Man and Materialism

Fred Hoyle

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000529302
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Political Philosophy

Originally published in 1957, this book offers a challenging intellectual experience to the reader who wishes to understand the broad historical trends that determine the future of humanity on this planet. The book examines natural laws that govern humanity by looking at communities over long periods of time and noting patterns which become evident. The book includes discussions of communism, the crisis in food and population growth, the significance of industrialism and man and his religious beliefs – all issues that remain as relevant today as when the book was first published.

I. The Tangled Skein

MUCH of humanity today fights under one or other of two banners, of Communism and Anti-Communism. The banners have become symbols that stand for many things, for so many things that by now no one quite knows what. When those of us who fight under the banner of Anti-Communism are asked to explain why we fight thus, in our ignorance we are forced to answer, “Because the men who support Communism are evil,” and those who are regarded as the staunchest fighters for Anti-Communism would add, “And that is good enough for me.” I don’t know whether fighters for the banner of Communism justify themselves by a similar argument but I suspect that they do.

When I was a boy I often fought under a banner. The boys of our village would fight the boys of another village because they had invaded our “bird-nesting” territory, because they had “pinched” a dog belonging to one of our lads, or even for no other reason than that they were boys of another village. We would meet in Homeric battle in some farmer’s field. With a continuous whooping and roaring, one band of boys would close in combat with the other. There would then come such a punching and pummeling as used to delight the eyes of adult passers-by. Strange to say, these little affairs seemed to do everybody good—with the exception of a few who came off with what Shakespeare would have called a bloody coxcomb; and even these had completely recovered by the morrow and were able to parade themselves as heroes for the rest of the week.

If a world war were no more serious in its impact than a battle between two herds of boys we should have little to worry about. But everyone knows that this is not so. Forty million people met their deaths in the last world war and powers of destruction have increased enormously since then. I think that few would disagree with the opinion that another world war might easily lead to a hundred million deaths, and that none of the participating peoples would escape from making a due contribution to the grisly total.

By a curious irony an appreciation of this terrible situation has become common ground to both Communists and Anti-Communists. Neither wishes to bring about the destruction of vast numbers of innocent people, counting many children among them. Neither wishes to court the downfall of civilization. Yet what other recourse is possible? When humanity divides itself into two camps, when each camp assembles itself beneath its own particular banner, when each brandishes its fist unceasingly at the other, how can such a conflict be resolved except by total war?

These are questions that I think each one of us should attempt to answer for himself. For my own part, I do not know whether there is any possibility of avoiding a disastrous holocaust, and I doubt whether anyone can give a certainly correct opinion on this. But of one thing I do feel certain: that the banner mentality does not improve our chances of averting disaster. Rather should we try to understand what the symbols on the banners mean. It is not enough to say that Communism is evil; we must try to understand as best we can exactly what Communism is, and why we are opposed to it. Only so shall we come to know where the snares lie along the path that we must follow.

Unfortunately an exposition of the nature of Communism is a matter of extraordinary difficulty. This is because the concept of Communism is now woven out of many threads: the police state, espionage, the suppression of the individual, the strength of Russian armaments, the increasing meaninglessness of life, the nature of private and public enterprise in general, social medicine, the retreat of the old religious views, anti-colonialism among native peoples. All these and others as well are components in our concept of what we mean by Communism.

Some people may object to this anatomizing on the grounds that they themselves do not understand certain of these items as being components of the communist issue. This may well be the case because those of us who are mustered under the Anti-Communist banner are very far from being agreed on what it is that we are against. Therein lies one of our most serious difficulties.

It is easy to see how this situation has come about. For the last thirty years the word “communist” has been a term of general opprobrium in the West. This has led us to associate many of the things that we dislike most with Communism and with the communists. In this way our ideas have acquired accretions that have changed the concept of Communism from what it used to be. There is little to connect the Communism of the present day with the Paris Commune of eighty years ago.

This process of increasing damnation has turned out to have very serious disadvantages. Quite apart from the truism that it is not always an advantage to paint one’s opponents blacker than they really are, a wholly unnecessary degree of confusion has been caused thereby within the Anti-Communist camp. We are paying bitterly for this confusion at the present time. During the last two or three years there has been the danger of a rift opening up between the United States and the British Commonwealth. This danger arises from the different ways that “Communism” has been colored in Britain and in the United States. By now the British understand by “Communism” something appreciably different from what the people of the United States do. It is this difference that has led the British not only to recognize the communist government of China, but to be astonished that the United States does not do likewise.

I hope enough has been said for the point I wish to make in this chapter to be considered as now established: that our first duty if we are to discuss Communism (and we can scarcely say very much about world affairs without bringing Communism into the discussion) is to ask what Communism is. I am sure that if we can agree on an answer to this question, however complicated the answer may be, we shall find that quite a number of our present difficulties either disappear altogether or will be comparatively simple of solution.

But the next step is an awkward one. By now the whole matter has become so complicated and so charged with emotion that it would surely take a visitor from another planet to consider it with a proper impartiality. The attempt is not to be avoided however.

II. The Tangible Aspects of Communism

LET ME begin with the aspects of Communism to which I object most strongly myself. I object to the police state, with its constant spying and its torture chambers. I object to the raids of the goon squads by night and the dispensing of political justice by day. I object to all those features that aim to reduce the individual to a cog in the state machine. This is an issue over which I would be prepared to fight, for I do not consider my life to weigh so heavily as the rights of the individual as they are understood in the West. I would go even further: if I thought the reduction of humanity to an antlike existence inevitable, then, quite frankly, I would have little interest left in the survival of the human species. I would feel that the sooner we got ourselves out of the way and left the road open for the evolution of some other animal of nobler aspirations the better.

Yet with this said, one must agree that the police state is not unique to the communists, nor is it even of their invention. Belsen, Dachau, the gas chambers of the Gestapo are still too fresh in our memories for us to make any mistake on this. Rather does it seem as if wave after wave of mass brutality—brutishness might perhaps be a better word—has swept over the world in the last few decades. Communism represents but one of these waves. This being so, we must I think be on our guard against supposing that the defeat of Communism will necessarily solve all our problems, any more than the defeat of the Hitlerites solved all the world’s problems. I suspect that the present sickness of the human race lies somewhat deeper than the struggle against Communism, important as this is.

Another conclusion that I believe to be valid is that brutishness cannot be successfully combated by brutishness. It is this that makes me doubt whether a war launched to defeat Communism will succeed in its broader aims. To defeat Communism in a way that caused the deaths of tens of millions of women and children would not I think persuade the world that salvation had been worth while. Herein lies one of the peculiar difficulties of the situation. We are in a position where real victory can only be achieved by persuasion and example, not by a deliberate display of force. This does not mean that we should not be fortified to defend ourselves in case of an out-and-out physical assault by the communists; of course we should.

Persuasion demands that we should scrupulously avoid adopting any of the noxious political practices of the communists. This is so manifestly clear that I am the more surprised that many who proclaim themselves publicly to be the strongest opponents of Communism seem quite ready, and even anxious, to adopt methods that are strikingly similar to those of the communists themselves. Bluntly expressed, these individuals give the impression of wanting to substitute the policeman’s dossier in place of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. If they should succeed, the communists will indeed have gone far toward securing a final victory; for the world is not I think interested in making a choice between one tyranny and another but only in a choice between tyranny and freedom.

Let us pass now to the second of the three topics to be considered in the present chapter, to the military threat of Russia. The debit and credit sides of the balance sheet can here be summarized quickly. On the debit side, Russia undoubtedly possesses an army of great numerical strength and, judging by its performance in the late war, of great striking power too. Of an equal seriousness in my opinion is the rapid advance of Russian technology. In the development of jet aircraft and of the atomic bomb, Russia gave the impression of hanging on a good way behind the West, but the communists were not a long way behind with the hydrogen bomb—unfortunately they were very nearly in the lead, a situation that would have seemed well-nigh impossible ten years ago. I very much fear that we must admit that Russian technology is now going ahead at as least as fast a rate as Western technology.

Let us turn now to the positive side of the picture. First we may take stock of the reassuring situation shown in Figure 1, which gives the locations throughout the world of the military bases operated by the Western Powers. Add to this strategic position the undoubtedly far greater industrial capacity of the West and it is clear that our case is being backed up by a real show of strength. In thus surrounding communist territory by military bases our leaders have evidently done a thoroughly good job: there is no question of a softness toward Communism here.

But this balance-sheet accounting does not give a complete view of the strategy of world affairs. A new factor, different from any previous balance-of-power struggle, has invaded the present situation; for both sides now possess sufficient strength to do mortal hurt to the other—this being the considered opinion of the great majority of those who have studied the destructive power of nuclear weapons. War is no longer a simple means of settling nationalistic rivalries, as it was in the First World War. Nor is it a means of ridding the world of a detestable state of affairs, as it was in the Second World War. The most that we can now gain from war is the total destruction of our opponents, knowing that in the process we ourselves will also irrevocably be destroyed. War is now synonymous with suicide.

This being I believe an undoubtedly correct assessment, I am at a loss I must confess to understand the full implications of the strategy illustrated by Figure 1, a strategy that looks very much like an old-fashioned policy of containment. The idea of a containment policy is: first to decide on a line drawn over the Earth’s surface, then to announce that a step across the line by the opposing side will be taken as equivalent to an open declaration of war. In former times this procedure had considerable merit to recommend it. With the position of the line stated, both sides knew exactly where they were; the consequences of a fateful step across were clearly understood. So the chance of war starting through a misunderstanding was thereby reduced to a minimum. Indeed many wars have probably been averted altogether by this policy.

For containment to work satisfactorily, the side that elects to draw the line must mean strict business. There must be no suspicion of a bluff. Otherwise an aggressive move may be made by one side in the belief that the other will back down in a pinch. If the other side does not then back down, war breaks out in earnest, even though no one may really have wanted it. The First World War started in much this way, Germany being uncertain as to whether Britain would declare war in the event of a German attack on the Channel ports. The German decision that Britain would not declare war turned out to be wrong—with the result that modern civilization was overtaken by its first major disaster.

Even before the atomic age, the satisfactory operation of a containment policy demanded steady nerves and cool judgment; and sometimes nerves and judgment failed, as German and British nerves and judgment failed in 1914. The difficulties inherent in containment are much more severe today. Consider the world-wide span of the line that joins our defensive bases, the bases shown in Figure 1. Are we really going to start a world war if this line is crossed at any place? Are we going to invite complete self-destruction? Are we going to endanger the whole fabric of civilization? Or are we going to back down? Are we just bluffing?

The dilemma of the containment policy is obvious. If we bluff then we run the danger that the communists will encroach more and more across the line. If we do not bluff then we court entire disaster, the only satisfaction being that we can bring the communists down in a ruin equal to our own—or perhaps worse than our own, if that should be any satisfaction.

There is a further, very serious complicating factor. The struggle is not between two coherent opposing forces. The late war in Indo-China for instance was not a straight issue between Washington and Moscow, or between Washington and Peking. In this particular case, mixed in with the political aspects of Communism was an anticolonial sentiment, a hatred of domination by the white man, a hatred that has become a strong force in Asia during the last few decades. The aim of the Viet-Minh army was as much to throw the French out of Indo-China as it was to support the schemes of Moscow.

The fact that neither the Communists nor the Anti-Communists fit into clearly defined categories, the fact that each is a highly complex association of many different peoples, the fact that the issues that seem of main importance in Indo-China are not the same as those in Germany make a policy of containment extraordinarily difficult to operate. When the communists cross the line, how can we be sure that the action is due to the deep-laid schemes of Moscow, and not to some local partisan issue? And unless we are sure of this, how can we take the risk of plunging the world into a nuclear war, a war that may bring down our whole civilization?

Yet if we cannot operate a containment policy how can we prevent ourselves from being nibbled to death (to use a politi-cism) by communist encroachment? How can we prevent the marxist forces on the other side of the line from spreading all over the world?

These remarks bring out the well-nigh contradictory character of present-day strategy. I get the impression that present policy is a makeshift that has arisen out of the policies of former generations. These did not work very well even in their own day (as in the outbreak of the First World War), and are likely to work less well under future conditions. It seems to me that although neither the Communists nor the Anti-Communists want to find themselves in a nuclear war, the policies now being followed (on both sides) make it very possible that a nuclear war will in fact occur.

I am not able to put forward any patent receipt. The only opinion I would offer here is that a less rigid outlook on both sides would probably be helpful.

With an apology for this pessimistic view, I would like now to take up the last of the three topics of this chapter; namely the difference of economic outlook between Communists and Anti-Communists, between Communism and Capitalism, that is to say.

As a first step it may be said that Communism and Capitalism are rather like the negative and positive of the same photograph. In capitalistic society the great bulk of property and industry is owned by individuals and the “State” is supported by taxes raised on private companies and on individuals. In communistic society things are just the other way round; effectively all property and industry is owned by the “State,” individuals being rewarded for their work at the pleasure of the “State.”

There is nothing in this to provide an immediately sensible reason why two societies adopting such opposite social organizations should be at each other’s throats; any more than there was a sensible reason why Swift’s Lilliputians should have risen in revolt against the practice of Littlendianism. Even when we look further into the matter it does not become easy to detect a sound reason for hostility. This will I hope become plain in the following discussion.

There are appreciable numbers of people living in capitalistic societies who express themselves as favoring the communistic type of organization. They say that Capitalism is “unfair,” that it sustains the so-called privileged classes. This is certainly true. In an economic free-for-all, which is what Capitalism amounts to, it is certain that some individuals will come out of the mix-up better than others. Special abilities may play a part but even without differences of ability, chance fluctuations would eventually lead to some people becoming much wealthier than the average. According to the people who favor Communism there is something immoral about this inequality.

Now does the communistic form of society really provide equality for all? Of course it does not. This we can see by inquiring into the so-far undefined concept of “State.” What is the “State”? In one sense it is the whole mass of a people and in another sense it is no more than the individuals who happen to form the governing group. In the present discussion it is the second interpretation that is of interest. The persons who govern, control all property in a communistic state. Do these people also take an equal share? Naturally they do not. They are the equivalent of the privileged class in capitalistic society. Indeed, a leader in a communist society is far more privileged than any capitalist could ever be. A capitalist at most controls only a fraction of an industry—the influence of even a Rockefeller is limited—but a small group of communist leaders control everything. They possess the whole of industry and they possess the physical power to dictate to the people what level of reward they must work for. No capitalist possesses any semblance of this latter power, hemmed in as he is by Trade Union activity. What it amounts to is this: in a capitalist society there is a large group of people possessing a limited degree of privilege. Whether a particular individual belongs to this group or not is largely a matter of chance. In a communistic society there is a perhaps smaller privileged class but what this class lacks in numbers it makes up in the very high degree of its privilege.

All this is so obvious as to make one wonder how anybody could be naive enough to put forward the “fair share” argument as a basis for favoring Communism. Actually not everyone using this argument really believes it. Those who do believe it usually describe themselves as Socialists, while those who use the argument but without believing in it are the communists. This is a distinction worth emphasizing at the expense of a diversion.

The communist living in a capitalist society advances the “fair share” argument because he thinks that by railing ag...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• PREAMBLE
• 1 The Tangled Skein
• 2 The Tangible Aspects of Communism
• 3 The Intangible Aspects
• 4 The Historical Record
• 5 The Significance of Industrialism
• 6 The Thing
• 7 A Biological Paradox Resolved
• 8 What is the Mind?
• 9 The Relationship of Individual and Community
• 10 The Evolution of Humanity
• 11 Crisis in the Modern World: The First Problem
• 12 Population: The Second Problem
• 13 Fossilization: The Third Problem
• 14 The Religious Impulse in Man