PERSONAL COLUMN

The prescriptive society

TIBOR SZAMUELY

The 'permissive society' has become the most commonplace stereotype of our cliché-ridden

age. One cannot get away from it. It has its ordained high priests and priestesses (usually, appropriately enough, bishops and

life peeresses). It also has its enemies, much more numerous though far less voluble. But friends and foes of the 'permissive society' concur on one point: the conviction that it actually exists. Which is where I disagree with both.

The myth of the 'permissive society' is no more than a confidence trick perpetrated upon an unsuspecting public. It is untrue that we are now 'permitted' to indulge in hitherto forbidden activities. What has hap- pened is that certain activities are now prescribed for all, whilst others are pro- hibited. We live, not in a permissive, but in

a prescriptive society. And if we don't watch out it may soon become a proscriptive one. What is known as 'permissiveness' applies almost exclusively to one area : sex. All the old inhibitions have been cast away, and we are constantly exhorted to enjoy as much sex as possible. Sex, we are told, is good for us. Certainly: but all the time? Yes, say the

grim Grand Permissitors; but since it is ob-

iously impracticable for the whole popula- tion to engage in coitus uninterru pt us, we are

perforce allowed to get away with merely reading, seeing, hearing and talking about sex throughout our leisure (sic) hours.

And so terrified have we 'become of the Grand Permissitors' displeasure that even

people who, for example, loathed Oh!

Calcutta! felt duty-bound to praise it. The drama critic of the Times called it 'a ghastly

show: ill-written, juvenile, and attention-

seeking'. His over-all verdict was 'mar- vellous'. The sexual Gleichschaltung (or

tynanisation) of the entertainment industry

is by now nearly complete. We have already had a nude Midsummer Night's Dream, a nude Romeo and Juliet, a nude Abelard and Heloise, a nude Lady Macbeth—very soon, I expect, we shall see The Three Sisters cavorting in the buff, indulging in nameless vices to raise their train fare to Moscow.

I must admit that until some weeks ago I had not realised the extent to which sex —more exactly, sex and violence—now

dominate the entertainment field. Trying to give my fifteen year old son some advice on

how to spend his holidays, I discovered that on one random day there were 130 films showing in 215 London cinemas; and sixty-

six films, or just over one-half, were marked

N'—prohibited to anyone under eighteen. They were running in 138 cinemas, nearly

two thirds of the total. A few representative titles were The Sadist, Play Girl, The Satanists, Do You Want To Remain A Virgin Forever?, School for Sex, etc etc ad nauseam.

Now Gresham's law applies to literature and the arts as much as to anything else. If the 'Permissive society' had been introduced 500 years ago, we would now have no fiction, no Poetry, no drama, no music, no painting, no sculpture. Only pornography. 'Permis- siveness' actually has nothing permissive or libertarian about it. It amounts simply to the imposition upon all of the 'moral values' (pardon the expression) of a small caste of progressive thinkers. A majority taste is not necessarily a hallmark of virtue. But for anyone who

believes in democracy it is preferable to the prerogative of a sanctimonious minority. 'Liberals' usually defend total sexual permissiveness on the ground that one can- not legislate for individual moral standards. But one can—and does. Today, thanks to these very same 'liberals', we have a greater degree of overt and covert censorship in this country than at any time in the last 150 years. The principal field of censorship, however, is that of race. The people who im- pose it are, almost invariably, the proponents of untrammelled sexual 'permissiveness'. In one case they lay down the law by pre- cription disguised as 'permissiveness', in the other by various forms of proscription.

Naturally, references to racial distinctions are disallowed, even between consenting adults, only if they offend coloured people— insulting whites is respectable, even desirable. When Enoch Powell warns of the danger of bloodshed he foments racial hatred; when Michael X does the same, in rather more specific terms, he shows commendable con- cern. There is nothing particularly new about this attitude. Twenty or so years ago George Orwell wrote: 'Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but accord- ing to who does them ... Almost any English intellectual would be scandalised by the claim that the white races are superior to the coloured, whereas the opposite claim would seem to him unexceptionable even if he disagreed with it'.

Censorship assumes many shapes. There is, first of all, the Race Relations Act : an act of naked political censorship. Other kinds are stealthier and perhaps more dangerous. The liberal establishment, for example, is desperately stamping out any attempt at the scientific study of race and racial charac- teristics. A striking instance of-this was the Great Jensen Row. Professor Jensen, a distinguished American scholar, published a paper seeking to show that inherited factors outweigh environmental ones in the difference in intelligence between races. All hell broke loose—Jensen was denounced from every pulpit (sorry, university chair) as a vile racist. Last month he addressed our own Society for Social Responsibility in Science (an organisation which I had in- nocently taken to be one of Peter Simple's more inspired fantasies).

I am not a geneticist, and normally would never dream of interfering in such a con- troversy. But genetics had nothing to do with the debate at all. Jensen's assailants spoke of politics and ideology, subjects of which I

probably know more than they. According to Professor Hudson, 'The importance and the social danger of research like Jensen's draws nothing from the logical applications of its evidence. Rather it arises, as does the importance of Powellism in British politics, from its appeal to the more primitive aspects of human involvement'. In other words: what matters is not the scientific correctness of Jensen's conclusions but their ideological worth. Professor Steven Rose posed the sacramental question: Was any scientist justified in ignoring the social implications of his work?' Had this ruling been adopted earlier we would have had no science

today—think of what would have happened if Copernicus or Darwin or Einstein had thought out the 'social implications' of their Work before publishing it!

That disgraceful episode reminded me of the Lysenkoist witch-hunt. Lysenko destroyed Soviet geneticists because their views ran counter to Marxist-Leninist ideology. Unlike our own ideologist-scientist, he at least had the courage of his con- victions. He abolished genetics.

But there arc more refined ways of withholding unapproved views from the public. For one thing, getting these into print - is no easy matter nowadays. A couple -of years ago one of our leading sociologists, Professor Andreski, wrote a learned book in which he argued that the independent African states were artificial contraptions, racked by corruption and a host of other ills. The manuscript was rejected by seven publishers before Andreski found someone bold enough to challenge the ultimate pro- gressive taboo.

Blasphemous works do sometimes manage to get published, but they can still be prevented from being read. The final Ni/ill obstat is conferred by the reviewers. When a book makes_ the impious suggestion that Africa is anything less than perfect, or col- onialism anything other than satanic, it is usually ignored in the public prints and thus consigned to oblivion.

The most frightening aspect of the clamp- down on anti-consensus views is the absence of any conspiracy behind it. How comforting it would be to believe in some sinister secret Agitprop directing these nefarious activities! There is nothing of the kind. The reality is grimmer: the progressive establishment has conditioned itself to react instinctively to any possible challenge.

Why, bewildered people may ask, should sexual licence be encouraged while anything that can be construed as 'racism' is sup- pressed? Because—we are told—racism, unlike pornography, provokes hatred, vio- lence, civil discord. Think of Hitler! (All Jensen's opponents referred to the 'Aryan doctrine'.) Now suppose this argument is correct. Suppose it is true that even the slightest mention of race might cause mad- dened crowds of ostensibly peaceable British citizens (your true progressive has a deep contempt for the intelligence of the lower orders) to start lynching every West Indian in sight. But then, what about the doctrine of class hatred? Surely in our century class- warfare has claimed infinitely more victims than racial fanaticism : 25 million in Russia, perhaps twice as many in China, and countless others across the globe. Compared to these achievements Hitler was a mere tyro. Yet the works of Marx, Lenin. Mao, Guevara et al. are freely printed and widely distributed, indeed greatly admired by many progressive thinkers. Don't they provoke people to hatred and violence?

This brings us to the heart of the whole issue of 'permissiveness'. The progressives have abolished censorship of pornographic and obscene publications because, they say, the printed word has no evil effect upon the reader; they have introduced censorship of publications dealing with race because, they say, the printed word can have the most pro- found evil influence upon the reader. The absurdity and dishonesty of this position is self-evident. They really can't have it both ways. But, of course, they always do have it both ways. For that is the essence of the system of double standards which forms the basis of our present prescriptive society.