Russian gold (1947)

From the November 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

People whose only principle is to praise every act of the government of State Capitalist Russia, need to be very careful how they throw stones at the other capitalist states. In the Daily Worker (23/9/47) Mr. Allen Hutt pokes fun at “our elaborate apparatus for extracting the yellow metal at enormous expense from deep holes in the ground in South Africa in order to bury it again in deep holes in the ground in Kentucky.”

This is indeed one of the daft things that necessarily go with capitalism, but why is it more daft to mine gold in South Africa and bury it at Fort Knox in U.S.A. than to mine it in the gold-fields scattered all over Russia in order to hoard it in Moscow? Already by 1934 Russian gold production, according to the “U.S.S.R. Handbook” (1936, p.197) had been expanded so much that Russia claimed to be second only to South Africa as a gold producer. Mr. Hutt should read “U.S.S.R. in Reconstruction,” May, 1937 (published in Moscow) where he will learn how gold production was increased fourfold between 1930 and 1936 and was still rapidly expanding. He will read how more and more men and materials were being-poured into the remote gold regions, how scientists were perfecting methods of mining, how mines were going to deeper and deeper levels.

“The principal gold fields,” we read, “are situated hundreds of kilometres from railways and navigable waterways. Goods are transported through Taiga, boundless steppe, sand dunes and over mountain ranges to the gold fields.”

And all for what purpose? “Soviet gold flows in a broad stream to the capital of the Union of Soviet Republics, where it is refined and stamped according to the world standard.” Some of it is then sold to U.S.A., to go into the vaults at Fort Knox. The same Russian publication quotes a resolution passed by the Russian Communist Party in 1922 affirming that government policy must be “to maintain the gold fund inviolable and to develop the mining of precious metals.”

Some of the mining is carried on by the State and the rest by individuals organised into co-operative groups. Of course it is all described as “Socialist” gold-mining, whatever that is supposed to mean.

Mr. Hutt in the Daily Worker recalls how Voltaire in “Candide” describes the land of El Dorado, where gold lay about disregarded and treated like dirt. He might also have recalled how Sir Thomas More in his “Utopia ” anticipated the use of gold and silver not as precious metals but to make “chamber-pots.” It was doubtless from that source, or possibly from Kautsky’s book “Thomas More and his Utopia” (p.203), that Lenin got the idea that under Socialism gold would be used “for making public lavatories in the streets of the great cities of the world.” (Quoted by Ralph Fox in “Lenin.”)

Sir Thomas More had another notion, which was that in “Utopia” gold would be used by the masters to make ”chains and fetters for their slaves.” That is certainly the effect on the minds of the workers under capitalism, wherever the worship of the Golden Calf still flourishes.

There is another, more grim, joke that Mr. Hutt overlooked. In U.S.A., while it is an offence against capitalist law to try to make forcible entry into the vaults at Fort Knox, it is at least not illegal to disclose where the gold reserve is situated. In the Russian ‘”Utopia” they have made even that a criminal offence. According to Soviet News (11/6/47, published in London by the Soviet Embassy) the new Criminal Code makes it an offence for a private individual to disclose “information on the current account balance and operative financial plans of the U.S.S.R.,” or to disclose “the place and system and safekeeping and transportation of precious metals of the State Fund, currency valuables and money coins.”

The unlucky Russian worker who lets out that the Russian “Socialist” gold reserve is kept at Moscow or wherever it is “shall be pimishable by confinement in a reformatory labour camp for a term of from five to ten years.”

This “mild” sentence is given “provided such action cannot be qualified as treason or espionage.” What happens for the aggravated offence of giving this information to foreigners and thus committing treason is not stated. If Mr. Hutt had written his little paragraph in Russia he would have been for it.

Edgar Hardcastle

The Wisdom of China? (1958)

From the August 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

Porcelain, Filigree and Philosophy

Ever since those many delightful commodities— porcelain, silk, embroidery, cloisonné enamel ware, carved jade and ivory, paintings, wallpaper and the like—were brought into Europe in quantity, there has also been an invisible import. A civilization that could produce such works of art stimulated curiosity, and many thoughtful people tried to understand the remarkable and impressive social theories that dominated Chinese life at the time. They saw a chance to use these ideas, which, though old in China, were newly imported into Europe. Chinese philosophy propounded theories which were particularly useful to the spokesmen for those who were finding that the feudal system of society on the Continent was becoming outmoded.

Did China influence the French Revolution ?

Confucianism became popular, though it was not generally recognised that this was only one of three systems of thought in China. Chinese philosophy, in the Europe of the 17th and 18th centuries, meant only Confucianism which was so eminently to the taste of those who wished to overthrow feudalism. As Maurice Collis remarks in The Great Within, men had freed themselves from the limitations imposed by mediaeval theology and its scholastic metaphysics; they were tiring of the half-mythological speculations of the Renaissance: they had set their feet in a new rational world. The condition of society and the structure of the state, these were the practical problems which they were trying to pose and solve. What was therefore their surprise at perceiving that 2½ thousand years ago in China a philosopher had devoted his attention almost precisely to the same problems and found an answer that worked out in practice.

Similar conditions anywhere at any time give rise to comparable thoughts. Some present-day sinologists say that China thus had its effect on the French Revolution. But history shows that new economic classes in society have little difficulty in rationalising their aspirations. If they cannot find a ready-made philosophy then their thinkers will produce one. If the French bourgeoisie had not been introduced to Confucianism it is doubtful if there would have been any difference in subsequent events. The thinkers in Europe felt that their men must act well if possessing right knowledge and this could only be acquired by the reasoning mind. This was all very modern at that time: it was clearly connected with the great advance then taking place in mathematics and the natural sciences.

Famous men who plugged Chinese Philosophy

Leibniz (1646-1716) made great use of Jesuit missionary publications and in his correspondence mentions “the work of Confucius, the King of Chinese philosophers, which has been published this year in Paris.” In 1697 he published his Novissima Sinica, in which he argued that just as Europe had sent missionaries to China so should China send to Europe to give instructions in government and morality.

Holding such views it is not surprising to find that his metaphysics are tinged with Confucian ideas.

Quesnay (1694-1774) was known as the European Confucius. It was he who, after a study of the Chinese classics, formulated a political philosophy derived from them with the practical object of inducing the Monarchy in France to model itself upon the Imperial Government of China. He saw that the French government was heading for revolution but argued in his book Le Despotism de la Chine (1767) that it could be reformed and saved if Louis XV should become an enlightened despot in the Chinese classic sense.

Voltaire (1694-1778) was another enthusiastic follower of Confucius, and in his play the plot turns upon the thesis, of which the Chinese were so fond, that as soon as the Outer Barbarians (as Europeans were called in China) come under the influence of Confucian culture they mend their ways and lead the moral life.

The feudal system of society in France at this time threw up the theory that the king can do no wrong. Some sinologists declare Chinese theories (including that of the Emperor ruling on approval, so to speak, and that if his rule does not win popular approval he must be dismissed), were a revolutionary force in feudal Europe and helped to influence the social revolution to capitalism which followed. Though men can learn from early history, in general it is the prevailing economic set-up that forms the basis upon which men build their ideas and policies.

Some say “ Good old Confucius,” but we say . . .

Even at the present time it is quite normal for the professional sinologists to advocate that the West would do well to follow the teachings of Confucius, and it may be a coincidence, but they seem to find in the teaching of the Old Master many virtues which it would be in the interests of our ruling class to inculcate in us. Such as humbleness in the presence of superiors and submissiveness to the State conservatism of ideas. Some even plug the old French Jesuit theory that Confucius was practically God.

The object here is to delve into this controversial subject to see if the tenets of Confucius can be helpful to the working-class movement

But first let us consider what Confucius advocated. He lived about 2½ thousand years ago and China at that time was in a period of great change. Until then there was ample land for expansion, but the population was increasing along with wealth. State boundaries became contiguous and this was a further cause of the friction which developed into internecine warfare as the more powerful Chinese States swallowed the weaker. But on the other hand, the people still obtained their livelihood from agriculture. Farms in river valleys had to be drained, then dykes built to contain floods. Farms on higher ground necessitated water systems to supplement the rain which in that country is uncertain. The maintenance work on these water installations was heavy and done by human power. Fairly large groups were required to co-operate in this work and so large family groups composed of several generations was the normal unit of society. This, then, was the milieu into which Confucius came. The prevailing insecurity induced him, as is quite usual in such circumstances, to look back to the good old days when the ruling classes exploited their subjects without having to fight for this right. They needed a code of ethics in order to enable their subjects to live peacefully together in these great family units and to keep the unit always submissive to the State, and Confucius, the conservative sage, obliged by consolidating the philosophy which bears his name, though the tenets were practised before his time.

Chinese Ship of State drops the Pilot

This philosophy was useful in China just as long as this system of farming lasted, but in 1949, when a capitalist government seized control they promptly dropped Confucianism as no longer suitable. Workers work harder if their income is kept for their wives and children and not shared amongst many relatives. The modern State taking over control of waterworks dispenses with the need for the old organisations. Ring out the old, ring in the new, cut out the deadwood, including Confucianism —this is Capitalism in China. Mao tse-tung, himself a Confucian scholar, leads this refrain. The ancient wisdom of China arose in an ancient system of society, but now, both have passed away. It is futile to try to resurrect the past.

Why Socialists reject Confucianism

Confucianism does not arise from Capitalist conditions and cannot be used by those living in Capitalism— the Chinese themselves recognise this. It is doubtful if any philosophy makes anything but nonsense outside of the conditions which give rise to it. It is no accident that Christianity, the religion of the slaves of the Roman Empire and which was found such a consolation for the slaves of later times, has failed so utterly to take root in China, a land of yeoman farmers living since time immemorial in civil service controlled State where, domestic work apart, slavery was virtually unknown.

We in the working-class movement have a Socialist philosophy which is all-embracing and leaves no vacuum to be filled by other systems of thought. It deals with the labour theory of value, the class struggle and the materialist conception of history, which point the way to a classless system of society where the means of life will be held in common. Arising from this we have an attitude towards trade unions, war, morals, marriage, property rights, the wages system, trade, religion, yes, and even Chinese philosophy. We leave the nostalgic yearnings of Confucius to the spokesmen who find part of it useful to capitalism, while we are content to explain it, and in so doing, demonstrate the correctness of the materialist conception of history which is the pillar of our Socialist outlook.

Frank Offord

Steven Pinker, the modern Pangloss (2022)

Book Review from the July 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Like a fearful angel, you don’t need to tread far into the recent works of Steven Pinker, particularly The Better Angels of our Nature (2011) and Enlightenment Now (2018), to get the gist of his popular thesis that today is better than yesterday and tomorrow will be better still, so long as states maintain control and reason triumphs over savage instinct. Better Angels is Bill Gates’s favourite book, and it’s not hard to see why.

The appeal is in the sensationally anti-intuitive optimism and the simplicity of the argument. A clear line is drawn from barbaric prehistory through the murderous Middle Ages all the way to the relatively placid present, in a bid to demonstrate the ‘civilising process’ embodied by states, which has led to universally declining levels of violence. Pinker doesn’t claim it’s a new idea, and indeed bases much of his argument on Norbert Elias’s The Civilizing Process, published in Germany in 1939 (a not-insignificant date, as we shall see).

It’s also an idea with some good prima facie evidence supporting it, at least for Western Europe during the last few centuries, at least for average civilian homicide rates. Few historians would argue that murder rates in this part of the world have not declined substantially over that period.

But zoom out, and the price of this simple linear argument seems to be that all other lines and details have been overlooked, rather like a large-scale geographical map from which all roads and features have been erased, apart from the one single highway that Pinker wants you to follow.

Predictably, this has enraged academic historians, who liken Pinker to a visitor who enters your house in muddy boots and then sticks his feet up on your living room table. Now, frustrated by the fact that ‘Pinker’s message is reaching the masses, and ours is not’, many of these historians, some of them from Pinker’s own Harvard University, have joined forces to deliver a devastating counter-blow (The Darker Angels of our Nature: Refuting the Pinker Theory of History & Violence, edited by Philip Dwyer and Mark Micale, Bloomsbury, 2022). There are 18 chapters written by experts in pre- and medieval history, early modern Russia and Japan, the Enlightenment, the British Empire, and histories of the environment, sexual violence, race, and the myth of a universal human nature. Some contributors offer a cool and detached evaluation of Pinker’s methodology, while others write with barely concealed rage at his blithe effrontery and cavalier lack of scholarship.

Pinker’s approach to evidence is variously described as shoddy, egregious and cherry-picking. He quotes sources that suit his argument, even if they’re only coffee-table books (like The Great Big Book of Horrible Things), and ignores vast swathes of respectable research that don’t. For instance, the medievalist Sara Butler writes: ‘Pinker has never seen a medieval court record, nor does he understand how the law worked in the Middle Ages… When he measures medieval against modern statistics, he has no idea that they are measuring very different things… without valid statistics, Pinker’s entire argument falls apart’ (p136).

If you ever wondered how Pinker could possibly know the murder rates in medieval times, with its patchy records, or in prehistory, with almost no records, you’ll find academic historians asking exactly the same question. Pinker doesn’t know, he’s guessing, and relying on estimates which are themselves sometimes wildly inflated and ideologically suspect, like those of Catholic missionaries estimating the supposed violence of heathen Native Americans. If you as an archaeologist dug up two Iron Age skeletons, and one had had its head bashed in, you wouldn’t automatically conclude that the murder rate must have been 50 percent. Archaeologist Linda Fibiger certainly wouldn’t. She studied 1,000 human remains from 150 sites spanning 3,000 years and made tentative conclusions on interpersonal violence only for that period and only within that geographical range. Pinker makes continent-wide conclusions based on 21 individuals from one Jutland cemetery (p.115).

What we discover, in chapter after chapter, is that Pinker is massaging the evidence, upwards in the case of the past, to make violence and ‘savagery’ look much worse than it really was, and downwards in the present, to make the world seem more peaceful than it really is. To take one example, he cites one claim that the Spanish Inquisition executed 350,000 Jews in 350 years, which was nearly twice the total population of Jews in Spain during that period (p.128). He also name-checks an eminent researcher but without mentioning the researcher’s own estimate of executions for the same period at around 810, a figure widely considered more reliable. This figure generates its own irony, as it would mean that Pinker’s own ‘civilised’ USA, with 1,526 executions between 1973 and today (p.270), has executed almost twice as many people as the Spanish Inquisition, and in a fifth of the time.

In reality, much of the historical evidence suggests the opposite of what Pinker claims. The Middle Ages was not addicted to cruel executions, which were in fact rare, and most punishments were in the form of fines. Early modern Russia, considered ‘uncouth’ by Western standards, executed far fewer people than its neighbouring European countries, and with less Grand Guignol cruelty. The Enlightenment, rather than civilising society, served to justify unparalleled colonial and racist violence, while excluding whole categories including women from supposedly universal notions of human rights. There’s a pattern to all this, and you can easily find other examples yourself. For instance, the ‘Wild West’ was arguably less violent than the modern USA and had more robust gun laws (bit.ly/3wYwj7S).

Pinker is unashamedly a neo-Hobbesean, arguing that in ‘non-state societies’ we humans are ruled by our inner demons – predation, dominance, revenge, sadism and ideology (‘ideology’ here meaning fascism, Marxism etc, but not his own perspective, which doesn’t count), whereas the benevolence of disinterested elites (like himself) and the ‘gentle commerce’ of capitalism have ‘gifted’ us modern civil liberties and allowed the predominance of our ‘better angels’ including empathy, self-control, a moral sense and reason. At no point does he consider that these modern freedoms had to be fought bitterly for, and in fact sees any social dissent or struggle as counter-productive and ‘de-civilising’.

And here is where Elias, a German Jew writing in 1939, becomes relevant again. His theory of states as a civilising influence presupposed that the state itself was benevolent. Elias ended up doubting his own assumption (p.101) precisely because of what subsequently happened in Europe. Yet Pinker skates over all this, dismissing the Holocaust as a statistical outlier that doesn’t affect his main argument. Awkward details don’t trouble him, as he ‘only travels on the sunny side of the street’ (p.66), trading in ‘comfort history’ and ‘Pinkering’ the evidence (p.305). Though Better Angels, at 800 pages, seems to follow the principle that ‘if you say it enough, it becomes true’ (p.176), Ben Kiernan’s Blood and Soil – Sparta to Darfur (2007) concludes, in 700 pages, that genocidal violence is as bad today as it’s ever been (p.332). With Pinker, one is irresistibly reminded of Voltaire’s Dr Pangloss, for whom everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.

Finally, modern historians are suspicious of linear historical narratives, because linearity always involves leaving stuff out. Nowadays they prefer more ‘webby’ approaches which reflect the diverse and often contradictory nature of the evidence. Marx the dialectician would have approved of this approach, so it’s a shame that one or two contributors in this book see him as part of the problem, a linear teleological thinker plotting a deterministic path to the future. This is to take the same one-sided view of Marx that Pinker takes of history. In all probability, judging from the withering scorn that Marx levelled at the half-baked and self-serving bourgeois thinkers of his own day, he would have given Pinker a roasting that even the sharpest condemnations in this collection would struggle to match.

Paddy Shannon

Words and Men. — Part 4 (1934)

From the January 1934 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 3

As the old aristocracy merged into the titled bourgeoisie, literary form and substance gradually extended to comprehend more and more of the interests of the bourgeoisie. The growth of sciences was reflected in the increasing use of prose and its extreme virility and terseness. The firm establishment of individualistic society produced the novel as an accepted and popular art-form. The need of commercial society to know the happenings of its different sections and localities called into being the regular news-sheets, and we have the beginnings of journalism. Daniel Defoe, a class-conscious bourgeois, has been called the first English novelist and the first journalist, Though he slightly preceded the first regular periodicals, he was a prolific and imaginative pamphleteer and one of the first to issue graphic topical accounts of spectacular events. His Robinson Crusoe (1719), directly descended from the Elizabethan narratives of authentic voyagings, is a masterpiece of homely and convincing detail and the first outstanding landmark on the road to realism: Defoe, Swift, Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, Austen, Thackeray, Dickens—the genealogy is plain.

Pope, who applied flawlessly classical technique to topical and even trivial subjects, represents both the culmination and the collapse of aristocratic poetry. Steele and Addison, elegantly witty essayists, supplied the popular demand for news and culture; all their Tatler and Spectator articles show clearly the steady growth of detailed realistic description, always, of course, of bourgeois households and habits. Both were recognised leaders of literature, and it is significant that both also held high political office. Johnson followed them with similar forms, but more widespread knowledge.

The master-stylist, however, of this—or perhaps of any—age is Swift, whose terse, bare, virile language clothes with forceful economy his scalding invectives on human society. He saw the deficiencies and evils of social life without in the least understanding their cause. His best-known work is Gulliver’s Travels (1726), a satirical romance which commonly fails of the appreciation it deserves; no one who delights in social criticism couched in superb language can afford to miss it. A lesser work, The Modest Proposal, is a vitriolic pamphlet which for irony has never been surpassed.

Swift’s passionate outcry against man’s claim to be a reasonable being itself demonstrates the extensive sway of the cult of “Reason” at this time. For the best examples of this cult we must turn again to France, where the forces of incipient capitalism straining at the leash of feudal institutions were producing ideas of revolt. Commercial production was dammed up; the capitalists were becoming more and more conscious of the need to attain power; and a revolutionary literature was thrown up by the political and economic aspirations of the would-be dominant class. Those embryonic theories of Liberty, Justice, Reason and Universal Science, which were proclaimed during the Renaissance, were now brought down to earth, and exemplified by reference to everyday experience. The symbol par excellence of feudal conservatism and repression being Holy Mother Church, the struggling capitalists directed much of their energies full tilt against that "infamous” institution. A weapon lay ready to their hand: the struggles of the English capitalists had also been aimed largely at Catholicism, and criticism had gone beyond Puritanism: it had produced the elements of materialism in the writings of Bacon, Hobbes and Locke.

The rebellious thinkers and writers of eighteenth century France seized upon this rudimentary materialism and used it to express the discontent with current social organisation which was then rife. The chief body of theory and discussion of this time appeared in the Encyclopaedia, but the best known single figures of the period are Voltaire and Rousseau, two men who expressed similar class aspirations with a wealth of difference. Voltaire, "as artful as a monkey, as cruel as a cat,” virulent enemy of the Church and passionate upholder of “justice” as against aristocratic class-dominance, was yet conservative and whole-heartedly despised the lower orders. “The people must not be educated,” he declared; he would have had society a ”benevolent despotism,” corresponding with his deistic idea of the universe. His snappy, sarcastic style, his apt retorts and comments have made his name a byword for witty denunciation.

The Encyclopaedists, however, offer the most comprehensive view of the intellectual ferment in France during the 50 years before the Revolution. The Encyclopaedia, 1751-1780, corresponded roughly to the now firmly established news-sheets in England. Conceived and largely executed by Diderot, it was to be a complete survey and interpretation of the whole of human knowledge. It contained full technical information, with engravings, on a wide range of subjects, but its particular value lay in its incessant propaganda for materialism and the “Rights of Man.” Locke’s Sensationalism (“There is nothing in the mind which was not previously in the senses”) and the Natural Man theory were either openly discussed and demonstrated or else skilfully woven into articles on quite alien subjects. The theory that man in himself is a kindly and reasonable creature but that he has been corrupted and warped by evil social institutions was valuable in spite of its limitations. Its supporters maintained that men are not individually responsible for their characters, and that men and their actions are formed by the circumstances in which they live; change those circumstances and men will react accordingly. So far, so good. But the theory in essence assumes a “natural man,” a state of grace or Golden Age from which man has departed; it is thus quite unhistorical and foredoomed to inconsistency and sentimentalism. Nevertheless, it was an important step towards historical understanding.

The Encyclopaedia attracted enormous attention. Many copies were confiscated; contributors and printers were imprisoned, but it continued to appear, and to captivate all thinking persons with its indomitable common sense. Diderot himself must have special notice, for he epitomises every tendency of importance in that age. He went further than Voltaire himself in religious criticism, for there is sufficient evidence to warrant the belief that he was a thorough-going atheist; he was the first to attempt “realist” or bourgeois drama, thus paving the way for Beaumarchais’ Figaro' (1775 and 1784); he was the first to write a full-length novel with a propagandist purpose; his celebrated art-criticisms, while not always sound, are always intelligent and stimulating; and from him Rousseau directly and admittedly derived his most celebrated theories. He swam perpetually on the crest of the intellectual wave, and in a flash here and there overtopped his times by almost a century; but his work is scrappy, often difficult to trace, and overlaid with that lip-service to orthodoxy which was often the only road to publication. Engels refers to his “Rameau's Nephew" (a conversation leaping from topic to topic over a wide range) as a “masterpiece of dialectic," and it is worth remarking that Rousseau's “Origins of Inequality," which Engels mentions in the same breath, was written at Diderot's suggestion and to his plan.

Rousseau adopted the idea of man’s perversion by corrupt institutions and gave it poetical, even voluptuous, expression. He became the seer and visionary of the coming order, the lion of a thousand banquets. His luscious style, his overflowing emotionalism, brought to his feet legions of admirers whom the logic and argument of the intellectuals had failed to stir. “Julie" (1761), a novel in the manner of Richardson’s “Pamela," enjoyed unprecedented popularity, becoming the rage of court and city immediately on publication. It is almost entirely concerned with man’s natural goodness. of heart and his susceptibility to sweet reason.

In England, meanwhile, the novel had emerged fully fledged from the hands of Richardson, who describes with loving detail the day-by-day existence of well-to-do families. Fielding, who began by parodying Richardson and ended as ardent a novel-writer as the man he jibed at, made the novel lighter, shorter, more selective. Smollett did not confine himself to the leisured class, but introduced “low life" and “robustious" humour.

Poetry now was inclining towards the romantic school. The Industrial Revolution was getting under way, and the growing complexity and sordidness of life were producing the beginnings of a reaction. A “back to Nature’’ movement—connected to some extent with Rousseauism and the Noble-Savage-Golden-Age theory—became increasingly popular; Thomson, Collins and Gray foreshadow it; Cooper, and especially Burns, give it frank and full expression. With the turn of the century the return to Nature is in full career in the writings of Wordsworth and Coleridge, and the Romantic movement is well under way.

At the very core of Romanticism lies the desire to escape from reality; as the real world becomes grimmer and more squalid, sensitive men seek refuge in dream worlds of varying kinds. Sometimes they wish simply to return to the country life of their parents; sometimes past history, more or less remote, takes on a glamorous enchantment for them; sometimes they turn to exaggeratedly colourful painting or to eccentric clothes. The English Poetic Romantics were Byron, Shelley and Keats, all full of haunting phrases and pitiful despair; the content of their work is wholly emotional. To the Romantic, thought is a weary burden which only lands him in self-hatred.

In prose Romanticism was less extreme. The link between eighteenth and nineteenth century novels is Jane Austen, whose minute attention to apparently useless detail belongs essentially to the realists, but whose determined refusal to mention the existence of any sort of social problem, at the time of the Combination Laws, The Six Acts, and the Luddite Riots, places her emotionally with the Romantics. Chief of English Romantic novelists was Scott, whose influence was greater on the Continent than here.

After the French Revolution events moved swiftly. Economic development proceeded apace, and literature did not lag behind. As France began to catch up with England industrially, her literature showed similar tendencies to ours; her tardy beginning meant increased pace, and we find the swing from realism to romance much more hotly dismissed and carried to far more fantastic extremes in France than in England. Moreover, the promise of the “Reason" cult was not fulfilled. The new society proved no more reasonable than the old. An extremely violent reaction against classicism and philosophy set in; this linked up at once with romantic influences from England. Scott was much translated and enjoyed a great vogue in France.

History, or rather very pseudo-history, became the fashion with the picturesque and soulful dramas of Victor Hugo, such as “Hernani" and "Ruy Bias." The poetry of Lamartine is bathed in melodious tears for the rapid flight of time and the vanity of human wishes. de Musset and de Vigny have more vigour, but the one despises himself and the other hates life, both natural and social; and neither has any very practical solution to their problem of unbearable existence. In short, the French Romantics are a miserable band, broken upon the wheel of advancing capitalism without any conception of what is happening to them save that they are crushed and bleeding and do not know how to escape.

Stella Stewart.

(To be concluded.)

Link to Part 5

Sociology of Eighteenth Century French Drama. by G. V. Plechanov. (1928)

From the July 1928 issue of the Socialist Standard

The study of the existence of primitive man confirms the fundamental statement of historical materialism, which declares that the consciousness of people is determined by their conditions. In support of this, it is enough to refer to the deductions made by Bucher in his remarkable research Arbeit und Rhythmus. He says :—

 “I came to the conclusion that labour, music and poetry at the first step of development were blended together, but the fundamental element of this triad was labour, and the two others were of secondary importance."

According to Bucher, the origin of poetry is explained by labor (Der Ursprung der Poesie ist in der Arbeit zu suchen), and one who is acquainted with the literature of this subject will not accuse Bucher of exaggeration. [1] Refutations launched by competent people are not concerned with the fundamental substance of Bucher’s theory, but only with certain secondary particulars. In essence, Bucher is undoubtedly right.

But his deduction primarily concerns itself with only the origin of poetry. However, what about its further development? How are poetry and art in general progressing in much higher steps of social evolution? Is it possible, and on what grounds, to note the existence of a causal relation between the state of being and the consciousness, between the technique and the economics on one side of society, and its art on the other?

We shall attempt to answer this question in this essay, and for this purpose shall treat of the history of the French drama during the eighteenth century.

It is necessary, first of all, to make a digression.

French society of the eighteenth century, from the point of view of sociology, is characterised primarily by the fact that it was a society divided into classes. This circumstance could not but reflect itself in the development of art. As a matter of fact, let us take even the theatre. On the stage of mediaeval France, as in all Western Europe, the main place was occupied by the so-called farce. Farces were written for the people and were acted before the people. They always served as an expression of the people’s views, its aims, and— what is especially necessary to note here— its discontents with the high class of society. But, beginning with the reign of Louis XIII, the farce begins to decline; it is considered as an amusement fitted only for lackeys and which is unworthy of people with a refined taste: "éprouvés des gens sages," as one French writer expressed it in 1625. Tragedy replaces the farce. But the French tragedy has nothing in common with the views, aims and discontents of the public mass. It represents a creation of the aristocracy and expresses the views, tastes and aims of the higher class of society. We will see what a deep impression this origin of class-division had upon the character of the tragedy; but, first of all, we wish to direct the reader's attention to the fact that in the epoch of the birth of the tragedy the aristocracy in France did not occupy itself with productive work, and lived by using that which was produced by the economic activity of the Third Estate (tier état). It is not difficult to understand that this fact could not but affect those productions of art which were arising in the aristocratic society, and which expressed the tastes of that society.

It is known, for instance, that the inhabitants of New Zealand praise the cultivation of certain native plants in their songs. It is also known that their songs are followed by a type of dancing which illustrates the motions performed by the cultivators of those plants. Here it is obvious in what manner the productive activity of man affects his art, and it is not less clear that since the upper class of society is not occupied with productive activity, as a result their art—which arises in their society—can have no direct relation to the public process of production. But does it mean that the causal dependence of consciousness upon conditions is enfeebled when a society is divided into classes? Absolutely not—for the division of society into classes is determined by the society's economic development. If art created by the upper class has no direct relation to the productive process, this also is explained by economic causes.

The materialistic interpretation of history, then, can be fully applied in this case, but it is understood that in this instance the undoubted causal connection between consciousness and conditions, between social relations—starting out on the ground of "work"—and art is not so easily disclosed. Here, between "work" on one side and art on the other, certain intermediate situations are formed which often attract the attention of scholars, and therefore make difficult the correct understanding of certain phenomena.

Having made this important digression, we shall return to our subject. First of all, we shall discuss tragedy. Taine states in his Lectures on Art:—

  “French tragedy appears at the time when the well-to-do and noble monarchy during the reign of Louis XIV organised the supremacy of manners, of fine aristocratic surroundings, a court life; and it disappears at the moment when the nobility—and morals—of court decline under the blow of the Revolution."

This is entirely true. But the historical process of the origin and especially the fall of the French classical tragedy was a little more complex than is presented by this famous art-theoretician.

Let us examine these kinds of literary productions in their form and substance.

From the side of form in the classical tragedy, it should first of all be noted that the famous three unities were the cause of so many disputes in the memorable period of French literature which involved the struggle between the romanticists and classicists. The theory of these unities had been known in France from the time of the Renaissance; but it became a literary law, and an indisputable rule of “good taste" not until the seventeenth century. "When Corneille wrote his Medea in 1629," Lanson remarks, "He knew nothing about the three unities." [2] As a propagandist of the theory of the three unities, Meré wrote during the 1630’s. In 1634 his tragedy, Sophonishe, was enacted—the first tragedy written in accordance with the "rules." It was the cause of a polemic in which the opponents of the "rules" put forth arguments much resembling the arguments of the romanticists. In defence of the three unities, the learned adherents to ancient literature were armed, and they had an absolute and firm victory. But to whom were they indebted for their victory? In any case not to the erudition in which the public was little concerned, but to the growing pretensions of the upper class for whom the naive scenic absurdities of the preceding epoch were getting intolerable.

  “Behind the unities was an idea which had to attract well-bred people" continues Lanson, “the idea of exact imitation of reality, capable of conveying the necessary illusion. In its real sense the unities represent the minimum of conditionality . . . Thus, the triumph of the unities was in the real sense a triumph of realism over imagination.” [3]

And thus the refinement of the aristocratic taste, increasing with the strengthening of “the noble and well-disposed monarchy," conquered. Further progressions of theatrical technique made an exact imitation of reality fully possible without the observation of the unities; but the representation of them was associated in the minds of the spectators with a whole series of scenes important and dear to them; therefore, their theory seemed to acquire an independent value, though depending on the indisputable demands of good taste. In the course of time the prevalence of the three unities was supported, as we shall see later, by other social causes, and the theory, therefore, was defended even by those who despised the aristocracy. The struggle with the theory of the unities became very difficult; in order to overthrow them the romanticists required much ingenuity, persistence and almost revolutionary energy.

Having touched upon theatrical technique, let us also note the following:—

The aristocratic origin of French tragedy also affected the art of the actors. Everybody knows that the acting of French players to this day. is characterised by a certain artificiality and even a stiltedness, which makes a rather unpleasant impression on a spectator unacquainted with this fact. Whoever saw Sarah Bernhardt will not dispute this with us. Such manner of playing is inherited by the French actors from the time when the classic tragedy reigned on the French stage. The aristocratic society of the seventeenth and eighteenth century would have revealed discontent had the actors of tragedy thought of acting with the naturalness and simplicity that enthralled the audiences of Eleanor Duse. Simple, natural acting absolutely contradicted all of the requirements of aristocratic aesthetics. The Abbé Du Bos proudly stated :—

  “The French do not limit themselves only with a costume to add the required nobility and dignity to the actors and the tragedy. We also demand that the actors speak in a higher and slower tone than that employed in common speech. This is a more difficult manner, but it has more bearing. Gesticulation must correspond to the tone, for our actors must display greatness and ability in everything they do."

But why did the actors have to display grandeur and nobility? Because tragedy was the child of court aristocracy and the leading characters were kings, heroes and, as a rule, such “high-place” persons, who, so to speak, the duty of service obliged to appear great and noble, if they really were not. A dramatist, in whose productions there was not the required conditional dose of court “nobility,” even though possessed of great merit, would never have received applause from the spectators of that period. This is best seen from the French opinions expressed about Shakespeare at that time, and through the influence of France even in England.

Hume found that Shakespeare’s genius ought not to be exaggerated; unproportioned bodies often seem taller than their actual height; for his time Shakespeare was good, but he did not fit in with the refined audience. Pope expressed regret that Shakespeare wrote for the populace and not for the well-bred. “Shakespeare would have written better,” he said, “had he enjoyed the protection of the monarch and the support of the court people.” Voltaire himself, who in his literary activity was a harbinger of a new era, inimical to the old order, and who gave to many of his tragedies a philosophic content, paid an enormous tribute to the aesthetic conceptions of aristocratic society. Shakespeare appeared to him a genial but rough barber. His opinion of Hamlet is noteworthy, indeed. He says :—

   “This piece is full of anachronisms and absurdities; in it Ophelia is buried on the stage, and this is such a monstrous spectacle that the famous Garrick got rid of the scene in the cemetery. This piece is rich with vulgarities. For instance, in the first scene the watchman says: 'I did not even hear the stamping of mice.' Must such absurdities be tolerated? Without doubt, a soldier speaks thus in the camp, but he must not express himself so on the stage before the selected persons of the nation—persons who talk in a noble tongue and in whose presence it is necessary to speak not less nobly. Imagine, gentlemen, Louis XIV in his glass gallery surrounded by his glistening court, and then imagine a jester covered with rags pushing the crowd of heroes aside—the great nobles and beauties which constitute the court—and proposing that they throw up Corneille, Racine, and Moliere for Punch and Judy, who possess sparks of talent, or make grimaces. What do you think? How was such a jester met? ”

These words of Voltaire not only indicate the origin of the French classic trageoy, but also the cause of its fall. [4]

Exquisiteness easily passes into affectation, and affectation excludes the serious and meditative refinement of the object.

The sphere of choice of objects must certainly have become narrow under the influence of the class prejudices of the aristocracy. Class conception of proprieties was clipping the wings of art. In this respect the demand which Marmontel put forth in the tragedy is extremely interesting and instructive:—

  “A both peaceful and well-bred nation, in which everyone thinks it necessary to adjust his ideas and feelings to the manners and customs of society, a nation where proprieties serve as laws—such a nation can allow only those characters which are softened with respect to their associates, and only such vices which are mitigated by propriety."

Class propriety becomes a criterion when valuing art productions. This is enough to bring forth the fall of classic tragedy. But this is not yet enough to explain the appearance on the French stage of a new kind of dramatic production. In the meantime, we see that in the 1830’s a new literary genre appears—the Comedie Larmoyante, the tearful comedy, which for a time had a fairly notable success. If consciousness is explained by conditions, if the so-called economics is in causal dependence to its economic progress, then the economics of the eighteenth century should also explain the appearance of the tearful comedy. The question is: Can it do it?

It not only can do it, but it did in part, though without any serious method. In proof we’ll refer, for instance, to Gettner, who, in his history of French literature, views the tearful comedy as a result of the growth of the French bourgeoisie. But the growth of the bourgeoisie, like the growth of any other class, can be explained only by the economic development of society. Therefore, Gettner, unsuspectingly and against his own desire—he is a great enemy of materialism, about which, by the way, he has the most stupid conception—applies the materialist interpretation of history. And not only Gettner! Brunetière, far better than Gettner, showed this causal dependence in his book, Les epoques du theatre francais. He writes :—

  “Since the time of the failure of Lau’s bank —to stop at this point—the aristocracy loses ground every day. It seems to hasten to do everything that a given class can do in order to . . . but especially does it (the aristocracy) become impoverished, while the bourgeoisie, the third estate, multiples its wealth, and, gaining more and more importance, acquires in addition the consciousness of its rights. As one poet afterwards expressed it, in their hearts a hatred was born simultaneously with the thirst for justice. Is it possible then that the bourgeoisie took no advantage of the theatre—such a means as it was of disposing propaganda and influence; that the bourgeoisie did not take their situation seriously; did not look with a tragic view at the inequalities which only amused the author of the comedies. Bourgeois gentilhomme and Georges Dandin? And, above all was it possible that this triumphing bourgeoisie became reconciled with the constant performances concerning emperors and kings and that it did not take advantage of its increasing wealth to demand the portrayal of its own life? ”

And so the tearful comedy was a portrait of the French bourgeoisie of the eighteenth century. Not incorrectly is it called the bourgeois drama. But Brunetière’s view, though correct, has a too general, and, therefore, abstract character. Let us develop it more fully.

Brunetière says that the bourgeoisie could not reconcile itself with the perpetual representations of emperors and kings. This is very probable after his emanations in the above citation, but so far it is only probable; it will become certain only when we investigate the psychology of at least a few persons who took an active part in the literary life of France at that time. To them the talented Beaumarchais—the author of several tearful comedies—belonged. What did Beaumarchias think, then, of the constant representation of only emperors and kings?

Decidedly and passionately he rebelled against it. He rarely laughed at the literary rule which caused tragedy to depict its heroes only as kings and others illustrious in this world, and which, on the other hand forced comedy to whip in people of the lower estate.

   "To depict the weal and woe of people of the Third Estate! Fi donc! One can only laugh at these! Ridiculous citizens and unfortunate kings—this is all that can be permitted on the stage. Very well, we shall remember that.” [5]

This sharp exclamation of one of the most outstanding ideologists of the Third Estate apparently proves, therefore, the psychological attitude of Brunetière. But Beaumarchais not only desired to portray the people of the Third Estate in their unfortunate situations. He protested also against the custom of choosing actors from the heroes of the ancient world.
  "What interest have I, a peaceful citizen of monarchial empire of the eighteenth century, with the events of Rome or Athens? Can 1 be intensely interested in the death of some Peloponnesian tyrant or in the sacrificing of a young princess in Aulis? All this does not concern me in the least; from all this I derive no significance." [6]

(Translated by Bessie Peretz for the 
“Modern Quarterly.")

(To be continued.)

Part II.

Notes:

[1] M. Herness remarks that the art of primitive decoration could develop only by depending upon industrial activity, and that those peoples who, like the Ceylon Vedas, as yet know nothing of industrial life, have no decoration. (Urgeschichte, der billenden Kunst in Europa. Wien, 1898, Page 38.) This conclusion is similar to the one made above by Bucher.
[2] Historie de la litterature francaise. Page 415
[3] Ibid.
[4] We will remark at this point that it was mainly this side of Voltaire's view-point that made him so repulsive to Lessing, the ideologist who adhered to German burgher-dom. This is well explained in F. Mering's book, Die Lessings Legend.
[5] Lettre sur la critique du Barbier de Séville.
[6] Essai sur le genre dramatique sérieux. Oeuvre 1. Page 11.

Ideology and Revolution pt.2 (2017)

From the November 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

Part 1

In the second part of this three-part series we look at the French Revolution

On the 4th April 1727 a leading French intellectual was present at the state funeral of Sir Isaac Newton in London. His name was Voltaire and what he found most impressive about the grand occasion was that although Newton was born a commoner his work had gained him such prestige as to warrant so high a national honour. Such a thing could never have happened in France at that time where only members of the nobility could hope to provoke such national recognition. This was a testament to the complete political domination of the English bourgeoisie who, after their revolution in the 1640s, had fought off an attempted counter revolution in 1688 and installed a constitutional monarch, an act of religious tolerance, free trade and even a ‘bill of rights’; something which the French middle class could only dream of. The new English ruling class embraced the symbiotic relationship of science and technology which was soon, through the immanent ‘industrial revolution’, to make them far wealthier than many of the petty European feudal monarchies. Isaac Newton became one of the first icons of the intellectual movement that turned its focus from religious faith to scientific reason in what we now call ‘The Enlightenment’. Newton presented society with a universal natural mechanism that had the potential to explain everything – including, in the hands of philosophers and political radicals, the perceived intellectual and moral progression of human cultural activity through history. It was to be the French intellectuals who were to transform this radical philosophy into a political ideology with which to fuel their own bourgeois revolution.

We have seen that it was the Protestant Reformation that enabled the English bourgeoisie to intellectually challenge the might of reactionary international Catholicism and which, in turn, informed the ideological propaganda used in their revolutionary struggle with their king. In France the Reformation was only ever partially successful and eventually almost entirely succumbed to the ‘counter reformation’. As a result the capitalist mode of production was continually handicapped by the very same feudal economic relationships that had so frustrated the English middle classes in the first part of the 17th century. This underlying class struggle was simmering and waiting to burst into revolution in France by the mid to late 18th century. As we have seen, it was the French intellectuals’ use of Enlightenment philosophy which was to reflect this remorseless economic and political tension. Foremost among these was Dennis Diderot’s Encyclopaedia which attempted the complete reformulation of knowledge through an enlightenment perspective. Together with writers such as Rousseau and Voltaire they began work on this monumental undertaking which was immediately recognised as a threat to the establishment by those who sought to defend the ‘Ancien Régime’. Another surprising element that served to weaken the paradigms of continental Catholicism came from a most unlikely source. Portugal had always been devout and, like its neighbour Spain, a bastion of reactionary autocracy. In 1755 a mighty earthquake hit its capital Lisbon destroying most of the city including many churches together with their congregations. A reciprocal tsunami augmented the devastation and death toll. Many believed this to be a breach of the covenant with the Christian god and served to seriously weaken belief in traditional religion and the social structures that went with it. All of these uncertainties, new intellectual paradigms and the manifest injustices of feudal autocracy were about to find their political expression as part of the explosion that was the French Revolution.

Action replay
It all started, as almost an action replay of the English revolution, when the French king was forced to call a parliament (Estates General) to deal with a financial crisis. France was near bankruptcy as a result, ironically, of Louis XVI helping to finance the American republican struggle against England. This parliament was composed of three ‘estates’: nobility, clergy and the commons. Although the deputies of the commons represented over 90 percent of the French people they only had a third of the votes, the other two thirds belonging to the nobility and clergy. This made it inevitable that they would be out-voted by the other two estates on most issues of contention. Upon being called to Versailles the members of the commons produced a book of grievances which addressed, together with many other problems, this profoundly anti-democratic arrangement. Unsurprisingly the other estates prevaricated and the commons lost patience and proclaimed itself as a National Assembly which represented the entire population of France and on its return to Versailles, some days later, to begin its work the delegates found themselves locked out of their former meeting place. Undeterred they proceeded to the nearest large interior space within the massive palace complex (a tennis court) where they took an oath not to separate until they had produced a political national constitution.

Thus began the revolution on 20 June 1789. Despite a provocative build-up of reactionary military forces the Assembly quickly got to work abolishing feudalism and producing a Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen (again very reminiscent of the English parliament’s Petition of Right and then its revolutionary ‘Grand Remonstrance’ of some 150 years before). In Paris, meanwhile, the decades of oppression of the poor had exploded into violence which culminated in the storming of the Bastille and the subsequent arming of the ‘sans culottes’ (proto working class) who were to defend the revolution against both traitors within the country and then to fight the revolutionary wars against the other nations which sought to destroy the new regime. The French bourgeoisie originally, as had the English, wanted a constitutional monarchy rather than a Republic but when Louis, like Charles I, was proven a traitor he was executed. By now the Assembly had moved to Paris where it came under the influence of a radical republican group (the Jacobins) and their most prominent member Maximilien Robespierre who, arguably, took the revolution in a direction that the moderate members of the bourgeoisie had never intended and which certainly did not correspond with the values of the Enlightenment.

These radicals would have been unable to take control of the revolution without the confluence of a series of events; civil war, international war, inflation and sectarian rivalry all contributed to what we now call ‘The Terror’ and the reign of Madame La Guillotine. In some ways this goes to prove that the ideology of the Enlightenment was, at best, only an idealistic aspiration and, at worst, merely empty propaganda to motivate those who did the fighting. Certainly when Napoleon Bonaparte came to power during a coup d’état in 1799 and subsequently ‘exported’ the revolution to most of continental Europe it was seen eventually for what it really was – an empire of exploitation and plunder. Oliver Cromwell had preceded Napoleon in this by his violent imperial activities in Ireland and both individuals represented the realities of bourgeois rule, stripped of its high minded rhetoric.

Since the days of these capitalist revolutions many millions of workers have continued to kill and be killed in the name of high ideals such as liberty, fraternity and equality. This does not, of course, invalidate these ideals and the integrity of those like Rousseau and Diderot who believed in them but, like the radical Christian ideals of the Puritans, they captured the ‘zeitgeist’ of their time, and as such, were open to manipulation by the powerful. That power, in the end, derived not from ideals but from economic and political forces which were little understood at that time. Both the French and English revolutions had the same result – the coming to power of the capitalist class despite the use of seemingly opposite ideologies (philosophical reason as opposed to religious faith); dialectically speaking such ideas are taken up because they seem to contain, however vaguely understood, antithetical elements with regard to the prevailing paradigms that rationalise the existing system. Such ideas always find an audience because of the oppression and exploitation necessary to sustain any private property system. These ideas are catapulted into the political spotlight when economic and historical circumstances make revolutionary change inevitable. Socialists, with the invaluable help of Karl Marx, have understood this for over a hundred years but, ironically, this political insight also fell victim to the manipulation of a new ruling class – namely the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution. Does this imply that Marxism/socialism is merely just another form of idealism that can be manipulated and used as propaganda by power elites?

In part three we investigate the relationship between the revolutionary events in Russia in 1917 and the political theory of socialism and what both owed, if anything, to the Enlightenment.

Wez.

Part 3

50 Years Ago: Unconquerable Print (1967)

The 50 Years Ago column from the January 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

A little while ago in the affairs of the Continent of Europe, lived an emperor called Frederick the Great. The only unquestionably great thing he did was to kill himself with uncommon vices. He departed a little from the usual insipidence of royal life by taking an interest in literature and entertaining Voltaire at his court. It would seem that this same hospitable reception of the satirist is the principal act of his life which entitles him to the epithet of ‘The Great’ . . .  one other action in the life of Carlyle's hero entitles him to remembrance if not to a fool’s immortal pillory. While driving through one of the cities of Prussia on a sunny day, he saw on a wall a placard in which he himself was denounced as an idle intemperate atheist. It had been posted in the dark and was loo high to be easily read. The emperor stopped his carriage and commanded that a similar bill should be glued at a more readable height. ‘For' he said, ‘My subjects may print what they like so long as I do what I like’.

It is difficult to say what thoughts were dancing in the Prussian’s skull. Did the old blockhead think that Print remained no more than print; this fierce placard, ‘posted after dark,’ no more than paper and letterpress? Did he not think that his own coronation and the docility of the masses, depended on advisory placards far different in spirit from this nocturnal one; that a word of this fresh sheet might stop those gilt wheels of his; that a thought of it might be as a whirlwind to knock his golden palace down and blow him and his better-half over the seas out of disgusted Prussia; that this sheet of letter-press might fire a country to destroy an Emperor?

From the Socialist Standard January 1917.

The Virtues of Reflection (2000)

Theatre Review from the February 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Candide. National Theatre.

One of the characteristics of turn-of-the-millennium capitalism is that people rarely reflect about life. True a lot of people will wonder about how they are going to survive in the next few weeks and months, whilst most of the rest of us will worry about coping with the stresses and strains of everyday life. But such actions are a million miles away from what I have in mind. I'm thinking about standing back from the ordinary and the commonplace, and trying to look at the world, and the lives that people live, in a larger, more objective way.

I had occasion to think about such matters at the end of Candide, the wonderful musical—music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics Richard Wilbur, book adapted from Voltaire's famous novel, by John Wheeler, in a new version by John Caird—which has been marvellously revived by the National Theatre. As I wandered out of the Olivier Theatre after a second visit, I couldn't but become aware of the favourable audience comment. "That was marvellous," said someone. "Wasn't that wonderful?" said someone else, rhetorically, and when I joined the queue for a drink just about everyone seemed to be saying much the same thing. But no-one was prepared to offer anything more substantial. No-one sought to justify why it had been wonderful or marvellous, or whatever, and when I joined my three companions to drink our cups of tea, the conversation quickly moved to other matters.

Voltaire, were he to be about to witness such things, would probably have been amused, but saddened, by the audience's reaction. By inclination an amateur philosopher, he cast a sardonic eye on the musings of the world's supposed best thinkers. And he would have been no doubt registered, with deep irony, that although by the end of the 20th century the human race had unlocked many of the secrets of Nature, and deployed the resultant knowledge in ways that would barely have been conceivable when he was alive, most people seemed still locked in an almost prehistoric mindset.

Voltaire published Candide in 1759, and like all works of literature it can only properly be understood in the context of ideas of its time. Voltaire was a sceptical, Enlightenment figure, and Candide examines two ideas which were prevalent at the time. One was Optimism, a crude extrapolation based on Leibniz's "Principles of Sufficient Reason". The other the idea of Rousseau that in the state of Nature people are naturally good: a notion which seems to suggest a genetic predisposition to goodness, rather than goodness being learnt.

Leibniz held that since god could have created any kind of universe, the fact that he chose the universe we now inhabit can only mean that since god is good this must be the best possible universe. It follows that, "All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds", a uniquely optimistic point of view which is elaborated by Dr Pangloss in Candide.

Not that Voltaire was an Optimist. Indeed the terrible earthquake in Lisbon in 1755 which had killed tens of thousands of people, many of them whilst sheltering in the cathedral, had persuaded him that not only was Leibniz's theory incorrect, but that such events challenged belief in the existence of god and any necessary coincidence between god the creator and god the source of goodness. And if "All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds", the consequences of all human actions is already determined, and with it the possibility of morality based on choice.

The wild, helter-skelter adventures of Candide, a student of Dr Pangloss, are at the heart of Voltaire's novel. And by the end Candide has learnt that neither goodness nor malevolence are natural or predetermined. At the end Candide migrates to a hospitable location which he describes significantly as "Like Eldorado but without the gold". Voltaire, the humanist, lays before us a tale characterised by war, pillage, arbitrary cruelty, rape, starvation and deprivation. The corrosive impact of religious certainty tied to metaphysical justifications in a class-riven society are examined, and rejected. Rather Voltaire suggests that we attend to the facts of the case, in a spirit of co-operative endeavour, and seek to the best we can for all humanity.

Yet on the evidence of my two visits, contemporary audiences have been so successfully taught by the ideological apparatus of society as not to wonder about the lessons of Voltaire's tale for themselves. Could they, too, be the unwitting victims of thousands of present-day Dr Panglosses? Have they so lost the capacity to reflect that whilst recognising the absurdities of the 18th century beliefs which Voltaire parodied, they might also unwittingly believe that "All's for the best in the best of all possible worlds"? What irony that we can even pose the question.

Michael Gill

Being Ernest (2007)

Book Review from the July 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

William Hart: Operation Supergoose. Timberline Press $15. (Available from Amazon)

A satirical novel that pokes fun at America's rulers and makes some good political points in a humourous way - that sums up this book. The hero is Lieutenant Ernest Candide and his military superior is General Pangloss, both references to Voltaire's eighteenth-century novel Candide.

Candide starts out as an all-American hero (sorry, Plunderian hero, as he's a citizen of Plunderland). But Plunderland's president is Buzz Twofer II, and the vice-president is Chain Dickey, so you get the idea of where the satire is aimed. The factory which makes official Plunderland flags is burnt down, and Candide is ordered to track down and kill the leader of the terrorists. The Committee for a World Ascendant Plunderland get the war they want, together with tax cuts.

Like his namesake, Candide is initially completely naive, accepting a rosy-coloured view of Plunderland's history (for instance, the native Plunderians had poor hygiene, hence they contracted smallpox). But after various adventures, including a stay in Guantanamo, he comes to see things differently. Just thinking for himself, rather than accepting what he's been taught, is the big step in his political development. As General Pangloss says when a prosecution witness at one of Candide's trials, 'When a soldier thinks, the whole military raison d'etre trembles and threatens to collapse . . .  not thinking has made me the man I am today.'

A book by Chomsky is among those that help Candide see what has been going on, and his new view of his country's history includes: 'Cubaland, Isle of Haiti, Puerta Rita, Panamaland and others were conquered by U.S. Marines and forced to pay tribute as little colonies, with fruit, sugar, cigars, naval bases and nubile women.' He turns down a request to run for governor on behalf of a new political party and prefers to live quietly with his family (cultivating his garden, as Voltaire had it).

Operation Supergoose is mostly great fun, with some nice swipes at Twofer and other politicians, and good exposes of Plunderian/American actions. Occasionally the satire is dropped in favour of more straightforward presentation, for instance on Zionia/Shrinkistan (Israel/Palestine), and this is less effective. And as Hart says at the end, imagine there really were a Plunderland and how people might act to change it. Or, indeed, to change not just one country but the whole world.

Paul Bennett