Review: God’s Creatures directed by Saela Davis and Anna Rose Socialism 101 series #12

Are there any socialist countries? Have there ever been?

Reviewed by Leah Whelan (Spoiler warning)

SET IN a rural coastal village in Ireland in the early 1990s, God’s Creatures, starring Emma Watson as Aileen and Paul Mescal as her son Brian, gives an interesting insight into violence against women, familial loyalty and tensions, and the Irish state’s inability to protect survivors of sexual assault.

The story begins with Brian returning from Australia unannounced after several years there. The happiness expressed by Brian’s mother and sisters is contrasted with the tensions between Brian and his father.

The small village is sustained through its fishing industry in which the men fish on the seas, and the women work in the factory sorting, cleaning and packaging fish and oysters – managed by Aileen. Fungus halts labour for a period of time, as it destroys the regular oyster production. Similar to Brian’s surprising return – there is confusion as to why the fungus has returned now.

A claim of an assault is made against Brian, and when his mother is called to the station, she quickly gives him an alibi. The lies quickly impact relations in work, in public and within the family.

Sarah, the person who made the claim and a work friend of Aileen, is the real victim of small-town mentality. Her claim, when brought to court, is quickly thrown out due to insufficient evidence and the alibi provided by Aileen. The proceedings are over as soon as they began, which serves to highlight the speed at which these serious cases pass through the Gardaí and courts.

The sexual assault takes a physical and mental told on Sarah, and as a result she misses work and is subsequently fired. In addition, she is not welcome and refused admission to the local pub – as she leaves the men at the bar make sexist jokes and taunts. We get a vivid depiction of this ‘lockerroom talk’, as the men even go on to say they ‘better not follow her now’, referring to an aspect of the claim made. Not only is Sarah let down by the state, but also by the community around her who come together to protect an abuser, rather than the abused.

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Brian displays no signs of regret or remorse at what he done and continues to work, socialise, and even attempt to get with other women. Haunted by her own guilt, at an intense boiling point, Aileen questions him on whether he feels anything about what he did.

There is a clear contrast between how the men and women view the situation. Brian’s sister Erin is horrified by both her brother and mother’s actions towards the situation. She tells her mother she would view it differently if she heard Sarah’s side. Sarah’s friends are disgusted by the assault and make it known to Aileen in the workplace without directly mentioning it. The reality of the role she has played, the person her son is and the impact it has had on her family and work relations has a degenerating impact on Aileen.

The film is a good insight into the real-life domino effect sexual assault can have on the people closest to the crime. The silencing of the victim, the unwillingness to step forward and the tragic ending for Aileen’s conscience shows the turmoil and harm that protecting abusers has.

By Eddie McCabe

A COMMON question asked by those learning about socialism is whether there are any actual examples of socialism in practice, either somewhere in the world today, or in history. Clearly, it would make it easier to argue for socialism as a real alternative to capitalism if such examples could be provided to sceptics.

Unfortunately, we have to disappoint. There are no such ready-made examples of socialism, but understanding this is an important part of understanding what socialism actually is.

At its most basic, socialism is a society in which the wealth and resources, including the means to produce wealth, are owned in common by society as a whole – and the decisions about how to use them are made democratically, with the principal aim of providing for needs of society as a whole (not competing individuals, businesses or states). It means a society of real equality and democracy, without poverty or injustice.

It hardly needs to be said that no country in the world today looks anything like this.

Still, for different reasons many people do cite examples of ‘actually existing socialism’. Whether it’s people like Bernie Sanders in the US speaking of a ‘Scandinavian socialism’, as if countries like Sweden with many universal public services such as free education and heavily-subsidised healthcare and childcare – valuable reforms won through struggle by a powerful organised workers’ movement – amount to socialism.

This would be mistaken even if such services weren’t being continually eroded, as they are in Sweden. In fact, since the 1990s, inequality has risen at a faster rate in Sweden than anywhere else in the world. The fact is Sweden’s economy has always been marketbased, with private ownership of industry and banks by capitalists, who of course have always been intent on overturning all the reforms won in the past.

Others point to the example of the former Soviet Union, and the regimes modelled on it such as those born out of the Chinese and Cuban revolutions. Their economies were based on state ownership and planning. This marked a real progression from the anarchy of capitalism and its rapacious drive for profit, and resulted in significant increases in living standards, literacy levels and life expectancy through the provision of free health, education and housing.

However, these societies were ruled by authoritarian regimes dominated by self-serving bureaucracies – and therefore were always anathema to genuine socialism, which necessitates both political and economic democracy (economic planning can’t work without the active input of the producers and consumers). The isolation of these regimes in a hostile capitalist world, along with bureaucratic mismanagement, resulted in capitalism being restored in the former Soviet Union and China, and its relentless encroachment on Cuba today.

In short, there are currently no socialist countries, and in a way that’s not surprising as a ‘socialist country’ couldn’t exist for very long as an island in a capitalist ocean. Sooner or later it would be engulfed. Capitalism is a global system and has to be overturned on a global level. Socialism too, therefore, has to be international.

But socialism is the product of a revolution that of course has to start somewhere. It is the culmination of the struggle of the working-class majority against its exploitation and oppression by a capitalist minority. Its seeds are sown in all mass movements of the working class, which in the right conditions – with the addition of the requisite organisation and leadership – can flower into a revolutionary transformation of society.

Capitalism means class war, and even though the capitalists have had the upper hand in the fight for a long time the potential for socialism exists everywhere the class war does. This was glimpsed in all the revolutionary movements of the past 150 years –since the Paris Commune first put the rule of the working class into practice in that city for 72 days. Only the workers and peasants in Russia went further with the heroic but tragically betrayed and strangled revolution that began in 1917.

Countless other attempts since then didn’t get as far, but they all in different ways give inspiration and confidence that socialism is possible, even if it doesn’t exist – yet.