138 139 THE CLASS STRUGGLE WHAT THE UNDER CLASS ANSWERS that is the method of capitalism. Culture for all, spiritual deliverance from the yoke of capital that is the watchword of the party of the working class, the Communist Party.
manner there was created a monopoly of education. The obtaining of a more or less decent education was possible only for the rich or for those supported by the rich. And the intelligentsia craftily exploited this situation in their own interest. And it is therefore plain why they were opposed to the workers in the November Revolution: they scented the danger to their privileges, their favored position, which would disappear if all should have instruction, if even those of black blood should have the opportunity to acquire knowledge.
INSTRUCTION SHOULD BE UNIVERSAL AND COMPULSORY Before anything else, it is necessary to make education universal and compulsory. Under the new organization of life, on new foundations, it will be necessary for those young in years to become accustomed to useful labor. The pupils in the schools must therefore become accustomed to various kinds of productive work. The gates of the higher institutions must be open to all. The priests must be kicked out of all the schools; if they like, let them ply their task of misguiding the young in some other place: they shall not do so in the government schools; the schools shall be worldly, of the world, not of the priests. The organs of the local workers authority shall have control over the schools; and shall not stint their energies in the matter of popular education, supplying to all the children and young men and young women all the knowledge which they need for a happy life.
At present in certain villages and provincial schools some of the more stupid teachers, with the aid of the kulaks (or, more correctly speaking, the kulaks, with the aid of these stupid teachers. are carrying on a campaign with the object of pointing out that the Bolshevikị want to destroy all learning, to abolish all education, etc. etc. But this is of course a manifest lie. The object of the Communist Bolsheviki is quite different: they wish to free all learning from the control of capital; they wish to make all science accessible to the working masses, they wish to destroy the monopoly (the exclusive right) of the wealthy in education.
That is the fact of the matter. And it is not surprising that the wealthy should be eager to retain every reed on which they lean.
When every worker has command of the learning of an engineer, then the case of the capitalist and wealthy engineer becomes sad indeed: there will be many more like him, and he will have nothing in particular to boast of. Then no upsetting of the workers plans, no sabotage on the part of the old retainers of capital will any longer be possible. That is what our respectable bourgeois friends are afraid of.
Culture for the wealthy, spiritual debasement for the poorWhat the Under Class Answers to the Most Impressive Phrases of the Upper Class By AUGUST STRINDBERG (1849 1912)
Society is an invention of the upper class to keep down the lower class.
It is the upper class which bestows authority, patents of nobility, social position; which devises the dictates of morality, the concepts of right conduct, the artificial conscience, which is drilled into the lower class from childhood, so that man living in society cannot without great difficulty distinguish the voice of his natural conscience from the false voices which the upper class may feel disposed to breed in us. The upper class controls all the books that are written, and itself writes all the books to defend its own acts, grants the necessary authority to them, and denies any authority to the books written by the lower class. Is it remarkable, therefore, that the upper class can refute everything, have an answer ready for everything? It needs simply to quote its own books, to clear up everything; the other side cannot quote its own books, because they have been declared not valid.
Is it surprising that the lower class should so often be unable to make reply, when it has been taught from childhood only the stupid answers to all questions that the upper class has drilled into it?
But the time seems at last to have come, when the lower class no longer answers the catechetical answers taught by the upper class, but is beginning to examine the lies of the upper class. Of course it is impossible for them to have all their answers ready at once, for how could the lower class, which has only recently liberated its thoughts from blind following of authority, succeed in a short time in pulling down what it has taken the upper class a few thousand years to build up? have here merely managed to gather together a little nosegay of the prettiest questions that have for twenty years been noticing in the upper class newspapers and they can be read there just as well today for they