Sunday Sermon - Socialist Ethics

Most religions of the world were founded and preached by inspired prophets or spiritual  teachers who claimed to have a divine mission, Judaism, Christianisty Buddhism and Mohammedanism. These religions embraced moral precepts which are essentially social in their character. You are called upon to love your brother and fellow man and so forth.

Earlier this year a Christian settlement in Lahore, Pakistan, was attacked by a hard-core Muslim group calling itself  ‘Lovers of the Prophet.’  The Lovers had been stoked by false accusations of ‘blasphemy’, i.e. accusations that the Christians had defiled the name of Muhammad.  The person accused was arrested. The Lovers together with other zealots then attacked the settlement and burnt two hundred dwellings while the police and other worthy citizens watched the scene. As news of the carnage spread and the Shahbaz Sharif government pretended that nothing was going on, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court that this did not appear to be a case of blasphemy, rather a land grab.  Where outright crimes are about to be committed its best to clothe them in the cloak of religion  to justify what is about to happen.

 The global increase in religiosity on every continent can’t be unrelated to the accumulation of suffering or the alienation, despair and uncertainties that flow from the political economy that is so dominant today. The turn to religion is an attempt to relieve moral anguish by a set of formulae and rituals. A depressed, demoralized and disoriented people seek solace in religion. In Pakistan this is taken advantage of my frauds and charlatans of all sorts. Inner ‘purification’ requires exterior measures such as targeting the ‘impure’ Muslims and members of other religions.

Socialist ethics are neither altruistic nor egotistic; they are intrinsically neither selfish nor unselfish. Socialism presupposes a condition of things in which the good of all will mean the good of each; and a society so constituted that the individual cannot serve himself without serving society, and cannot injure society without injuring himself. Thus there will no longer be altruism and egoism, selfishness and unselfishness, existing as antagonistic abstractions, but selfishness and unselfishness must necessarily be alike social in the general run of conduct. Socialism calls for enlightened selfishness. But the fact that this selfishness is enlightened, and recognises that it can serve itself only by serving the common interest, will completely change its character, so that it will cease to be the narrow selfishness of to-day, which so often defeats its own ends. Selfishness passing through the refining fire of economic change ceases to be selfishness and becomes socialism.

 It is common to express the utmost horror at anything like a revolution; while the very same persons who do this in one breath, will, in the next, complacently discuss the advisability of waging an unprovoked war for the purpose of asserting national supremacy, or for securing fresh commercial outlets. The horror at the human suffering entailed evaporates under some phrase such as “necessity” or “inevitability” (which, being interpreted, means desirability from their own class point of view) in the other. They well know that, as possessing classes, they have everything to lose and nothing to gain in a domestic revolution, while in a foreign war they often think they have a great deal to gain, and, as they hope, very little to lose. Evidently force and bloodshed, when contrary to the interests of the possessing class, is a monstrous crime, but when it is in their favour it becomes a duty and a necessity.

The working class has its own “morals” and “ethics” just as the ruling class has its “morals” and, “ethics.” What is decent for worker under certain conditions would be considered very indecent by the boss. When the boss runs scabs into a plant on strike under the protection of the police, the strikers consider it ethical and responsible to give the scabs some working-class education, even by the use of a little pressure. The bosses however consider such conduct as irresponsible and unethical.

Them are times, too, when the workers must establish their own legality. There are times when workers can not accept the bosses’ “law.” Workers’ organizations can not always remain passively “law-abiding.” If workers had always been “law-abiding” according to the terms, of ruling class law, there would be no trades unions in the world today. There would be no Factory Acts and Health and Safety legislation. Wages would be far lower than now and hours would be much longer. Workers have made the gains they, have through the decades because they opposed the ruling class and fought every step of the way. Since nothing fundamental has changed in the relationship of the workers to the bosses, there is no reason for the workers to change from the procedure that has brought them, their victories.

All ethics can be shown to have a class bias in a class system. Socialists do not invoke "Truth", "Duty" and "Altruism" but demand a state of affairs where these things have a different content from the existing ruling morality. Humility or self assertion, unselfishness or selfishness are themselves neither virtuous nor vicious; it is the actual social situation which gives them their truly moral quality.

Socialism will always fail. People are innately selfish. People are naturally violent. People are born greedy.  People cannot change their nature. Supporters of status quo insist that “human nature” creates all the ills of the present system – greed, competition, war, inequality. Appearances certainly seem to confirm such a view a rat-race with everybody at eachother’s throats competing with one another in a dog-eat-dog society.

 But life is not fixed. People can adapt themselves to a wide range of different condition. The world not only involves people competing with each other. It also involves them working alongside one another on a scale never dreamt of before in human history. There exists also a spirit of solidarity with others and self-sacrifice for others.

Socialism is, then, the ethics of humanity.