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Vol 83, No. 4 APRIL 1978 Published by Conwayha Munanist Centre VoL 83, No. 4 APRIL 1978 CONTEN1S EDITORIAL: ONLY A GAME 3 EUROWMMUN1SM 4 by Fred Kissin HISTORY—A PREPARATION FOR LIFE? 8 by Tom Hastie LITERATURE AND THE ENGLISH INTELLIGENTSIA . 10 by I. D. MacKillop FOR THE RECORD . 13 by the General Secretary FORUM: TOWARDS A NEW SCHOOLING. 15 DISCUSSION: THE RIGHTS AND WRONGS or THE aosEn &tor. 16 VIEWPOINT . 17 SOUTH PLACE NEWS. 18 COMING AT CONWAY HALL. .2, 19 Published by ConwayHa Munanist Centre Red Lion Square, London, WC1R 4RL SOUTH PLACE ETHICAL SOCIETY OFFICERS: Appointed Lecturers: H. J. Blackham, Richard Clements, one Lord Brockway, T. F. Evans, Peter Cronin General Secretary: Peter Cadogan Lettings SecretarylHall Manager: Robyn Miles Acting Hon Registrar: Robyn Miles Hon Treasurer: C. E. Barralet Editor, "The Ethical Record": Eric Willoughby Address: Conway Hall Humanist Centre Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL. (Tel: 01-242 8032) Coming at Conway Hall Sunday, April 2 11.00 am—Sunday Meeting: COLIN FRY on The Quest of Annie Besant. Contralto solos: Irene Clements 6.00 pm—Bridge and Scrabble 6.30 pm—Concert: Vesuvius Ensemble. Beethoven Septet, Mozart- ' Bach Fmi Adagio and Fugue, Crusell Clarinet Quartet Cmi Op 4 Tuesday, April 4 7.00 pm—Discussion introduced by Nicolas Waller. Scientific Rationalism Sunday, April 9 11.00am—Sunday Meeting: SIR JOHN LAWRENCE on Religion and Communism 3.00pm—Forum: Education Otherwise (home ;teaching) with Shanaz Durran; and others 6.00 pm—Bridge and Scrabble 6.30 pm—Concert: Rasoumovsky String Quartet. Bloch No I, Beet- hoven A Op 18, Mozart C, K. 170 Tuesday, April II 7.00 pm—Discussion introduced by Barbara Smoker. Secular Humanism Continued on page 19 THE ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING South Place Ethical Society WEDNESDAY, 31st MAY, 1978 at 7.00 pm (Refreshments from 6.15 pm) Resolutions and nominations for the General Committee to the General Secretary by April 9th 2 THE ETHICAL RECORD Vol. 83, No. 4 APRIL 1978 The views expressed in this journal are not necessarily those of the Society Microfilm and reprints available—details on request EDITORIAL Only a Game damaged by bricks thrown near a VIOLENCE is one of the indicators football stadium—the list goes on. of a sick society. It is synonymous Surely this is quite the opposite with boredom, frustration, a sense of sport, and as always, the many of being dominated and an admis- suffer for the few. Restrictions to sion of guilt of poverty in think- prevent the minority doing its ing. damage at football grounds in Vandalism and spontaneous recent years have included the violence are abhorrent for their building of fences and barriers, lack of reason. Political violence and new police procedures. Moves is at least motivated. But violence like this take all the enjoyment amongst sport spectators is more out of spectator sport and trans- sinister. And there have been some form the scene into a kind of very horrific examples of this in imprisoned mass of fearful people. recent weeks. Once again, commerce and busi- Sport is surely one of the good ness lie beneath the scenes. There things in life, for the participants is so much money in sport today and the spectators. At least it that the competitive spirit has been should be. Loyalty to a player or replaced largely by profit and loss team is commendable in a specta- accounts, and if the organisers of tor, and more than one speaker in sport place the action second to Conway Hall has condoned loyalty their own personal motives, they as a personal ethic, in recent can hardly blame the renegade months. supporters for doing similar, even Certainly there is rivalry in sport though it is often desperate. and amongst spectators. That is Also, the ready supply of canned the very essence of sport, and the drinks provides a two-edged terror inescapable companion of loyalty. for the genuine supporters. The But when that loyalty, that hooligans become affected by the rivalry, turns to fanaticism and alcohol, and then have empty cans hatred, surely it becomes out of to use as missiles and, in some control, and that seems to be the cases, sharp-edged weapons. case in football, at least. The football authorities are now In early March, just one Satur- working hard to try and improve day afternoon produced a football matters, but so long as they are supporter with a dart in his eye, a pursuing profit goals rather than goalkeeper wounded in the leg by sporting ones, they are unlikely to a throwing knife, several suppor- win any trophies against those who ters lacerated by flying coins rebel against being used to finance whbse edges had been filed into the big business of sport—those blades, four houses extensively who pay the entrance fees. • 3 Eurocommunism BY FRED KISSIN NEITHERa comprehensive analysis nor an exact definition of "Eurocom- munism" is as yet possible. Though the phenomenon is not•really new the issues linked with it are still in a fluid state. Besides, there are several distinct varieties of Eurocommunism. The Italian, the Spanish, the French and the British Communist parties are usually described 'as "Eurocom- munist"; yet they differ from each other on points of substance, and there are also important differences and shades of opinion within each "Euro- communist" party. All one can do at present is throw some light on the origin and the history of this political concept, and on the principal fea- tures the parties and the politicians concerned have in common, and draw certain conclusions regarding the probable future development of Euro- communism and its impact on the world communist movement as a whole. The emergence of Eurocommunism is not primarily, as some Western observers seem to assume, a switch by certain communist parties to a milder, more moderate version of communism. It is true that most if not all Eurocommunist parties are pursuing fairly flexible policies. They have expressed preference for the peaceful-parliamentary road to power —as against revolutionary violence—and have pledged themselves to sur- render governmental power if, after winning an election, they 'should be defeated in a subsequent poll. They have also abandoned the watchword of the "dictatorship of the proletariat". But this softer line is not the crucial aspect of the matter. The general line of the parties of the Com- munist International was just as conciliatory, just as much• at variance with "Marxist-Lenninist" orthodoxy, between 1934 and 1939 when the Comintern sections in a number of capitalist countries were committed to "Popular Front" tactics, i.e. to policies of alliance not only with Social Democratic but also with those anti-socialist "bourgeois" parties which, in international affairs, favoured some kind of accommodation or co- operation with the Soviet Union. Matter of Attitudes The kernel of Eurocommunism is not its. moderation in the day-to-day struggle or the shedding of Maxist shibboleths but the attitude towards the leadership of the USSR and the Soviet Communist Party. The new heresy stems from the conviction of leading West European communists that their chances of success in the domestic arena depend on autonomy vis-à-vis the Kremlin, on their right to hammer out their own strategies without interference from Moscow. They have also reached the (correct) conclusion that without openly criticising some of the Kremlin's more repulsive internal methods (e.g. the treatment of dissenters), and without denouncing such clearly aggressive actions as Soviet intervention in satellite countries they would be apt to forfeit working class sympathies at home. While the term "Eurocommunism" is barely a couple of years old (it was apparently first used at the end of 1975), the political development which has led to the present critical rift began to take shape in the mid- fifties, in connection with "de-Stalinisation" in the USSR. To appreciate the significance and the consequences of these events one has to call to mind the chief traits of the monolithic communism which prevailed under Stalin. 4 The international communist movement which emerged on the world scene after the Russian October Revolution was not originally monolithic. the Bolshevik regime of which Lenin and Trotsky were the chief ex- ponents was, almost from the outset, a one-party dictatorship but not a totalitarian one. There was open controversy and dissent in the state and party leadership, and in the Comintern, until about 1927-28. While Lenin was alive he enjoyed considerable authority in party circles, but he was not treated as infallible; leading colleagues sometimes openly disagreed with him and criticised his actions. But when, some years after Lenin's death, Stalin had finally triumphed over all opposition within the USSR, all genuine discussion was stifled, both in Soviet Russia and throughout the Communist International. All decisions were taken or approved "unanimously", all Stalin's, or his henchmen's, pronouncements were endorsed and praised automatically. No-one contradicted Stalin with im- punity; even unspoken but suspected disagreement meant disgrace and liquidation within the Soviet Union, disgrace and expulsion (combined with calumny) in the Comintern parties outside the USSR. Changes in Destiny Things did not change immediately when Stalin died in 1953; but some dramatic events occurred in 1955 and 1956, after which things were never the same again in international communism. Chief among these events were the Soviet reconciliation with the Tito regime in Yugoslavia, and Khruschev's denunciation of the Stalinist "cult of the personality". In his book Eurocommunism and the State, the Spanish communist leader Carillo explained the profound psychological effect of those hap- penings. When the anathema was pronounced in 1948 against Tito and his friends, Carillo wrote, the Spanish communists, "following the tradi- tion of unconditional support for the Soviet Union .
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