Letter: Socialists 'shying away'? (1996)

Letter to the Editors from the July 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists 'shying away'?

Dear Editors,

In May’s Socialist Standard Jonathan Clay writes that "evil” has social roots, rather than being some theologically explicable external force ("Dunblane—a Question of Evil?"). Let’s take "evil" as meaning acts of gross inhumanity, and let’s accept this as a sound argument. As capitalism becomes more effective in undermining our essential humanity as states and companies are increasingly free of restraint on their use of our lives for their purposes, then it seems that random acts of "evil" by individuals become more common.

This makes perfect sense to me, and finds an echo in Erich Fromm’s study of "evil"— Anatomy of Human Destructiveness. In this superb work, Fromm reasons that commercial and corporate life produces certain character types who have a tendency towards sadism as a solution to the draining away of meaning and human contact from their lives. It is a commonplace in psychology that such tendencies are more likely to be actively expressed if the person is subjected to pressure, and who can deny that modern capitalism produces an abundance of stress and pressure on everyone subjected to it?

I wonder, however whether Clay's picture might be incomplete in a vital areas of inquiry. There is a sense of omission here for me which feels important, and which is shared, to do Clay credit, by Fromm’s approach. The omission concerns our incomprehension of how antisocial pathology is actually formed in an individual character. Clay put it this way:

"The formation of an individual is on extremely complex, open-ended process which, even will all possible information about that individual at our disposal, can never be adequately grasped."

Is this so, I wonder? We as Socialists certainly feel that we can arrive at, at least, an "adequate” grasp of social mechanisms, in spite of their complexity and opacity. The fact is that there is a body of work available now which shines a good deal of light into the hitherto dark region of enquiry encompassed by the word "evil’’.

John Bowlby’s work on attachment and loss, in which he built upon insights gained through a study of hospitalised children, has given birth to whole field of investigation called Attachment Theory, which is proving fruitful in the understanding of antisocial behaviour and even acts of gross savagery. For example. it shows that violent rage stems from a disrupted attachment in infancy or early childhood, from a breakdown in a carer’s ability to provide a "secure base" for the child, for whatever reason, we are not talking about judgements here, but about explanations.

Experiments carried out by Ainsworth. Mary Main and others show that even among under-five's it is possible to prove a connection between the quality of attunement and boundary setting provided by a parent for an infant, and that infant's behaviour in an observed play setting. The better the connection the parents are able to offer the child, the more the child will play sociably and as an equal with its peers, whereas infants of parents who are neglectful will be disruptive and perhaps bullying. For an excellent overview, expanding and in my view deepening Fromm’s masterpiece, anyone interested might read Felicity De Zulueta's From Pain to Violence—The Traumatic Roots of Destructiveness (Whurr 1993).

Socialists tend to shy away from such work. They fear that it implies the abandonment of societal explanations for personal ones. We think what we hear is—"society isn’t sick— you are!" We are suspicious because we think such thinking is simply the blaming of the powerless for the abuse of the powerful. the shackling of working-class mothers with the responsibility for all the ills of the world.

This is not so. The understanding of the origins of pathology is not the same thing as judging. Under capitalism in many ways adequate parenting can become almost impossible.

Of course suspicion is healthy here. I’m not arguing for the shifting of responsibility from capitalists onto hard-pressed parents, but let us not turn our backs on new thinking which casts light on, not only gross crimes, but also the psychological mechanisms which help to produce our assent for abuse and exploitation.

I want to look at Jonathan Clay’s description of reality under capitalism for a moment He talks of: "Fragmentation, powerlessness. alienation, anxiety and despair, in a world which is chaotic beyond all our attempts at control."

This accurate description of how capitalist society can feel is also a beautiful and harrowing evocation of how it must feel to be a helpless neglected child. Such a child, as an adult, may well feel driven to inflict those unbearable emotions on others now less powerful than himself. Such logic does not excuse his behaviour, but it may well explain it.

All of the foregoing is not intended to blame the powerless or shift the spotlight off capitalist society, but with gaining a better understanding of abuse power, which is, surely, the essence of capitalism. Abusive power masquerading as its opposite.

Clay quotes Camus, saying “Children will still die unjustly, even in a perfect society." Well, maybe we as Socialists have more to offer in illuminating this problem than Jonathan Clay thinks, at least if we can be more open to, and less afraid of. the more intimate "people sciences". To paraphrase him— "Do we really want to understand less?"

Peter Rigg, 

Nelson, Lancs

Proper Gander: Lessons from Adolescence (2025)

The Proper Gander column from the May 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

A little over a year since Mr Bates vs The Post Office reminded us that TV drama can still have an impact, Netflix’s Adolescence has also shaped debate in Parliament, online, in the media and round the proverbial water cooler at work. Adolescence has been particularly resonant because the issue of violence from young males which it raises feels both more emotive and widespread. The story centres on a 13-year-old boy who is accused of stabbing a girl from his school. Each episode covers an hour at intervals after the murder, with the first showing Jamie’s arrest at his home. Episode two follows the police’s initial visit to the children’s school, the third is a conversation between Jamie and a psychologist some months afterwards and the last episode looks at how the rest of his family are managing over a year later. The performances from Owen Cooper as Jamie and Stephen Graham as his father Eddie are particularly gripping, with Graham also co-creating and co-writing the series. Impressively, each episode was filmed in one continuous take, which must have involved intricately structuring and choreographing the scenes to get the camera and the actors in the right places at the right times.

The drama gives less emphasis to the details of the murder than to the circumstances around it, gradually bringing out the combination of reasons behind Jamie’s actions. His family isn’t portrayed as dysfunctional apart from his father’s anger, described as a generational trauma passed on to Jamie. His own anger is shown sparingly and as being fuelled by online culture. The ‘manosphere’ to which Jamie is drawn, of emojis, incels, influencers and abusive messages has led him to a view of women which leads to his crime. The script tends to understate the causes: Jamie is outwardly ‘normal’ rather than obviously aggressive. Online discourse isn’t explored in detail, other than several brief scenes where aspects of the ‘manosphere’ are mentioned, hinting at its links with far-right ideology. The meanings behind kidney bean emojis and ‘taking the red pill’ explained by the teenage characters would have been new to many viewers. An effect of this is to tell parents that they may not have understood the nature of online cultures their children are being tempted into, and how this can almost casually slide them into violence. In some ways, this is a modern version of past moral panics about the influence of horror comics, video nasties and computer games on young people, although this feels more serious, given today’s climate with the rise in knife crime and misogyny.

Much of the discussion sparked by Adolescence has concentrated on ‘toxic masculinity’, rather than another factor in what influenced Jamie. His school is depicted as a grim and tense place for children to learn in, taking into account that the scenes there are set only a few days after the murder. The teachers are depicted as policing behaviour more than teaching, while the regimented routines and drab walls aren’t much different from those of the police station or detention centre seen in other episodes. Our society’s institutions and environments encourage and reinforce alienation, with Jamie representing its extremes.

Adolescence isn’t a case study, although because it’s fiction perhaps it can be spoken about more openly than real cases. Its release was certainly timed well to contribute to a broader debate. In the same month, former England football manager Sir Gareth Southgate, giving the BBC’s annual Richard Dimbleby Lecture, said that today’s young men need more wholesome role models rather than ‘callous, manipulative and toxic influencers’ online. Also in March, the Centre of Social Justice published its Lost Boys report which describes an increasing divergence between the future prospects of boys and girls, with girls now more likely to later have higher qualifications and higher-paid employment.

Various right-wing vloggers (and Elon Musk) opined that Adolescence is liberal-lefty propaganda which demonises white males and distracts from the proportion of stabbings committed by black youths. Their dislike of the drama is presumably due in part to its criticisms of the ‘manosphere’ they represent. Right-wing commentators were also more likely than those on the left to say that it is being used by the government to justify legislation about regulating online activity. The Online Safety Act 2023 passed into law under the previous Conservative government, and its implementation is still in progress under Labour’s regime. The Prime Minister met with the series’ creators and backed MP Anneliese Midgley’s call for it to be screened in schools with the aim of helping to deter teenage boys from misogyny and aggression. Secondary schools are already obliged to include ‘Relationships and Sex Education’ on their curriculum and updated guidance to cover sexual violence is being planned. Even if the state’s approach of embracing the programme and saying they are taking action over the issues it raises is sincere rather than cynical, it’s still a better PR move than ignoring or disputing the drama.

Adolescence has, at least for a few weeks, connected together various attempts to address concerns about some young males. But to what extent can tightening up legislation about online activity or showing the series in schools or promoting different role models counter misogynistic violence? The context of the problem remains. Titling the drama ‘Adolescence’ points towards the root of the issue being with younger people, especially boys. However, the real cause is found with the social conditions which shape adolescence. Therefore deeper social change is needed, although this risks being ignored among the piecemeal reforms and proposals.

Mike Foster

Blogger's Note:

Mr Bates vs The Post Office was reviewed in the February 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard.

A lesson in capitalist ethics. (1908)

From the April 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

"The fact brutally resolves itself to this. Society ultimately depends on force. Happily force is not constantly employed, but, until the world becomes very different from what it is, it must always be latent."—The Times, Feb. 29, 1908.

Between the Lines: Male violence (1993)

The Between the Lines column from the June 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Male violence

Channel Four's Brookside (Mon and Wed 8pm, Fri 8.30pm) has woken from its recent slumbers in a controversial attempt to lift its ratings, now down to little over three million. By introducing the gruesome Trevor Jordache character—a wife beater and child abuser— Brookside has once again set the daytime TV shows a-chattering. And with good reason. Brookside have simply introduced the best (and most original) storyline into a British soap for ages.

The background to the story has been that the Jordache family, of mother and two teenage daughters, had previously been moved to get [away from] husband and father Trevor, convicted of physical assault and sexual abuse. After ferrying them around bedsits for two years, the authorities have now found the Jordaches an inadequate “safe house” on Brookside Close. Unfortunately they have been beset by Trevor's unwelcome attentions once again on his release from prison. Having wiled his way back into the Jordache household with a cry of poverty, the plot has essentially been revolving around Trevor's increasingly hideous behaviour and the plans of the desperate mother and eldest daughter to kill him rather than face his continued assaults—or the alternative of eviction from their new "safe house” on Brookside Close if the authorities find out about Trevor’s return.

The portrayal of this sticky situation has been graphic, bringing into the homes of millions the torment suffered by those women and children with a monster in their midst, a monster mentally equipped for his wrong-doing by a society where sex is cheap and dirty and where violence appears as the "easy” solution to problems. The most interesting aspect of the story is the way in which, beyond the ratings hype, it has illustrated how monumentally badly capitalism copes with the situations it itself has helped create.

Viewers may well ask themselves whether a two-year spell couped up in a dingy prison cell was appropriate for a man whose actions towards those he professes to love have persistently bordered on the pathological. Dealing with any such individuals in a socialist society would not be easy, and no-one pretends it would be, but as Brookside has amply demonstrated, capitalism is at a complete loss, unable to provide the institutional framework to help those individuals who may not be able to help their own actions, let alone provide a situation where mother and children can live in safety and comfort.

Life should never be as brutal as it is for the imaginary Jordaches of Brookside, but unfortunately for thousands of families in the real world of capitalism, it most certainly is.

Female equality

If any show has demonstrated why feminism on its own is not enough it was BBC2’s “Ladies in Lines". Forty Minutes (4 May 9.50pm).This documentary about a platoon of raw female recruits into the Australian army showed why "equality” under capitalism is not generally much of an equality worth having. In this particular instance it was, to be charitable, equal opportunity to be treated like a lump of shit.

The young women involved, arriving with parents, boyfriends and teddybears were subjected to a daily routine that would not have been entirely out of place in a Stalinist labour camp. A quarter of those who started the basic training with the ritual hair-cropping were unable to compile the course and many who did seemed to spend a fair proportion of their time in the charge room, in tears, or both.

Why these individuals should have chosen to enter the army is a tribute to the strength of the society-wide propaganda which eulogizes the virtues of discipline, aggression and competition—supposedly "male values”—above all others. Indeed, virtually all the young women involved testified to an identity crisis. Although they knew they were really women, they were forced to behave as they imagined men behaved.

All in all it proved to be an unedifying sight. Many of the women eventually proved that they could be like male soldiers. but no one, including the women themselves, were really prepared to suggest why this might be a good thing. Beyond correctly identifying the emptiness of the life offered in civvy street, none seemed able to give a credible reason for their presence as women in the army.

In truth, this was not really their fault, as no such reason exists. How on earth can there be a realistic salvation for women under capitalism through simply acting as maniacally as men have so often being trained to behave? Could female soldiers really be the giant step forward for womankind that was implied? Surely not.

As socialists have always suspected, capitalism's reaction to an inequality is invariably to sink those previously at a more humane level to a more barbaric one. thereby giving the appearance of evening things out a bit. Across the world capitalism’s tendency has been to barbarise those who are most vulnerable to its unyielding propaganda, and the "ladies in lines" were as good an example of this as is possible to get.

Dave Perrin

Little Children Suffer (1978)

From the May 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Closely rivalling, if not outdoing, sex as the advertising industry’s most popular theme is the home and the family. There is, of course a difference; sexually orientated ads work on promise — the near-nude rolling in the surf, the tightly jeaned female bottoms — while those based on the home are about fulfillment. The image of a smart, comfortable home with affectionate parents and secure children is used to sell toothpaste, breakfast cereals, soup, scouring compounds . . . Because the family, as a place of care, of security, where children grow into happy, well adjusted adults, is one of capitalism’s essential ideals.

Well a recent survey by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (The Child’s Guardian—Winter 1977) estimated that 110 children —mostly babies—are battered to death every year and that beyond these at least 7,700 children receive non-accidental injuries of varying degrees of severity. The NSPCC’s annual report for 1976 said that during twelve months they actually found 30,878 children potentially at risk of neglect or injury.

Concern about child abuse is a comparatively modern fashion; for much of the span of property society children have been regarded as wilfully deficient adults and therefore deserving of whatever punishment their elders liked to inflict on them. As a child king, Edward VI was regularly flogged; Charles I managed to interpose a whipping boy to take his treatment. In the 17th century Massachusetts and Connecticut had a law which prescribed the death penalty for unruly children (nowadays, in England, they are likely only to be put into prison). The case of Mary Ellen, in the 1860s, which saved her from parental brutality, succeeded only on the grounds that she was an animal; while it was illegal to maltreat animals the rights of parents to chastise their children was inviolable.

It was entirely natural, then, that the Industrial Revolution should extend the field of child abuse. In Halifax, Defoe admired four year olds earning their living like grown ups, which meant that in the mines and factories they worked 14, 16, or even 18 hours a day, whipped at their machines to keep them awake and often subjected to imaginative torture by sadistic overseers. The tradition was carried on in the schools, where children were persistently beaten and humiliated to make them learn or behave themselves. It was not only poor kids who suffered; Lord Shaftesbury recalled the school he was sent to, at the age of seven, at the start of the 19th century:

  The memory of that place makes me shudder . . . I think I never saw such a wicked school before or since. The place was bad, wicked, filthy, and the treatment was starvation and cruelty.

(The Prevention of Cruelty to Children — Leslie George Housden)

The agitation over child abuse, which gathered strength in the late 19th century, was largely an upper class affair, typified by a letter in The Times in 1884 which bemoaned “. . . the cruel neglect towards children among our degraded and criminal classes.” From this movement the NSPCC was born, to grow up with the (undeserved) image of the black-uniformed inspector calling in response to anonymous and groundless complaints from malicious neighbours.

Since then there has been a progressive refinement of the techniques of dealing with cruelty towards children, beginning with the deficiencies existing in the methods of detecting the condition some of which were hair raising. One girl, who had herself battered her child, gave an example:

  My elder sister, I think she could have been classed as a battered child, though you didn’t have them then, did you?

(Children in Danger — Jean Renvoize)

Doctors and social workers were pretty slow to detect the signs of baby battering, even misinterpreting something as apparently obvious as healed fractures showing up on an X-ray plate. Now the paediatrician works as a specialist in his own right, but under the restraints common to anyone whose job is to minister to capitalism’s casualties. And, as the NSPCC indicate, a substantial amount of child cruelty still goes undetected.

In 1961 an American doctor, Henry Kempe, published his theory that baby battering might be regarded in the same way as a disease, in that its presence was indicated by certain symptoms which collectively made up what he called the battered baby syndrome. The first symptom may be the act of the parents bringing their child to hospital with, say, a large bruise on its face and a story about it falling off the settee a couple of days before.

Questioning the parents may then reveal other symptoms—one or both of them may have had a bad experience at the hands of their parents; they may make excessive demands on their children for obedience or achievement or uncritical affection. And in among this mixture of physical and emotional problems there are also often social ones, part and parcel of the working class status of the battering parents.

An NSPCC research project in 1976 (At Risk) found that an unwanted pregnancy, marital difficulties and bad housing were predisposing factors in baby battering :

   Many of the parents were living in poor, cramped accommodation, unsuitable for the arrival of a new baby. Hence they spent much of the pregnancy desperately seeking an alternative, which must have added to their general insecurity and anxiety.

If the battered baby syndrome tells us anything it is that human behaviour is largely a response to the conditions the human being finds himself in.

The growth of knowledge about child abuse should cause some questioning of the assumption — on which many of the decisions in domestic and juvenile courts are based — that the best and safest place for a child is at home with its natural parents and that the greatest institution ever developed by man is the monogamous marriage which is, was and shall be.

In fact the family has been a changing organism in society reflecting development in the mode of production. Frederick Engels (The Origin of the Family) describes the monogamous family as: ". . . the first form of the family to be based, not on natural, but on economic conditions — on the victory of private property over primitive, natural communal property”, and points out that it was the intensification of production in agriculture, metalwork and later slavery — all of them the preserve of the male — which finished of the primitive social order dominated by kinship groups, with group marriage and matriarchal families.

The observations of primitive society by Margaret Mead (Coming of Age in Samoa) revealed households consisting not just of biological families but also of all those related in any way to the headman or his wife. One effect of this was that children could wander freely and always find food, shelter and protection because they were never out of surveillance of some older relative. If a child was under pressure in one household it could always move to another — a safety valve against over-punitive discipline:

  A girl whose father has beaten her over-severely, in the morning will be found living in haughty sanctuary, two hundred feet away, in a different household. So cherished is this system of consanguineous refuge, that an untitled man or a man of lesser rank will beard the nobler relative who comes to demand a runaway child.

As the Samoan child was passed from one relative to another it learned that no one person, or small group of people, represented care, security or authority, it grew up without the need to invest a great deal in any one relationship; at the same time as passions like jealousy were practically eliminated so was my strong emotional attachment. It couldn’t have been more different from Woman's Own; in Samoan society the successful people were those whose affections were spread thinly over many others, in contrast to modern capitalism’s ideal of an intense focussing of affection onto a small group.

One conclusion from this is that conformity and deviance are very much subjective concepts, fashioned by the demands of the social system within which they exert their pressures on people. The tragedy in what capitalism does to us is that we have the worst of all possible worlds. The monogamous family is restrictive and repressive; it encourages intense involvement over a small scale but it does not bring the commensurate rewards which the moralists claim for it. To begin with it is a perilously fragile arrangement; for example children who conform and form a dependence upon their parents are grievously damaged if anything goes wrong with that relationship. The family of capitalism copes only with difficulty with the natural pressures of the system, which amount to the everyday burdens of working class poverty. If the bough breaks, and the cradle falls, there is rarely a safety net below.

At the same time the family of capitalism is under pressure to become ever more private and introverted. In face of the popular notion that it is breaking up, an increasing amount of money is being diverted into cementing the family together. Mortgages, washing machines and television sets are not just ways of spending money; they are also inducements to use, or enjoy, the results of that spending behind your own front door. And if you must go out you can always keep yourself intact as a unit within the mobile privacy of the motor car.

When we intensify this situation of stress with the normal pressures of survival under capitalism — the need to keep, and progress in, a job for example — we have something which can realise its explosive potential in violence among the electrical gadgets or in a battered baby lying in the G Plan bedroom. Jean Renvoize puts it starkly, as an everyday problem in a working class home when a baby arrives:

  Time and again battering parents report sleeping problems. and no one consistently deprived of their proper quota of sleep can be said to be fully themselves.

Capitalism works by deception and among the cruellest is its family, which it presents as a haven but which is often a torture chamber. Organisations like the NSPCC, typical of their kind, sit Canute-like, puzzled and dismayed at the ever-encroaching tide of reality. Panicked, they splash among superficialities — bad housing or emotional tangles or misconceptions about a child’s abilities. Capitalism is a society in which some violence earns a gaol sentence and some wins medals. It cannot provide for its children or its adults and it will go down in history as having much blood on its hands.

Ivan

Letter: The rusted mirror (1983)

First edition hardback cover

Letter to the Editors from the April 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

The following letter and essay appear exactly as submitted. While we cannot agree with some of the points made, the writer's perceptiveness contrasts sharply with most of what usually passes for social criticism.

Dear Editors

Recently at my school we were set an essay to write: its theme being the good and bad aspects of the world today, with reference to The Chrysalids by John Wyndham, which we are reading at the moment. Incidentally, this book is set in the future which has reverted to the past after a nuclear holocaust — or "tribulation" as it is known in their world.

I spent a considerable amount of time thinking about the posed title; writing an essay which was depressing but, I felt, true. I admit my conclusions from the essay were highly influenced from reading some copies of your magazine, which I was sent on inquiry. I was not entirely pleased with the final product, but I was definitely convinced that my principles were right.

As I am still convinced. I am sending a copy of the essay to you; I hope you enjoy reading it. I certainly enjoy reading the Socialist Standard and will continue to do so. Please accept my appreciation for being able to learn a lot from your magazine, and also for being able to quote it in my essay to strengthen my standpoint.

Yours for socialism 

Charlotte Brown (age 14)

Hatfield. Herts.

Talking about ‘The Old People”, i.e. those in our world, it is said “Nobody knows . . . where they were right and where they were mistaken”. Give your views on the good and bad aspects of our world.

I would like to begin this discussion with a comment on a quotation from The Chrysalids. In it, Uncle Axel says of the word “tribulation": "A word, a rusted mirror, reflecting nothing. It'd do the preachers good to see it for themselves. They'd not understand, but they might begin to think”.

This phrase is useful, as I believe it can be used in the context of world leaders of today; that they wish to attribute all the wrong in the world to certain phrases when really, if they could only realise that their “mirror was rusted", they would be able to be more constructive.

This is, then, my first point about a bad aspect of our world: that the people who are able to improve conditions (whether they should be in this position or not), seem to be unwilling to do so. As thousands of people in the world starve to death many politicians say that this cannot be stopped by financial aid since this would cause inflation. So thousands of people continue to starve. This sort of attitude (that of "let it be") is also present in other problems: unemployment, evil dictatorships, poverty, repression, etc. And then there is, of course, the arms race. Much negotiation seems to be impossible because of the threat of nuclear war. Millions of pounds are spent daily on weapons — the instruments of destruction — while people in the world struggle to survive, let alone manage to enjoy their natural environment.

Before I discuss the world’s problems in greater detail. I feel compelled to suggest a reason for so much of the misery present in the world. I have valiantly attempted to think of another reason for the pointless aspects of the world. None is forthcoming. I condemn world capitalism for a lot of the bad aspects of the world. This quotation, taken from a socialist publication, I feel illustrates my point well (all quotations in this essay are taken from the Socialist Standard):

  The Official Coroner’s Statistics for 1981 reported nearly 5.000 suicides in Britain that year an average of one every other hour. Of those they leave behind, in one hour, six were made redundant in Britain alone, and in the world as a whole 3,500 people starved to death.

This statement clearly shows the insanity of the world at present. I do not pretend that I am "world wise" and have experienced any of the evil things that exist in the world. But I hope that I am capable of realising their existence. Speaking of Britain specifically, here are the things which, in my view, are causing unhappiness:

Unemployment. This predicament is affecting 4½ million people in Britain in 1983 (this figure includes "housewives"). People struggle to live on the small amount given to them through social security. They struggle with boredom and frustration, ever-present in an unemployed person’s life. They struggle to remain sane and rational. They struggle to find other employment. And they struggle to stay optimistic that there is a job for them. But they struggle in vain — their lives are not self-controlled.

Employment (Yes!) and “the Rat Race”. Even people in employment have to face difficulties. Apart from having the worry that perhaps tomorrow there will not be a job for them, they are often underpaid and over worked. Jobs can be stressful physically and mentally. Many people slog at a boring job all of their lives, going from home to work, then back home again, to demand supper from the woman of the household (whether working or not) and then to collapse in front of the television — the substitute for what really should be happening to them, for example, seeing oil tycoons "living it up”, or endless advertisements for holidays in the sun. I shall give another quotation, which describes perfectly the reality of "the rat race":

  After a tiring, often frustrating and humiliating day at work and a crowded, stressful journey home, thousands of workers in Britain eat a meal at roughly the same time and flop in front of the television set. What they see and hear must not disturb their recreation this period of rest and recuperation which, together with a night's sleep, enables and encourages them to go to work tomorrow and tomorrow.

Violence. In Britain (Scotland. Wales and England. at least), there is no official war. The army trains but on this isle never has to make its practice reality. So what I am referring to here is the violent attitude of Britain. The "triumph" of the Falklands War proved that British people accepted having their money spent on weapons and death. 70 per cent of the British population, according to reliable surveys, wish capital punishment to be re-enforced in Britain. This is not limited to the death penalty — many people also believe that criminals should be publicly whipped and humiliated. One group of people stated that they thought capital punishment was justified, even if it was not a deterrent against crime. People (especially men) resort to violence towards people they know because of their frustration with themselves or, more truthfully, their situation.

Violence breaks out on the streets, be it in the form of shop burglary, muggings, rape or victimisation. Most of these acts of violence can be explained because of people being emotionally insecure, or because they need money, or because they need someone to be responsible for their own misery. Although I do not condone people acting violently, or encourage them to do so, I can understand why they are forced to do so. Because Britain is a violent nation. Whether violence is approved of (for example, in wars) or condemned (as in muggings), it is noticed.

Prejudice. Violence leads to another bad thing present in Britain: prejudice. Prejudice towards women, or men, towards white people or black people, towards Indians or Jews, towards Catholics or Protestants, towards young people or old people, towards poor people or rich people, towards clever people or stupid people. It is all bad and unjustifiable. I admit that black people often have cause to hate white people, or that the Irish people often have cause to despise the British people, but my opinion still remains the same: it should not exist. But it does exist because our society is so unfair; for it not to exist would seem odd. Some people have reason to hate their "opposite", while others do not. But whatever the prejudice, it results from the fact that someone is "better" or "worse" than yourself, and should be hated for that reason. No one seems to accept that differences do not equal "better" or "worse". Prejudice is an attitude of a capitalist doctrine.

As I have mentioned the main problems of Britain I am unable to spend so much time on the problems of the rest of the world. In most cases, problems in other countries are far, far worse than in Britain. Many nations have no system of democracy whatsoever; they have to suffer under evil dictatorships, and people are punished for possessing any views of their own. Many nations are extremely poor, and the people of these countries consistently suffer from famine and starvation. Many nations are troubled with wars of religion; religion rules their lives and often prevents them from seeing the truth. Many nations are unfair to certain groups of people; especially to women, who are still second class citizens in the majority of countries in the world.

Many nations have civil wars raging; they also have unfair imprisonment, sadistic "lawful” punishments, and torturing. Many people in the world are too ignorant to be able to alter their situation.

My conclusion from all this is that most problems have their roots embedded in certain attitudes: that being able to destroy another is more important than to be able to feed another, that people are never equal and should never be treated as such. It is an evil situation that these attitudes are so embedded. I hope that soon the rusted mirror will be able to shine, but most of all to reflect.

Are there any good points, then?

Comparatively, yes. This means that I am more fortunate than my ancestor, and that I am more fortunate than my foreign neighbour. At least I am able to give my views. No doubt some will disagree with them, but no one will be able to stop me declaring them. I am warmer now than I would have been before electricity. I am more healthy than I would have been a hundred years ago. The whole texture of living is undoubtedly richer than the past; it is also more interesting. It is the attitudes of today which are harmful.

I have a better chance of getting a job (as a girl) and of being accepted as an equal being. I am certainly more enlightened about many things than my ancestor, although not really because of education but because of the opportunity, not to only survive but also to think. Newspapers. books, television programmes and radio are all available to teach me. I always have enough food.

But what about the rest of the world? Well I believe, despite all the evil present, that modern advancements will make it easier for us to abolish evil. We can communicate with people thousands of miles away. We do have the ability, now more than ever before, to give everyone enough to eat. enough clothes, good living conditions. to make the best use of the world's resources. Why. then, when our knowledge is so exceptional, can we not use it correctly? Because of the awful attitudes about war and peace which exist. Destroy world capitalism and I believe we have destroyed the nuclear threat, poverty. starvation, violence, war. and so to a certain extent unhappiness.

  You want to eat, to live in a decent home, to be fully mobile, to enjoy the pleasures of the world — but the world refuses to let you.

Capitalism — The Violent Society (1969)

Editorial from the May 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Think about it. Violence and conflict, whether in strikes, demonstrations, crime, or war, are an accepted part of modern society. Think about it, and ask why and what can be done about it.

Every large industrial concern—and small ones as well—has its disputes over wages, hours, and conditions of work and all that goes with them—disputes often coming to a head in a strike or a demonstration, perhaps a scuffle with the police.

Every big city — and many a small town—has its gangs, whether they are the frustrated youngsters of some new town or the deadlier adult gangs who organise their rackets in places like London and Glasgow. It is the same story abroad; in some American cities, for example, people live in continual terror of violent crime.

The level of crime has been rising steadily since the war, and despite the many theories on how to deal with it, none of the experts seems to have the answer. According to the Cambridge lnstitute of Criminology, on present figures about a third of the population will be convicted of an indictable offence some time during their lifetime. In some cities crime has increased over the past fifteen years by over 300 per cent.

At no time, since peace was officially declared in 1945, has the world been free of war. Sometimes it has been a minor clash, like the battles on the Indo-Chinese borders; sometimes a bigger affair like Korea or Vietnam. Sometimes, as in the case of Berlin and Cuba, the world has stood on the brink of a nuclear war.

All of these problems—and there are many others like them—are symptoms of violence—not the violence of people or of human society but of one particular type of social system. Many people who are concerned about these problems think that they are caused by some ‘original sin’ which has left in all of us an instinct for violence and cruelty. But human beings are as ready to be kind as to be cruel, and to co-operate with each other as to fight each other. The fact is that human behaviour is largely conditioned by the environment we find ourselves in. And what sort of an environment does capitalism offer—what sort of behaviour does it encourage?

Capitalism is a society of privilege, in which one class owns the means of wealth production and employs the other class to work for it. Here is one cause of dispute, for the employing capitalists have interests opposed to those of the workers they employ. Strikes, lock-outs, and so on are the battles in a war which is continually going on between capitalists and workers over the division of the wealth which the workers produce.

Capitalism subjects its unprivileged class—the working class—to a degrading life of employment, poverty, and frustration. A worker's life is not simply a battle to make ends meet; there are also the warping influences of life in soulless new towns or neurotic suburbs, or in the slums of the big cities. Here there is little chance for human beings to grow up freely and naturally; childhood and adolescence are often times of torture. This is how a Glasgow youth leader sees the problems of the young gangs in the Easterhouse housing estate:

  They are almost totally asexual . . . This is the most overt cause of the violence; they lack the greatest outlet for human energy and emotion. (The Guardian, April 10, 1969.)

Capitalism draws some of its most hopeless and vicious ciriminals from places like these. At the same time, the system is itself a standing incentive to crime. Since it is a society of private property, it denies the vast mass of its people abundance or even security; they are reserved for a minority. But of course some people, perhaps in especially desperate circumstances, try to find a short cut out of the frustrations and humiliations of the unprivileged; they try crime in preference to the humdrum existence of the wage slave in the office or factory. That is why something like 90 per cent of crime consists of offences against property, some of which are accompanied by ruthless violence with cosh or pickaxe handle or gun.

Capitalism, in this field and in others, sets its own pattern. The same spokesmen who condemn the violent criminal have no hesitation in using force in the disputes of the capitalist class. That is why the states of capitalism keep up massive armed forces, and the few most powerful have their armouries of all-destructive nuclear weapons. This year, British arms spending will go up by £100m. to a record of nearly £2,400m.

Capitalism’s international disputes arise because it is a competitive society, whether it is competition between one firm and another in the High Street or between nations over access to markets or sources of raw materials. The Middle East, for example, is a sensitive area because of the rivalry between the capitalists of so many states for the oil there. As long as capitalism lasts war is either a threat or a reality.

Capitalism, then, is a world of violence, dispute, and frustration. It cannot provide its people with safety, or plenty, or happiness. None of its religions, none of its philosophers, none of its political parties, has any solution to its problems. They all operate on the assumption that capitalism will continue. What if we assume the opposite—that capitalism is abolished and replaced by Socialism?

Socialism is a society in which the means of wealth production are commonly owned. The wealth which is produced will not belong to any class; it will be a common pool to which all human beings will have free access. Thus Socialism will end class divisions, it will end privilege, and it will end poverty.

Socialism is a society in which all humans will have a unity of interests — to co-operate in the production of the world’s wealth. There will be no competition between one group and another for economic supremacy.

Socialism will make its wealth for use and not for sale. This will release society from the restrictions of having to turn out cheap goods for a market. Everything that is produced will be the best we are capable of—we shall not build slums, we shall not make shoddy clothes, we shall not grow sub-standard food.

Socialism is a world without nations and frontiers. It will have one people working together for the common wealth. The crimes and disputes of capitalism will fade into history.

Socialism is necessary now—and we can have it now. All that is needed is for the working class to realise the viciousness and futility of capitalism and to appreciate that it can be ended only by a fundamental social change. Socialism will come after a revolution, as the conscious, democratic act of the world working class.

Herewego — Where next? (1988)

From the August 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

 Today the ones who are looking for trouble do not wear scarves. They wear expensive clothes and a nice watch. People think they are all mods and rockers — they are not. The London boys might be wearing about £200 of clothes. Chelsea "fan", Guardian 20 May

As certain types of social violence escalate, the media, politicians and "experts" of all sorts are clamouring to tackle the problem. It is necessary, however, to look at incidents of violence in their wider social setting to discover what causes them and therefore what needs to be changed in order to eradicate destructive behaviour. The conventional social attitude to organised violence is confused. Consider the following announcement:

  Last night two hundred young men engaged in an organised assault. They violently attacked another group of men whom they had never met before.

If, for instance, three young men were singled out as most responsible for causing mayhem and destruction, what would society do to them? It depends. A government spokesperson asked that question would need to know whether the thuggery was committed by “our boys" in the Falklands or "our boys" in Frankfurt. For distinctive violence ordered against an official "enemy" the soldiers receive pious praise, possibly a medal and commiserations for any maiming they may have suffered to body or mind or both. For distinctive violence which the government has not ordered, the louts in the Union Jack boxer shorts who marauded through German cities in June's European football championship received nothing from the authorities back home but grave censure and contempt. Some of these latter thugs, suffering from a surplus of patriotism and a shortage of brain cells, went on the rampage in Germany wearing "ENGLAND ON TOUR 1914, 1939, 1988" T-shirts. The folly of propertyless workers being patriotic is one thing, but even the capitalists who own Britain (the top seven per cent own about 80 per cent of the wealth) were upset by this piece of gratuitous jingoism.

From an aerial view, British society is fraught with violence as part of its ordinary processes. Apart from the development of organised running battles associated with "football hooligans", there is clear evidence to suggest a proliferation of clashes between rival gangs, and between gangs and police, in rural and costal towns. Every year hundreds of children are treated in hospital for serious injuries inflicted on them by adults, often their parents or guardians. Each year thousands of women leave home to seek refuge in hostels from the brutality of a cohabitant. Then there is the Sadism Industry. which operates on two levels: the illegal and the legal. Below the line of legality lurks the trade in "video nasties", where depth of depravity is the gauge of a film's attractiveness. Pathological disturbance is presented as an art form. Above the line there is a prominent genre of films which portray killings, massacres and annihilation as nothing much more than exciting, glamourised drama They are aimed at a wide market for box office or video success.

Overshadowing all this, though, is the gigantic scale of institutional violence and force. The role of the Police Force is, as its name implies, to use force to keep people in line. Were society civilised we would not need to threaten people to make them conform. Over 50,000 men and women are currently caged up in British prisons and the majority are there for offending against property laws. The military are the Youth Training Scheme in Destruction and Delinquency. The services, especially the Army, present themselves as agencies for travel and tourism, an apprenticeship and the opportunity to develop such things as "life skills"; in reality, recruits are swiftly knocked into a routine of hardship, indignity and idiocy. They have to be trained to obey any order without question or thought. Each soldier is to the Army what a bullet is to a gun — ammunition in a murder machine. And since the business of the Army is orchestrated violence, it is scarcely surprising that the outfit produces barbaric perverts of the kind recently prosecuted for over-zealous disciplinary techniques.

Many factors have been cited as the "main cause” of recent outbreaks of thuggery. What is the socialist analysis of these arguments?

Slack schooling and permissive parents?

  Our current education system equips the bottom 80% of the population for nothing better than sitting in betting shops or being soccer hooligans.

Sir Rhodes Boyson (The Barnet Advertiser, 23 June)

With all the compassion and understanding of a nineteenth-century workhouse Governor. Rhodes is prone to encourage acceptance of his views using physical force. As Headmaster of a north London school he was a firm believer in the educational value of "correcting recalcitrance" by beating young people with a wooden stick. His regret about the current operation of the education system is ironic. If he was entirely candid, he might have gone on to say: " . . . the ruling class needs the rising generation of workers to be moulded into regimented, industrious, compliant wage-slaves who won't play up and disrupt the process by which social wealth is appropriated by capitalists. Such disruption requires a larger slice of profits to be spent on paying for a larger, more powerful police force. It is simply more efficient to educate workers into docility." Indoctrinating young members of the working class to assume the role of poverty-trapped wealth producers is a big problem. It becomes much worse when advertising and media imagery everywhere offer lifestyles which are tantalising. unobtainable and, in reality, largely synthetic pleasures of a cash-culture society. The problem becomes aggravated even further by the reduced chance of even becoming a wage-slave in the present economic environment. This is annoying Rhodes Boyson. He continued his remarks with the words

  I'm sure that about one third of those unemployed are quite happy watching TV, doing the garden, sleeping — and getting paid for it by the tax payer. I envy them.

Surely Mrs Thatcher will rebuke her knight for referring to members of the House of Lords in such terms.

The problem of quelling disorder in the profit system is growing. A survey on "Indiscipline and Violence in Schools" was recently conducted by the National Association of Head Teachers. Its findings are based on returns from 1.630 schools and suggest that

  Violence and other forms of disruptive behaviour are steadily increasing in all types of schools throughout the country.

and in the Primary sector

  Nursery-aged children are starting school already imbued with anti-authoritarian habits because of poor parental control.

(Times Educational Supplement, 17 June)

Modern capitalism requires governments to rely, ultimately, on police forces and armies to make it work. Schools, similarly, are authoritarian organisations and frustrated and resentful young people can easily, though misguidedly, respond to coercion with violence. If more children are becoming consciously anti-authoritarian then that is a healthy development. Babies and toddlers need to be guided from the dangers of traffic and electricity sockets but the use of authority to control attitudes is the hallmark of uncivilised society.

Booze and belligerence

 It is clear from the evidence that a mob of hooligans of which you were a part had spent much of the day swilling beer. This kind of conduct must be stopped. It is all too prevalent.

Judge Gerald Butler QC to Millwall "soccer fans", Southwark Crown Court, 27 June

The men addressed by the judge were part of a gang who stampeded through New Cross Gate station to ambush another group of "supporters". They were convicted of affray after many terrified train passengers had fled across live electric railway lines to escape a mob armed with lumps of concrete, planks, knives and bottles. It is popular to regard alcohol as the cause of violence in society. Used in certain circumstances and in certain quantities it will aggravate aggression, give "Dutch courage" and impair the drinker's social conscience. It is pent up tension and frustration which is usually being released, so it is important to ask why society produces these routine stresses and then promotes alcohol as a palliative.

The promotion of alcohol as an anaesthetic to most peoples problem-ridden routines is booming business in the profit-system. Over £120,000,000 was spent on drink adverts on TV alone last year. Most were aimed at young people and although some were banned (like the one for Bulmer's cider which showed cartoon woodpeckers swigging from a bottle with the slogan: "Spend some time out of your tree") shareholders in drinks companies must have been generally quite pleased with the results of the campaigns. The "George the Bear" films for Hofmeister lager were recently voted the most popular commercials among 13-year-olds.

Governments have, from time to time, sought to control the consumption of alcohol by workers. During World War I, the American Congress stopped the manufacture of alcoholic drink to conserve grain. The prohibition lobby grew in strength and the National Prohibition Act (1920) and a constitutional amendment were later passed to forbid completely the manufacture and consumption of any intoxicating drink. The law proved impossible to enforce, fuelling widespread corruption and increasing the power of gangsters and racketeers. It was repealed in 1933. The Licensing Laws in force in Britain until last month were introduced during World War I because it was feared that munitions workers were spending too much time in the pub.

The organisation, Action on Alcohol Abuse claims that drink kills ten times as many people as do drugs and is a far greater cause of illness and social disturbance. There are always plenty of schemes being devised to reduce alcohol abuse — only recently the Home Office Working Group on Young People. Alcohol and Violence produced a list of 50 recommendations — but such exercises are about as useful as asking the Archbishop of Canterbury to pray that things get better. The only way to solve the problem of alcohol-related violence is to remove the cause of it — the grind, strain and unfulfilling nature of people's lives.

Network nightmare

  Children are likely to be particularly disturbed by violence in a setting which closely resembles their own. Thus an accident in which someone who looks like a child's father strikes someone who looks like his mother is probably very disturbing, threatening as it does the child's sense of security in the home.

(Guidelines on TV Violence, BBC 1979. Omitted from current guidelines)

The extent of wife-battering is unknown, largely because the pressures on women to remain in the home and the shame and stigma associated with this type of violence means that reported cases are merely the tip of an iceberg. Television does not cause the problem — it is usually committed by men who have been humiliated and victimised in some way in their passage through the rat race. Embittered by their circumstances and usually in a state of drunken rage, they embark on the one conflict they can "win". This is not the crazed conduct of a few men with congenital brain disorders but a widespread social problem. Children watching it on TV will undeniably be disturbed but trying to keep it secret from them will hardly help to solve the problem

Using killing, torture and destruction as key ingredients of exciting television for young people is bound to produce some unsavoury results. A recent documentary suggested that a young American who watched an average of three hours of TV a day would have seen about 10,000 killings before reaching the age of sixteen. This cannot but desensitise the mind to real trauma and misery left in the wake of a violent death. Every so often violent incidents appear to imitative: a spate of crossbow attacks occurred, for instance, after one was used by Sylvester Stallone in Rambo. Overall, however, television is not the cause of social violence. At the start of this century, hundreds of people were murdered every year in Britain. Violent disorder on the streets was rife — in fact the word "hooligan" was coined in Edwardian times. Hundreds of thousands of workers were slaughtered every year in the First World War and the final death toll ran into millions. This was all before television. The earliest broadcasts were not until 1936 and they were quickly suspended on the outbreak of another world war, this time one which was to wreak destruction on an unprecedented scale.

Madame Medusa

 The crimewave, which has now assumed typhoon proportions, is the direct result of Tory policies and Tory philosophy. The thug with too much money and too little conscience is the monster which has mutated from Margaret Thatcher's open advocacy of selfishness and greed. Crime is contagious and the disease is being spread by Downing Street.

Roy Hattersley, Deputy Leader of Labour Party (Daily Telegraph, 23 June)

It is facile and misleading to attribute violent crime to particular personalities or political parties. Whether the profit system is run by parties like the Conservatives, which is avowedly capitalist, or the Labour Party which is allegedly "for the workers" makes little difference. It will operate the only way it can — by producing wealth for sale and profit and not for human need. It will be a society in which the wealth producers live in relative poverty while the socially parasitic wealth owners live in luxury. It will be a society of wage-slavery for the majority. It will be a society ridden with competitive anxiety and beset with the insecurities of employment and the persistent threat of war. These are symptoms of a social system. They are as irremovable from the profit system as are death and injury from warfare.

If Roy Hattersley really believes that street violence in its current forms is largely the consequence of Thatcher's Tory policies, how does he explain the eruption of exactly the same type of problem in many other countries? Margaret is not Madame Medusa. She espouses a particularly callous doctrine to defend class-divided society but poverty, evictions, strikes, homelessness and militarism have been presided over by every Labour government. If Hattersley travels thirty miles across the water to France, he will see that the wretchedness of capitalism is not something which appeared in a blue hat in May 1979 to plague Britain alone. Hattersley, in fact, knows better than this. He is a careerist politician who, if he ever became Home Secretary, would be the man in charge of the police and prisons.

Capitalists get rich by employing workers. Sir John Sainsbury, for example, owns £1,000,000,000. Garry Weston boasts £1,500,000,000. The person who creates their bank statements must have an extra-durable "O" fitted to their printer. In any event, you do not acquire wealth like that by putting in a lot of overtime. You get it by exploiting a large number of workers — that is, by paying them less than the value of what they produce. You call it Employment and tell members of the wealth producing class that they’re lucky if they can get it. Roy Hattersley, therefore, is in favour of a society where he would put the robbed in gaol and use the police to protect the bounty of the robbers. When speaking of "the crimewave which has now assumed typhoon proportions ”, he may have misread his notes. It is in fact of "tycoon proportions".

Why?

Why do babies starve
When there’s enough food to feed the world?
Why when there’s so many of us
Are there people still alone? 

Why are the missiles called peace keepers
When they’re aimed to kill?
Why is a woman still not safe
When she's in her home?

Tracey Chapman, from her namesake album, 1988.

Capitalism is based on the ownership and control of the earth's resources by a minority class. The owners permit the production of wealth only so far as it can be sold in the market for a profit. At the British Army Equipment Exhibition earlier this year, 386 companies specialising in the production of high tech hooliganism on a Hiroshima scale displayed their wares to visitors from all around the world. True to the "democracy” that the Army will tell you it exists to defend, the public were not admitted. You can imagine the cost of the weapons and the social effort required to produce them from the fact that one company spent £450,000 on the exhibition, including £100,000 on the stand alone. In exhibition week, thousands of people died of malnutrition and hundreds of children went blind through vitamin A deficiency.

Young people are conscripted to fight in wars begun by governments in furtherance of the bosses' interests. Trade routes, strategic regions on the map, areas for market expansion and those rich in mineral deposits are the reasons behind war. No workers' interests are ever at stake in their masters’ struggles.

A society of money, banks and property deeds is a society of handcuffs, prison cells and homeless people. A society of Army exhibitions and young men trained to kill like machines is a society of mindless gang fights and street violence. When a majority decide democratically to put an end to class rule we can consign law and disorder to the history books. As soon as we bring the commercial system to a close, its endemic violence will cease. Only then can we establish real civilisation.

Gary Jay

Editorial: The Unemployed Riots in France (2005)

Editorial from the December 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

Following the death in the last week of October of two teenagers electrocuted while trying to avoid a police identity card check, riots broke out in the suburb of Paris where they lived. These soon spread to other suburbs of Paris and then to those in other cities of France. Police were stoned, cars set alight  and fire engines attacked, night after night,for three weeks.

  

Most of the rioters were the children or grandchildren of workers who had come to work in France from its former colonies in North and West Africa. This led some to see the riots as another aspect of some Islamic attack on “Western civilisation”. Predictably, the notorious French racist politician, Jean-Marie Le Pen, said it was all due to immigration.

Actually, in a sense, it was a revolt against “Western civilisation”, but not by Islamists. It was a revolt by unemployed youth, living in rundown estates with the worst amenities, against the fate capitalism has imposed on them. Certainly, most of the rioters were nominally Muslims and the children of recent economic migrants, but essentially they were workers who had been thrown on to the scrap heap even before they had had a job.

Insult was added to injury by the French interior minister talking about people on the estates as “riff-raff” and about “cutting out the gangrene” and “cleaning by pressure hose”. He maintained he was only referring to drug dealers and petty criminals but this was not how it was perceived on the estates.

Capitalism needs a reserve army of  unemployed, to exert a downward pressure on wages as well as a source of readily-available extra labour-power that can be called upon during the expansion phase of the capitalist economic cycle. In addition, there is always a surplus population who, for various reasons, are never going to be employed. The level of state “benefits” paid to these non-working sections of the working class is fixed more by political than economic considerations, basically by what the state can get away with without provoking riots.

In France the state has evidently pushed a section of these workers too far. The result has been a revolt against the state as represented by the police, the fire brigade and public buildings. The French state has replied in kind. Sending in more police, declaring a state of emergency, imposing curfews, handing down severe sentences including deportation to countries convicted rioters are supposed to have “come from” but have never been to.

Of course, in the end, the state will win and the riots will be put down. After the repression, however, the state will spend a little more money to improve amenities and job prospects on the estates, the price of avoiding further costly and damaging unemployed riots.

But what a comment on capitalist civilisation! In a world which has the potential to provide a decent life for everybody, a section of the population is driven to riot just to get a slightly less small pittance to live on. Rioting, though perhaps understandable, is not the answer. What is required is not blind rage but that the quite legitimate rage of these victims of capitalism should be accompanied by an understanding of the situation capitalism has put them in. Capitalism causes – in fact, requires – some workers to be surplus to requirements and suffer above average social exclusion.

Once this is understood, then it will be realised that the constructive thing to do is to work for a new society in which having to obtain money, by hook or by crook, to acquire what you need to live will be a thing of the past. A society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of life where enough for all will be produced since satisfying people’s needs will be the sole aim of production. A society where everyone will be “socially included” because we’re all fellow human beings.

What Makes a Thug? (1962)

From the May 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

They are still worrying over the young, violent criminal. It is easy to sneer at them, in their conferences bending anxious eyes over statistics. But a young thug is, apart from anything else, a socially ugly person so perhaps it is as well that there is somebody to worry over him and to try to find out why he moves around in his own little nightmare of violence. But the worriers—and this is no sneer never come up with the answer. They hammer away at parents, at schools, newspapers, television. They experiment in methods of treatment and punishment. Yet after this the young thug is still with us, coshing and slashing, and sometimes killing.

Last month, we remember, there was something of an uproar about the television portrayal of Bill Sikes murdering Nancy in the serialised Oliver Twist. Even the Postmaster General criticised the episode in the strongest language. There is some evidence that young people like to try and imitate death scenes which they have seen on T.V. Many adults were uneasy that some youngsters might try to do a Bill Sikes on their girl friends. Perhaps this was being rather unfair to the poor old BBC. At least, the Bill Sikes episode showed passionate murder as it is a messy and obscene business, with human beings behaving like dull beasts. That might put potential thugs off. But it is a different matter with the westerns and some of the crime serials. These make violence seem so much sweeter, less damaging, less violent, in fact. At least, when Bill Sikes throttled Nancy she went out spluttering and struggling. The cowboy or detective hero, on the other hand, can take a thunderbolt on his head, shake himself, blink and smile and recover in time for the next episode.

If this teaches anything, it is that violence is sent to test our manliness. Any influence which television might have upon the criminal figure should surely be credited (if that is the word) to the cops and robbers type of programme.

Yet even when we have said that, we are still a long way from the bottom of the matter. Some months ago a reader of The Guardian wrote to that newspaper criticising the BBC's choice of plays as laying too great an emphasis upon sex, gangsterism and crimes of violence. This letter brought forth a sharp reply from a Reverend Jones, who wrote from The Vicarage at Appleby. There was, said Mr. Jones, another sort of programme in which these things were given prominence: “I refer to the general news." The reverend thought that the broadcasting companies should do their best to play down these aspects or to broadcast them only when adults were likely to be tuned in.

The interesting thing about this letter is that its writer realised that the real world is in parts just as violent and intimidating as any script writer's nightmare scenario. It is not surprising that Mr. Jones missed the point that in real world capitalism violence is unavoidable. To say the least of it, anyone who sets out to teach a child that violence is socially useless has an uphill battle ahead. There is a constant pressure upon all of us to believe that the violence used by capitalism's heroes is glorious and commendable. A battle of Britain fighter pilot can be as violent as he likes. So can a Lovat Commando or a detective roping in a bunch of bank robbers.

Capitalism, in fact, is a violent society, in which war is as much a part of our life as milk is of cheese. And what does war mean? Admiral Jackie Fisher, who it better known as an austere, belligerent sailor, once spoke his mind on the matter. “It's perfect rot," he said, “to talk about Civilised Warfare. You might as well talk about Heavenly Hell! " (Fisher also said, at another time, " . . .  we can only have community of interests in the masses of people always being on the side of peace, because it is the masses who are massacred, not the kings and generals and politicians." which was a strange comment from a man whose job was to send some of the masses to be massacred).

We all grow up now under a cloud of socially organised violence. Our newspapers scream black headlines about fall out and missiles and anti-missiles and anti-anti-missiles. Nobody can feel secure when the world itself staggers from one crisis to another, always with the horrible feeling that the next might be the one to push the fingers down upon the buttons marked FIRE. This is a potent cause for despair and cynicism. Here is one of the roots of criminal violence. Do the worriers, then, speak out on this at their conferences? They are stuck with capitalism, and their hopeless efforts to reform it. They do not, therefore, speak out.

We should not forget that the ground in which capitalism's criminals take root is always well tilled and fertile. Why do people turn to crime? Most of us get our living by going out to work for a wage, which is often a precarious business. Even in boom time we need never be far off a recession which means short time or redundancy. Going out to work can be a boring business. Men can stand all day on the same spot, going through the same simple action time and again. Or they may sit at a desk shuffling the same dull paperwork, with their only prospect of excitement the chance of finding a miscast invoice. Young girls type endless letters and forms or fill up endless boxes of sweets. Yes, going to work for a living is often a precarious, boring, unpleasant business.

Small wonder that so many dream of the big pools win to take them away from it all. And no wonder either that a few decide that the chances against climbing out of the rut by keeping within capitalism’s laws are stacked high enough to justify them trying some other way. Such people are criminal material. Indeed, some criminals have coldly worked it out that they would spend a large part of their life in gaol, rather than give it all up to the nine to five-thirty routine with only a shiny trouser seat to show for it. The criminal, like any law abiding worker, dreams of the easy touch, the job that clicks. Usually it doesn't come off; that is why so many ol them lose their gamble and end up as shambling old lags.

Property rights stand between the criminal and his objective. To get what he wants he is prepared not only to break capitalism's laws. To clinch a Job he will beat up a watchman or cosh a messenger or even kill a cashier. Then if they catch him there is the macabre process of trial and sentence and execution. There is no lack of newspapers, fighting for sales, to give us all the juicy details. And what effect is this supposed to have upon potentially violent criminals? Victor Terry shot down the bank guard at Worthing on the very day that a friend of his was executed for murder. A member of the last Royal Commission on Capital Punishment put it on record that he was finally convinced of the need to abolish hanging when he read the letters, which regularly arrive at the Home Office. applying for the job of public hangman.

We can see that the matter of violence in society is more complex than simply trying to assess the effects upon a young child of watching Bill Sikes do Nancy in. Like so many of the other unpleasant aspects of capitalist society, it is all something of a shambles. But it is a shambles which can be sorted out. The first need is to have a world so organised that human welfare is at the top of the list of social priorities instead of being, as it is now, somewhere near the bottom A world like that would get rid of most violence by simply not having wars and poverty and criminal farms like the slums of the big cities.

When we have done that we can get down to finding out why some (if any) people may be violent. We can look at it for what it is — or should be — a human problem. That will be better than beating or hanging or punishing. It will be better than fussing the kids away from the television set. It will even be better than worrying over statistics in muddled, if well meaning, conferences.

Ivan

Pathfinders: Guns, Gays and the NRA (2016)

The Pathfinders Column from the July 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

The appalling murder last month of around 50 people in a gay club in Orlando may have passed from the front pages, but the ramifications are likely to linger on.

In the first place there is the shooting itself. The gun lobby, in a macabre way, continues to do well out of these massacres, and gun sales always spike in the days afterwards. The gun lobby argues that a lone 'whack-job' gunman won't get far shooting at people who are themselves armed and able to shoot back. Of course this is true up to a point, but this then implies that for maximum safety everyone should be armed, even school children. It's not hard to see what's wrong with this logic. The fact that everyone around you is tooled up like an extra from The Wild Bunch is likely to make you feel less safe, not more so. Society would be drunk with anxiety and nervous tension. Massacres could be sparked by cars backfiring. Bar and football fights like the recent Marseille riot would become Tarantino bloodbaths. Divorce would be by nine millimetre. Cities would be war zones which police would patrol in tanks and helicopter gunships. Students would wear Kevlar onesies and their teachers would look like Mad Max. Americans would be climbing the barriers en-masse to get into Mexico. Even the National Rifle Association would have a hard time describing that society as desirable, progressive and free. But hey, this is capitalism, don't complain, buy shares in Smith & Wesson.

Secondly, America is close to an election. This could be the tipping point Donald Trump needs to be tipped into the White House as panicky voters decide he and not Hillary is the man most likely to stick it to the Islamicists. Socialists don't expect much from capitalist puppets of any ilk, and we know that for all their big talk they never really accomplish anything because they have to take their orders from the market. But it's never encouraging when, in times of perceived crisis, populations choose to vote for a bully or an idiot.

Then there is the homophobia. The Orlando slaughter spotlights this egregious feature of Islam which is not confined to extremists but is pretty much endemic. In the days after the shootings some Moslem gays in America did try to speak up in solidarity with the LGBT community, but their problem is that they are despised by their own religion and so are caught between a rock and a hard place, unable to speak up for either religion or gay pride.

Western liberals who draw a discreet veil over Moslem homophobia, sexism and . . . well . . . veils, really deserve to have their cowardly arses kicked. Like Jainist monks determined to cause no harm, they cause harm by proxy, refusing to take any kind of stand or defend those who need defending. At the same time, moderate Moslems need to confront their religion's endemic sexism and homophobia if they want to see any real integration in advanced capitalist societies, which is after all where the money is. Perhaps Orlando is a watershed moment, after which the fire-breathing imams will not dare to open their bilious mouths and pour further scorn on a community which now has 49 bona fide martyrs. But that's a fond hope. No such reservations bothered the 'reverend' Pastor Roger Jimenez of the Westboro Baptist Church, who complained in a sermon that the shooter hadn't killed enough of these 'pedophiles' and expressed the hope that the government would round up the rest and 'blow their brains out'. In many countries you would be arrested for saying such a thing, but apparently it's ok if you say it from a pulpit in the name of the Lord.

Gay people continue to be persecuted, beaten, raped and murdered almost routinely in many parts of the world, sometimes allegedly in order to 'cure' them. Homosexuality remains outlawed in 80 countries and is a capital crime in five of them. Even in western countries, where the gay-bashers of the 1970s have mostly died, retired or rotted away in prison, gays still have reason enough to feel insecure. The law makes 'hate speech' an offence, but it can't legislate homophobia away. Conversely, state tolerance of gays is just about the only reason anyone would want to go and live in North Korea.

Of all the absurd prejudices workers have – many of which actively prevent socialist revolution – homophobia makes possibly the least sense. Why would a heterosexual resent someone whose orientation makes them less of a direct competitive threat? Historically it makes no sense either, since homosexual behaviour has been documented throughout human history and is also known to occur among  dolphins, raccoons, lions, giraffes, cats, dogs, chimps, bison, bears, horses, elephants, marmosets, foxes, koalas… to say nothing of the many bird, fish, reptile, amphibian and insect species.

In short, rather than homosexuality being 'unnatural' as the gay-haters claim, it is homophobia which is unnatural and which needs explaining.

One can speculate how homophobia could have developed and become engrained into the moral and religious codes of many early agricultural societies (China being an interesting exception). If life in the Iron Age tended to be nasty, brutish and short, with high mortality due to warfare, disease and bad diets, there would have been an urgent need to breed new soldiers, farmers and child brides. Those displaying prime breeding attributes would gain high status while homosexual behaviour could be seen as letting the side down. Over time this view could have become encoded into religious teaching and 'sacred' texts which came to global prominence in the Middle Ages, where many people still live.

In modern times, however, we have science. What does the science say?

Nothing definitive. The best guess is that homosexuality is a by-product or side-effect of heterosexuality, caused by wandering ratios of male and female sex hormones. This would explain why many people see themselves not as either/or but somewhere on a 'gay-straight gradient'. What exactly is going on at the genetic level is hard to say, because cause and effect are almost never one-to-one but many-to-many, creating a cascade of complexities whose decipherment proceeds at a glacial pace. Moreover nobody is in much of a hurry to study homosexuality because of the political and ethical concerns, and because real diseases are more pressing.

Even if it's a side-effect, it doesn't matter much. Animals are full of bodges, accidents, redundancies, 'design' flaws and downright mistakes which give die-hard Creationists the night sweats but don't bother biologists. Things don't survive because they are fit and flawless – they survive if their flaws don't matter. Homosexuality doesn't matter to evolution, any more than it matters to socialism.

For socialists, homophobia is like any other irrational hatred that divides the working class so that it is too weak to challenge the dominance of the ruling elite. While the poor tear at each other's throats, the rich are laughing at all of us.

PJS