For your night out (1957)

Film Review from the October 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

If you have five shillings to spare, go and see "The Witches of Salem"—it might come off soon. Even if its title does not sound very interesting, this new French film is unique. A gripping drama—reminiscent of Ibsen at his best—it has everything the heart could desire: a most moving love story, a good deal of direct, down-to-earth sex; a vivid portrayal of puritan life. More important is that you won't need to leave your critical faculties at home, for this is a movie that deals with the lives of real people. Always political, and an impressive study in mass psychology, it shows the struggle between rich and poor, between the Church and the people. One of those rare films that a Socialist should not miss to see. Script by Sartre, based on a play by Arthur Miller. Subtitles in English.

B. J.

Are you being driven mad? (1981)

From the May 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

One in twelve males and one in eight females in Britain will spend some part of their lives in a psychiatric hospital. Most women between thirty and sixty are regularly prescribed tranquillisers by their family doctor. Since its introduction in the 1930s, ECT (electric shock treatment or electroconvulsive therapy) has been used on thousands of people. There is a widespread use of neurosurgery and other therapy methods, and admissions to psychiatric hospitals are increasing as daily life in our society becomes more tense and frenzied.

“Madness” is very often behaviour which conflicts with conventional ideas of normality or proper thinking. We all think as an involuntary activity, in ways which are specifically human and which differentiate us from our older animal relations. To think is to reflect m the brain the material reality of the environment: il is a relationship between matter and matter. The way in which we relate to our material surroundings determines how our thoughts are to be classified by other people. In primitive society people believed that they were in touch with another world when dreaming. In the Middle Ages people who rejected Christian morality were tortured as lunatics who were possessed by the devil. "Sanity” can be interpreted as a readiness to accept common experiences in conformity with common ideas; "insanity" can be dissent from the social conditioning process.

Mediaeval society had certain ideas about how women should behave. Those women who did not fit in with those ideas were often persecuted as witches. Sprenger and Kramer's hook on how to spot a witch, The Malleus Maleficarum, written m I486, was the downfall of many a woman who suffered from epilepsy. the symptoms of which were listed in the book as the classical characteristics of a witch. In 1515 five hundred unfortunate women were killed for witchcraft in Geneva in the space of three months. In the eighteenth century the "mad" were confined to institutions where they were chained up. beaten, humiliated and put on public display. The diaries of many a nineteenth century nobleman contain reports of Sunday afternoon outings to the lunatic asylum to be entertained by the misfortunes of the deranged.

Most British mental hospitals were built to fit m with nineteenth century ideas about mental health: these days the chains have gone, but the humiliation of the confined has not. Many inmates in modern asylums were first put there for moral or criminal transgressions An unmarried servant girl at the turn of the century who bore a child would face such moral outrage that she would become depressed and, instead of receiving sympathy from those around her, would be locked up in an asylum. Soldiers who could not take the conditions of war, homosexuals who cracked up trying to repress their feelings for the sake of acceptability, poor children who saw nothing wrong with stealing from the rich, men who broke under the monotony or responsibility of their jobs, wives who were left on their own by husbands who grew tired of them, girls who could not conform to the advertisers' modes of anatomical excellence —all of these may be found m any psychiatric hospital. They are not sick just sick of what society is.

Conventional mental disorders are experienced by almost everyone at some time. Depression is a perfectly natural response to a lifestyle in which we are taught to have expectations, but are denied the opportunity to fulfil them. If we are depressed because we are not allowed to do what is technically feasible but socially forbidden, we are simply reacting to a seemingly insoluble social dilemma. Socially produced ills are what cause such depression: people formulate their own reasons to be miserable. Another common mental illness is paranoia: the feeling that there is some force beyond you which is trying to dominate or oppress you. Most of us have felt vulnerable, threatened, unwanted or inadequate at some time. But are we ill because we have these feelings? In a society based on the hypocrisy, artificiality and authoritarianism of the sort that is an integral part of the buying and selling system, are those who are in the inferior social class wrong to have a feeling that we are being oppressed?

It would be very nice for our bosses if every worker who complained that he is oppressed could be classified as a nutcase, but responding to the oppression which surrounds us is not paranoia. In a society which locks people up for taking what they have produced (stealing from work), for refusing lo kill (in many countries military service is still compulsory) or for attacking the government (as is the fate of dissidents in the Russian Empire and South Africa), it is the ignorance of oppression which betrays the greater mental contusion. Then there is schizophrenia which most psychiatrists define as a state of mental fragmentation: it is a condition in which part of the mind accepts reality as it is, while the other part entertains delusions. These so-called delusions are sometimes treated by neurosurgery, the aim of which is to modify the patient's thinking so that the brain responds to all events in a standard way. A case of schizophrenia is cited by Morton Schatzman in his book, Radical Therapist:

Recently, a young man in the NATO military forces, with a position in a chain of command to push a nuclear-missile "button”, decided to refuse to obey orders related to his job. He told his superiors that they should not command any man to do such a job. He was diagnosed as a schizophrenic and was hospitalised.

Mental problems are caused by the relationship between the human mind which is rational — and a mystifying social environment — which is irrational. If we misunderstand the world around us we are entitled to feel depressed and threatened and deluded. When one considers just how crazy the present system of organising human affairs is, mental non-conformity is to be strongly advised. What is often called “madness" is a rational response to such problems as war, poverty and insecurity. In The Inner World of Mental Illness, so-called psychiatric disorders are characterised as

. . . opposed to a normality which is intimately related to the major value orientations of western society. It may be asserted therefore that abnormality (psychosis) involves negative relationship to prevailing social normative prescriptions . . . In the jargon of the moment we may call this "alienation”.

The mental health pressure group. PROMPT, has stated that one of its roles  is

. . . to demonstrate that what currently passes as "mental health" is often the measure of the person’s exploitability by those who own (or otherwise control) the means of production and distribution of that which is necessary to sustain life; and to show that a person called “mentally ill” is often someone strongly reacting against their exploitation.

In state capitalist Russia dissidents who try to criticise the bogus socialism are often locked away from the public on the grounds that they are mad. Once locked away, many of them are driven to actual mental derangement by excessive isolation and the use of drugs. Once diagnosed as being insane the dissenter loses whatever credibility he may have once had. Bukovsky and Gluzman, in their Manual on Psychiatry for Dissidents, points out that

Dissidents, as a rule, have enough legal grounding so as not to make mistakes during their investigation and trial, but when confronted by a qualified psychiatrist with a directive from above to have them declared non-accountable, they have found themselves absolutely powerless.

The other capitalist states use similar methods. British television, for instance, is quite expert at branding social dissenters in such a way as to lead acquiescent workers to reject what they are saying very often before they have even said it. Most socialists will have been called a crank or a lunatic at some time for having spoken about a world without money. Of course, men like the Duke of Edinburgh who dress up in military uniforms and talk about how safe nuclear weapons are, are considered to be perfectly sane and worthy of public respect.

The battle for socialism is the battle against the conventional ideas of our age. Socialists ask questions. We ask why it is that there are people who produce all of the wealth of society and yet live in poverty and people who are idle who live in luxury. Why do grown men and women cry when they run out of money in the middle of the week and they have a family to feed. Why are children sent to school to be conditioned? Why are otherwise rational men and women occasionally seen to address the sky and ask for help? Why must we live in constant fear of being killed by bombs that none of us want? Why are our fellow human beings dying of starvation by the minute while food rots? Why slums? Why palaces? Why unemployment? Either it is all normal and those of us who reject it are 'insane,' or else we are sane and it is mad.

Socialists aim to bring the ideas held by the majority of people in line with their experiences. This is the role of any scientist who is serious about his work. But instead of endeavouring to examine social reality, government scientists tend be employed to perpetuate the current form of reality. This is particularly true of modern psychiatry which is more concerned with the treatment of symptoms than with examining their cause. Indeed, if psychiatrists were to study causation they would be put to the impossible task of either giving up their occupations and trying to change society or continue their jobs in the knowledge that what they are doing is futile and often counter-productive.

If a man lives his life in chains and responds by kicking out at those around him, the psychiatrist’s solution of binding his legs or dulling his brain so that he is too weak to kick is less reasonable than the socialist solution of destroying the chains. However, under capitalism — the social system which prevails throughout the world today — the freedom of the parasites at the top can only he secured by the social constriction of the vast majority. So, reasonable a proposition as it may he to smash the chains which presently confine us, they who pay the psychiatrists are paying to ensure that symptoms are treated while the problem remains.

But surely if we, the majority class in society, are the victims of this system, we should be destroying the chains ourselves? Indeed we should but it is an unfortunate fact that a majority of that majority class have become accustomed to the confinement of life under capitalism and nothing would disturb them more than the prospect of social freedom. How is it that capitalism has spared its victims from such dangerous thoughts of non-conformity? We can begin by rejecting the most popular explanation: that human beings come into the world with ideas already implanted in their brains. This is the argument of the apologist for capitalist normality, who is anxious to inform us that we have "forgotten about human nature”. (As if the moment he reminds us we are going to stop being socialists!)

In fact, ideas are not inherent, but are acquired by convention. Our language is a learned code. Our concepts of right and wrong are products of historical change. Learning is the essence of our conformity. We learn to accept things as they are in three ways: firstly, by the overt agencies of thought control, such as schools, universities, newspapers, television, radio, parental guidance, and religion, secondly, by experience of the system which one comes to accept as natural phenomenon; thirdly, at an early age our feelings of freedom and human creativity are repressed to fit in with conventional social relationships. Rejection of these conditioning. processes is often labelled as insanity.

For instance, if a child takes no notice of the social norms imposed by its parents and teachers it will be persuaded, bribed, locked up, beaten — but if these things fail and the child does not step into line it may be labelled as disturbed, insane or subnormal. This label will have profound effects upon the future economic and personal prospects of the non-conformist. People who reject the 'naturalness' of their social environment are easily dismissed as fantasists or utopians. It in within the terms of sanity to complain that the rent is too high, but it is a case for psychiatric concern if one demands decent living conditions for everyone. Many innovative scientists, who have challenged conventional hypotheses, have been dismissed as lunatics. The non-repressed individual is virtually unknown in our society, but if you try to live in an unrepressed manner you are likely to end up either being isolated in squalor or confined to an institution. How many of us could honestly say that we would live as we are living now if we were really free?

In The Manufacture of Madness Thomas Szasz says that psychiatry

. . . is harmful to the so-called mental patient. This is not because it is liable to abuse, but rather because harming people categorised as insane is its essential function. Institutional psychiatry is, as it were, designed to protect and uplift the group (the state) by persecuting and degrading the individual as insane or ill.

He goes on to point out that there is no basic difference between modern ideas of madness and those of mediaeval society. Despite the so-called liberalism of the modem state

. . . there are still the disadvantaged, the disaffected, and the people who thought and criticised too much. The non-con formist, the objector, all who deny or refuse to affirm society's dominant values, are still the enemies of society.

This view is confirmed by an article in The New Scientist (21/6/79) in which it was reported that in South Africa, Germany and Japan

. . . doctors unabashedly carry out psychosurgery to make “patients" more obedient and supposedly as a “cure" for homosexuality.

It should be pointed out that many patients have died as result of needless psychosurgery. It should also be pointed out that many of those being presently held in such top security mental hospitals as Rampton are undergoing corrective treatment involving drugs and ECT, as well as brain surgery, simply because they have refused to obey the social norms. The terrible thing is that the more such people claim that they are being abused, the more the psychiatrists who are supposed to be treating them accuse them of being mentally ill. It is not only in Russia that offenders against the status quo are sentenced to insanity.

Dissent is safest when it is engaged in en masse. The purpose of the Socialist Party is to be an instrument for mass opposition to the capitalist system as a way of living. If you stand out against it alone your friends, family and workmates will try to dismiss your non-conformity as eccentricity or utopianism. The more of us there are, the harder it becomes for the Normals to ignore us with a nervous laugh. We, the overwhelming majority of the human race, have no weapon which is more effective than our capacity for critical thought. Ideas coupled with political solidarity will penetrate every single aspect of the social edifice which seems so unbreakable to the lone dissenter. If we are bitter and vociferous and impatient it is only because the system which aims to control us has driven us to it. Now let us be mad and sane enough to learn to control the system.

Steve Coleman

Witch side are you on? (2011)

The Halo Halo! column from the February 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard 

It’s always strange when, after conversion from one religion to another, someone says “I was born a Christian” (or Muslim, or whatever), “but I’ve converted to Hinduism/Judaism/The Celestial Flying Teapot” or whatever it is. Of course, none of us is born Christian or Muslim or anything else. We’re born with no knowledge or beliefs in any god. In fact we’re all born into a state of atheism.

If someone ‘born’ into a religion – any religion – suddenly became aware of the fact that by some freak occurrence it was the wrong god they had been born with, and they had to convert to another one, surely God only has himself to blame. These gods certainly move in mysterious ways.

There’s been a bit of juggling from one deity to another in the news lately. The strangest case by far must be that of Christine O’Donnell the ‘Tea Party’ candidate for a seat in the US Senate. After apparently being brought up as a God-fearing Christian her faith in Jesus was shaken. “I dabbled into witchcraft,” she admitted. “One of my first dates with a witch was on a satanic altar.” Maybe she once wrote to Santa but mistakenly sent the letter to Satan. We’ll never know.

However, by the time the midterm elections were under way she had found Jesus again. After reassuring the American public that “I’m not a witch” she went on to explain to them the truth about (amongst numerous other things) Evolution, Socialism and Masturbation.

“Evolution is a myth. Why aren’t monkeys still evolving into humans?”

“America is now a Socialist economy. The definition of a Socialist economy is when 50% or more of your economy is dependent on the federal government”.

And her views on masturbation were numerous and detailed. Hardly the sort of thing sensitive readers of the ‘Standard’ want to hear. Well OK then, just one  – “Masturbation is a form of adultery.” Do you think she’s been doing it wrong?

As someone once pointed out. “The trouble with political jokes is that they sometimes get elected.” This one didn’t.

Back in the UK Lauren Booth, an English language Iranian TV channel journalist, and Tony Blair’s step-sister in law, spent most of October hogging the headlines with her conversion to Islam. “Almost unnoticed to me, when praying for the last year, I had been saying ‘Dear Allah’ instead of  ‘Dear God’, she informed readers of the Guardian while complaining about the ‘screams of faux horror’ from her fellow columnists. In fact they were mostly screams of laughter at the latest antics from Blair’s extended family.

Tony himself, of course, famously recently undertook a religious conversion when he decided to become a Roman Catholic and nipped off to Rome with Cherie for an audience with the Pope. Imagine being a fly on the wall at his first confession when he was asked about his role in the Iraq war.

It must be confusing now in the Blair household. “Hide the pork pies and the communion wine, Lauren’s coming round”. Fortunately Roman Catholicism and Islam do have one thing in common. Both are dominated by old men wearing long black dresses. Maybe that’s the attraction.

NW

Tiny Tips (2011)

The Tiny Tips column from the February 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Sofia Whitcombe began her day with the startling realization that she might not be exactly who she thought she was. “My whole life, I thought I was a Capricorn,” the 25-year-old New York publicist said. “Now I’m a Sagittarius? I don’t feel like a Sagittarius!” Countless people were astonished by the “news” in Monday’s Star Tribune in which Minneapolis astronomy instructor Parke Kunkle affirmed that the Earth’s “wobble” has shifted the zodiac signs.

The buzz has raced across the Web like a shooting star. Some people seemed angry. “I believe it’s a zodiac scam,” said Jose Arce, 38, from Fort Lee, N.J., who runs a body shop. “I’ve known myself to be a Sagittarius, I believe, since I was born. So to come up now with some new sign? It’s unacceptable!”

[Link.]

A bluefin tuna fetched a record 32.49m yen (£254,000) today at the first auction of the year at Tsukiji market in Tokyo, but the fish’s growing popularity across Asia has raised fears it will soon be fished into commercial extinction. The 342kg tuna easily beat the previous record, set exactly 10 years ago when a 202kg fish fetched 20.2m yen. Market officials are accustomed to seeing prices rise during the new year auction at Tsukiji, the world’s biggest fish market, but today’s winning bid was unexpected:

[Link.]

Catholics who receive communion at Sunday mass believe the sacred wafer they swallow contains the body of Christ. New York health officials have warned the parishioners of a Long Island church that the wafers they received on Christmas Day may have also contained hepatitis:

[Link.]

Everyone curses the taxman, but Romanian witches angry about having to pay up for the first time are planning to use cat excrement and dead dogs to cast spells on the president and government today. Also among Romania’s newest taxpayers are fortune tellers – but they probably should have seen it coming:

[Link.]

Men and women have been banned from shaking hands in a district of Somalia controlled by the Islamist group al-Shabab. Under the ban imposed in the southern town of Jowhar, men and women who are not related are also barred from walking together or chatting in public. The BBC’s Mohamed Moalimuu in Mogadishu says the penalty would probably be a public flogging:

[Link.]

Using an expanded definition of poverty, the U.S. Census Bureau said it determined that 15.7 percent of Americans — 47.8 million — live in poverty:

[Link.]

Houston, we have a problem (2012)

The Halo Halo! column from the March 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

The revelation by his political opponents last year that Barack Obama may not actually be a US citizen and is perhaps a Muslim or, even worse, a socialist, has made it difficult to tell the difference between fact, fantasy and conspiracy theory in the run up to the US Presidential election.

Republican contenders for the job are taking the need to demonstrate their patriotic credibility very seriously. Newt Gingrich, for example, has expressed his intention to colonise the moon. “By the end of my second term we will have the first permanent base on the moon. And it will be American”, he promised his supporters. A difficult act to follow, you might think. But no, not if you have God on your side.

Space oddities come no odder than his opponent, Mitt Romney. He believes that with God’s help he, too, can boldly go where no man has gone before and solve America’s problems.

As a lifelong member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints – a Mormon bishop in fact, he believes that the baptism of the dead to bring them into the Church is a sensible idea, and is guided in life by the ‘Book of Mormon’. The contents of this amazing volume were revealed to the church’s founder, Joseph Smith (who had 30 wives and was killed in a prison shootout) on golden plates and written in a mysterious language known as ‘Reformed Egyptian’ by an angel named Moroni. Fortunately, with the help of a pair of magical crystal spectacles, Smith was able to translate it into English.

In case that is not enough to convince voters of Romney’s suitability for the job, he believes, too, that God lives on a planet called Kolob and he wears special Mormon underpants. (Romney wears the special underpants, that is, not God). And if you want more details, or wish to order a pair, visit www.mormon-underwear.com.

So as Americans decide whether their future lies in a colony on the moon or in special underpants from planet Kolob, you may wonder whether things can get any more bizarre. Well unfortunately, yes, they can. While the space centre in Houston contemplates its future missions to Newt’s moon base and Planet Kolob, a strange object in the shape of ‘Lady Apostle Helen Ukpabio’ is hurtling asteroid-like towards them and is due to collide in March. And when it comes to cranky ‘out of this world’ ideas the Lady Apostle makes Gingrich and Romney look like mere space cadets.

She is a preacher from Nigeria with her own church who specialises in casting out witches, particularly from children. For her 12 day visit to Houston in March she promises deliverance from (amongst other things) bondage, bad dreams, witchcraft attacks, mermaid and other evil spirit possession, untimely deaths, lack of promotion, financial impotency and chronic and incurable disease.

All good, clean harmless fun? Well unfortunately no. Helen Ukpabio is no joke. In her book Unveiling the Mysteries of Witchcraft she explains how to identify a child witch. “If a child under the age of two screams in the night, cries and is always feverish with deteriorating health, he or she is a servant of Satan”, she advises. Her teachings are said to have contributed to the torture or abandonment of thousands of Nigerian children. “Suffer the little children” as the good book has it.

NW

Religious Observations (2013)

From the February 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Scientific and Technical Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK) has put a stop to the publication and sale of all books in its archives that support the theory of evolution, daily Radikal has reported. Titles by Richard Dawkins, Alan Moorehead, Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Levontin and James Watson are all included in the list of books that will no longer be available to Turkish readers: (Link)

Every year an unknown number of children – most of them disabled in some way – are murdered in northern Ghana because of the belief that they are in some way possessed by evil spirits set on bringing ill fortune to those around them. The practice is the consequence of ancient traditions and customs and is shaped by poverty and ignorance in remote and often marginalised communities. But it is still infanticide and no less horrifying than the killing of children anywhere. For years NGOs and the Ghanaian authorities have tried advocacy and education in an attempt to eradicate the practice but with only marginal success. Well into the 21st century, Ghana’s so called spirit children are still being killed because they carry the blame for the misfortunes of everyday life: (Link)

Millions of children in Indonesian elementary schools may no longer have separate science classes starting in June, the beginning of their next school year, if the government approves a curriculum overhaul that would merge science and social studies with other classes so more time can be devoted to religious education…. Officials who back the changes say that more religious instruction is needed because a lack of moral development has led to an increase in violence and vandalism among youths, and that could fuel social unrest and corruption in the future: (Link)

A popular Indian spiritual guru sparked a backlash Tuesday after saying a 23-year-old student could have averted a murderous gang-rape by begging for mercy from her attackers. Self-styled godman Asharam, known to his followers as ‘Bapu’ or father, told his devotees: ‘This tragedy would not have happened if she had chanted God’s name and fallen at the feet of the attackers. The error was not committed by just one side,’ he said: (Dead Link)

Being spiritual may give life deeper meaning but it can also mess up your mind, research suggests. A study found that people professing to be spiritual, but not conventionally religious, were more likely to suffer from a host of mental challenges. Their demons included abnormal eating conditions, drug abuse, anxiety disorder, phobias and neurosis. They were also more likely than others to be taking medication for mental health problems: (Dead Link)

Silence in Church (2013)

The Halo Halo! column from the March 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

In February, Kepari Leniata, a 20 year old mother from Papua New Guinea, was stripped, tortured, doused in petrol and burned alive. Hundreds of bystanders were in attendance, some even taking photographs of the events. She was suspected of being a witch (Guardian, 8 February 2013).

And in Zimbabwe in January, a sorceress who survived a massive explosion in her home explained that it occurred when her partner, a witchdoctor, was beheading a goblin. A customer who had paid $15,000 dollars to have the goblin dealt with and the witchdoctor were both killed. The explosion occurred during a ‘lightning manufacturing process’ involving petrol and electricity which was required for the operation (religionnewsblog.com/27031).

Meanwhile in London on 4th February, Justin Portal Welby, another man who believes in the resurrection of the dead, a ‘holy ghost’ and other spiritual hogwash was sworn in as the new Archbishop of Canterbury. As part of the proceedings he promised to ‘promote unity, peace and love among all Christian people,’ and to guide the Church away from ‘error.’

He may have his work cut out since ‘unity, peace and love’ are in short supply in the Anglican Church at the moment, but at least there is plenty of ‘error,’ so perhaps he can get stuck into that.

One of the most dangerous examples of religious error (admittedly, more associated with the independent happy-clappy churches than with Justin’s lot) is the apparently growing belief here too in witchcraft, exorcisms and the casting out of evil spirits, etc. particularly from children: Kristy Bamu, for example, who in 2010 was tortured to death by his sister and her partner who had convinced themselves that he was a witch.

And should any would-be witch doctor for Jesus need instruction in performing an exorcism, the internet is awash with them – complete with handy lists of biblical passages to study. (wikihow.com/Perform-a-Christian-Exorcism, for example.)

According to the Guardian (1 March 2012), ‘More than 650 Pentecostal churches opened in the UK between 2005 and 2010, taking the total to 3900. Many feature exorcisms and sell lucrative ‘cures’ for possession.’ And in August last year, Tim Loughton, the government’s children’s minister, complained of the ‘wall of silence’ that surrounded the problem (Guardian, 14 August 2012).

So, if the new Archbishop of Cant wants to do something about the ‘error’ of the faithful, given that belief in biblical teachings is part of it, he now has the perfect opportunity to break the ‘wall of silence’ and come clean about the dangers that lie in wait for the gullible in religion.

However, we do like a happy ending in the Halo, Halo column, so here’s a piece from the Guardian (29 January) to show that silence from the Church can sometimes be golden – or rather, worth its weight in gold.

When the vicar of St Peter’s in East Blachington, Sussex described his church as having ‘a wonderful quality of silence,’ one of the flock hit on the idea of recording, and flogging it. And apparently they’ve sold out of their first pressing and are now taking orders from as far away as Ghana.

Well, Christianity has been selling nothing for 2,000 years, but how long it will take for the customers of these CDs to realise that you need perfect silence before you can listen to them is anyone’s guess. Witchcraft is obviously not the only scam the faithful fall for.

NW