Hi alloallo3, and thank you for these considered comments. Let me first of all say how sorry I am that your trip to Britain some thirty years ago was an unpleasant one in certain ways. Unlike Colonial pursuits in far off lands, omelette making has never been a British strong point. It is good news however, to learn that your return trip did much for your hitherto shattered confidence in just about everything British.
Before addressing your specific points relating to the essay to-hand however, I really feel I must correct the few illusions you so clearly hold about British life in the twenty-first century. You make the following assertions:
"While I have returned to England a few times in the intervening years, let's look at the circumstance I found in England in the summer of 2006, 30 years following my first introduction to Great Britain...The British standard of living now matches or exceeds that of the United States. It has become a fantastically wealthy nation".
Now then, it is true that Britain's GDP has generally increased over the past thirty years (I assume you have GDP in mind when you assert that Britain is a 'fantastically wealthy nation' because GDP is one contemporary common measure of an industrial nation's wealth) but that is not the whole story. Merely to make such a descriptive claim and then to illustrate it with what can only be described as anecdotes, is rather misleading. In short, it glosses over the reality of the situation. For example, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) records Britain's latest government debt figures; "At the end of March 2007 general government debt was £574.4 billion, equivalent to 42.6 per cent of GDP". That's one hell of a lot of debt for a 'wealthy nation' don't you think? Similarly, the same source (the ONS is effectively government run and widely accepted as one of the most reliable sources of quantitative data in the UK) shows that "[t]he wealthiest 1 per cent [here in Britain] owned approximately a fifth of the UK's marketable wealth in 2003. In contrast, half the population shared only 7 per cent of total wealth". In other words, it is one thing to assert that a nation is wealthy, while it is quite another to say that a nation's collective wealth is rationally distributed in a disinterested fashion, and to meet the material and cultural needs of all in society (an impossibility under conditions of capitalism of course).
Again, the ONS shows quite clearly that "[i]n August 2003, 2.8 million children were living in families claiming a key benefit"and that "[i]n 2004-05, 16 per cent of the population in Great Britain lived in low income households". The fact that this is so in one of the so-called richest countries in the western hemisphere seems to bother no one. It is my considered opinion therefore, that your bald assertion that Britain is 'fantastically wealthy' serves only to disguise the reality of the situation. And there are plenty more examples from a range of sources other than the ONS which stand to support my view. Moreover, your claim about Britain's wealth says nothing about how such wealth is generated in the first place, namely through the exploitation of human beings. Yours is essentially an assertion about the concept of 'wealth', largely in abstraction from the realities of concrete society. America is fantastically wealthy too of course, and much like Britain, it too, has its fair share of poverty, low income families, an all-but-absent health service and so on. Again, in such a rich country, these kinds of anomalies seem to bother but a tiny minority at the present time.
I think it is useful to point out as well, that while individuals do indeed make a contribution to human history, it is society at large that makes change possible / happen and not merely the individual. You talk of 'leaders' and 'individual greatness'; you speak in particular of Margaret Thatcher and Winston Churchill. You even go as far as to suggest that because of the British chooing the right 'leader', they have largely escaped the clutches of poverty since WWII. Notwithstanding the fact that poverty has never left capitalistic British society (or any other capitalist society for that matter), I feel obliged to say that this kind of reasoning, again, is somewhat flawed and misleading. For it implies that social development is essentially a consequence of the accidental characteristics of one or other individual. It is beyond question that individuals play their particular part in influencing social, cultural, economic and political happenings. It is equally beyond question that social development is not essentially determined by great individuals but by the movement of antagonistic classes of people. And classes of people require leaders for various purposes. In this sense, exceptional individuals play a role as a representative of one or other class of people. Indeed, when Thatcher was deemed to be no longer of any use by / to the class she represented, out she went. Thatcher was, above all else, an intellectual representative of the ruling capitalist class here in Britain and when here particular views clashed with the general views and aspirations of the class she represented, she fell as an individual.
Moreover, I think that here too, you try (consciously or otherwise) to idealise Thatcher in particular, considering her in abstraction from reality. According to Hannah Sell for example, in her book 'Socialism in the 21st Century' (2006, p.6), by 1987, Margaret Thatcher, in her capacity as Prime Minister, had presided over cuts to the welfare state of more than £12 billion. When there is no such thing as human society of course, as Thatcher asserted, then such cuts appear wholly rational, nay necessary. Sell continues; "as a result [of these cuts], basic state benefits for the unemployed covered only 55% of the basic necessities of life. The number of working poor...increased by 300%...[Thatcher's] 'home-owning democracy'...led to a 300% increase in private-sector rents and a 100% increase in...[social housing]...rents. [Meanwhile, a] state pension which provided the bare minimums of life in old age, council housing for those who could not afford (or did not want) to buy, and the right of 16 and 17 year-olds to claim benefits, all this and more was taken away". As for the more fortunate individuals in 1980's conservative Britain, again, data drawn from Sell is revealing. She argues that "the money that Thatcher saved [from her draconian welfare cuts] was poured into the pockets of the very rich. One tax cut alone gave the richest 550,000 an extra £33,000 a year each".
Finally here, I think your point that "the problem with Marxist thought it that it has to squeeze the entire human condition into an economic model" is a little unfair. Before people can do anything, they must socially organise as their only means of producing and reproducing the basic means of life. It is therefore credible to argue that everything that arises in society is bound to be conditioned by this historical economic pattern. Cultural life, political life, social life, all this is conditioned in its own way by the economic pattern. This is not the same as saying that economic factors determine all. It is thought in the last analysis that determines all and it does so in definite material circumstances. Thus, in the English Revolution, people were prepared to, and indeed did die for their various religious beliefs. But the reality underpinning such religious thinking was the ongoing transformation of the feudal order in English society to that of a capitalistic society. In other words, Christian ideas were a reflection of the material conditions of economic life. I think if anything, capitalist society is open to the charge of being hopelessly determined. For example, print too much money and the currency value changes. Capitalist society always produces unemployment. Capitalist society is always threatened by the spector of inflation. Capitalist society is always prone to economic crisis. These kinds of things are unavoidable under conditions of capitalism. Bankers, accountants, politicians etc merely react to such measures day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year without ever understanding the root material cause for why such phenomena arise, namely the contradiction in society based on class antagonisms.
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So now let me address your particular points relating to my essay proper, numbered by you one - four. Logic suggests I should begin with point number one. The first criticism you make relates to my claim about the division of labour under conditions of capitalism and the further suggested division of human capacities that results. You take issue with this point and draw on events in Ireland to illustrate your belief that people do indeed change their economic activities. You supplement this reference to Ireland with an interesting anecdote. However, I fear that the essential point has been misunderstood. I never once suggested that people's economic activities stay the same in the sense that society does not evolve economically. To have done so would have been silly. Indeed, in the closing paragraph of the essay's section concerning the division of labour, when setting out Marx's general view on all this, I explicitly state that since Marx's time. the socio-economic categories may have changed somewhat, but the principle of necessary economic specialisation remains as good now as it ever was. Thus, instead of a hunter, fisherman, critic or shepherd as cited by Marx, today one might be a solicitor for life, or a doctor for life, or a politician for life, or an electrician for life, or a teacher for life, or a policeman / woman for life, or a coal miner for life, or a bricklayer for life, or a TV chef for life, or a shop assistant for life, or a road sweeper for life, or whatever else for life. And even under particular favourable circumstances in which some people become reasonably mobile in terms of their employment (as your own anecdote about your various economic activity implied), all this boils down to at root, is movement from one atomised and bounded form of employment, to another atomised and bounded form of employment. Movement from one kind of specialisation to another kind of specialisation. Clearly, the possibility for the nurturing and development of all-round human potential under such conditions, is essentially sacrificed in the social pursuit of profits.
Your second criticism begins by taking issue with the idea of work becoming 'life's prime want' before leading into an attack of what you take to be the consequences of communist society. Let me address the former point first of all. Without production of some or other kind, humans cannot survive as a species. Work then, is a necessary task that all human societies must undertake (the form that such socio-economic organisation assumes of course, will itself be conditioned by geographical, historical, technological, scientific and other such factors). To try and escape work as many wish to do in capitalist society is not to be taken as a reflection of the superfluous nature of work per se, but instead, it should be regarded as a reflection of the alien condition in which work is carried on in capitalist society. It is not human to work in one specialised field of economic activity, or else to move from one specialised field of human activity to another for one's entire life. For this can only serve to cripple the potential for socially developing all-round human capacities. The great intellectual Renaissance humanists like Francis Bacon, William Shakespeare, Leonardo da Vinci and others forcefully remind us of the dangers of alien, human specialisation. The conclusion that follows from all this, is that unless and until work is carried out by people in a classless society, free from exploitation, then work can never become life's prime want. In other words, many people will continue to try to avoid, whenever possible, the very activity that is necessary to maintain the human species. However, should communist society ever be realised in its fullest form, it is more than reasonable to conclude that work will then become life's prime want and that everyone will desire to work for such a society will be a human society, based upon the principle 'to each according to his need'.
This brings me to your other point where you argue that communism has already been tried and has been shown to have failed. Again, this is classical liberal ideology. First of all communism / socialism were words never to be mentioned (remember McCarthy?). Then, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, communism became an in-vogue word, endlessly talked about in its purported failings. You do not explicitly state any one so-called 'communist' country, but I can only assume that you have the former Soviet Union in mind and no doubt China too and maybe even Cuba for good measure. You pose the question; "How many people have to die, how many people have to live in inexorable poverty, before we realize this?" Leaving aside the fact that this question could be readily applied to all capitalist states and their subsequent international activities, I would answer this question by suggesting that communist society has yet to exist on planet earth.
It is probably true that many of the Bolsheviks in 1917, were inbued with Marxist ideas albeit coloured and conditioned by particular socio-historical circumstances. It is also true that prominent political leaders like Lenin, and Stalin to a degree, tried to apply these kinds of scientific based ideas to the practical problems historically facing them in the Soviet Empire as it then existed. It is equally true however, to make plain that most of this Empire was based on agrarian and peasant socio-economic relations. And as Marx himself well realised, not until the material conditions of life are favourable, will socialism and then communism ever be realised. I defy anyone to produce evidence that communism has ever existed in human history in accordance with Marx's scientific vision. In the former Soviet Union (or China, or Cuba or wherever else one wishes to focus), did power ever pass from those classes whose mode of production was based on the private ownership of the means of production to society at large? Did the means of production across the Soviet Empire ever become collective public property? Was economic activity ever planned across the Empire as a whole to meet the material and various cultural needs of the people concerned? Did the Bolseviks, or Stalin for that matter ever transform the state from an organ functioning to protect private property into an institution functioning to prevent private property? Did the Soviet government ever arrive at a stage where as an Empire, it was producing an absolute abundance of goods and services so that everything one needs is available? These kinds of questions must be answered in the affirmitive if one is even to begin to accept that communism exists yet each of these questions to my mind can easily be answered in the negative. It is true that central planning asserted itself to a limited degreee in the Soviet Union, so too China and so on. But the material conditions were absent to allow this kind of activity to flourish. I think you are correct when you question and draw attention to the number of deaths brought about in people's various efforts to establish communism (not least in the former Soviet Union). I think it is incorrect to assert that communism has already been tried and tested and ultimately seen to have failed. This latter kind of argument is tirelessly disseminated by those who naturally seek to defend the capitalist way of life.
Your third point relates to my reference about 'obscene wealth' as witnessed in every capitalist society without exception. You ask for a definition of the concept 'obscene'. For me, obscene means an ongoing disparity of wealth in a world now posessing the material basis, to produce plenty for all. It is indeed obscene, when we take into account that production is now social in form, and spanning the globe, that the majority of wealth created from such production, is currently appropriated by a clique of humanity, namely the capitalist class. This suggestion of unevenness and inequality is born out for example, in respect of the ONS figures I cited earlier, relating to wealth distribution in Britain. There is plenty more evidence to support the view that capitalism is a socio-economic system incapable of meeting the needs of society at large.
I therefore think that our western conception as to what constitutes wealth needs to be challenged. Presently, under conditions of commodity production, distribution and consumption based on private property ownership, wealth has naturally come to be conceptualised as something inanimate, something we can get for ourselves, not least in money form. Indeed, we spend our lives chasing commodified things in our efforts to realise happiness. And we use our fellow human being as the means by which we attain such inanimate goods or impersonal services. We need to move, I feel, both in concrete and theoretical terms (the former will of course fuel the latter) towards a society in which the conception of wealth involves the idea of wealth as relating merely to the meeting of the material and cultural requirements of those in the whole of society (I take society here as relating to an international community of people). This presupposes the end of both commodities and money. A society in which the governing of antagonistic groups of people has been replaced by the administration of things.
Your final point which is less a criticism I suppose, and more a remark in passing, relates to the popularity of TV cookery shows in particular and TV generally. And you make the interesting point about TV programme makers being tuned in to 'human nature'. But then the question arises, what conditions have served to bring into being a human nature that breeds rampant individualism? This question must be answered because anthropology teaches us that so-called human nature is wholly variable. Not every human culture spends its days rushing about chasing one or other commodity in pursuit of subjective happiness. Human nature is variable so what acts to create such variability? Is it desirable? If not, how might we begin to transcend such a state of affairs? As I say in the essay, to say that TV is popular is merely to state the obvious. To say that people have more time now to watch TV is to do little better. For the social origin and ongoing material sources of social influence functioning (a) to give birth to one or other TV programme and (b) to sustain its popularity must in turn be explained. Why this kind of TV format and not another? Why has a minority in society at this time in human history assumed overall control over what is produced for, and broadcast on, TV and for mass consumption? With regards to TV cookery show in particular, I am convinced that the origin and ongoing source of social influence of such TV is rooted in the antagonistic class society we term, capitalism.
It is only through the existing property relations that science and technology finds expression. In other words, under conditions of antagonistic class relations, the dominant class by virtue of its legally enshrined property relations, will ultimately control the application and further development of any innovation born of wider society. Atomic science is a classic example of this under conditions of capitalism. Fantastic developments were made in this particular field of science in the twentieth century, developments that stood, and indeed still stand to benefit humankind en masse. However, such scientific advance has chiefly been applied to the production of atomic bombs or else the production of nuclear power involving powerful capitalist interests whose sole concern has been to produce ever greater profits year on year (with this latter group here in Britain often dumping nuclear waste into the Irish sea until reasonably recently).
It is the same with TV. When such technology arose, it naturally assumed the role of serving wider capitalist interests. In this sense, as I argue in the above essay, cookery shows are but one small part of this ideologically driven media service. These kinds of shows I think, have become popular, and remain popular, in no small part (a) because they serve to normalise in a psychological sense, the kind of society upon which capitalism is based, and (b) because those who watch this kind of TV, derive positive psychological benefits helping them to cope with a concrete daily life of alienated and atomised exploitation. Religion functions in much the same way in this latter sense, essentially by promising a wonderful life to all only when they are dead. This kind of religious doctrine flourishes in, and is a reflection of a society that as yet, has no conscious motivation to begin transforming in a concrete sense, such an unpleasant general form of human existence. Thus must they transform their minds in one or other manner, as one means of compensating.
Thank you alloallo3 for commenting.
Colin