpreter for a time in Britain including for German prisoners of war at the Kempton Park prison camp, before creating a de-Nazification programme that he pioneered at Slemdal Prison Camp in Norway. He received recognition and support from the Labour MP Philip Noel-Baker and after a time with the International Refugee Council eventually became a middle-ranking UK civil servant in London, but it is not that for which he is perhaps most well-known.

After the war, Reynolds created a weekly discussion group that mirrored to some extent one that he had developed in Hungary and another, later, circle of Germans who had been influenced by his tutelage. It was called the ‘Bridge Circle’ and out of this emanated a monthly journal called the London Letter. This had a low circulation but an influence that was disproportionate to its size: over time Martin Buber, J.B. Priestley, TUC leader George Woodcock, Albert Schweitzer and Sir Herbert Read were all contributors. Jomo Kenyatta was another who orbited in this milieu, as was Colin Wilson who described Reynolds as ‘one of the most original minds of the modern world’.

Reynolds went on to found an English Language School in central London, but it is for the Bridge Circle and London Letter that he is probably best known. His philosophy counselled strongly against ‘group think’ and in favour of the search for ‘personal truth’ and arguably veered between liberalism and anarchism (with added influences from the saner writings of Nietzsche among others). In 1982 a number of Reynolds’s articles were published in a volume called Pilate’s Question. This title referred to the eternal conundrum of ‘what is truth?’, though Reynolds was a little frustrated that this was interpreted by some onlookers as being a possible religious tract when it was anything but.

Reynolds was for decades one of London’s characters and it was at Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park that he met Richard Headicar in the 1950s, the author of this biography. Headicar was at the time an anti-nuclear speaker with anarchist leanings and who broadly supported CND. He became heavily influenced by Reynolds who converted from being his critic to mentor, and was a regular attender at the Bridge Circle (later carrying on a similar informal philosophy group in London, including after Reynolds’s death in 1993). Headicar writes:

‘Fittingly the last time I saw Alfred was at Speakers’ Corner. Coincidentally I was speaking for the SPGB of which he claimed he was once a member. I think he may have joined using another of his noms de plume. Spotting him in my crowd I was once more fleetingly visited by trepidation, wondering if he would be disappointed by my new affiliation. When I alighted from the platform he at once approached me, smiled, put his arm around my shoulder and said “Richard, that was pure Bridge”.’

The book is beautifully produced and includes many copies of letters, photos and other artefacts. It also details the more recent resurgence of interest in him in his home country of Hungary, including for his early work Alfred Reinhold’s First and Last Volume of Lyric Poetry. There is a useful chapter on Bridge philosophy too and its relationship with Marx, Nietzsche, the power of human consciousness, technology and creativity among other things. And while Reynolds was sceptical of the ‘group think’ of Marxism, he clearly recognised in the SPGB a more independent and critical spirit than is typical on the self-styled Left – as of course, did Richard Headicar himself, a Party member to this day.

Dave Perrin

Alison Assiter's Revisiting Universalism (2003)

Book Review from the December 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Revisiting Universalism. By Alison Assiter. Palgrave Macmillan. 2003.

This is a book that re-asserts that there are universal values applicable to all human beings. It is directed against the “post-modernists”, “multi-culturalists” and some feminists, who assert that, on the contrary, there are no universally shared values by which to judge conduct, that any group’s view is as good as any other’s and ought to be respected as such (i.e. not criticised), or, as one wit has put it, “cannibalism is a matter of taste”.

Assiter starts from a materialist position. What all humans share in common, she says, is the basic need for a minimum level of food, clothes and shelter as essential to their physical health:

“(i) All human beings have needs which must be satisfied, if they are to act in any way at all;

(ii) These needs therefore ought to be satisfied, and this is a universally valid ‘ought’”.

Therefore “each one of us has an equal right to have our basic needs satisfied”. At the abstract level at which the argument is being conducted, Socialists can go along with this. But then Assiter extends this by adding that it means that every human being therefore has a “moral obligation” to do what they can to ensure that every other human being has their basic needs met.

This would make the case for socialism (as one among possible actions to try to ensure that every human has their needs met, the only effective one in fact) a moral case whereas we have always argued that socialism is based on interest, class interest to be more precise. It is in the material interest of the working class to have their needs met; these cannot be properly met under capitalism; therefore it is in the interest of the workers to abolish capitalism. So, when we approach our fellow workers, we don’t say “You should be a socialist because you have a moral duty to ensure that the basic needs of all your fellow humans are met”. What we say is: “You should be a socialist because only socialism can assure that your basic needs are met”.

In any event, to say that every human has this moral duty towards all other humans is pointless since ineffective. It would mean that the capitalist class has some moral obligation towards the working class. Tell them that and they’ll laugh in your face. And why should we assume any moral duty to the capitalist class, who exploit us? Not that workers are likely to respond to appeals to a supposed “moral duty”; they will establish socialism out of material self-interest, individual and collective. Socialism is a class issue not a moral issue.

To tell the truth, this book will have little relevance outside the academic world, indeed outside university philosophy departments. Academics are wage-slaves like the rest of us and one of their conditions of employment is “publish or perish”. As a result publishers’ lists are clogged up with books written just for this purpose. Something marginally different about this book is that we get a mention (even if our address is wrongly given).

Assiter, a leading feminist intellectual who was once a Socialist Party member, quotes Slavoj Zizek as writing that

“when the ‘left’ makes its demands ‘for full employment’ ‘retain the welfare state’ ‘full rights for immigrants’ . . . it is bombarding the capitalist state with demands it cannot fulfil. The left, he writes, is ‘playing a game of hysterical provocation, of addressing the Master with a demand it will be impossible for him to meet’”.

And contrasts this with the approach of

“the British SPGB, a political party that has operated in the UK, and elsewhere, since 1904. Members of the SPGB reject Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky as ‘impure’ versions of Marx, and believe that they must argue the socialist case in as many venues as possible, in order to convince a majority of the working class of the veracity of their case. They adopt the strategy of believing that rationality will prevail and that once people see and understand the logic of their case, just like the believer in decision procedure, then those people will convert to their cause and there will be no more capitalism, no more wars and no more wage slavery”.

A bit over-simplified in that we are not trying to “convert” people to our “case” as such, but to convince our fellow workers that it is in their material interest to establish socialism. But perhaps we shouldn’t look a gift-horse in the mouth.

Adam Buick

Story time: mystery and meaning (2023)

From the May 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

We all love a good story with its elements of drama, suspense, comedy and confrontation etc. – indeed it could be said that the telling of, and listening to, stories is one of the defining characteristics of our species. From the tales of Homer and Shakespeare together with the eponymous adventures of King Arthur, Robin Hood Boewulf and El Cid to the modern-day myths of Batman and Superman, we indulge ourselves in this vicarious catharsis of courage and adventure. There seems to be a deep need in us to understand ourselves and our world in terms of a narrative containing elements of motive, origin, action and resolution. Typically, these events take place within a chronology which may last a day, a year, a lifetime, a century or even the entire span of our species together with the very universe itself! But can this need for stories give us a distorted view of our society and the natural environment within which it resides? May the projection of a narrative onto events sometimes actually prevent an understanding of them? Let us look at two of the most influential stories that have defined and informed human existence to explore their impact in terms of either harmful delusion or insightful truth.

For Europe, and then subsequently the rest of the world courtesy of imperialism, trade and cultural contact, two of the most enduring and powerful stories have been that of the ‘Jesus Myth’ and its antithesis: the evolution of reason and science. One emphasises a continual battle between the forces of good and evil where human nature remains constant while the other insists on a progression of our species in terms of moral, technological and rational characteristics. They both share unimaginably exotic origin stories where either a capricious supernatural deity decides to create the universe or, as science has it, everything spontaneously exploded into existence courtesy of a ‘big bang’. An equally dramatic resolution is also imagined in terms of a final conflict (Armageddon) for the Christians and a ‘big Crunch’ or an equally depressing slow death for the universe, if it were to keep expanding, for the cosmologists of science. Most of us attempt to understand our lives and our world in terms of either one or other (and sometimes in an uneasy combination) of these narratives. Of course, it may turn out that both of these stories are equally erroneous but it cannot be denied that they are incredibly imaginative and exciting. This isn’t the place to go into the deep mystery of time itself but it is possible that a story or chronology of events might be purely an anthropological phenomenon which tells us little about reality. What does the story of socialism have to say about the two meta-narratives described above? It is undeniable that it shares some elements of both with its insistence on reason and the belief in progression which it shares with science but there is also an element of a final conflict with private property where the socialist revolution is somewhat reminiscent of the Armageddon of Christianity. The redemption of our species has obvious religious attributes although a socialist would argue that religion has obvious purely human roots.

The story of socialism (so far) begins with the ‘communism’ of prehistoric societies that lasted for many millennia until the invention of agricultural technology that produced a surplus of food which enabled, through its control and ownership, the rise of warrior elites with the power to enslave the producers. The subsequent history of our species is concerned with the different elites that have relinquished and gained this power. Capitalism is the most recent of these incarnations of economic systems that enslave the majority producers and it is to overthrow this inequality and return humanity to its default communism that socialists have dedicated themselves. Formally the idealists considered the struggle to be primarily based on morality whilst today, after the discoveries of Marx, it is now considered as a class struggle. The narrative of history is at the very heart of socialist consciousness where the changing modes of production formulate our understanding of who we are and what is to be done. It is an overwhelmingly optimistic ‘ideology’ which, with the help of a Marxian perspective, transforms itself from being merely an idealistic hope into a coherent scientific and non-ideological narrative. It shares with both religion and science the need for a storyline.

Humanity has a deep-seated horror of chaos for many reasons: if everything is arbitrary then there is no possibility of control; that we live and die for no reason is intolerable and only stories seem to give existence any meaning; that all our knowledge is based on narrative illusions. But the danger is that in our need for meaning we have clung to destructive ideologies that have turned our beautiful world into a hell for many – clearly there are different types of narrative, some of which depend on evidence and others solely dependent on faith. Will our stories die when our species does or, for instance, do the laws of nature pre-exist us? Do at least some of our stories provide an insight into reality? Was Marx merely just another example of an Old Testament prophet and is science a kind of secular religion with its white-coated operatives being a new priesthood? Are stories examples of our yearning for a truth that will always evade us? Religion, science and socialism are stories we tell ourselves to help make some sense of it all – only you can choose which the relevant narrative for your life is. To socialists the suffering in life mainly stems from the capitalist mode of production and it therefore must be replaced by socialism. We have nothing to lose but our chains, so let’s give it a try – whether or not the revolution will reveal the utility of grand narratives we cannot say. Until then we’ll just have to embrace the mystery.

Wez.

What do you think? (2023)

From the May 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

As you wake in the morning, and go to sleep at night, and whatever dreams may come – so you are. The sum total of your experience. Likewise, we as a species are the sum total of our experience. There is a world beyond the senses, but we are only ever speaking of our experience of it.

We organise that experience in various ways, corresponding to (1) brain structure (2) the geometry of sharing ideas between ourselves, as well as (3) integrating it with past experiences that we already have.

There is no reason to make things more complicated than that. While we look at our life in this way and that way, from different aspects, it is all manipulating this whole. You can look at your world with the eyes of a child, of an old man or woman, or suppress your self-consciousness as the Eastern philosophers try to do and see yourself as an uncarved block, but it’s all the same mind. We can create categories to better structure and further our experience, but they are just that – our categories, things that we made rather than things that we found, ways to organise our experience, and things that we may often have to re-evaluate and even overthrow. ‘Reality’ is not something that we find, but something that we manufacture.

So while there are socialist theories – you can make as many theories as you like, all scientifically testing the data available – there isn’t a philosophy, at least not in the conventional sense. There is only pulling apart and better reforming our experience, in cogitation and conversation, no more magically than one might knead and pull apart dough while making bread.

It would be folly of course, as we said, to think that there was no world beyond the senses. But it is simply not what we are talking about. Everything we think to say about the world, we say about ourselves. We are not gods, looking down upon our own creation. Instead, we come after the fact, back-seat drivers in an organism we will never truly know. We are dragged through the world as if through a thorn bush at midnight, and all we know of it is by examining our scratches and scars. Similarly, we interact with the world according to our own plan, like children on their backs making snow angels in the snow.

Animals evolve: they mutate, and then these mutations are tested against the world beyond the genome, with some prospering and some dying. In a similar way we simply value what we value, with modifications, and act accordingly. These values are then tested for fitness – do we prosper or suffer? – and modified, without ever being true except in their own terms, from the earliest human and probably far further back, up to today. It’s like playing that old game Mastermind, where you guess what pattern of colours are behind the screen, except here when you lift the screen at the end of the game there is nothing to see.

Dialectical thinking

You may by now be firmly grabbing the arms of your chair, testing for your thoughts to be real. You may even, as Samuel Johnson did, kick a stone to show how real your experience is. But these themselves are just more experiences, if in a certain category of experiences that we use to judge the whole. Not just touch: we have many. ‘Seeing is believing’. I feel it in my gut’. ‘It’s beautiful’. ‘It’s mathematically pure’. ‘It feels logical’. ‘I experience the Divine’. All of these are so many ways of assuring ourselves that this concept rather than that is the right one, is somehow true. But they are no more or less substantial than the rest of our experience, except in that this is how we organise our experiences. Certainty is key to action: but wisdom lies always in doubt.

This is all that is meant by dialectical thinking. Instead of the commonplace model, of a world of objects viewed by an abstract Self with dreams and desires, for us all the parts of our experience are of the same kind. So for example, a factory is a brick building, a place where things are made, where profit is made, where misery and boredom is experienced, and all are just looking at the same matter from different aspects. You cannot separate the things that a factory makes from the experience of being in it.

There is a world beyond the senses, but we are never talking about it. Rather when we talk about iron, or a factory, or railways, we have the sense of them being heavy, immovable and, in capitalism, not ours, but we should always remember that it is our experience that we are talking about, and that experience of mass is commensurate with the experience of boredom, of misery, of lost love, of a daytime life from schoolroom to factory to office spent trapped inside out of the sunlight. In capitalism we treat commodities as substantial, and the horror of their production as ephemeral. This commonsensical attitude is the capitalist attitude, the attitude of objectification, that makes us credit what seems heavy and dismiss what seems light. It is the alienation that makes us dismiss our feelings in production, our whole, real lives, and only pursue them in the time granted us to wallow in sentimentality in our soap operas, our fictional lives, before bed.

The socialist revolution lies in the healing of this wound.

Alienation

It is our current, capitalist – or rather, private property – society, that demands that we think in this more complex manner. As the means of life are denied us, we are not only deprived, we are alienated from those aspects of our lives. Any organic relationship between our society, our labour, and the things of life and of enjoyment, is now ruptured – part of our world is made violently inaccessible to us, by a group of people alien to us. As that loss becomes timeworn, and children are born to the alienated world, that situation ceases to be a wrong and becomes a social fact – alienation becomes objectification. And the organic world of both social relations and the means of life, that had been violated, becomes divided into things without persons and persons without things. The Self is established and reinforced, as an isolated person devoid of means and of relations, as the afterimage of a world of commodities.

Because this is the most fiendish aspect of capitalism. What is objectified from us is not a thing, distant in space. It is a portion of our own self. Our minds, objectified, are sliced into a myriad pieces, all with owner’s marks and price tags on them, all but the bleeding remnant of the Self, which is defined by its dismemberment much as a torso is defined by amputation, and then hyper-sentimentalised by the very lack of its real object. We live as starveling lodgers in our own skulls. Capitalism’s daily violations leave constant fresh scars on the psyche, while the world we inherited from our parents is endured as a dull wound. And cruelty on cruelty, we are offered a way back, on an offering of servitude and pain, to reunite with our lost world, but not as a living thing, only a possession, the commodity – much as some eunuchs would keep their testicles, mournfully, in a separate box.

Companionship is replaced by the television and the internet. Security is replaced by rent paid – this month. And feelings turn in on themselves, finding outlets wherever they may. In the end, the old die alone. And whereas we started by producing existing values, such as bread and clothes, by valuing them in part according to the misery involved in their production, now that misery is much of what we produce, and what the rich consume. Our feudal lords at least had taste, and took the best of what we all desired: but the value of a capitalist’s goods lies mainly in the lost lives of those who produced it, with its practical value as a distant echo.

So while the Self is the starting point for capitalist philosophy, it is not a real start, it is the end point of the capitalist process, of the immiseration process of history to date. It is the internalisation of the class struggle, at the point that it has already been lost, accepting this butchering of the human soul as a precondition for thought itself. Rejecting this start point, demanding the end of a condition where one’s own experience is infinitely fragmented and one must go to war with all others in order to regain those objects, even those relations, with force or with money – this is the start point for any revolutionary position. And this is why we are dialectical, because we merely wish to think like human beings and not these one-sided and broken creatures. As Marx put it, the revolutionary cry is ‘I am nothing and should be everything!’.

The revolutionary emotion is shame.

SJW

The Evolution of Scientific Socialism (1975)

From the May 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

Scientific Socialism is a doctrine which in the early 1840s began to emerge out of Utopian socialism, under the influence of Hegelian philosophy on the one hand and of classical political economy on the other. It is the doctrine which gave the adequate explanation of the whole course of civilization.

Thus destroying the fallacious arguments of the capitalist theoreticians, the doctrine was essential to the interests of the working class. Not only did this doctrine give a clear demonstration of the inconsistencies of the opponents of Socialism, but furthermore when showing their mistakes it supplied the historical explanation of these errors.

Just as Darwin enriched the natural sciences with his work on the origin of species, a theory simple and scientific, so the founders of Scientific Socialism showed that in the development of the forces of production, and in the struggle of these forces against the social condition of production, there was implicit the principle of the transformation of social species.

It must not be supposed that Scientific Socialism can be recommended as a rule of thumb method, or as an absolute truth. Obviously even today the development of Scientific Socialism is not finished. That development did not come to an end with the writings of Marx and Engels, any more than the theory of the origin of species was worked out once and out for all. The main principles of Scientific Socialism have been used for a study of subsidiary problems, a study that will complete the revolution in science brought about by Marx and Engels. The outlook of most branches of sociology have been enlarged by the adoption (usually without acknowledgement) of the philosophic standpoint of Marx and Engels. Though Scientific Socialism derives its philosophy from Kant and Hegel among others, it is opposed to idealism. This philosophy has to a large extent replaced idealism in the realm of philosophy. Scientific Socialism is based upon the materialist conception of history. This means that it explains ethical and moral history as the outcome of the development of the social relations, partly influenced by the natural environment.

To hold the viewpoint that man is a product of his environment, that he is moulded by his surroundings, is not enough to account for the social differences. Environment itself is a complex of contradictions. It is not the consciousness of men which determines their existence, but conversely their social existence which determines their consciousness; so that man by acting on natural forces outside himself and changing them at the same time, changes his own nature.

Engels in his 1888 preface to The Communist Manifesto said:

In every historical epoch, the prevailing mode of economic production and exchange, and the social organization necessarily following from it, form the basis upon which is built up, and from which alone can be explained, the political and intellectual history of that epoch.

Marx wrote: “The philosophers have hitherto sought to explain the world; we seek to change it.” But how can the world be changed?

Marx, who in the 1840s was steeped in the study of histories and prevailing conditions of France and England, came to the conclusion that the working class was the only class that could bring about the change. With the publication of Marx’s Capital and its detailed analysis of capitalism a clear demonstration became available, which shows that although there has been an enormous development in capitalism since its publication, the basis of society remains the same. The problem of a way to abolish poverty from the world has remained insoluble.

Modern capitalism with its tremendous potentiality has made it possible to provide all members of world society with their needs of life to transform this potentiality into an accomplished fact. This is the historic mission of the working class. To change the basis of society from its present capitalist form, to one of common ownership and democratic control, and so harmonize the present form of social production with one of social ownership in order that goods and services shall be freely available to all mankind.

To bring about this change in the basis of society it is imperative that the working class (that is those who are dependent on wages or salaries in order to live) shall take control of political power in order that this power, at present being used to maintain capitalism, shall be so shaped and altered to the needs of the new society.

Taking over political power under these circumstances will be a revolutionary act. Nevertheless it must be a democratic act, a deliberate act by class-conscious men and women, a class scorning the idea of leadership, a class which will instruct its delegates to work for the abolition of the working class, and thus abolish class society, and bring into being the new society.

Bob Ambridge

The Meaning of Freedom (1989)

From the February 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

What is liberation? The words which need most careful use are, usually, those which are thought to be above it. In an essay on George Orwell published in 1948, George Woodcock remarks how Orwell continually talked of brotherhood, justice. decency and so on without ever giving specific meanings: they spoke for themselves. A minute's thought over the everyday corruptions of those terms will show that they do nothing of the kind. Freedom is another. Assumed to be self-explanatory, it is all things to all men: hope, delusion, inducement, trap. What became of "the Four Freedoms"? Freedom fighters, where are you now?

In fact, freedom by itself is an insignificant word. Its importance comes with its expansion — freedom from what, or to do which. Freedom from may be considerable: its range can cover merciful release from some private burden, to the abolition of a political restraint. Nevertheless, freedom in that sense remains negative and limited to shifting a particular evil. It is, of course, the most popular sense, and the argument is often made that to pile up these removals of restraint ("extending areas of freedom") must in the end lead to total and therefore positive social liberty.

The line drawn

However, the pursuit of the piecemeal does not work like that. The man who has obtained relief from a disability or restriction is simply released into the general slavery of his fellow-men. That is why rulers seldom mind, in the end, giving freedom from: liberation is a means of creating more slaves. The cracker-motto "freedoms" set out by Churchill and Roosevelt in the war were of this kind. Leaving aside that they were part of the sham currency of wartime promises and so unlikely to be taken seriously when the fever was over, it is worth observing that freedom from hunger and insecurity is had. more or less, by people in prison.

Nobody pretends that freedom from privation is worth having on such terms, but the terms accepted in ordinary life are often surprising. The usual paternalistic saying is that society can approve "liberty but not licence", and it is interesting that “licence" is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as excessive liberty". What is being said, therefore, is that you may have liberty but not too much. The line of excess is drawn, inevitably, by the ruling class: and the liberty thus prescribed is already restricted to the limits of freedom from. Thus, to suppose that slices of freedom can be gamed within capitalism and put together to make a free society is naive in the extreme.

Choice and responsibility

The context in which "freedom" takes on positive meaning is freedom to. Individually, innumerable extensions might be given: what they add up to socially is freedom to choose. This is the all—embracing denial made by the authoritarianism of a class-divided society. Under it, for the ruled, choice is directly refused or made impossible. One's station and way of life, loyalties, duties, means of expression are selected and hung on one. A free society is definable as such only in this way: in it. individual choice is sovereign.

All sovereignties have boundaries, however. The alternative point of view, the Stirnerite one which disfavours society itself for inhibiting the ego's absolute demands, is still practised by a number of anarchists whose cult it is never to answer letters or keep appointments as proof that they are free and spontaneous individuals not responsible to anyone. When the doctrine is stated like that, both its absurdity and its perniciousness are plainly visible: this is not freedom at all, because it depends on mutilating someone else's freedom. Freedom is relative always to the fact that we exist only as social creatures.

In simple everyday experience, every relationship or contract voluntarily made is a limitation on freedom. A person joining a political group or a recreational organization has "tied" him— or herself by the acceptance of obligations, including the recognition of rules and majority decisions.

The way to go

Freedom, then, means a state in which contracts are entered and obligations accepted, but by one's conscious choice not a predetermined one. The comparison to be made is between a free society and the authoritarian system where the obligations remain while somebody else imposes the choice. What must be recognized, however, is that the obligations are there in both cases. Indeed, freedom implies responsibility where servitude does not; having the choices imposed and the decisions made for one is tolerable to many people because it is easy. Part of the tyranny of capitalism is to make a virtue of that kind of mental laziness and extol bromides like "liberty not licence" to try and keep responsible thought in check.

Given comprehension of what freedom is, how is the free society obtained? The lack of freedom is not just a question of holding wrong outlooks. It derives from material conditions as much as from legal and moral restraint. The irony of the old saying that everyone is free to dine at the Savoy has innumerable applications. A poor or ill-educated person is not free to choose his work, or where he will live, or even whom he will mix with. Financial worries, insecurities, hostile circumstances of all kinds are obstructions to freedom.

But it does not follow that reforms of circumstances are the answer. That takes us back to the realm of freedom from, where capitalism's nature is to turn apparent gains into equivalent losses; at this, you can't win. The creation of a free society can be accomplished only by changing the structure of society. The disabilities and oppressions which are everywhere are aspects and consequences of the basic enslavement by capitalism, the class-ownership of the means of living. To replace them with freedom of choice and make responsibility instead of imposition the keystone of social life, common ownership is the prerequisite.

Freedom is the natural — and immediate — concomitant of the establishment of socialism. Nor is any abstract judicial freedom meant. The economic condition of socialism, production for use. means free access by everyone to the material wealth of society. That is emancipation. and from it arises the freedom to choose the sort of life one wants.

Letter: Socialism and Materialism. (1926)

Letter to the Editors from the July 1926 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Labour M.P.’s rejoinder and our reply. 

The Editor, Socialist Standard.

Sir,—I am obliged for your interesting reply to my letter. Perhaps you are able to find room for the following further observations.

You state that the whole of the idealistic school attempts to explain society in terms of ideals. In the absolute sense this is true, and I am convicted of using a careless phrase. But the unconscious dualism of the materialist is revealed clearly in the sentence, “from Plato to Hegel man’s being is explained by his consciousness rather than his consciousness by his being” Except as a doctrine of super­natural implications, I do not understand what can be meant by “consciousness” and “being” considered as separate enti­ties. I certainly do not attempt to explain either by the other, for both are part of the same evolutionary fact.

You ask, “How can the qualities of human beings be more fundamental than the environment to which they are related and in which they are inextricably involved?” Agreed. But when you speak of environment you speak of something bigger than economics and something which is not exclusively external. Strictly speaking, embryological facts are as much environ­mental as any other. I am aware of the ambiguity of the word “fundamental,” and I use the word only in the sense that a larger category of events may include smaller ones. Heredity cannot be ruled out. And you cannot rule out the intel­lectual history of the race in accounting for the culture of a period.

“The only hope of improvement for a wage-slave is in Socialism.” That depends upon the wage-slave. He may have ability, courage and no conscience. He may then become a capitalist jackal, a scab, or a “labour leader,” and would do so in strict, conformity with a philosophy which makes man’s “being” his belly. And it would be, to say the least, foolish to call him names if there is no ethical standard by which to judge conduct and only the stom­ach to explain it. The unfortunate feature of the whole situation is that the process leaves you with the incompetents on your hands.

Please do not misunderstand me. I am putting a case and offering you an explanation of a fact to which you so frequently draw attention—the existence of a whole tribe of working-class misleaders. These, if they are as venal as you say they are, seem to have absorbed non-moralism ex­ceedingly well.

You have not answered my question, “What becomes of ‘class’ if you discount idealism?” Material interests are first of all personal interests; they only become class interests when combination offers a reasonable prospective of collective advantage. The prospect of Socialism is some­ what uncertain—not to put top fine a point on it. I don’t fancy the odds at present, and I am not prepared to invest in the apathy and folly of my class. Any one of us is a hopeless dud if he could not have made his personal circumstances more secure, to say the least, had he never touched Socialism. The Socialist movement as yet calls for considerable sacrifice, and to put it in order you offer a post-dated cheque — or rather, an undated one, on the bank of revolution !

No wonder you say you have no concern with my personal motives, which, in the main, are much like other people’s. If you had concern with motives you would understand the psychology of class better. All that comes out of purely material motives even our way (if it is in any sense your way or mine) is “never mind what, but get it quick—we can’t wait.” Which is perfectly natural, if you “discount idealism.” Why should anyone ignore any old fleshpots that might be knocking about for the sake of “this day, next day, some­ time, never,” in the light of the progress of the S.P.G.B. or even the S.D.F? Come, sir, you must all be high-souled philanthro­pists without knowing it.

In practical fact, “class-consciousness” is only “brotherhood of man,” minus the exploiting classes. There is as much cant about one as the other. As for capitalists exploiting “war-cries,” they would prostitute anything and do nearly everything. All the more reason why we should insist upon the validity of certain “abstractions.”

I am asked to explain the origin and development of monogamy and prostitution if love does not play a part essentially sub­-ordinate to private property. Monogamy is a social custom hardly collateral with capi­talist society or of capitalist origin, and it can be only very doubtfully described as a property reflex. It has nothing to do, in any case, with the subordination or other­wise of love, which is an impulse that ante­ dates primitive communism and is shared by man with all sentient life and perhaps with the mineral kingdom. Prostitution is the oldest profession in the world, and a social phenomenon that runs through epochs of economic variations cannot, without gross misuse of language, be said to be “subordinate” to anything but its own passion. Strange you should have placed the two things together. Doesn’t prosti­tution cancel out monogamy, any way ?

In conclusion, if my “friends” had to be exclusively those who think exactly as I think, I should have few “friends.” Why should I object to Sir Henry Slesser airing views that are not mine in the paper I edit? And why the unction of “these be your friends”? Do you not share the “eco­nomic man” theory with all the Liberal gradgrinds and Tory buccaneers whatever?

Yours faithfully,

F. Montague.

Our Reply.

It is a trifle difficult to take Mr. Monta­gue seriously. He appears to be bent on the time-honoured pastime of setting up Aunt Sallies and knocking them down again. The original article which he attemp­ted to criticise commenced with a reference to a plea by one of his political colleagues for “a new society based upon Christi­anity.” We sought to show that society is based upon economic development and not upon religious beliefs. Unable to show us wrong in this respect, Mr. Montague accuses us of all manner of philosophical errors which he equally fails to prove.

This time it is “unconscious dualism” of which we are alleged to be guilty because, forsooth, we distinguish, in the abstract, between man’s “consciousness” and his “being.” Does not man’s being include his consciousness, as the greater includes the less, or is his consciousness all-embracing and exhaustive? Do we judge an individual simply by what he thinks of himself? Must we accept every ruling class at its own valuation ? These questions only need to be asked to illustrate the absurdity of the idealist position. But is Mr. Montague an idealist? In his first letter (June issue) he asserted “that certain human qualities are more fundamental than any shaping process, economic or otherwise.” Now he “agrees” that they are not ! No wonder he does “not attempt to explain either by the other !”

This does not prevent him, however, from persisting in regarding the individual and his “personal motives” as the all-important factor in social development. He may pay lip-service to what he calls “economic de­terminism” but he evidently does not under­stand it. For instance, he refers to a whole tribe of working-class misleaders and appears to attribute their position to their “ability,” “courage,” and lack of “con­science,” instead of to the economic pres­sure arising from the conditions of capitalist society.

According to Mr. Montague, the bulk of the working-class are “hopeless duds,” see­ing that, although they have not “touched Socialism,” their “personal circumstances” become increasingly less secure ! “The Socialist movement as yet calls for consider­ able sacrifice !” Capitalism, of course, doesn’t, eh! Mr. Montague?

Our critic imagines that any unscrupulous scoundrel can get the best of modern soci­ety. He appears to be blind to the opera­tion of the economic factors which care as little for personal motives as do the winds and tides.

“Material interests are first of all personal interests,” he says, but fails to ex­plain how any person can exist apart from some class in a class-society.

“Class-consciousness” he regards as a moral term akin to the “brotherhood of man.” He ignores the fact that “minus the exploiting classes,” the term would be meaningless. Class-consciousness implies the conception, not merely of identity, but of antagonism in the economic realm. This antagonism cannot be explained by ethical abstractions, which only serve to confuse the workers’ minds and thus delay the hour of their triumph.

Mr. Montague’s handling of monogamy and prostitution indicates a very shallow knowledge of the subject. Monogamy is more than a social custom. It is a legal institution and, as such, bears the unmistak­able impress of its origin in the private ownership of the means of life. There have been other forms of private property be­ sides that at present obtaining, and we did not suggest that capitalism alone was re­sponsible for the origin and development of this form of sexual relationship. Modern marriage and prostitution in all its forms imply the economic dependence of the woman upon the man. This condition did not exist under the communal arrangements of primitive society, and sexual relations were, as a consequence, of a widely differ­ent character from those which at present prevail. We have not space here to describe them in detail, but Mr. Montague would be well-advised to study Morgan’s “Ancient Society,” and Engel’s “Origin of the Family” before indulging in more random generalisations about “love.” Women sell themselves, in marriage or out of it, because their economic circumstances so determine; and prostitution, so far from “cancelling out” monogamy, supplements it. The capitalist’s legal wife presents him with heirs to his invested wealth. His paramours help him to enjoy that which overflows from the field of investment.

In conclusion, we referred to Sir H. Slesser in order to illustrate our contention that, politically, Mr. Montague keeps strange company for an alleged Socialist, which does not exactly tend to remove our suspicions as to the utility of philosophy. As for the “economic man” theory, we should have credited even a member of the S.D.F. with knowing better!

Editorial Committee

Gnostic Marxist (2021)

From the February 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

I am a gnostic. Now, before anyone has an attack of the socialist vapours, this is not going to be an attempt to reconcile Marxism with religion. It is the epistemic principle that lies behind the original esoteric manifestations of Gnosticism that we will consider.

For all the fanciful claims made by Gnostics, the essence is each individual coming to know in such a profound way that the knowledge leads to action via conviction. The alternative was for salvation to be delivered by the Church, the authoritative body controlling ideology, effectively rendering people powerless.

The material conditions for achieving socialism exist and have done so for quite some time. The political structures also exist through which that goal can be democratically pursued. Yet, in the near 120 years of the existence of the Socialist Party in Britain the vital element, the working class, has not embraced their own cause.

The last general election, just over a year ago, once again demonstrated how divided against itself the working class remains, and how distant it seems from becoming a credible socialist force. The collapse of the ’Red Wall’ allowing an insurgency of the Blue Meanies was but the latest example of the dominant acceptance that problems can be solved without really changing anything.

Brexit has been an ongoing exemplar with much heat, but little light, as staying in or leaving the EU was the rancorous issue: which would be best, opting for capitalism or choosing capitalism? Hardly worth the political energy that has been expended on it.

Cue nationalism. With Scotland firmly in the Remain camp, the SNP raised the independence banner for workers to rally around yet again. If they are successful will there be some haven from the travails of capitalism north of the Tweed to Solway border posts?

It’s a nonsense of course, but a powerful and a destructive one because while it occupies the minds of Scottish workers, perhaps rouses the antagonism of English workers, they lose sight of the crucial fact that, actually, they are just workers who share common cause with all other workers.

In a song, ‘The White Rose and the Red’ there is a verse that runs,

‘Pennines slope to east and west, / Yet where on the moorland range

Is a line that’s clearly drawn / Where the colour of roses change?

By colours men are misled…’

Be they the colours of roses or other divisive symbols such as flags such totems remain potent political narcotics. If there was an election tomorrow there is nothing to stop people voting for socialism, except they wouldn’t. It’s not simply an absence of socialist candidates, for most who might claim to be socialist voters, their ballots would most likely go to the present-day wearer of the red rose.

The determining factor in socialism becoming realisable is the material conditions necessary being in existence. Without such conditions, the productive and distributive technology, such a society would remain an unobtainable ideal.

History can furnish examples of idealists establishing communities based on common ownership and equality that proved either unsustainable, or, lacking widespread support, were actively suppressed by vested interests.

By the time Marx was writing, those necessary conditions were either in existence or well on the way to becoming so. There has been no significant material barrier to establishing a socialist society for 150 years or more.

Through those intervening years, despite claims made in disparate countries at various times, socialism has yet to garner the vital mass support needed for it to be realised. What is preventing working people deciding to act in their own best interests?

The answer seems simple, but is proving stubbornly difficult to address. The objective conditions for socialism may well exist, but the subjective conditions presently do not. This is the factor that needs to change to fully realise the vast potential of material reality.

When socialists consider the working class they envisage the majority in society acting collectively to pursue their common interests. However, in Britain for example, that collective is actually so many million individuals and each individual needs to become a socialist for the working class to become socialist.

For socialism to succeed, then it is not just the millions in Britain who must be committed, but also the billions worldwide. Not as followers of a vanguard, but active in their own right on their own behalf. Some task.

Marx famously stated: ‘Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world is various ways; the point is to change it.’ It is not enough to mount convincing arguments in favour of socialism if they do not become integral in the thinking of the vast majority. Then they can act collectively to change their world.

And this is where being a Marxist gnostic comes in. Actually, all socialists are political gnostics by dint of having become their own authority. There isn’t a secular ‘Church’ to which they can subscribe that will mediate between them and salvation, the achievement of socialism. This is the case whether there be just a few, or vast numbers of socialists.

My tongue may be lodged a little in my cheek, but those who have seen through the miasma of falsehoods that cloud the general view of capitalist society, are the ones who know in a profound sense, why capitalism cannot simply be made better, why socialism is the only viable alternative.

The task of dispersing that miasma remains daunting, but feudal monarch, bishops and barons felt their positions in the world were unassailable, while their peasants largely regarded society as being divinely ordered and beyond change. Yet change it most certainly did, and profoundly so.

We will conclude with a secular (and very, very loose) reworking of the third secret saying in ‘The Gospel of Thomas’:

If it is said by those who lead you, ‘Socialism is in this country, or that country,’ you are merely hearing the squawking of parrots.

If it is said, ‘Socialism has been tried and failed and is behind you,’ they are trying to blind your vision with myopic hindsight.

Rather socialism is all around you in all its productive potential.

And socialism is within you with your ability to embrace that potential.

Then you will realise socialism for what it is.

But until you know, you dwell in the poverty of philosophy and you are that poverty of philosophy.

Here endeth the lesson.

Dave Alton

Reality (2002)

From the April 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

There are at least two statements about reality that cannot be seriously disputed: that reality is an idea, and that it claims to be something more and something other than just an idea.

Reality is a concept that claims to transcend the world of ideas; it has an existence independent of consciousness. Given that most ideas make some claim to a relationship with the world we experience, why does this one exert such a seductive power on us despite its obvious paradoxical nature?

Politically speaking some use it as an excuse for not trying to change things while others, like socialists, need to understand it specifically to change it. In all political debates the perceived division between idealists and pragmatists is continually expressed. For many of us reality is a depressing life of exploitation which stands in stark contrast to the proposed vision of society offered by socialism. But is that kind of social structure mere idealism or is it the prison of our working lives which is sustained by the ideological illusion of a single reality?

One attempt to define reality centred on the search for an unchanging essence within the objects that make up our world. Metaphysics attempted to comprehend the real, to grasp the truth and to witness the good. In its later synthesis with Christianity it became the search for God. Dualistic philosophical tradition liked to define it by what it was not: it did not change, it was not an illusion and, most importantly, reality could not in itself be evil because it was the creation of God.

There is an echo here of a much more ancient duality concerning structure and chaos which lies beneath the classical conception of truth and falsehood and Christianity’s good and evil. Evil, in some traditions, is defined as the ignorance of the truth – an illusion (false God) that prevents access to really. We hate what we fear and we fear what we don’t understand. But what was “understood” in this Christian context was the metaphysical belief in an unchanging “human nature” which in great part was confirmed by the fear of the historical developments that engulfed the Christians during the reformation and beyond. The Christian ideological schisms of the 16th and 17th centuries created an ever more desperate need for a realm of unchanging moral values and, revealingly, a source of absolute power (God).

Power

Karl Marx was very interested in the nature of power and how it manifested itself historically; usually quite differently from the way it was explained within the ideologies of the power groups concerned. His theory attempted to trace the origins of political power and the social classes that have wielded it through history. It is more than an attempt, as Engels and others seem to imply, to use the methodology of the natural sciences to understand human history because history itself can be used to explain science in its ideological and social context. Science, in many ways, did not destroy religion as a way to legitimise political power, it merely replaced it (although some extreme reactionary regimes like the USA and Iran still use religion in this way). One of the reasons for this ideological dethronement is because science has become the contemporary language of “reality”.

So what does the scientific enterprise tell us about reality; and what do the politics of today’s power structures tell us about science? Physics and biology both have surprisingly little to say on the subject. There seems to be a great variety of speculation based on the experimental data. For instance, quantum theory can offer us a choice between the “uncertainty principle” which implies that the universe is essentially an unknowable paradox created by the nature of relationship between mind and perception; or it provides us with infinite parallel universes where every quantum possibility exists simultaneously. In biology the holy grail of genetic determinism is pursued with crusading zeal. It looks as though this search will end in a similar place where the physicists now repose, exhausted beside their over-heated particle accelerators after yet another unsuccessful attempt to find the definitive sub-atomic particle.

All of this tells us much about the motivations of the ideology that lies behind the scientific project itself. For all its failures in defining a coherent concept of reality it is still the dominant arena for our culture’s attempts to understand and so control nature. This reflects the hierarchical authoritarianism of the social structure of capitalism. A scientist is a potential member of a social elite; he or she has undergone the training that allows their “baptism” by the agents of the power-brokers of our society – in this case the scientific establishment. This group has in turn received its authority from the ruling class via government grants or company sponsorships. Without this patronage science could not and would not exist in its present form. All of which leads us to a more certain source of reality – money.

Money

Along with fear, plain, death, hunger and love no one would deny that the need for money constitutes a reality; and yet most of us are aware that the notes and coins we use are in themselves worthless. Money is, in fact, merely a contract between buyer and seller which promises the seller that he can redeem the value of what he has sold to the buyer. No other human promise carries as much confidence within it as this one does in our culture. We might swear on a stack of bibles or give up our loved ones as hostages and still fail to create the confidence inspired by hard cash. Why is this? Simply because all of the world’s power structures are focused primarily on enforcing this financial contract. If any doubt arises concerning this law of exchange it causes chaos that leads to economic depression and, for the parasite class, the ultimate horror of a loss of profit.

So once again the quest for reality resolves itself into an idea; but an idea that derives immense power from a universal cultural consensus. This consensus is continually reinforced by social power structures such as the World Bank, IMF and the WTO but it was not created by them. Marx has said that men make history but they make it only with historical constraints. The bourgeois revolutions became possible because of the changing mode of production which made the feudal power structures inappropriate. The English Revolution of 1642 was in most part generated by the capitalist class’s need for a free market system to replace the royal court government’s monopoly production rights. Money replaced land as the economic basis for access to the new ruling class – the bourgeois parliament. Thus production for profit became the basis of English law where the means of life could only be secured through money.

Historically for some 300 years (compared to feudalism’s 600 and slavery’s 1000 years) capitalism has evolved into the global market system we see today. Once again a similar political situation to 1642 has arisen where the social power structures are inhibiting economic progress. The profit-motivated system prevents millions of people in the world from securing the means of life. A new idea has come into existence that challenges the old capitalist cultural structures – socialism. When the majority of humanity believes in this idea then it can transform itself into a social and economic reality. It is the historical relevance of an idea that can make it real because only then can it transform the power structure to reflect the needs of those who sustain the system of their own exploitation. In the end it is, and always has been, political power that defines reality for us all.

It is an entertaining diversion to speculate whether a tree still falls if no-one is there to observe it or whether the Earth was spherical before its inhabitants believed it to be so; but this type of philosophical debate is unavailable to those of us who are dying of hunger, war or disease. Political power is derived from humanity’s historical and social consciousness – or the lack of it. From this central process everything that constitutes reality is derived. In the words of a Rastafarian song:

“They wonder why the sun shines, they do not know that it shines for I and I (conscious people).”

Wez.