The Judgment of Joad
It is most lamentable that Socialists, in their long and arduous struggle to dispel working-class political ignorance, receive hindrance rather than help from those acclaimed by many as intellectual leaders. In April’s SOCIALIST STANDARD we referred to the shortcomings of Mr. George Bernard Shaw on the subject of Socialism, and now we feel impelled to pass judgment on Dr. C. E. M. Joad. Writing in’ the New Statesman and Nation, for May 3rd last, in an article, “The Wheel Comes Full Circle (II),” he observes:
“It is one of my most profoundly held convictions that the methods for the achievement of Socialism which have been fashionable during the last twenty years . . . can be productive of no good thing.”
He accordingly welcomes the “renewed intrusion of ethical concepts into political and more particularly into socialist, political thinking,” and one of his conclusions is that “there is a definite relation between Socialism, as my generation were brought up to understand it, and the values of ethics and the virtues of Christianity.”
Let us make it clear to Dr. Joad, that if his concept of Socialism be accepted by the rest of his generation, then neither he nor they were brought up to understand it, and, as evidence, let us quote again from his article :
“In my last article I described the conceptions which have increasingly dominated Communists, and we may add Socialists—for what Socialism has there been in England during the last twenty years, save that of Communism?—in the period between the two wars. And now again there is a change. John Strachey writes a book which appeals to faith in the name of love. . .”
With absolute confidence we defy Dr. Joad, or anyone else, to prove, (a) that the Communist Party has even been Socialist; (b) that Mr. John Strachey has even been a Socialist; (c) that there has at any time been a Socialist organisation in this country other than the Socialist Party of Great Britain.
Let us offer Dr. Joad further information regarding Socialism, so that he may know that the hope for humanity lies there, and there alone, and not in those doctrines he falsely conceives to be Socialist, nor yet in the Christian approach.
Dr. Joad argues that “Socialist” methods are fallacious because one cannot “be sufficiently sure one is right to justify one in the infliction of untold suffering in the present to make straight the way of the future,” and because human beings are corrupted by power. We share his aversion from the “authoritarian dogmatism” of these methods; but they have nothing to do with Socialism, neither has “the ordering and ruling of human beings.” Socialism cannot be till society consciously desires it. Violence will not achieve it, and consequently there will be no need of power to impose it.
Regarding his suggested alternative, Dr. Joad mentions without a trace of rebuke the Oxford Union tenet, that an essential condition of world reconstruction is a “return to God through organised religion.” (Italics ours.) Does he not realise that the State, instrument of man’s oppression by man, was even in early times essentially theistic, and that organised religion—including such as the Catholic overlords of Spanish workers and the Church of England landlords of London slums—is a potent factor in that oppressioin ? What, one may well ask, has this to do with “love, kindliness, respect for the individual” ?
Assuming Dr. Joad really means Christianity, then we may reply that while Socialism will be the practical realisation of “Love thy neighbour as thyself” (whereas capitalism is its antithesis), yet the Christian belief leads men not only to seek salvation apart from this earth, but also to feel that the patient endurance of hardship will speed that salvation. It contends, too, that if man is to have material emancipation here, it must be consequent upon his moral reform.
Particularly apposite is Dr. Joad’s comment that the record of two thousand years of ethical incentives to the betterment of society “is not encouraging.” He tries to argue away this point. Fails. Gladiatorial games and duelling have gone, yet the slaughter of man by man is surely more prevalent in the world than ever before. Wars may be condemned, but the condemnation is generally utilitarian rather than principled. No longer is there persecution for witchcraft; yet in its place we have widespread maltreatment of the workers who struggle for a better world.
Concluding his plea for ethical considerations, Dr. Joad states: “I do not think the appeal to moral values is always futile.” Let him observe that war and other capitalist evils which beset us are invariably bound up with appeals to moral values.
We strive for Socialism—common ownership and democratic control of the means of life—not because it is moral, ethical, virtuous, or seemingly eligible for any other relative abstract description, but because it is a scientifically demonstrable social and economic necessity.
RICHARD TATHAM