Historical materialism

The last century has witnessed immense developments in the technology of production. Modern machines can do much of the arduous work which once had to be done by humans; computers can make calcula¬tions and pass on information in a fraction of the time it took one hundred years ago; industry can be liberated from the dirty, dangerous, time-wasting methods which accompanied its emergence. The "impossible" has been achieved; the productive ingenuity of modern society has defied the imaginations of even the most advanced scientists at the time of Marx's death.

But there is a contradiction: although technologically we are in the Space Age — the age of science and rationality - socially, our society is still entrenched within the rut of the capitalist system. The way we organise wealth production and distribution is in conflict with our ability to produce enough for everyone. This contradiction is not a modern phenomenon; it is the driving force of all history. For Marx, contradiction is the generator of change - it is out of the antagonism between the way things are and the way things could be that new situations arise.

Non-Marxist historians see social phenomena in terms of design or accident. They regard the study of history as an empirical investigation, and see their role as simply to tell the story of the past without any need to explain the interconnections and classes and forces which occur and reoccur throughout the historical narrative. Such historians often tell us what happened in the past, but they are without an answer when it comes to why social events happened. The "design" historians try to explain the "why", but they do so in an idealist, metaphysical manner; they seek non-material causes for material changes. The theocratic historians, who dominated the study of the past for hundreds of years, were quite clear about why phenomena occur: it was because God wills them to. This divine determination was not only supposed to relate to natural phenomena, such as earthquakes, smallpox epidemics and cancer, but also to social events, such as wars, famines and poverty. If such a myth were true, we should have to seriously consider whether the "all-loving father" should be reported to the NSPCC. Other idealists, such as the German philosopher of history, Hegel, argued that historical change was a process of the gradual enactment of a Universal Idea. Marx spent volumes demonstrating the absurdity of this metaphysical nonsense; in The German Ideology, for example, Marx mocked the Hegelian idealists who conceived their role as freeing people from their false perception of the world, as if the problems of material existence were the result of an error on the part of human consciousness. Imitating the Hegelians, Marx wrote:

Let us liberate them from the chimeras, the ideas, dogmas, imaginary beings under the yoke of which they are pining away. Let us revolt against the rule of thoughts. Let us teach men, says one, to exchange these imaginations for thoughts which correspond to the essence of man; says the second, to take up a critical attitude to them; says the third, to knock them out of their heads; and existing reality will collapse.

Marx turned Hegel on his head. This does not mean that Marx was an expert at martial arts, but that the Marxist approach to history employs a methodology which is reverse to that of Hegel: the latter asserted the primacy of ideas, in the manner of Descartes ("I think, therefore I am"); Marx asserted the primacy of matter: "I am, therefore I think". This is how Marx put it:

Consciousness can never be anything else than conscious existence, and the existence of men in their actual life-process. If in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside down as in a camera obscura. this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical life-process

In direct contrast to German philosophy which descends from heaven to earth, here we ascend from earth to heaven. That is to say we do not set out from what men say, imagine, conceive, in order to arrive at men in the flesh. We set out from real, active men, and on the basis of their real-life process we demonstrate the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life-process. The phantoms formed in the human brain are also, necessarily, sublimates of their material life-process, which is empirically verifiable and bound to material premises. Morality, religion, metaphysics, all the rest of ideology and their corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the semblance of independence. They have no history, no development; but men, developing their material production and material intercourse, alter, along with their real existence, their thinking and the products of their thinking. Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life.

The material environment determines our ideas; we are the creatures of historical circumstance. So, according to Marxism, social change is neither accidental nor designed, but determined by material conditions. When we refer to Marxism as historial materialism we are stating that Marxism takes into account four crucial factors: 1. That matter and energy are independent of control by the human mind or supernatural forces; 2. That all ideas, actions and social phenomena are derivative from matter; 3. That a specific cause, or combination of causes, will always have the same effect; 4. That no accident can exist without causation in material terms, even if knowledge is insufficient to provide a material explanation. These principles are not exclusive to Marxist social science: they are the essential principles of post-Cartesian science.

In explaining why social change occurs historical materialists are concerned with cause and effect. What is the causation of social motion, if it is not pure accident or the will of God or the unfolding of the Universal Idea? In the passage from The German Ideology quoted above, Marx suggests that it is the process of "men, developing their material production and material intercourse" who make history. Why do humans exist socially? Because it is only by existing in relation to one another that we can survive. What must we do to survive? Produce and distribute what we need to survive. So. it follows, that the most important aspect of social organisation — the first characteristic which we must look at when examining a society — is the way in which production and distribution of wealth is organised. Idealists may turn their noses up at such a way of looking at history; they would prefer to examine ideas, which are ultimately only the reflection of economic conditions, rather than the eonomic structure (what Marx called "the mode of production") itself. Idealist historians far prefer to waste their (and our) time debating the matrimonial affairs of Henry VIII than explaining the growth of mercantile capitalism in mid-sixteenth century Europe.

When Marxists look at history our first question is, What was the social system? A system is simply a network of relationships to the means of wealth production and distribution. For many thousands of years — indeed, most of human history — the system was a primitive form of communism: the means of living were owned in common. With the advent of private property (a process which is well described in Engels' classic work The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State) came a new social phenomenon: Class. Ever since then these wretched divisions between human being and human being have been with us. The history of property society is the history of class struggle.

The class struggle is not a game invented by Marxists in order to bother the capitalist class. The class war is an inevitable consequence of the division of society between those who own and control and those who do not. The political conflicts of recent history (or post-property society) can be explained in terms of an unceasing war between minorities who possess the means of life and minorities who want to. The English Civil War was such a struggle; so was the French Revolution; often, the subject class has been recruited to support one minority class against another. Non-Marxist historians like to explain such phenomena in terms of individual characters ("Great Men") or supernatural designs. As recently as the 1970s there were a number of reputable Israeli historians who claimed that the victory of the Israeli army over the Arabs was due to the will of god; and in Iran today the Islamic priests are sending off their armies in the war against Iraq with the blessing of Allah — a blessing which is also given by the Iraqi Moslem priests to their cannon fodder. Admittedly, there are fewer people now than there were a century ago who still believe that history is manipulated by an ever-caring string-puller in the sky. But even the most professedly "radical" of social thinkers still apply the "Great Man" theory to history; for example, there are Trotskyist historians of the Russian Revolution and its outcome who argue that if only Trotsky, and not Stalin, had succeeded Lenin. Russia might have been a "socialist country" today. Then there are the Leftist observers of recent economic history who, instead of examining the inherent economic tendencies of world capitalism, make silly condemnations of "Thatcher's Britain" and "Heseltine's attack on the working class". The Marxist analysis of history shows that it is not individuals who govern the system, but the system which governs individuals.

But if the system governs individuals — if ideas reflect the material environment — if we think as we do because we are as we are, then is it not the case that, far from being a revolutionary theory, Marxism is a profoundly conservative doctrine? Like any revolutionary outlook, Marxism can be perverted into a theory which justifies doing nothing because there is nothing you can do. It is now necessary to show that Marx's conception of history was not only about explaining the past, but provided a revolutionary theory for creating the future. Unlike all other conceptions of history Marxism does not stop at the present.

Let us return to the present, which was the point at which we started: in terms of the productive forces there is a current potentiality to satisy human needs; in terms of the social relations there is mass deprivation of human needs under the capitalist system because use values must come second to exchange values — profits are more important than needs. This, we may say, is the fundamental contradiction of our present stage of history: we could produce for use, but we persist in producing for profit. How did Marx explain this contradiction?

In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will, relations of production which respond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which rises a legal, and political superstructure and to which correspond defi¬nite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come in conflict with the existing relations of production. . . From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an epoch of social revolution. (Marx, Preface to The Critique of Political Economy, 1859)

In the above passage can be seen the crucial weaving together of Marx's theory of history and his theory of revolution. The purpose of present-day Marxists is to apply it to the great social contradiction of the present. "At a certain stage" the forces of production conflict with the relations of production. We are right in the middle of such a stage now. What, then, is the key to the social revolution?

If Marxism was a theory of economic determinism, as most of its critics have suggested, there would be no need to do anything about the social revolution except wait for it. To be sure, there are plenty of so-called Marxists whose ideas of social revolution involve no more than anticipating the imminent collapse of capitalism or looking forward to some far-off day when socialism will "come", like an unexpected gift. However, Marxism without activity is not real Marxism, but a useless dogma — and we know from Marx himself (whose favourite motto was De omnibus dubitandum; Doubt everything) that the role of revolutionaries is not to endlessly survey the world as it is, but to actively change it.

All previous revolutions have changed the world in the interest of a class. The capitalist revolutions in Europe, for example, displaced the old monarchies and aristocracies, with their hereditary privileges and assumptions of divine right, and replaced them with rule of capitalists who obtained their right to live in idleness from the new Holy Trinity of rent, interest and profit. The next revolution will be no different from the others. The class which will expropriate the expropriators will not be another minority ruling class. The working class is a majority class and its role is not to climb from the position of the oppressed to that of the oppressor, but to enact the abolition of classes and oppression. Like all previous revolutionary classes, the working class must conquer the powers of government and the armed forces. But, again unlike previous revolutionary classes, the workers, being a majority, can assert revolutionary power by democratic means.

If workers are to make a social revolution we must make it consciously; history is made by those who are aware of the material conditions which they are in and the real possibilities for immediate revolutionary change. Class ignorance produces dreamers and poets at best, and do-nothings at worst, but never meaningful social change. The need for class consciousness does not mean that ideas make history, but that, because we can only develop within the material conditions that surround us, it is better to have a realistic consciousness of what can be done than an idealistic dream of what is impossible.

Socialism — a world without money or wages or states — is often attacked as being an idealistic dream of the impossible. Even a majority of those on the so-called revolutionary Left regard Marx's conception of socialism as a Utopian fantasy which is not to be realised for at least five hundred years (this was Lenin's view). An understanding of historical materialism shows that, although socialism may be as alien to the people of capitalism as capitalism was to the people of feudalism, there is nothing impossible about human society taking a step forward, out of the contradiction of capitalism and into the new system based on production for use. Indeed, the really unhistorical dreamers are the ones, of both the Right and Left, who want to retain the present system, but hope to eradicate its inevitable chracteristics. It is the gang of confused reformists, who want to preserve the cause while wishing its effects away, who stand as political obstacles to the onward march of history. We Marxists have a history lesson to teach them; what is will not always be, and today's proposals are tomorrow's reality.
S COLEMAN

Socialist Standard March 1983

Marx: a critical view

Although Karl Marx lived and died in the nineteenth century, he probably ranks as the most influential political thinker of the twentieth. To me his influence has been almost entirely evil, and I find it hard to think of any redeeming features. I regard him, with Sigmund Freud (whose work does not concern us here) as a philosophical scourge of the twentieth century.

As a prophet, Marx was false, and his predictions have gone unfulfilled. This would not matter very much if the failure of life and history to fulfil his predictions had deprived him of his actual or potential following; but it is one of the curious features of Marxism that its most abysmal prophetic record tends to be blamed upon the failings of individuals or the vagaries of circumstances instead of being attributed to the author of the prophecies.

Above all, however, the fact that Marxism lies at the root of some of the worst totalist tyrannies of our times — from the Soviet autocracy to the genocidal Pol Pot regime in Kampuchea — strengthens the indictment. It is not a defence to assert that Marx himself would not have approved of such horrors, if only because the assertion is by its nature unprovable. The point is that the seeds of totalism are inherent in the Marxian philosophy. with its millenarian assumptions and its confident assertion of absolute truth.

Determinism and Praxis

As with all absolutist philosophies. Marxism abounds in contradictions. There is, for instance, an inherent contradiction between Marx's determinist view of history as the product of contending economic relationships in which men are involved in a manner "independent of their will" (Critique of Political Economy, 1859), on the one hand; and on the other hand, the notion of "Praxis", which calls upon the philosophers to cease contenting themselves with merely interpreting the world, the point being "to change it" (eleventh of the Theses on Feuerbach, 1845).

The contradiction emerges with still greater clarity in respect of Marx's uncompromising forecast that capitalism will collapse under the weight of its own contradictions, to be succeeded by socialism.

For if socialism is inevitable, because determined by scientific laws independent of men's will, then there is no need for the expectant to do anything but await its coming. Marx, however, expected his followers to do everything they could to make the prophecies come true, to hasten the breakdown of capitalism and the advent of revolution.

This expectation, in line with the idea of "Praxis", has been responsible for more revolutionary violence and avoidable suffering than any other idea of Karl Marx's. In fact, capitalism has nowhere collapsed spontaneously, even when subjected to great strains and stresses. Even in Russia, it was not "capitalism" (which had been flourishing under the Tsars) that collapsed, but the Tsarist system. Lenin abolished capitalism by decree after his little gang of followers had ousted the liberal/democratic Provisional government of Alexander Kerensky.

Since 1917, the story has been repeated dozens of times: never a spontaneous collapse, always the outcome of force. This is as true of Stalin's East European empire, as of Mao Tse-tung's victory in China, or the conquest of South Vietnam in 1975. or the imposition of communism in South Yemen. Ethiopia and Afghanistan. It was Lenin who developed effective techniques for violent revolution: but the violence, and all that ensued, was inherent in Marx's Praxis.

False Prophecies

One of the most demonstrably untrue of Marx's predictions was the coming "absolute pauperisation of the workers". I shall not attempt here to refute Karl Marx's strictly economic theories, which others better qualified than I have done repeatedly. However. Marx fell into the trap of extrapolating from the present and drawing conclusions which later events proved to have been quite unfounded. He argued in Capital that competition would drive capitalists to accumulate capital, which would become concentrated in monopolistic cartels and trusts. Labour-saving devices and machines would create unemployment by reducing the need for hired hands. But this also would reduce capitalist profits, obliging the capitalists to intensify their exploitation of the workers, whom unemployment forced to work on progressively more disadvantageous terms. Faced with "pauperisation", the masses, in their misery, would be forced to unite and overthrow the system.

The best short answer to this prophecy of workers' doom is the visual one made available to Khrushchev on his visit to the United States in 1959, when he was shown the parked cars of the car workers in Detroit, which, it is said, came as a shock to him.

By whatever measuring rod, it is a fact that not only has there been no inexorable pauperisation of the workers under capitalism, but on the contrary that their living standards have risen consistently. Moreover, the living standards of the workers in the United States and in any West European country are far higher than they are in the Soviet Union after 65 years of Marxist-based socialism. Something has gone wrong somewhere.

Another expectation — an expectation, perhaps, rather than a prophecy — that went awry was the belief that the revolution would start in an advanced capitalist State. Marx had Britain in mind. In fact, it took place in Russia, one of the more backward countries in Europe, in industrial terms.

The Class Struggle

Perhaps the most pernicious of Marx's doctrines is the class struggle. Starkly expressed in The Communist Manifesto of 1848, of which Friedrich Engels was the co-author, it trades upon envy and is a permanent incitement to violence and conflict.

Ultimately the doctrine sanctifies the so-called "dictatorship of the proletariat", in other words the autocracy of the single ruling party in the name of the working class. Translated into international terms, it becomes "the international class struggle"; in other words, what the Soviet rulers call "peaceful co-existence" and those at the receiving end term "the cold war". As the final Resolution of the Conference of 81 Communist Parties of November 1960 put it, peaceful co-existence "implies the intensification of the international class struggle".

The duty to support "national liberation movements", as sanctified by the doctrine of the class struggle is enshrined in the current (1977) Constitution of the USSR.

The Dialectic

In theory, Marxism is a materialistic set of doctrines and dogmas, denying the existence of a God and seeking materialist solutions to the world's problems by the correct application of the "scientific" laws of history, as discovered by Karl Marx. Yet, the Hegelian dialectic of "thesis, antithesis and synthesis", upon which the Marxist hypothesis rests is pure mysticism.

Borrowing from Hegel (who in turn had borrowed from Plato) Marx arbitrarily decided that feudalism was the thesis, changing by degrees until it was replaced by capitalism, its antithesis. Capitalism was in turn destined to develop increasing contradictions until in the end it yielded to the "synthesis" of socialism. Once socialism has been reached, contradictions are eliminated, this being the Marxian version of Hegel's Absolute.

This, however, is a totally unscientific approach to the study of history. Why, for instance, start with feudalism? Why not with imperial Rome, or Chinese despotism, or the Egyptian theocratic State? Capitalism, moreover, did not spring whole into the world as the "antithesis" or "negation" of feudalism, but as the outcome of a complex process that included the violent disproof of the divine right of kings, the decadence of Rome and the emergence of the Puritan ethic, new inventions, the spirit of inquiry of the Renaissance, and so forth.

Nor has "socialism", in practice, proved in any sense a synthesis or an Absolute. While socialism was being imposed upon the Soviet peoples at the cost of millions of lives and total loss of liberty, capitalism was weathering the great crisis of the Depression, finding its self-correcting mechanisms and raising living standards in contradiction of all Marx's expectations.

Life itself, to borrow Khrushchev's favourite phrase, is the disproof of Karl Marx's philosophy.
Why then, do tens of thousands still flock to the banner of a discredited prophet? The answer, I believe, must lie in the continued need for religion, in the widest sense, in an age of scientific scepticism. Marx, to the uncritical, offers certainty. It matters little, to the millenarian mind, that his prophecies lie in ruins or that his doctrine has produced monstrous tyrannies wherever it has been applied. It is not the doctrine that is wrong: the fault lies with the character defects of the tyrants that have followed Lenin's example: with Stalin, with Mao. There is a search for other Gods: although Fidel Castro's failure is as complete as that of any other Marxist-Leninist, attempts are made to cling to the myth of his relative purity.

Just give us a chance, say the Marxist fundamentalists, and we shall succeed where others have failed. For the sake of humanity, it is devoutly to be hoped that they will be denied the opportunity to try.
Brian Crozier

Reply: Marxism Defended
The statement that Marx "probably ranks as the most influential political thinker of the twentieth century" and that this has been "almost entirely evil" is based on an alleged impact of Marxism on aspects of the present world which is asserted, but in no way substantiated. That "Marxism lies at the root of some of the worst totalist tyrannies of our time" is an oft-repeated attack on the ideas of Marx, but one which Brian Crozier makes not the slightest effort to prove. Indeed, there are many tyrannous regimes in the world; not all of them make any claim to be "Marxist", and it is notable that anti-Marxists are usually conspicuously silent about the tyrannous dictatorships in Chile, El Salvador, Paraguay. Pakistan, South Africa and Turkey. But what of the totalitarian dictatorships in Russia, Eastern Europe, China, Albania and Cuba? The dictators in these countries pay lip service to some perverse notion called Marxist-Leninism — just as other tyrants pay lip service to Christianity or Islam — but it is not because of this ideological lip service that "the Soviet autocracy and the genocidal Pol Pot regime in Kampuchea" behave tyrannously. These countries are state capitalist and the oppression which characterises them is not the result of Karl Marx's analysis of capitalism, but of their need to exploit their workers in accordance with the needs of the very capitalist system which Marxism opposes. Far from being examples of something other than capitalism, the state capitalist dictatorships are extra stains on the social system which its supporters, like Brian Crozier, aim to whitewash. Mr. Crozier is right that Marx would not have approved of the horrors of the regimes which pay lip service to him — but it would be with more than hindsight that Marx and Engels could now state that state capitalism is not socialism. As Engels wrote in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific:

The modern State, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it pro¬ceeds to the taking over of the productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage workers — proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is rather brought to a head. (Our emphasis.)

On the basis of that — and other similar statements by Marx and Engels — how can anyone claim that Marxism supports centralised, state ownership and control of capital? It would be true to accuse Leninism of such an aim, but Mr. Crozier mistakenly states that Marxism, as opposed to Leninism, "lies at the root" of the state capitalist regimes.

Marxism, unlike the Idealist philosophies which speak of absolute truths, is notable for its historical relativism. Marx was not a socialist because socialism is an absolutist Utopia to be striven for, but because the next stage in social history is a necessary solution to the contradictions of the present. Far from basing his thinking on absolute certainty, Marx's very wise motto was "Doubt Everything".

Determinism and Praxis

"Marxism", we are informed, "abounds in contradictions". Incorrect — Marxism explains social contradictions, between social existence and material, historical potentiality. To examine and solve contradictions is not be contradictory; in other words, contradiction is the object of the Marxist study. Brian Crozier's suggestion that there is an "inherent contradiction" between determinism and consciousness does not show that Marx was illogical, but that Marx's dialectical materialist understanding enabled him to see that history cannot be explained either entirely in terms of fixed determinism or entirely in terms of human will. Would Mr. Crozier not agree that certain social relations involve humans "independent of their will" (those imposed by the social environment into which we are born and conditioned) and others can be brought about by human beings consciously creating them? All that Marx was saying is that there is a massive contradiction between what is and what could be; only conscious human action can resolve that contradiction.

But let us get down to the crux of our critic's confused attack. Would it be fair of us to suggest that he has attacked the social analyses made by Marx without reading them? He tells us that he will not refute "Marx's strictly economic theories, which others better qualified than I have done repeatedly". We are entitled to expect Mr. Crozier to tell us who these great experts are who have refuted Marxist political economy — where are their detailed refutations of Capital to be found; in what way have they demonstrated that Marx was wrong about value and profits and wages and inflation and unemployment and trade cycles? If they have managed to "refute" the economic thinker whom Mr. Crozier regards as the most influential of this century, where are they hiding with their words of capitalist wisdom? According to Brian Crozier, Marx predicted that "capitalism will collapse under the weight of its own contradictions, to be succeeded by socialism". We have searched the collected volumes of Marx for this alleged prediction, but like the critics who have refuted Marxist economics, it is nowhere to be found. Marx did not forecast the collapse of capitalism. A Socialist Party pamphlet published in February 1932 pointed out that

Workers who have accepted the wrong and lazy idea of collapse have neglected many activities that are absolutely essential. They have taken up the fatalistic attitude of waiting tor the system to end itself. But the system is not so obliging!

The collapse theory, when advanced by people calling themselves Marxists, is based on the illusion that there are no counter-tendencies to the falling rate of profit. In dealing with the nature of crises Marx points out that these will not cause the collapse of capitalism. In his Theories of Surplus Value Marx categorically states that "Permanent crises do not exist" (p. 497). If. as Mr. Crozier mistakenly states, Marxists believed that capitalism will collapse and socialism is inevitable, "there would be no need for the expectant to do anything but await its coming". But unlike those who are waiting for the Messiah to come down to earth (and presumably be crucified by the Daily Telegraph readers who applaud Mr. Crozier's articles about the need to preserve the status quo) Marxists are not in the business of waiting for the revolution to make itself.

Brian Crozier talks about the "revolutionary violence and avoidable suffering" of recent history as if it somehow demonstrates that Marx was mistaken about something. But the violent changes to which Mr. Crozier refers were consequences of the rise of capitalism in backward countries. For 1917 in Russia read 1798 in France; Engels predicted that a Russian Revolution would be a repeat of 1798. The Bolshevik revolution did not see the destruction of capitalism in Russia, but the beginning of state capitalism.

False Prophecies

We are told that "one of the most demonstrably untrue of Marx's predictions was the coming 'absolute pauperisation' of the workers". Let us put Marx's theory into context; in Wage Labour and Capital he wrote that

A house may be large or small, as long as the surrounding houses are equally small it satisfies all the demands for a dwelling. But let a palace arise beside the little house, and it shrinks from a little house to a hut. The little house shows now that its owner has only very slight or no demands to make; and however high it may shoot up in the course of civilisation, if the neighbouring palace grows an equal or even greater extent, the occupant of the relatively small house will feel more and more uncomfortable. dissatisfied and cramped within its four walls.

In the same pamphlet Marx pointed out that improvement in the worker's material existence "does not remove the antagonism between his interests and . . . the interests of the capitalists". Higher wages do not alter this: "In proportion as capital accumulates, the lot of the labourer, be his payment high or low, must grow worse" (Capital Vol. I, Chap. XXV, p. 645). The fact is that, compared with the potential which now exists for meeting human needs, we are living in a society which faces not only the same social problems as existed fifty and a hundred years ago (starvation, bad housing, poor hospital facilities, unemployment, deprivation), but new, more awful ones: chemical pollution, racism, the nuclear threat, state secrecy using computers, numerous conventional wars using new weapons of mass killing, widespread street crime. The lot of the workers has grown worse. Similarly, Marx's prediction that capital would become increasingly concentrated in fewer and fewer hands has come true.

Poverty has led to widespread working class discontent, but not yet to a working class which is conscious of the need for socialism. The tinny motor cars which Mr. Crozier cites as evidence of working class affluence, like the mortgages and mock-Tudor front doore w hich some workers acquire, may have shocked Khrushchev, but they do not hide the essential poverty of the class which produces all the wealth of society but who, in general, can only afford to consume the second-rate trash. Poverty is not the absence of a Ford Fiesta or a Sony Hi Fi, but is the social alienation of the wealth producing class from the means of wealth production and distribution. If Mr. Crozier is sure that such poverty is "demonstrably untrue" he could tell us how the 80 per cent of the British population who own between them less of the accumulated wealth than the richest 1 per cent are "demonstrably" affluent?

Incidentally, Brian Crozier is quite incorrect when he states that Marx has been proved wrong in his "belief that the revolution would start in an advanced capitalist state". There has yet to be a socialist revolution, so Marx can hardly have been proved right or wrong.

The Class Struggle

"Perhaps the most pernicious of Marx's doctrines", we are told, "is the class struggle." We are informed that the theory of the class struggle is based on envy and incites violence and conflict. Anyone would think that violence and conflict would be absent from capitalist society unless wicked Marxists invented class division! The opposite is the case: it is the existence of a society in which there are classes which produce social antagonism, often violent. It is impossible to have a society in which the privileged minority monoplises the means of living and the wealth producers are reduced to wage slavery without serious and ceaseless conflict. The Murder Squad do not commit the murders they investigate; Marxists do not invent the class struggle which we experience. Envy will be eradicated by abolishing poverty. If Brian Crozier is as opposed to class conflict as he claims — and as Marxists are — why does he oppose the only political movement in existence which aims to establish a classless society?

It is absurd to suggest that Marxism "sanctifies" the autocracy "of a single ruling party in the name of the working class". Marx's whole political outlook was a reflection of his view that "the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class themselves". The Socialist Party of Great Britain, which shares the view of Marx, has never once condoned or ceased to expose parties which rule in the name of the workers. Marxists stand for worldwide democracy — the ownership and control of the earth and everything in it and on it by its inhabitants. That has nothing to do with dictatorship, either of the party or the board room.

Brian Crozier's reference to Russian foreign policy has nothing to do with Marx or Marxism. The rivalry between NATO — representing western capitalism — and the Warsaw Pact — representing eastern capitalism — is a product of the market system which Marx opposed and Crozier accepts.

The Dialectic

Like most critics of Marxism, Brian Crozier is baffled by the theory of historical materialism. It is anything but a dogma. Materialists do deny the existence of god, just as we deny the existence of fairies, pink elephants and other invisible and supernatural creations of human fantasy.

Marx's philosophical writings, far from being based on Hegel's "pure mysticism", rejected Hegelian metaphysics. Again, it is utterly mistaken of Mr. Crozier to suggest that Marx's analysis of historical development started with feudalism. In his Preface to the Critique of Political Economy Marx refers to "Asiatic, Ancient, feudal and modern capitalist modes of production".
Engels' great work, Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, can hardly be said to consider history to start with feudalism. "Capitalism . . . did not spring whole into the world" writes Brian Crozier. Of course not; neither did feudalism or the ideas of Marx or even Brian Crozier himself— all things evolve. Capitalism, as a network of social relationships, did replace feudalism as a social order; one does not have to take the word of Marx or the Socialist Party on this — virtually all reputable historians will verify it. In saying that socialism will replace capitalism Marxists are not predicting an absolute synthesis — whatever that would be — but a movement in social evolution. Socialism will not be a static, absolute society; it will develop in line with material needs and possibilities.

Conclusion

Why do workers become Marxists? Brian Crozier suggests that tens of thousands flock to the banner of Marxism because it is a new, secular religion offering dogmatic certainty about the world. Perhaps some workers do seek dogmatic certainty in Marxism, but in so doing they are not Marxists. Many workers claim to be flocking to Marxism, but are, in fact, rushing enthusiastically towards ideological platforms which, knowingly or otherwise, perpetuate the capitalist social order. Similarly, many so-called critics of Marx and modern Marxists are not criticising anything but a bogus caricature of the socialist case. The failure of millions of workers to become Marxists has much to do with the fact that it does not provide dogmatic certainty and god-like leadership. The strong conditioning towards working class passivity has made the politics of revolutionary conscious action seem unattractive and frightening for many workers. At the moment the majority of workers are willing to leave the historical driving seat to those, like Brian Crozier and his fellow apologists for capitalism, whom they foolishly think will know what is best for society. For the sake of the working class, let us hope that many workers will study Mr. Crozier's manifestation of his political wisdom and draw from it the obvious lesson that the case against Marxism is unproven — and probably unprovable.
S COLEMAN

Socialist Standard March 1983

Questions of the Day (part 13)

Human nature

ONE OF THE PRINCIPAL objections to Socialism is the frequently expressed claim that human nature is such that people as a whole have never acted, and will never act, in an entirely co-operative manner; that for instance, greed, ambition, cruelty and the like are fundamental human traits. It is argued that each human being will do whatever is to his own immediate advantage, regardless of the effect his actions may have upon others and, ultimately, the effect they may have upon himself. Some contemporary illustrations, some guesswork about the past and some misconceptions about the future, are then put forward as evidence in support of the contention. As soon as this evidence is examined it becomes plain that the case against Socialism on this ground, is built upon practices that are uncritically accepted as if essential for all time.

That such views should be widespread amongst all sections of the population, no matter the class or the occupation of the holders is a striking commentary on the nature of the education most people receive. It leaves them completely unaware of the significance of the changes in ideas that have occurred in the recent past, and even in the lifetime of their own generation. It should be apparent that ideas which were taken for granted as universally true not very long ago would now be laughed at; ideas such as the divine right of kings; that women were incapable of taking part in social affairs along with men; that working men were incapable of taking part in government: that the British Empire was invulnerable; and so on. Yet in spite of this, and in spite of the vast accumulation of information to the contrary, resulting from the investigations of anthropologists and historians, it is still widely accepted that the acquisition of property is the only course for mankind. That social existence is impossible without money, wages, profits, the State, frontiers, wars and all the other paraphernalia that drive us to distraction today.

When we examine the meaning usually attributed to the term 'human nature' we find that the objectors lump together under this heading acts that are today regarded as anti-social. Human nature is looked upon as fundamentally bad (a carry-over from the theological dogma of original sin), and it is assumed that people commit anti-social acts because 'they are born that way'. Many of those who put forward this view contradict it by urging that the growth of religion, or 'civilising influences', will help eradicate 'evil' conduct. However, the main things people are born to do are to eat, drink, keep warm, imitate, copulate and learn. The relations they enter into with each other at a given time to accomplish these ends set the pattern for the social outlook and the social code. Those who depart from this accepted code, although they may start the movement for a new pattern, are considered to be anti-social or criminal in great or small degree. In the course of history humanity has moved from relative simplicity in the social arrangements. It has moved from a world of isolated communities into a world of large interconnected industrial complexes. But through all the changes the fundamental characteristics of humanity have remained the same; the spur to action has been the probing and planning based on these fundamental characteristics. What people think and how they act is not the result of fundamental ineradicable instincts, but is the result of customs, regulations and inhibitions that spring from the social environment in which people of succeeding centuries have had to solve the problem of living. In other words, that people are able to think and act is a fact of biological and social development, but how they think and act is the result of social conditions. Since private property came into existence, the pursuit of riches has bred murder, cruelty, fraud, enmity and other anti-social behaviour.

The thoughts and actions of human beings are influenced by their surroundings, which include customary traditions, the education they have received, their living conditions and the other people they have met. The present social arrangements and outlooks are only temporary and are associated with social conditions that can be changed. The duke and the dustman, the millionaire and the mechanic, the tycoon and the counter-hand, the oil king and the labourer; all are separated by barriers that are artificial social barriers that have grown up during centuries of the development of property society.

Ideas are not just a mechanical reflection of technological processes. In doing things in a certain way men, over a long or short period, see methods of changing these ways that are better, or that they think are better, and it is this that leads to changes in the technological processes. In other words, the process of history is the result of an interchange between man and his environment. It is man who makes the changes; but he can only make them out of the material that is at hand and part of this material, in the form of traditions from the past, slows the pace of change.
There has been little discernible change in the fundamental make-up of man yet there have been considerable changes in social conduct corresponding to the changes in social conditions. Changed social conditions have been responsible for the changes in attitude towards acts that are identical. For example, stealing today is looked upon as a criminal act whereas in the ancient Greek city state of Sparta stealing was a virtue and was taught to the young.

A brief glance at history will reveal how great has been the change in social attitudes towards people. In the days of classical antiquity one section of mankind, the slaves, were chattels, and in the much-lauded democracies of those days they were left entirely out of account. In the Middle Ages land was the great source of riches and money-lending was frowned on. The serf was no longer a chattel, but he was tied to the land and to his lord, and if he ran away he could be forcibly brought back. In our day money is the hallmark of social standing and will buy almost everything — beauty, honour, titles and position, yet as late as Jane Austen's day, to be engaged in a trade, put a man outside the circle of gentlemen: and who, in Victorian times, would have dreamt of a miner or a boilermaker rising to the eminence of a knighthood or the House of Lords, or a relative of a royal family serving in a shop or a fashion house?

The objector will often readily agree that Socialism is a desirable system but he argues that it will be impossible to achieve because of the 'human nature' barrier. (We rarely encounter the objector who considers his own 'human nature' standing in the way of Socialism — almost always it is other people's.) It is urged that it will be impossible to get people as a whole to work together to their mutual advantage because man is selfish by nature, and each individual wants to get the better of the other, to get the lion's share of whatever is going. As to the assumption of selfishness, we would point to the thousands of people who give selfless devotion in all manner of voluntary effort including work for political parties. Let us, however, look at the matter from another aspect. In a socialist society where each would be free to take what he needs there will be no point in anyone trying to get more.

The very people who argue that the fundamental and ineradicable nature of human characteristics make Socialism impossible, are themselves often engaged in propagating reforms the object of which is to remove conditions that are believed to be responsible for certain forms of objectionable conduct — thus their own actions refute their claim that Socialism is impossible.

Finally, man's curiosity and humanity make him an essentially reasonable being: when he is free of artificial barriers he readily works in harmony with his fellows. Even within the limits of the present social order there are innumerable examples of the extent to which men are prepared to make sacrifices, even of liberty and life, in the effort to help their fellows.

The selfish, cruel, anti-social conduct that is laid at the door of human nature is really only conduct that is the outcome of systems based on private property, which compel people to engage in predatory conduct in order to survive. What else can be expected in the present social system where one section of the population monopolises the means for producing the things that are needed by all, while another section is forced to work for the privileged minority in order to obtain the necessities of life?

Once class monopoly is abolished and replaced by the common ownership of the means of living, that is, when all that is in and on the earth becomes the common possession of all mankind, people will willingly co-operate in harmonious association for their mutual benefit just because it is 'human nature' to seek that which contributes to personal wellbeing.

Further Reading

Are We Prisoners of Our Genes?
Some Notes on Man's Social Nature SPGB education document
After Bulger Socialist Standard 1994 (.pdf)