Since publishing Arthur Merton\u2019s article on the outcome of the James Bulger murder trial Workers\u2019 Power\u2019s letters page has been deluged with responses. We have been able to print only a few of these. Here Jack Tully responds on behalf of the Workers Power Editorial Board<\/p>\n
The murder of Jamie Bulger shocked millions of people. Everywhere, people asked the same question: why?<\/p>\n
The answer to this question is not simple and, as the debate in Workers Power\u2019s letters page shows, people with similar political points of view can advance radically different answers.<\/p>\n
In our original article on the subject ( 173, December 1993) we argued that the event was \u201can aberration, a qualitatively different viciousness that de\ufb01es pat explanations\u201d and that the answer as to why the two boys killed James Bulger \u201clies deep in the psyche of the killers themselves\u201d.<\/p>\n
In the following months we were accused of \u201ca complete abandonment of Marxism\u201d, of advancing \u201ca view more akin to lapsed Catholicism than Marxism\u201d in an article which was \u201cat odds with Marxism, historical materialism and indeed materialism itself\u201d.<\/p>\n
The discussion raises important questions about the relationship between Marxism, psychology and science in general.<\/p>\n
Marxists are materialists. We think that all phenomena, including the movements of social classes and the behaviour of individuals, can be explained by material factors which obey certain objective laws.<\/p>\n
These \u201claws\u201d are not simply invented by scientists. They correspond to the way in which matter moves and interacts. It is the job of scientists\u2014and Marxism itself is an attempt to think scienti\ufb01cally about society\u2014to formulate these laws as accurately as possible.<\/p>\n
Social<\/p>\n
Marxism is the science of social development. Psychology is the science of individual behaviour. Yet human beings are \u201csocial animals\u201d\u2014their individual behaviour can only take place in a social context.<\/p>\n
Two different and opposing conceptions of human behaviour have generally been advanced through the ages. On the one hand there is the idea that we behave the way we do because of \u201coriginal sin\u201d, \u201cnature\u201d or \u201cgenetic determinism\u201d. On the other hand there are explanations focusing on \u201cupbringing\u201d, \u201cnurture\u201d or \u201cenvironmental factors\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Marxist starting point in trying to overcome this bald contradiction is that the human mind or psyche is composed of matter. It consists of electrical signals in the brain. The nerves which carry these messages are assembled in a particular way, a complex interaction of genetic \u201cprogramming\u201d and the effects of experience. But the chemical and neurological laws governing the way in which we are \u201cwired\u201d cannot, in general, explain the way in which individuals behave.<\/p>\n
Of course, some behaviour can be explained and predicted by particular physico-chemical or biological laws. You drink alcohol\u2014you behave stupidly\u2014you fall down.<\/p>\n
But in general we need richer explanations of human behaviour, explanations which deal with human beings not just as a walking collection of nerves and chemicals but as social beings, interacting with each other and the world, developing according to certain contradictory laws.<\/p>\n
If we want to understand the society which produced James Bulger\u2019s murderers, with its child abuse and poverty, its two-faced attitude to children\u2019s rights and responsibilities, its lurid video nasties and its moralising bigots, only Marxism will suf\ufb01ce.<\/p>\n
If we want to understand the particular effect of that society on the children\u2014how the institution of the \u201cbourgeois family\u201d was mediated through the actual families of James Bulger\u2019s murderers\u2014we cannot rely on Marxism\u2019s understanding of society\u2019s laws alone.<\/p>\n
We have to grasp the reality of individual behaviour through a dialectical materialist psychology.<\/p>\n
In the development of psychology, a massive step forward was made in the late nineteenth century by Freud. Freud allowed us to glimpse the possibility that human beings do not only behave according to simple material rules governed by their emotional states or their social conditions. They might also behave according to more complex and unseen rules, perhaps relating to the nature of the family and the way in which the growing child relates to its parents, the imposition of discipline and so on.<\/p>\n
These factors, Freud claimed, take the form of unconscious forces or structures. They cannot be directly observed but can be deduced on the basis of close observation of the behaviour of the individual.<\/p>\n
Another attempt at a materialist explanation of human behaviour was made by the Russian psychologist Pavlov, in the early years of this century. Pavlov\u2019s famous research, on the changing behaviour of dogs under different external stimuli, formed the basis for an explanation of the behaviour of in human beings.<\/p>\n
Controversy still rages over the merits of the psychoanalytic and behavioural approaches laid down by Freud and Pavlov respectively.<\/p>\n
Here is what Trotsky, one of the few great Marxists to write about psychology, had to say on the subject:<\/p>\n
\u201cPavlov\u2019s re\ufb02exology proceeds entirely along the paths of dialectical materialism. It conclusively breaks down the wall between physiology and psychology. The simplest re\ufb02ex is physiological, but a system of re\ufb02exes gives us \u2018consciousness\u2019. The accumulation of physiological quantity gives a new \u2018psychological\u2019 quality . . . \u201d<\/p>\n
Freud<\/p>\n
\u201cThe school of the Viennese psychoanalyst Freud proceeds in a different way. It assumes in advance that the driving force of the most complex and delicate of psychic processes is a physiological need. In this general sense it is materialistic if you leave aside the question whether it does not assign too big a place to the sexual factor at the expense of others . . . But the psychoanalyst does not approach problems of consciousness experimentally, going from the lowest phenomena to the highest, from the simple re\ufb02ex to the complex re\ufb02ex; instead he attempts to take all these intermediate stages in one jump . . . from the religious myth, the lyrical poem or dream, straight to the physiological basis of the psyche\u201d. (Trotsky, Culture and Socialism 1926)<\/p>\n
Trotsky\u2019s purpose here was to show that:<\/p>\n
\u2022 different scienti\ufb01c methods can grasp elements of the same reality<\/p>\n
\u2022 they do not have to be subjectively Marxist. The best objective science will spontaneously approximate to the dialectical materialist method<\/p>\n
\u2022 Marxism doesn\u2019t reject Freudianism just because of its \u201cconjectural\u201d and primarily individually-oriented method of analysis<\/p>\n
\u2022 whilst there can be a Marxist, materialist judgement made about psychology\u2019s methods and conclusions, there can be no \u201cparty line\u201d on them. Some Communist Party members had argued in favour of banning Freudianism from the USSR\u2019s scienti\ufb01c establishment.<\/p>\n
Trotsky returned to this theme in his notebooks in the 1930s, emphasising again that:<\/p>\n
\u201cBy itself the method of psychoanalysis, taking as its point of departure \u2018the autonomy\u2019 of psychological phenomena [from the physiological], in no way contradicts materialism. Quite the contrary, it is precisely dialectical materialism that prompts us to the idea that the psyche could not even be formed unless it played an autonomous, that is, within certain limits, an independent role in the life of the individual and the species\u201d (Notebooks 1933-35)<\/p>\n
At the same time Trotsky was prepared to criticise vigorously every attempt by psychology to provide its own \u201cpat explanations\u201d of social phenomena. Much of sham Freudianism, he wrote, \u201chas nothing to do with science and merely expresses decadent moods\u201d. And he devoted a whole article to attacking Pavlov\u2019s attempt to explain not merely individual behaviour but society\u2019s development in terms of physiological re\ufb02exes (Science in the Task of Socialist Construction, 1923)<\/p>\n
What does all this mean for our attempts to understand the Bulger case, and for the arguments raised in letters to Workers Power?<\/p>\n
The gutter press screamed that the two boys were \u201cevil bastards\u201d and thus repeated the argument of medicine-men, exorcists, religious bigots and reactionaries down the ages.<\/p>\n
Other press pundits claimed the boys\u2019 behaviour was the direct result of one \u201cmaterial in\ufb02uence\u201d\u2014watching the horror video Child\u2019s Play III. The Tory right lined up behind this argument, and the original Workers Power article was focused against their pro-censorship conclusions.<\/p>\n
We can accept Colin Lloyd\u2019s argument (WP175) that the article overemphasised this point, failing to take on the \u201cevil bastards\u201d argument, and sweepingly applied the notion of a simple \u201caberration\u201d to other shocking crimes.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, two readers argued that distinctly social reasons can explain why James Bulger was killed.<\/p>\n
Gerry Downing claims that \u201cthe cause was the disturbed and decaying social relations in the capitalist society as a whole\u201d. Quentin Rudland writes that \u201cat least one of the two murderers had probably been severely abused by an adult\u201d .<\/p>\n
These are attempts to provide a materialist explanation. Unfortunately, merely because a theory attempts to root itself in material factors does not mean it is right.<\/p>\n
In this particular case, these \u201cexplanations\u201d do not help us one bit. This is not the \ufb01rst phase of decay in capitalist relations, nor is Liverpool the hardest-hit place on the face of the planet, and yet the Bulger case was so striking because it was so unusual. Similarly, many children are abused. Virtually none of them kill other children.<\/p>\n
Despite their best intentions, Downing and Rudland only proved that their \u201cexplanations\u201d are not suf\ufb01cient. It is obviously the case that neither child abuse nor capitalist decay are adequate explanations because they cannot explain the particularity of this case.<\/p>\n
Both contributors make reference to Freud in support of their arguments. As Rudland suggests, the early Freud discovered the material evidence of widespread sexual abuse of children and linked it to adult psychological disorders. But under the pressure of public opinion Freud changed his explanation, emphasising childhood fantasies, as opposed to the actual experience of abuse, as the roots of psychosis.<\/p>\n
A materialist critique of Freud must take account of this massive, ideologically motivated retreat from scienti\ufb01c truth. But it does not invalidate the consideration of aberrant behaviour from the point of view of the individual human psyche. As Trotsky pointed out it is precisely dialectical materialism which allows us to consider the psyche playing:<\/p>\n
\u201can autonomous, that is, within certain limits, an independent role in the life of the individual and the species\u201d.<\/p>\n
So why did these two boys kill James Bulger?<\/p>\n
If we are true to Trotsky\u2019s method we have to admit we do not know the full answer. That does not mean that the answer is unfathomable. But Marxists do not pretend to have a monopoly of insight into the motivation of two genuinely abnormal children.<\/p>\n
This is not an \u201cabandonment of Marxism\u201d or an example of \u201clapsed Catholicism\u201d. It is a refusal to follow the gutter press and leap upon the \ufb01rst explanation which comes to hand\u2014either innate evil or susceptibility to trashy horror \ufb01lms.<\/p>\n
It will require scienti\ufb01c study, probing the psyche of the two boys concerned and all the factors\u2014social and biological\u2014which produced those two boys to fully understand the crime.<\/p>\n
Some of that study has already begun, with journalists Gitta Sereny and David Smith producing separate accounts of the children and their families. In both accounts we \ufb01nd unmistakable signs of neglect and suggestions of sexual abuse in the case of one of the perpetrators, but also suggestions that the behavioural problems of another arose from his chronic hyperactivity.<\/p>\n
Being<\/p>\n
All of this should warn Marxists against any attempts at \u201cpat explanations\u201d. Marxists\u2014including some of the writers to the letters page\u2014quote Marx, who argued that \u201cbeing determines consciousness\u201d. This is undoubtedly true, but needs to be understood in its fullest, most dialectical fashion.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeing\u201d\u2014our existence, our nature\u2014does not only refer to our immediate or past social experience. Humans are social animals; that is, we have a material, social nature. Our physical nature is refracted through the experience of society.<\/p>\n
There is no barrier between Marxism and psychology. Indeed self-consciously dialectical thought is the best guarantee of accurate results in psychology and any other science. But Marxists, even if armed with the general truth that \u201cbeing determines consciousness\u201d, have no monopoly on scienti\ufb01c truth. They have no right simply to counterpose their own armchair psychology to that of the bosses\u2019 media pundits.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Since publishing Arthur Merton\u2019s article on the outcome of the James Bulger murder trial Workers\u2019 Power\u2019s letters page has been deluged with responses. We have been able to print only a few of these. Here Jack Tully responds on behalf of the Workers Power Editorial Board The murder of Jamie Bulger shocked millions of people. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7724,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[104],"class_list":["post-3738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-archive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7724"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3738\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}