With the present drip drip drip in the main stream media in preparation to persuade the population of many western States that a forthcoming world is inevitable and that they must be prepared to fight for it on behalf of their various capitalist ruling classes this piece from the Socialist Standard of August 1931 is still apposite.
Letter to the Editors from the August 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard
The correspondent whose letter was replied to last month, writes again on the need to make an “emotional appeal.”
Tottenham, N.17,
July 7th, 1931.
The
Editor,
Socialist
Standard,
42,
Great Dover Street,
London,
S.E.1.
Dear
Sir,
(1)
May I reply to the points raised against my letter in the July issue.
The success of the emotional appeal of the war reveals how powerful
appeals to irrational forces can be. The workers do not simply commit
an error of judgment, mistaking "the capitalists’ interests
for their own,” but respond because their behaviour is so largely
influenced by emotional tendencies, which, suppressed by the demands
of civilised life, find outlets in behaviour often irrational when
judged from an economic standpoint.
(2) The
Socialist case may be rejected or fail to arouse interest because the
dominant trends in a person do not respond sympathetically to the
exposition. Trivialities such as the manner, speech, or clothes of
the propagandist may evoke unfavourable impressions, or the immediate
attraction of a tennis game or dance distort the value of the
propaganda.
Influences
which seem remote from politics play a part in the making of
Socialists. As mentioned in my letter, “experiences of sexual
character, dislike of certain individuals, jealousy, etc., find
consolation in Socialism,” supplying motives other than a sense of
inferiority.
(3)
It is noteworthy that, while Christian, Communist, and Socialist
vigorously assert the intellectual character of their convictions, it
is not difficult for each to discover emotional influences at play in
the others.
(4) Modern
psychology, distinguished by its emphasis on a dynamic or hormic view
of the mind, is reversing the conceit that man, among animals, is a
rational creature. In the nineteenth century, when Darwin established
the truth of evolution, those whose approach to people depended on
the retention of an obsolete account of man's origin, resisted the
theory strenuously. Now, a like opposition is offered to the
psychologists’ conviction that the intellectualist interpretation
of man’s behaviour is equally outworn.
Just
as evolution is older than Darwin, so there may be much that is not
new in modern psychological theory, but it is through the mass of
evidence collected that theories gain weight and insist on scientific
recognition.
(5)
The tendencies within capitalism seem to point to a drift towards
Socialism, but they, after all, are tendencies only, to be worked out
by human-beings. There is no divinity benevolently directing events
to a happy ending, and so if Socialists persist in presenting their
propaganda to a mythical working-man, guided by intellectual
preference, and, with a fine disdain, refuse to stoop to moulding
their propaganda nearer the hearts of the workers, their efforts may
be misspent.
Yours faithfully,
Reply.
(1)
Our correspondent now claims that the workers' support of the war
proves "how powerful appeals to irrational forces can be,"
and he denies that they responded to an appeal to their "interests."
Does our correspondent then deny that the workers in 1914 were
trapped by being told that defeat would mean the loss of "their"
colonies, "their" foreign trade, “their" merchant
shipping, "their” property, "their" liberties,
"their" jobs, and "their" security, not to
mention their lives and those of their dependants? If these are not
appeals to the workers' interests what are they? Even the talk about
"poor little Belgium" was backed up with the threat that
defeat would mean the same treatment for this country as had been
meted out across the Channel.
If
the workers respond merely to "emotional tendencies," not
guided, by assumptions as to their interests, why do not the workers
endeavour to treat their class enemies at home as they treated the
Germans when they (the workers) believed their interests to be bound
up with the outcome of the war? What sort of "emotional
tendency" is it that leads the half-starved and unemployed
dweller in a slum to vote for the class (and even for the
individuals) responsible for his miseries, makes him leave the place
where the miseries are inflicted and could be ended, and actually lay
down his life on foreign soil under the orders and in the interests
of that class? If the uncontrolled "emotional tendency”
dominates the situation why did not and do not the victims make a
direct attack on the landlords, employers, and politicians with whoso
activities their miseries are closely and obviously associated?
The
answer is that the workers are always having it drummed into them
that they have a common interest with the capitalist class in
maintaining capitalism.
Our
correspondent, as was pointed out last month, ignores the results of
40 years of I.L.P. and Labour Party appeals to emotion. He persists
in ignoring the results, except to make the claim that the war shows
how powerful the emotional appeal can be. In his anxiety to seize a
supposed point he
appears to have forgotten what we are discussing. His admission that
years of emotional appeal from the Labour Party and I.L.P. did not
succeed in making socialists but did succeed in making willing
victims for the slaughter only supports our objection to the
emotional appeal as a means of making socialists.
(2)
The
remarks in this paragraph are obvious but not in the least helpful.
Of course socialist propaganda will be listened to more readily if it
is pleasantly and tellingly presented; but so will anti-socialist
propaganda. Does our correspondent imagine that Liberals are all of
them people who think that Lloyd George has a nice kind face? And
that the workers are all childish like H. G. Wells and will, like,
him, allow their dislike for Marx’s Victorian whiskers to dissuade
them from studying socialism?
(3)
It
is difficult to make out what this paragraph is intended to imply, as
it seems to have little to do with the argument. Our correspondent
lumps together Christian, Communist and Socialist and says that he
finds "emotional influences" in us all. It would indeed be
strange if he did not. If he looks a little closer he will discover
that we are actually human beings. But what has that to do with our
contention that emotional appeals are not a method of building-up a
socialist organisation, and with his contention that emotional
appeals are such a method?
(4)
Again,
we must ask our correspondent to consider the facts and not just
discuss airy assumptions. "Modern psychology,” he tells us,
has shown that the emotional appeal is the way to build up a
socialist party. Will he then explain why the I.L.P., which
concentrated on this emotional appeal, from its formation back in the
eighteen nineties, has failed so utterly to get socialism, or to
build a socialist organisation, or even to build a solid and
dependable organisation at all? Why, in face of emotional appeals
backed up with lavish funds and delivered by professors at the game
such as J. Maxton, why, in face of that has the I.L.P. lost half its
members in two or three years?
(5)
In
this paragraph our correspondent (who, by the way, writes in language
which the average reader would find it very difficult to understand)
tells us how to get to the hearts of the workers and thus not waste
our efforts. We can only reply that if we had had the relatively
enormous financial resources of the emotional appealers the I.L.P.
and the. Communist Party, and yet found our efforts had produced as
little result as theirs have done, we would indeed have cause to look
for different methods. But the facts point to the reverse conclusion.
Apart from confusing the workers’ minds and making our propaganda
efforts more difficult, the emotional appealers have achieved nothing
of assistance in the task of getting socialism.
Editorial Committee
https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2019/03/the-socialist-forum-value-of-emotional.html
THE SOCIALIST PARTY AGAINST ALL CAPITALIST WAR
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