Part 6 (2/2)

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 30: Bildungsstaat.]

XII

There is a way by which the day's work can be enn.o.bled, and even have mind brought into it,[31] on capitalistic lines. Before the War we were just about to enter on this path--America is treading it now. Its fundamental condition is a huge increase in general well-being.

The daily wages of the American working-man have risen, as we have already remarked, to seven or even ten dollars, corresponding to a purchasing power of over a hundred marks. This amounts to so radical a removal of all restrictions in domestic economy that one can no longer speak of the proletarian condition as existing in the United States. A man who drives to his work in his own automobile can satisfy all his reasonable needs in the way of recreation and of extending his education, he looks at his sectional job (as has not seldom been the case in America even in earlier days) with a critical eye, he forms his own judgment of its place in the whole, he improves the processes, and amuses himself by being both workman and engineer. (Consider in the light of this fact the value of the prophecy that America is standing on the brink of Bolshevism!)

In a country whose wealth at this moment--in consequence of war-profits and depreciation of money--is almost equal to that of the rest of the world put together, the process of abolis.h.i.+ng proletarianism can go forward on capitalistic lines. But we Germans, since it is decreed that we shall be among the poorest of the peoples, and must begin afresh, and live for the future--we shall renounce without envy the broad path of the old way of thought, the way of riches, in order to clear with hard work the new path on which, one day, all will have to follow us. The way of Culture is the way to which we are pointed, and we have described Interchange of Labour as the fundamental condition which enables us to travel it. It is now clear that the conception of popular culture is not, after all, represented by any of the five-and-twenty idealizing catchwords with which we are wont to console ourselves in our elegiac orations, but that by it is meant a clearly defined political procedure.

By the principle of Interchange of Labour it is required that every employee engaged in mechanical work can claim to do a portion of his day's work in intellectual employment; and that every brainworker shall be obliged to devote a portion of his day to physical labour.

There are, of course, fixed limits to the application of this principle, on the one side in intellectual, on the other in bodily incapacity, as well as in those rare cases where it is recognized that the interrupted hours of intellectual work cannot be made good.

We would also establish a year of Labour-Service, to be devoted by the whole youth of Germany, of both s.e.xes, to bodily training and work.

The tests of capacity and of the claim to be reckoned as ”cultured” is not to consist in examinations but in proof of work. Any one who can offer some show of claim can demand to be tested, and, if the result is favourable, to receive further culture. Thus we shall be taking seriously the question of the ascent to higher grades, which, so long as it depends on a particular age, or on school certificates, must remain on paper.

Let no one say that this testing system is a mere mechanical method, that it degrades Culture from its intellectual dignity, and is equivalent to the Chinese literary tests for office. True culture is distinguished from mere sybaritic aestheticism in that in some sense or other it makes for production. Where there is no talent for art or for creative thought, then there remain to be developed the educational forces of judgment, or a faculty for the conduct of life, which must have their influence.

Different categories of Culture will arise of themselves; not ranks or castes or cla.s.ses, but grades of society, each of which may be attained by any one. No one must be able to say that any monopoly of culture has barred his way, or that training and testing have been denied him. If the culture be genuine it will never look down in intellectual arrogance on the stages below it; if it have duties a.s.sociated with it, then he who has rejected the path of ascent, or has failed in it, cannot claim to fulfil those duties. Any one who has no faculty but that of a glib tongue will find in the multiplicity of callings some field for his activity; but the rule of the talker, backed by force or not, will at any rate be spared us.

At this point we may hear a voice from the average heart of Socialism exclaim: ”How is this? Do you call that having no castes? We have just begun to shake off the yoke of the capitalists and now are we expected to put the cultured in command? This is pure reaction!”

Softly! If this is a case of misunderstanding, we shall clear it up.

If any scruples still remain, we shall consider them further.

Let us take the misunderstanding first. It is apparently forgotten that capitalism ruled by hereditary power. Any one who belonged to that circle ruled along with it, whether he were competent to rule or not. But culture is not a heritable possession; no one can win it save by virtue of a higher spirit and will. He who has this spirit and this will, can and will win it. He who wins it is fit for higher responsibilities. Is the voice from the average heart answered?

No. It replies: ”Heritable or not, what do we care? We are out for equality. Distinctions in culture are a kind of aristocracy.”

Now, good heart, you have revealed yourself. What was the meaning of your everlasting talk about the ladder for the rise of capacity? I shall tell you. The capable man is to toil, and to rise just so far as you permit him, namely, till you can possess yourselves of the fruits of his labour: then he is to be thrust down, and the loudest mouth is to rule. You are not pleased with this interpretation? Neither am I, so we are quits.

For of the folly of imagining a society of equals I do not intend to speak. The average man, who cannot understand equality of human dignity, equality before G.o.d, thinks nothing of demanding equality in externals, equality in responsibility and vocation. But this sham equality is the enemy of the true, for it does not fit man's burden to his strength, it creates overburdened, misused natures, driving the one to scamped work and hypocrisy, and the other to cynicism. Every accidental and inherited advantage must indeed be done away with. But if there is any one who, among men equal in external conditions, in duties and in claims, demands that they should also be equal in mind, in will and in heart--let him begin by altering Nature!

In remuneration also, that is to say, in the apportionment of conditions of work, a mechanical equality would be tantamount to an unjust and intolerable inequality in the actual distribution or remission of work. Work of the highest cla.s.s, creative and intellectual work--the most self-sacrificing that is known to man because it draws to itself and swallows up a man's whole life, including his hours of leisure and recreation--this work demands extreme consideration, in the form of solitude, freedom from disturbance, from trivial and distracting cares or occupations, and contact with Nature. This kind of consideration is, from the economic point of view, an outlay which mechanical work does not require. If mechanical and intellectual work are to be placed under the same specific conditions, under which the highest standard of output is to be maintained and the producers are as far as possible to bear an equal burden, then the scale of remuneration must be different.

Starting from a subsistence minimum it must for intellectual work be graded two stages upward, one for the output,[32] and one for the grade of culture implied.

Women will also be subject to this system of grading whether they exercise any vocation outside their homes or not, for society has a deep interest in the culture of its mothers, and in external incentives to culture women must share equally with men.

An intimate sense of a.s.sociation will grow up within each grade of culture. This, however, will not impair the general solidarity of the people, since no hereditary family egoism can arise. This sense of a.s.sociation, renewed with elements that vary from generation to generation, and corresponding very much to the relations between contemporary artists who spring from different cla.s.ses or territories, will dissolve the relics of the old hereditary sentiment and absorb into itself whatever traditional values the latter may possess.

Between the separate grades there will not only be the connexion afforded by the living possibilities of free ascent from one to the other, but the system of ever-renewed co-operation in rank-and-file at the same work will in itself promote culture, tradition, and the consciousness of union. We need only recall the old gilds and military a.s.sociations in order to realize what a high degree of manly civic consciousness can arise from the visible community of duty and achievement. The mechanical worker will become the instructor of his temporary comrade and guest, and the latter will in turn widen the other's outlook, and emulate him in the development of the processes of production. The manual worker will bring to the desk and the board-room his freedom from prepossessions and the practical experience of his calling; he will learn how to deal with abstractions and general ideas; he will gain a respect for intellectual work, and will feel the impulse to win new knowledge and faculty, or to make good what he has neglected.

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