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Title: On Education
Author: Mikhail Bakunin
Date: July 31, 1869
Language: en
Topics: education
Source: Retrieved on 2016-10-28 from http://marxists.architexturez.net/reference/archive/bakunin/works/1869/education.htm
Notes: First Published: in L'Égalité, July 31, 1869; Source: flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/bakunin/egalite1.html.

Mikhail Bakunin

On Education

L’Égalité, July 31, 1869;

The first topic for consideration today is this: will it be feasible for

the working masses to know complete emancipation as long as the

education available to those masses continues to be inferior to that

bestowed upon the bourgeois, or, in more general terms, as long as there

exists any class, be it numerous or otherwise, which, by virtue of

birth, is entitled to a superior education and a more complete

instruction? Does not the question answer itself? Is it not self-evident

that of any two persons endowed by nature with roughly equivalent

intelligence, one will have the edge - the one whose mind will have been

broadened by learning and who, having the better grasped the inter-

relationships of natural and social phenomena (what we might term the

laws of nature and of society) will the more readily and more fully

grasp the nature of his surroundings? And that this one will feel, let

us say, a greater liberty and, in practical terms, show a greater

aptitude and capability than his fellow? It is natural that he who knows

more will dominate him who knows less. And were this disparity of

education and education and learning the only one to exist between two

classes, would not all the others swiftly follow until the world of men

itself in its present circumstances, that is, until it was again divided

into a mass of slaves and a tiny number of rulers, the former labouring

away as they do today, to the advantage of the latter?

Now we see why the bourgeois socialists demand only a little education

for the people, a soupcon more than they currently receive; whereas we

socialist democrats demand, on the people's behalf, complete and

integral education, an education as full as the power of intellect today

permits, So that, henceforth, there may not be any class over the

workers by virtue of superior education and therefore able to dominate

and exploit them. The bourgeois socialists want to see the retention of

the class system each class, they contend, fulfilling a specific social

function; one specialising, say, in learning, and the other in manual

labour. We, on the other hand, seek the final and the utter abolition of

classes; we seek a unification of society and equality of social and

economic provision for every individual on this earth. The bourgeois

socialists, whilst retaining the historic bases of the society of today,

would like to see them become less stark, less harsh and more

prettified. Whereas we should like to see their destruction. From which

it follows that there can be no truce or compromise, let alone any

coalition between the bourgeois socialists and us socialist democrats.

But, I have heard it said and this is the argument most frequently

raised against us and an argument which the dogmatists of every shade

regard as irrefutable - it is impossible that the whole of mankind

should devote itself to learning, for we should all die of starvation.

Consequently while some study others must labour so that they can

produce what we need to live - not just producing for their own needs,

but also for those men who devote themselves exclusively to intellectual

pursuits; aside from expanding the horizons of human knowledge, the

discoveries of these intellectuals improve the condition of all human

beings, without exception, when applied to industry, agriculture and,

generally, to political and social life; agreed? And do not their

artistic creations enhance the lives of every one of us?

No, not at all. And the greatest reproach which we can level against

science and the arts is precisely that they do not distribute their

favours and do not exercise their influence, except upon a tiny fragment

of society, to the exclusion and, thus, to the detriment of the vast

majority. Today one might say of the advances of science and of the

arts, just what has already and so properly been said of the prodigious

progress of industry, trade, credit, and, in a word, of the wealth of

society in the most civilised countries of the modern world. That wealth

is quite exclusive, and the tendency is for it to become more so each

day, as it becomes concentrated into an ever shrinking number of hands,

shunning the lower echelons of the middle class and the petite

bourgeoisie, depressing them into the proletariat, so that the growth of

this wealth is the direct cause behind the growing misery of the

labouring masses. Thus the outcome is that the gulf which yawns between

the privileged, contented minority and millions of workers who earn

their keep by the strength of their arm yawns ever wider and that the

happier the contented - who -exploit the people's labour become the more

unhappy the workers become. One has only to look at the fabulous

opulence of the aristocratic, financier, commercial and industrial

clique in England and compare it with the miserable condition of the

workers of the same country; one has only to re-read the so naive and

heartrending letter lately penned by an intelligent and upright

goldsmith of London, one Walter Dugan, who has just voluntarily taken

poison along with his wife and their six children, simply as a means of

escape from the degradation's of poverty and the torments of hunger

(1) - and one will find oneself obliged to concede that the much vaunted

civilisation means, in material terms, to the people, only oppression

and ruination. And the same holds true for the modern advances of

science and the arts. Huge strides, indeed, it is true But the greater

the advances, the more they foster intellectual servitude and thus, in

material terms, foster misery and inferiority as the lot of the people;

for these advances merely widen the gulf which already separates the

people's level of understanding from the levels of the privileged

classes. From the point of view of natural capacity, the intelligence of

the former is, today, obviously less stunted, less exercised, less

sophisticated and less corrupted by the need to defend unjust interests,

and is, consequently, naturally of greater potency than the brain power

of the bourgeoisie: but, then again, the brain power of the bourgeois

does have at its disposal the complete arsenal of science filled with

weapons that are indeed formidable. It is very often the case that a

highly intelligent worker is obliged to hold his tongue when confronted

by a learned fool who defeats him, not by dint of intellect (of which he

has none) but by dint of his education, an education denied the

workingman but granted the fool because, while the fool was able to

develop his foolishness scientifically in schools, the working man's

labours were clothing, housing, feeding him and supplying his every

need, his teachers and his books, everything necessary to his education.

Even within the bourgeois class, as we know only too well, the degree of

learning imparted to each individual is not the same. There, too, there

is a scale which is determined, not by the potential of the individual

but by the amount of wealth of the social stratum to which he belongs by

birth; for example, the instruction made available to the children of

the lower petite bourgeoisie, whilst itself scarcely superior to that

which workers manage to obtain for themselves, is next to nothing by

comparison with the education that society makes readily available to

the upper and middle bourgeoisie. What, then, do we find? The petite

bourgeoisie, whose only attachment to the middle class is through a

ridiculous vanity on the one hand, and its dependence upon the big

capitalists on the other, finds itself most often in circumstances even

more miserable and even more humiliating than those which afflict the

proletariat. So when we talk of privileged classes, we never have in

mind this poor petite bourgeoisie which, if it did but have a little

more spirit and gumption, would not delay in joining forces with us to

combat the big and medium bourgeoisie who crush it today no less than

they crush the proletariat. And should society's current economic trends

continue in the same direction for a further ten years (which we do,

however, regard as impossible) we may yet see the bulk of the medium

bourgeoisie tumble first of all into the current circumstances of the

petite bourgeoisie only to slip a little later into the proletariat - as

a result, of course, of this inevitable concentration of ownership into

an ever smaller number of hands - the ineluctable consequences of which

would be to partition society once and for all into a tiny,

overweaningly opulent, educated, ruling minority and a vast majority of

impoverished, ignorant, enslaved proletarians.

There is one fact which should make an impression upon every person of

conscience, upon all who have at heart a concern for human dignity and

justice; that is, for the liberty of each individual amid and through a

setting of equality for all. That is the fact that all of the

intelligentsia, all of the great applications of science to the purpose

of industry, trade and to the life of society in general have thus far

profited no one, save the privileged classes and the power of the State,

that timeless champion of all political and social iniquity. Never, not

once, have they brought any benefit to the masses of the people. We need

only list the machines and every workingman and honest advocate of the

emancipation of labour would accept the justice of what we say. By what

power do the privileged classes maintain themselves today, with all

their insolent smugness and iniquitous pleasures, in defiance of the all

too legitimate outrage felt by the masses of the people? Is it by some

power inherent in their persons? No - it is solely through the power of

the State, in whose apparatus today their offspring hold, always, every

key position (and even every lower and middle range position) excepting

that of soldier and worker. And in this day and age what is it that

constitutes the principle underlying the power of the State? Why, it is

science. Yes, science - Science of government, science of administration

and financial science; the science of fleecing the flocks of the people

without their bleating too loudly and, when they start to bleat, the

science of urging silence, patience and obedience upon them by means of

a scientifically organised force: the science of deceiving and dividing

the masses of the people and keeping them allays in a salutary ignorance

lest they ever become able, by helping one another and pooling their

efforts, to conjure up a power capable of overturning States; and, above

all, military science with all its tried and tested weaponry, these

formidable instruments of destruction which 'work wonders' (2): and

lastly, the science of genius which has conjured up steamships, railways

and telegraphy which, by turning every government into a hundred armed,

a thousand armed Briareos (3), giving it the power to be, act and arrest

everywhere at once - has brought about the most formidable political

centralisation the world has ever witnessed.

Who, then, will deny that, without exception, all of the advances made

by science have thus far brought nothing, save a boosting of the wealth

of the privileged classes and of the power of the State, to the

detriment of the well-being and liberty of the masses of the people, of

the proletariat? But, we will hear the objection, do not the masses of

the people profit by this also? Are they not much more civilised in this

society of ours than they were in the societies of byegone centuries?

We shall reply to that with an observation borrowed from the noted

German socialist, Lassalle. In measuring the progress made by the

working masses, in terms of their political and social emancipation, one

should not compare their intellectual state in this century with what it

may have been in centuries gone by. Instead, one ought to consider

whether, by comparison with some given time, the gap which then existed

between the working masses and the privileged classes having been noted,

the masses have progressed to the same extent as these privileged

classes. For, if the progress made by both has been roughly equivalent,

the intellectual gap which separates the masses from the privileged in

today's world will be the same as it ever was; but if the proletariat

has progressed further and more rapidly than the privileged, then the

gap must necessarily have narrowed; but if, on the other hand, the

worker's rate of progress has been slower and, consequently, less than

that of a representative of the ruling classes over the same period,

then that gap will have grown. The gulf which separates them will have

increased and the man of privilege grown more powerful and the worker's

circumstances more abject, more slave like than at the date one chose as

the point of departure. If the two of us set off from two different

points at the same time and you have a lead of one hundred paces over me

and you move at a rate of sixty paces per minute, and I at only thirty

paces per minute, then after one hour the distance which separates us

will not be just over one hundred paces, but just over one thousand nine

hundred paces.

That example gives a roughly accurate notion of the respective advances

made by the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Thus far the bourgeoisie

has raced along the track of civilisation at a quicker rate than the

proletariat, not because they are intellectually more powerful than the

latter indeed one might properly argue the contrary case - but because

the political and economic organisation of society has been such that,

hitherto, the bourgeoisie alone have enjoyed access to learning and

science has existed only for them, and the proletariat has found itself

doomed to a forced ignorance, so that if the proletariat has,

nevertheless, made progress (and there is no denying it has) then that

progress was made not thanks to society, but rather in spite of it. To

sum up. In society as presently constituted, the advances of science

have been at the root of the relative ignorance of the proletariat, just

as the progress of industry and commerce have been at the root of its

relative impoverishment. Thus, intellectual progress and material

progress have contributed in equal measure towards the exacerbation of

the slavery of the proletariat. Meaning what? Meaning that we have a

duty to reject and resist that bourgeois science, just as we have a duty

to reject and resist bourgeois wealth. And reject and resist them in

this sense - that in destroying the social order which turns it into the

preserve of one or of several classes, we must lay claim to it as the

common inheritance of all the world.