Must Socialism Wait for the Last Hottentot?

Many people who—without being Socialists—have seen that the future of the human race lies in the direction of international organisation are worried and perplexed by the problem of the “backward races.” Forgetful of the processes by which their own opinions were changed and their knowledge enlarged, they look with dismay at the seeming hopelessness of converting the rest of the population. As one “young man in a hurry,” who later drifted into Fascism, used to ask, “Must we wait for Socialism until the last Hottentot has been converted ?” At present nobody worries about the Hottentots and other dark-skinned peoples, for the apprehension has taken a new twist. Now we are asked how the world can ever deal with the savage Germans and jackal Italians and other low-grade peoples who have fallen into the absurdities and brutalities of Fascism. For their part, of course, Germans and Italians who have swallowed the racial dogmas of their leaders despise the supposedly degenerate supporters of democracy and loathe the Jews. Taking a short view, the outlook for Internationalism and Socialism may look black, but actually the widespread character of these theories of racial inferiority, and the multiplicity of changes they undergo from time to time, are a good indication that the whole conception is false and will not endure. If history could show that the majority of the human race had been consistent in its belief that some one section was inherently inferior there would be a case to look into. Instead, history shows no agreement, no consistency. The sub-human races of one day are the esteemed brothers in arms of the next, and each new generation has disproved the judgments of the last. In our own century there have been wiseacres who have said that the Slav races (notably the Russians) are incapable of acquiring the mechanical knowledge and skill of the Latins and Teutonic peoples of Western Europe; just as, less than a century ago, it was confidently prophesied that the Germans were incapable of catching up the industrial development that had gone ahead in Britain and France. Latterly the view was that the yellow and black races were inferior to the white in this matter of mechanical and inventive skill. Japan and China and India have disposed of that view, and the present war has shown North American Indians, Maoris, Indians, East and West Africans, and many others acquiring all the knowledge and training required in the handling of the mechanical marvels of modern war.

Only a few months ago the following report appeared in the Times of the training of Abyssinians to operate telegraph systems :

“One of the most curious and impressive sights in Addis Ababa at present is that of 200 young Ethiopians, with hardly a word of English between them, who are being initiated into the arts and mysteries of telegraphy by half a dozen British n.c.o.s of the Royal Corps of Signals. These pupils are destined to form the nucleus of both the new Ethiopian Telegraph Service and a signal company in the Ethiopian Army.
A few of them have had some slight experience of the matter during the period before the Italians were evicted, but most are complete novices. Nevertheless, after eight weeks’ training, a handful are already sufficiently advanced to be employed as assistant wireless operators, while others are out reconstructing the telegraph lines destroyed during the war, under the supervision of British signallers.”—”Times,” August 27th, 1941.

It will be said truly enough that mechanical skill and capacity is only part of the problem. What about the other qualities, without which the smooth working of a world social system based on common ownership is unthinkable ? How can peoples co-operate who are given to aggression and filled with a desire to dominate those weaker than themselves ? To which the answer is that these are not inherent, racial characteristics. There are no peoples or groups which would not acquire them under appropriate conditions and were incapable of shedding them with changed conditions and greater knowledge. Take the Italians who have supported or condoned Fascist intolerance and imperialist brutality. By general agreement the Italians were regarded, to use the phrase of a recent book on Italy, as “one of the most kindly and tolerant peoples on earth.” It was stated in the Press only last month that Italian prisoners of war in a camp in England refused to draw their small pay on All Saints’ Day. They asked that it be given to the poor in a neighbouring village, “especially to any poor families who have lost men in the present war” (Times, November 21st, 1941). Will anyone who knows the Italian workers and their past record of loyalty to the earlier attempts to form international working-class movements believe them incapable of playing their part in the future, on the ground that they fell into the common error of trying to solve the problems of capitalism by the road of dictatorship and colonial conquest ?

The truth is that, no matter how much the conduct of human beings may deteriorate under bad conditions, nor what mistakes workers may make in their search for a way out of the chaos in which the world finds itself, there are no nations or races in which the suppressed class have been or can be permanently robbed of the desire to understand and to learn. What Mr. H. G. Wells wrote of young people in this country is true, at least in large measure, of adults here and everywhere else. “Most people want to learn,” he wrote. “Put the stuff attractively before your new generation and they will take it greedily, just as they will grow healthily if wholesome food is put within their reach” (Sunday Dispatch, November 23rd).

One nation learns from another, and one group of workers learns from another as well as from their own experience. If we who are Socialists look after the task of teaching Socialism, we shall not in the long run have to trouble overmuch about the so-called backward or degenerate races.

(Editorial, Socialist Standard, December 1941)