Learning, earning and yearning (1987)

From the November 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard 

"I never let my schooling interfere with my education." Mark Twain

You might have left formal education years ago. You might be involved in it now as a student or a teacher. What, though, is your opinion about the way education is organised? Is it a pleasurable, inspiring, challenging experience? Well, if you stop a group of young people making a swift exit from school at the end of their classes or a tired troupe of teachers and ask them about their day, "pleasurable" and "inspiring" are probably not the sort of words they will use to describe their routines.

Acquiring useful knowledge and developing new skills are pursuits that people can, in the right circumstances, greatly enjoy. Why, then, do millions of people involved in formal education find it such a boring and uncomfortable business? For an answer to this question it is worth considering what is contained in the text books and what is imparted in the classrooms and lecture halls. For a clearer understanding of what education is all about, however, it is reasonable to look out of the classroom window to consider the type of society which education is designed to prepare us for. What sort of person does the education system want to make? In order to understand the instruction manual you need to look at a picture of an ideal version of the finished product.

What is Education?

The word “education" derives from the Latin word educere meaning "to lead out”. It is seen as the process whereby young people are led out from states of inability and ignorance into the workings of the world beyond — their idea being that the older and more experienced generations will equip the members of the new generation with the knowledge and abilities required in order to cope with social life. In order for society to survive it needs to produce goods and services like food, clothes, accommodation and transportation. Human history has developed through different social systems, like slavery and later feudalism, and consequently the way in which young people have been prepared for the life ahead of them has varied according to the sort of society they are to inhabit.

The commercial society we live in today is a stage in history. There is no evidence to suggest that after thousands of years of change and development human history has ground to a halt and that the style of society we have now is something that will never change. The main characteristics of today's society are quite simple and they are the same all over the world. Society is divided between the wealth producers (the great majority) and the wealth owners (a small minority). Most people have to sell themselves to an employer like a company or the state in order to get a livelihood. A price is put on everyone as they flog their lives away in order to make someone else rich. How much are you worth? £3.25 an hour? £506.78 a month? £10,000 for one year of your life? Meanwhile a few men and women live in luxury with gigantic wealth which has been legitimately robbed from the people whose energies and skills have produced it. It is a society in which a man or a woman in a pinstripe suit can take a decision which will devastate a local community, ruining hundreds of lives, by deciding to "withdraw investments" from some local industry. A couple of days later the person who took the decision could be in drunken revelry at a chic nightclub, celebrating a successful £10,000 share deal made in ten minutes while mothers from the wrecked community are weeping over the new wasteland in which their children will be growing up.

We are living in a world where conscripts to the Argentinian military forces and economic conscripts to the British forces were ordered to massacre each other in the name of civilisation. What is reasonably described as an act of insane savagery when it is committed in Hungerford is called noble heroism when it is committed in Goose Green. In the same way, Russian soldiers in Afghanistan and American soldiers in Nicaragua are being ordered to murder people in "defence" of a "good" cause. How good is an argument or a cause that requires you to shoot someone with an exploding bullet in order to persuade them?

Above all, the economic principle which governs the way we live is that of profit. Although the world can easily produce more than enough food and drink for everyone, millions of people die of starvation while farmers are paid to burn wheat in order to keep its price high. Coffee is dumped in the oceans, mountains of beef and butter beshadow lakes of wine and milk while, according to the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF), a child dies from poverty every two seconds. A network of well-intentioned campaigns like Live Aid and Sport Aid struggle to alleviate the plight of those on the borderline of survival but the problems remain. Workers in relative poverty, thinking twice about how they are going to pay the electricity bill, shelling out a few quid to the destitute will not solve any problems. Charity may prolong the agonies, though, by lulling people into the mistaken belief that the profit system can be humanised if people were simply to be a little more thoughtful to others. The profit system has to operate according to what is profitable, not according to what is in the best interests of the majority. Think about the priorities of the profit system. In 1986 Cancer Research in the UK tried to collect £1 million by begging from people. The research here is reasonably important because one in four people in industrial areas of the world die of cancer-related disease. During the same period the United States government spent $45,000,000,000 on military research and development and a similar sum was spent by the Russian government.

Learning Compliance

What role does formal education play in all this? Primarily it is a dull and restricting process by which people are gently indoctrinated to accept a highly undesirable, difficult, dangerous and insecure way of life. The indoctrination today is not always delivered in a stark, crude way (although it was at one time) but the net result of someone going through ten years of schooling is. generally, the acquiring of a frame of mind and a set of prejudices that make for a willing wage-slave, a follower of leaders and in many cases a military recruit. "Education", according to one writer, "is what remains when we have forgotten all that we have been taught" (George Halifax). Certainly, judging by the dreary content of most formal education courses there is every reason for young people to quickly forget most of what has been taught. The hang-over effect though is the production of people who, give or take a complaint or a wish to reform something, are generally compliant to the type of society we have. In David Copperfield, Charles Dickens introduced the character of Uriah Heep who refers to his education as a young boy.

They taught us a deal of 'umbleness . . . not much else that I know of, from morning to night we was to be 'umble to this person, 'umble to that; and to pull off our caps here and make our bows there; and always to know our places and abase ourselves before our betters.

Local and national employers recently attended the college where I work to organise lectures and workshops for the students as prospective employees and the message was subtle but clear: the people who taught Uriah Heep had the right idea. Today's bosses have a wide vocabulary of terms to avoid being openly offensive. "Be obedient" becomes "Could you co-operate?" but the relationship of "master" and servant has not changed even if it is labelled as that between employer and employee. An official at the Department of Education and Science recently said.

We have to ration . . . educational opportunities so that society can cope with the output of education . . . People must be educated once more to know their place.

[The Listener 4 September 1986] 

In Britain today the children of the owning class attend costly private schools where they are trained in the techniques of pomposity, arrogance and the social hierarchy. Only 6 per cent of young people attend such schools while the other 94 per cent are learning how to know their place. It should not be forgotten, though, that the minority who own and control the society we live in (the owners of the factories, offices, newspapers and so forth) do not occupy their positions of power because they had expensive and élitist educations. On the contrary. They have expensive and élitist educations because their parents occupy positions of power. A person's class position pre-dates their education and continues regardless of whether they performed well or badly in school. You do not get to own landed estates or a string of factories or oilfields because you worked hard at school or college. The Duke of Westminster owns 138,000 acres including some of the most lucrative sites in London like Oxford Street, Belgravia and parts of Westminster. He owns estates in America. Australia. Wales and England including a 14-bedroom house set in 19,000 acres in Lancashire. That house alone is worth over £5 million. The Duke has one O' Level. It is interesting to note the disgust and indignation that the news media have today regarding acts of organised thuggery, plunder and looting because it was precisely by those methods that the early aristocrats acquired their estates, including the ancestors of the Duke of Westminster.

Finding Out the Hard Way

Many people who believe that you can get rich by working hard discover the real nature of class-divided society the hard way. Some may get jobs as £30,000 a year executives or become successful yuppies. Nevertheless, unlike the fully-fledged social parasites who live extravagantly from the unearned incomes of rent, interest or dividends, the upstarts with the company BMWs rely on a salary or commission for their dosh. Consequently. if the company they work for closes or goes insolvent (the closure of the London Daily News is a good recent example) they land with a bump on the floor of the economic class they have never really left. This fall will necessitate a rapid change of lifestyle and. ironically, one of the expenses which may no longer be possible in this situation is often the cost of sending their children to fee-paying schools.

Social problems like poverty and disorder are endemic to the profit system which puts the minority's acquisition of wealth above all other considerations. An economic recession aggravates these problems and it is in this social context that the government has decided to introduce a national school curriculum. Governments of whatever political complexion have to act as executive committees for the owning class. A national curriculum. whereby the same courses sanctioned by the government are taught uniformly across the country, is seen as a way of brain-washing tomorrow's wage-slaves and dole-queuers in a more efficient fashion than is achieved by today's methods. Bear in mind, though, that governments (not just in the UK) are opting for more thorough and systematic methods of "educating" young people into acquiescence but not necessarily because the ideology of the profit system is blossoming. Consider the instances from the past where centralised powers have used programmes of education to bolster their ethics and principles. At the time of the ancient Greek empire with the conquests of Alexander, the Greek curriculum was established all over the Hellenic colonies to explain and promote the culture of that empire which involved institutional slavery as an integral part of its so-called civilisation. Centuries later the Roman Catholic church was organising in a similar way. The Jesuit schools were originally intended for members of a special religious order but the schooling system was extended to cover the lay élites of medieval Europe. This extension and the social circumstances which caused it are similar to those which caused the expansion of early Greek schools. It was the insecurity, not the dominance, of the Greek colonies of Alexandrian times which prompted them to build and depend on schools to produce support for their social hierarchy. Similarly it was the insecurity of the Roman church in the time of Ignatius which accounts for the formation and rapid growth of the Jesuit schools. In both examples the school was regarded as a way of preserving a set of social values which were losing their dominance.

Today, many young people are deeply dissatisfied with what society has to offer them. Not just those who are rioting on the streets of places like Belfast. England and Sweden but also the classrooms full of people whose potential skill and creativity is being deliberately under developed because there are either no vacancies for them after school or work of a very limited kind. Some at least are healthily less reverential to authority today than they were in previous generations. It is harder than it used to be for the profit system to con young people into believing that it works in their interests, especially during a recession. So, one thing for Kenneth Baker to ponder is how long a system of indoctrination can succeed when its message runs against people's experience — you cannot make castor oil taste nice by teaching someone to call it syrup.

It was the development of the education systems in the emerging nation states of Europe last century which produced the earliest models of the school system of today. A national education system with schools teaching common subjects and with teachers produced by uniformly organised training colleges was first established in nineteenth century Prussia. The aim was to produce multitudes of workers tailored to meet the specifications of the architects of the German state. With the industrial revolution came the need for the new owners of industry to get a workforce which was equipped with rudimentary skills, the habit of obedience. servility to the bosses and there was also the need for many workers who had competence in elementary literacy and numeracy. The education system was developed accordingly to manufacture factory workers and clerks.

Education Today

Today most people who work are employed in commercial or service industries. The latest available figures show that whereas there are 6,368,000 people working in the manufacturing and construction industries there are 8,221,000 people engaged in service areas like distribution, transport and finance. (An Economic Profile of Britain 1986 — Lloyds Bank.) So schools and colleges need to prepare a workforce for these areas and to condition young people to accept the social scenery by referring to it in terms which make it seem sensible and unchangeable although it is neither. Maths and Statistics syllabuses are riddled with questions about companies, profits, redundancies and productivity where the desirability of a class-divided society is assumed as a self-evident truth. Accounting, commerce and Business Management courses ask sober questions about the economic laws which cause such misery. History courses focus on the affairs of monarchs and politicians and encourage people to grow up with a narrow, nationalistic and ethnocentric viewpoint. Some economics courses are entirely founded on the quite false assumption that there is an unavoidable scarcity of goods for the people of the world to consume. Education could be organised so very differently. It could be what it should be: stimulating and imaginative. Anyone, though, who sought to achieve those aims by simply reforming the methods or content of the current system would be faced with a frustrating and ultimately impossible task. From primary to postgraduate levels, education is geared to the economic system of which it is a part. What is the point in devoting time and energy to obtaining a few more scant resources for education when its entire stocks are overwhelmingly outstripped in scale and sophistication by those of the murder industry (the official one)? Time and energy spent on quickening the end of the social system which creates the perverse priorities is a much sounder investment.

The only way to achieve a real change in education is to change the social environment for which education prepares people. A society which converts the means of producing and distributing wealth from the private ownership of companies and state machines into the common property of the whole community would be able to direct production to one aim and one aim alone — the satisfaction of human needs. A society which abandons the division between a few who own and control and a majority who do not will be able to operate on the basis of the principle — from each according to her/his abilities, to each according to her/his self-defined needs. There is no problem with people behaving co-operatively, even on a huge scale, as was demonstrated by the millions of people who organised the monumental Live Aid across the world. No one working in any of the thousands of different tasks which needed to be done for this project worked for money. The 80,000,000 people who participated in Sport Aid with exemplary organisation testify to the same point.

Education in Socialism

Education in a classless society would not have to regiment, discipline and inculcate young people with rubbish the way it does now. Teachers are often authoritarian today as a result of the disagreeable disciplinary work the system demands they perform. In a social setting which does not create the need for people to be authoritarian, education will not need to be the flow from a "teacher" to a "learner" that it so often is now. People will be much less inhibited about venturing to teach someone who is teaching them or learning from someone they are teaching. More importantly, though, no-one would have to become "a teacher" and be lumbered with performing that function to the exclusion of other, more creative occupations. Today it makes sense to the profit system to make you into a mechanic or a nurse or a carpenter or a computer programmer and that's you done. There is no need, however, for anyone's creativity and usefulness to be restricted in this way in a society that puts human satisfaction as its top priority and profitability nowhere. Instead of being a series of unpleasant experiences foisted on people between the ages of six and sixteen education should become an exhilarating project continuing throughout life for everyone who wishes to maintain the mental vitality they enjoyed as a child.

Ignorant people are easy to fool and manipulate just as knowledge is strength. Don't let your schooling interfere with your education.

Gary Jay

Best years of your life? (1987)

From the November 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard 

"On your first blow of the whistle, they have to freeze. Then, on the second, they must go back inside." Such was the advice given to me on starting a short spell of work as a teacher in a primary school recently. I was beginning to wonder whether my job application had been mixed up with that of a would-be prison screw. I could certainly understand the young child who says after her first day at school that she doesn't have to go the next day because "I've been there once already". The first lesson then, on entering a school is that it is compulsory.

The second lesson was that it is no coincidence that the daily routine of a school is closely modelled on that of a factory or office. Bells or sirens usher the uniform mass in at 9, out at 12, in at 1, out at 4 . . . One of the main functions of schools is to prepare the children of workers to fit into the kind of life-long routines that their parents have suffered before them. They are taught not to respect themselves and their own needs. They are taught to accept poverty and to fight for “the nation" and its owners.

The school is an artificial and hostile environment in which large numbers of children are herded together, grouped according to age and without the resources to cater for the subtleties of individual needs. In later life it would be absurd if you were only to be on friendly terms with those who were born within twelve months of you. and yet throughout the school years this is the kind of arbitrary association that is thrust on children. Then, in groups often over 30. they are expected to "learn".

The current proposals for a national curriculum and for testing at 7, 11, 14 and 16 will simply make an intimidating environment even worse. The Rutter Report (15,000 Hours) has reassured us that "prize givings are neither detrimental, divisive, nor elitist". Maybe not for the minority who get the prizes. But the capitalist approach to dealing with differing needs means being concerned with the differing needs of various employers, and therefore carefully grading and labelling the products of their mind factories for later use (or non-use).

At the same time, the capitalist attitude towards the young has always been ambiguous. Childhood is itself an artificial construction, a social concept which has emerged and changed very much in its definition over the centuries. And in the present, youth is seen as both charming and yet potentially dangerous. Creative or imaginative dreams have to be moulded so that they are accommodated to the needs of the present system, or else scorned and smashed. And this is another role of the so-called education system in present-day society.

The Intentions Behind State Education

All of these purposes of schools were present from the earliest days of state education. Before 1830 the British state spent nothing on education, and fifty years later the groundwork had been laid for the system we have today. Employers wanted well-trained workers: "The superiority of workmen of some education over those who have none must be sensibly felt by all the great manufacturers in the country" (Earl Stanhope, 1807). They wanted to be able directly to control the young, to hold back change. As the manufacturer, Andrew Ure, put it in 1861:

The uneducated state of the lower orders is a dark den of incendiaries among misrule which, if not cleared out will give birth to disastrous eruptions in every other province. A limited education might be a most effective bulwark against revolution.

And it was seen as necessary to condition workers into the role and life-style of steady and submissive wage-slaves:

We do not profess to give these children an education that will raise them above their station of business in life: that is not our object. but to give them an education that may fit them for that business.

[Robert Lowe, Final Report of the Cross Commission, 1888]

Such intentions are just as much in evidence today, with for example the recent White Paper on Education and Training, which states that the aim of current educational changes is to make "learning in schools more relevant to the needs of the modern world and. in particular, the needs of employers".

Before taking a glance at what is actually taught in schools, let us consider briefly some of the supposed "alternatives" on offer. After immense effort and campaigning, comprehensive schooling was established in Britain. And yet even some of those most vigorous campaigners will now acknowledge that many of the old frustrations and indignities still remain in the newer system of "indoctrination without discrimination". Furthermore, it has recently been argued that the current proposed reforms will effectively restore many aspects of the grammar school system anyway. Then there was the famous old Labour policy of getting rid of the public schools, not that they ever did anything about it. In fact, is it such a bad thing that we are saved the unpleasant experience of rubbing shoulders at school with the Hooray Henrys and Henriettas who will later be exploiting us? It is quite logical that in a two-class society there will be two classes of school preparing people for two different lifestyles or roles: the employers and the (sometimes) employed.

The whole nature and purpose of "education" cannot be fundamentally changed without a transformation of society as a whole. With the establishment of socialism, as a system of production for use, the idea of being dragged through a compulsory institution will have no place. Such prisons can only jokingly be called "places of learning". Education then will become a life-long and voluntary process, based firmly in everyday experience. Already, modern educational methods are recognising the value of the "problem-solving" or investigational approaches to learning. But this is still taking place in the artificial confines of schools. Socialism will not need to produce people as profit-generating commodities. So learning then can be completely voluntary. life-long and rooted in experience, as we start to refine the satisfaction of our needs.

Training Future Workers

What, in contrast, is taught in schools at present? The tone is perhaps set by a recent headline. "Business seeks a broader role with schools" (Times Educational Supplement, 21 August 1987).

From an early age. schools are teaching children to accept the curiosities of capitalism as if they were natural. And the message, once swallowed at this vulnerable age, sticks hard many years later. Take for example this self-confessed indoctrinator, describing how she introduced some 8-year-olds to the idea of "profit". She says there was

incredulity as we would have 10p every time we sold a spider, also confusion at hearing the word "profit". It was previously a concept outside their experience and I spent much teaching time after this trying to reinforce the idea of profit and how it is essential for the survival of a business.

[Child Education, February 1987] 

No doubt if a teacher was to show, more accurately, how profit is essential only for the survival and prosperity of the owners of a business, this would be slammed in the gutter press as bringing "politics" into the classroom!

Last year, in fact, Norman Tebbit accused ILEA of driving children to truancy by teaching "anti-sexist, anti-racist, gay, lesbian, CND rubbish" in schools. In fact the kind of thing that drives many of the more sensible victims to truancy" is, for example, the absurd humiliation of the weekly dose of physical jerks, or the regimentation of enforced sessions of "Country Dancing", and the arrogant sarcasm of teachers who cannot earn respect and therefore demand it as a right.

In Statistics A-level, students are expected to calculate how to set minimum standards for the proportion of faulty items off a production line, in such a way as to allow a stated set of results to pass those standards! (This reflects a common practice in industry, in which both profits and good PR are maintained by setting the standards to match the results rather than the more honest way around). And in history, an acceptance of nationalism runs quietly throughout all of the courses, as in 20th Century British History (Heinemann. 1987) which says of the 1931 National Government that "they wanted to work together to help Britain. Britain had to get out of the Depression".

Then there is religion. Under the 1944 Education Act. all pupils have to meet every day for a collective act of worship. Again, this is of course neither spontaneous nor voluntary but enforced. "Religious instruction" is also the only compulsory school "subject" on the curriculum in Britain.

Teaching Law and Order

A piece of historical crudity almost as stupid as the Heinemann variety was served up earlier this year by a policeman addressing the children of a Newcastle school I was working in: "Before the forming of the police force in 1829," he explained, "there was no law and order. There was crime everywhere". So different now, isn’t it? There is currently a fairly widespread policy in inner London of teachers refusing the police access to schools. This policy has been attacked by the NUT, as well as the government and the tabloids. Recently a surprisingly honest headteacher from St. Paul's. Bristol acknowledged that police make regular guest appearances in schools because "teachers are in alliance with power and authority. We cannot opt out in school" (Libertarian Education, summer 1987).

The 1986 Education Act requires any headteacher to have regard "to any such representations which are made to him by the chief officer of police" and the annual school governors' report should describe "what steps have been taken to develop the school's links with the community (including links with the police)". Apart from the obvious chance offered to the police to impress a vulnerable and captive audience with the wonderful way they work to ensure that ten per cent of the population remain in control of most of the real wealth, they also even supplement this PR job with "intelligence gathering" activities. A certain PC Currant recently boasts in The Job (Metropolitan Police paper) that “a lot of youngsters began talking to us, giving us descriptions and nicknames of burglars".

In recent years, this extra subject on the curriculum, known as Submission Studies (is a "Law and Order” GCSE on the way?) has become even more prominent. The 1981 Scarman Report advised:

Police assistance in the education of children in the fundamentals of an ordered society can. . . be of great value . . .  as the pressures on our society grow in intensity, the need for programmes of instruction for all children in the way government works, in the law and in the duties, as well as the rights, of citizenship increases.

The American Radical, Henry Adams, had more sense when he pointed out that "chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit". And this was followed up in 1983 by an HMI Report, Police Liaison with the Education Service, which again showed an obsession with the need to artificially implant in young minds an unhealthy awe for something called authority:

Nor can schools, because of the work they do, and the responsibilities it entails, give the impression to pupils that civilised society could function without authority and a general respect for it among the populace.

The traditional idea of "beating sense" into young children who have the real sense to question and resist the myths and tedium they are fed, has in modem times increasingly been replaced by the more "enlightened" (and ultimately more persuasive) idea of smooth-talking this "sense" into them. John Locke, writing nearly three hundreds years ago. was a capitalist theoretician well ahead of his time:

Beating is the worst, and therefore the last means to be used in the correction of children . . . if you can once get into children a love of credit and an apprehension of shame and disgrace, you have put into them the true principle.

[Educational Writings] 

He sums up here perfectly the modern orthodoxy, in which morality is instilled into children by self-righteous "liberal" and trendy teachers, through the use of guilt, shame and pride. Why pay for a policeman on every street comer when you can put one on 24-hour patrol inside every head?

Examples of mental, as opposed to physical punishment were everywhere to be seen during my recent experience of working in a primary school. The sarcasm so often used by teachers shows a fundamental lack of respect. Some of the more exuberant children are frequently and studiously informed that they are "deaf', that is, not listening to the boring teacher. One fairly typical tirade from a PE teacher was transcribed as follows: 

Who made that noise? Did I ask anyone to make a noise? My instructions were to spring up . . . Anyone who wants to talk come out here.. . Don't all do the same: you're individuals! Adam, do you find this hard to do. because I can give you a lot more practice if you do. . .

and so on ad nauseam.

One boy had been swearing at teachers and going home; the headteacher methodically visited every class to ensure that no respect built up for this individual’s actions. "He's been babyish, hasn't he?" she whined at each confused class. Another boy, at a school in Newcastle where I was "trained", had severe problems at home. His resulting "tantrums" during the day at school were systematically punished (not "in anger") by a teacher who then told both me and this boy that he doubted very much whether the planned punishments would make any difference at all to his future behaviour-, then proceeded to implement them in any case. One was left seriously wondering for whose benefit this ritual was being so tenaciously pursued.

One young child keenly offering to help another was slapped down with the statement: "Sit down at once; I'm the teacher here!" An 8-year-old girl who grew bored with a story about a speaking cat and commented that "cats don’t speak. anywaY" was rudely told to "shut up and stop being silly". It seemed an earnest discussion between teacher and pupil on the relative merits of realism and fantasy in children's fiction was not on the cards that afternoon. One class were being spurred on by the offer of a £2 prize for the best work, and an 8-year-old boy who. when asked to pass a book which was "second from the top" in a pile of three jovially pointed that "it's second from the bottom!" was told not to be cheeky. Examples such as these bear out the statement made long ago by Helvetius that "Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education".

Society Without Schools

Fortunately, even the stultifying experience of school does not always succeed in killing off completely the imaginative and creative "dreams" of children. On one occasion. I invited a class of children to describe their ’ideal world". The response to this included: No Maggie Thatcher, No wars, No schools, "schoolchildren paid instead of teachers", "in shops, they give you the money, and and the product", "everybody equal, plenty of money for all people every day", "everything free in shops". Several children said "everything would be free".

The idea of society without schools was laid out in William Morris' portrait of a liberated society, News From Nowhere, in which the "visitor" to that society, on mentioning schools, is confronted with a bewildered reaction:

"What do you mean by that word? I don't see how it can have anything to do with children. We talk, indeed, of a school of herring, and a school of painting, and in the former sense we might talk of a school of children - but otherwise" said he. laughing. "I must own myself beaten".

On the suggestion made by several of these children that everything should be available free, a debate was set up in which they made statements as to whether they were for or against this idea, and why. Some of the resulting statements volunteered by children on the issue showed just how much their thinking is in advance of that of their so-called teachers:

I am for the idea because people won't have to worry about debts and bills/ I don't think people will take it all . . . they might be a bit greedy, but not that much/ There would be no poor people and no posh and rich people, and even though you will still be ill sometimes, if you are you can just take the medicine and it would be free; you would not have to share things, but I still would/ Not equal shares of money, just each take what you want/ Don't knock down banks, just burn the money; use the mints for something else, anyway, the banks wouldn't exist by then, probably/ The poor would be rich as well . . . taking too much? Who would bother?/ Money would not be invented and we would be rich in our own way. Because the poor wouldn't die of hunger. I wish they could open up an orange and find enough money to look after themselves.

If these young people's imaginative efforts to solve the insane contradictions of capitalism are to flourish, and to grow into a practical solution to those contradictions, it will be in spite of and in opposition to their experience at school:

Let's get off children's backs and let them learn what they want, how they want, when they want. Learning grows where it will, where the soil and climate are right. We can no more ordain learning by order, coercion and commandment than we can produce love by rape or threat.

[Education Otherwise Newsletter. 34]

 Clifford Slapper

Instructions for M A.'s (Miracle Agents) (1957)

From the September 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Schoolmaster and Woman Teachers' Chronicle, journal of the National Union of Teachers, can never be accused of harbouring anything that could be labelled “revolutionary” or “seditious” thought; on the contrary, it has always, despite “differences” from time to time with this or that Minister of Education, been the champion of the British way of life; i.e., it supports the system of Capitalism whilst grumbling at the rewards. In supporting Capitalism it often goes to strange lengths. An example of this is afforded in the current issues. There we find a series of articles entitled “Religious Education in the Primary School.” At the time of writing we have reached episode X, entitled “Teaching about the Miracles.”

When we realise that the depository of the Christian religion—the Church—is today, apart from a hard core of “Fundamentalists,” composed largely of “Apologists” of various degrees, one can indeed be curious as to how the question of Miracles can be explained in this day and age so that they do not lose their value in telling. It is the business of the author to do just this. The Rev. writer rushes to the aid of the teacher, to the harassed believer grappling with a situation which is getting increasingly difficult and also to those who have abandoned the struggle as far as Miracles are concerned, merely relating just those Biblical stories in which human virtues are displayed, like sharing one’s raiment with the more unfortunate, or the bravery of little David standing up to a giant

One reads the article painfully. One sees that the idea is to “catch ’em young" (hence the emphasis on the Primary School). Religious belief being, as we are so often told, a matter of faith rather than knowledge, the teacher is expected to abandon his or her true vocation in order to mould the malleable minds of children in such a manner as to fit them into the estate it has “chosen God to place them” (and at the same time make them suitable material for Capitalist Society.)

Consider the grand attack against Unbelief. In true apologetic manner part X of the series defines the word “miracle” as “a wonder,” “something contrary to the laws of nature,” but qualifies this by quoting St. Augustine’s definition as “contrary to what is known.” It then goes on to discuss Old Testament miracles, and actually dismisses them as “pious legends.” One cannot expect the Church to retreat all the time, and so we find that there are first and second class miracles; i.e., those of the Old Testament, done by ordinary men, and those of the New Testament, performed by Christ himself. We feel sure that the poor teacher now feels on safer ground, especially when we read (in connection with miracles first class): “Belief in God is not to be made dependent upon belief in every event attributed to Him.” (We can now hear the teacher breathe a sigh of relief at being able to choose his miracles). We are next told that “a miracle is not so much an inexplicable event as an occurrence which brings an overwhelming sense of the presence of God.” Quite a bit of verbiage this, meaning, one supposes, that a “miracle,” though proven to be a natural phenomenon, can, because of the wonder, awe or curiosity it invokes, be said to prove the “presence of God.”

Many natural phenomena have done this with varying degrees of awe, wonder, curiosity, etc., arising in the mind of the onlooker depending on the understanding of the times, from the rolling of the thunder to the explosions of the hydrogen bomb. Does the hydrogen bomb prove the “presence of God? ”

The “Rev.” writer, knowing what he is up against, says that despite the difficulties teachers have in teaching (about) miracles, younger children (our italics) will accept them naturally, and questions asked will result from curiosity rather than scepticism! So you see, teacher can now get on with her miracle lessons with no fear of attack from her class of five-year-olds!

It is hard to believe that the writer has ever read history. From the time when the Bible was first published in the vernacular, men have read an account of how the world began. It was their only source of knowledge. But in time this simple faith was shattered. Whilst in the Middle Ages learned Cardinals gathered to argue the number of Angels that could stand on a pin head and later, during the reign of Charles I, Archbishop Usher “proved” that it was 4003 years 2 months 11 days and 6 hours from the Creation to the birth of Christ; today we have grown up somewhat, so that even leaden of religion now openly argue the authenticity of miracles, including the Resurrection, Heaven, and so on.

An attempt is obviously being made to capture lost ground, and the young, being defenceless, are the chosen victims.

“Miracles” cease as Nature’s laws are better understood. When no one doubted them they abounded. They were lavished on the world. Now, when more and more deny them, when the Faith is in dire distress; when just a few of the miracles enacted in the desert of Sinai could shake the Modem World to its foundations and bring us rushing back to the arms of “Mother Church"; now, when the least expenditure in Miracles could bring the maximum result—Miracles cease. An attempt is made to keep them alive by means of stories told to impress the imaginative minds of the young.

When mankind finally breaks the last bonds of religion and realises itself as a long, upward progression, shedding its superstitions on the way. then we will have emerged from bondage to freedom. As Socialists we fight the powers “temporal and spiritual.”

We leave you to cogitate over the words of a well-known hymn: “The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate. God made them high and lowly and ordered their estate.” This, one suggests, would be a fitting hymn with which to end each lesson on “Miracles Made Easy for Children.” Constant attention to the words is guaranteed to immunise the future worker from the virus of Socialism.

W. Brain.

Tiny Tips (2026)

The Tiny Tips column from the October 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

A change in the mode of production would be necessary to address climate change seriously. But obviously, that is not the path of capitalism, which seeks ever-greater expansion, reinforcing the very logic that is generating the crisis. 

[rosalux]

 

What is happening outside Iran is deeply concerning. In certain circles that see themselves as progressive or left-wing, the regime is beginning to be viewed almost automatically as a legitimate force simply because it is confronting the United States and Israel. People forget that only a short time ago there was a massacre in which thousands were killed within a matter of days. Now the Supreme Leader and military commanders who were unlawfully assassinated are being praised, while it is overlooked that they themselves were also responsible for killings and repression.

[rosalux]

 

Three million dogs are at risk of being killed in Morocco ahead of the 2030 FIFA World Cup. Now the influencer and animal rights activist Therése Lindgren is reacting. ‘It’s absolutely terrible’, she says.

[Expressen]

 

Nicaraguan feminists and human rights leaders began sounding the alarm decades ago. The 2006 absolute ban on abortion; rollbacks in women’s rights; the Ortegas’ denouncement of feminism and misogynist persecution of their own daughter, Zoilamérica, after she accused her stepfather of sexual abuse; attacks on NGOs (to date, more than 5,000 have been shut down), the closing of feminist media, and persecution of leading figures left no room for doubt that the principles of the revolution had been betrayed. The violent repression of the 2018 pro-democracy uprising in the country that left some 350 dead ushered in a period of even greater repression. Constitutional changes in the constitution in 2025 subordinated all powers to the presidency. With the dismantling of checks and balances, the presidential couple was clearly laying the foundation for a perpetual family dynasty.

[CounterPunch]

The coercion of Ukrainians in the occupied territories to take Russian passports is also significant when it comes to what we refer to in our report as the ‘conscription pipeline’. Children are being systematically prepared for future armed service. By being forced into Russian citizenship, boys also become eligible for conscription as soon as they turn 18.

[The Conversation]

Democratic socialism [sic] often more closely resembles the Nordic model: a capitalist economy in which government takes a larger role in protecting human rights and guaranteeing certain essential goods and services.    Actually, this compromise of preserving the fundamentals of capitalism while trying to achieve the egalitarian goals of socialism is precisely what more committed Marxists don’t like about democratic socialism. They might argue that capitalism is inherently unsustainable, exploitative, and unreformable, relying as it does on never-ending growth and abuse of labor, and that working within it is doomed to only limited successes at best.

[Common Dreams]

Trump Draws a Hard Line at Mount Rushmore: ‘You Cannot Be Both’ a Communist and a Patriot.

[Newsbreak]

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

Halo, Halo! (2025)

The Halo Halo Column from the July 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Which, in the long term, is going to damage a child’s mind more – the Brothers Grimm fairy tales or the fairy tales implanted from the various so-called holy books of various religions? Ignatius Loyola, said, give me a child for the first seven years of their life and I’ll give you the adult. Why? – to imbue the nonsense that is religion into susceptible minds so that when children become adults they will continue to unquestionably mindlessly spout ‘religion good, atheism bad’.

The imposition upon young minds of the indoctrination from propaganda sources which use colourful pictures redolent of those used in their media by jehovah witlesses pales into insignificance when compared to the actual physical abuse forced upon the very young by some religions.

In May the Washington Jewish Week was outraged against Belgium that it should be apparently mounting a ‘vicious attack’ upon ‘religious freedom’. The report says that Belgium police raided two mohels. A mohel is an individual practised in the religious ‘art’ of cutting of a male infant’s foreskin at the age of eight days.

‘There is no benign interpretation of these events. Armed officers descending upon religious leaders’ homes under the pretence of legal inquiry is the stuff of authoritarian regimes, not democratic Europe. The confiscation of ritual instruments used for one of the oldest and most central commandments in Judaism — brit milah, the covenant of circumcision — is to desecrate more than property. It is to trample upon the millennia-old continuity of Jewish life and identity. The demand that mohels surrender the names of children they have circumcised is especially alarming. It represents not only a grotesque invasion of privacy but a potential threat to those families’ security. Why do the authorities need those names? What database will they enter? What precedent does this set for religious communities across Europe? When religious practice is policed under suspicion, it is not law enforcement — it is persecution.’

The article then moves on to attack Belgium for its stance on animal welfare. Belgium has banned kosher and halal slaughter because the methods used inflict unnecessary suffering.

More article shocked outrage voice: ‘Now, it has targeted brit milah — a core Jewish ritual dating back to Abraham. Such orchestrated anti-religion action by the state is wholly unacceptable’

One can hear them channelling GretaThunberg, how dare you!

In the UK two men, from the other religion that does this have been convicted of ‘serious crimes related to non-therapeutic male circumcision (NTMC) of children…NTMC is an irreversible surgical procedure, which is medically unnecessary by definition, believed to be performed on thousands of UK children annually.’

Let us not forget the thousands of girls who undergo FGM (Female Genital Mutilation).

Meanwhile In Pakistan the Council of Islamic Ideology is peeved because a federal territory passed a bill outlawing marriage to anyone under eighteen. The peevishness is demonstrated by the Council’s response which said that ‘the legislation’s provision to define underage marriage as rape and impose punishments contradicted Islamic teachings.’ and is ‘contrary to Sharia.’

DC

Slings and Arrows: The Wages of Philanthropy (1953)

The Slings and Arrows column from the June 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Wages of Philanthropy

A poet of the eighteenth century commented that “Virtue is its own reward.” That thought is often quoted and applied, especially when workers want a rise in pay. It is nice to know, however; that occasionally virtue brings other and more tangible rewards than the mere satisfaction of knowing one has been virtuous.

When, in 1892, Lord Rowton built the first of his enormous lodging-houses, he did so because he believed (Daily Express, 30/4/53) “every man should have a room to himself—with a door—for 6d. a night.” Five such lodging houses were established and although every man was entitled to pay his sixpence and get his room—with a door—only the poor turned up. The rich, either ignorant of these facilities, or not wishing to stop the poor using them, continued to reside at the Ritz or Claridges. But time has a habit of evening things out and in due course the rich were duly rewarded for their consideration, as we shall see.

It is a far cry from the nineties of the last century to the present time but Rowton Houses still go on and although the price has increased to 2s. 3d. per night nevertheless there is a constant demand for accommodation. So much so that the dividends on the capital of Rowton Houses Ltd. has recently been increased. Its properties are reputed to be worth £2,000,000, and the shares, if the firm were sold, would have a break-up value of £10 each. The City Editor of the Daily Express tells us that although the share and property dealers are envious and would like to do a deal in Rowton House shares their chances are slender, for the shares are held by people “who put service to the not-so-wealthy before profit.” It is perhaps a coincidence that the shares of Rowton Houses are regarded as gilt-edged and that that institution of putting “service before profit,” the Britannic Assurance Co. hold 11,000 shares. When “service to the not-so-wealthy” is accompanied by an increased dividend then virtue gets more than its “own reward,” and when Ecclesiastes wrote “Cast thy bread upon the waters and it shall return after many days ” he little dreamed that it would return buttered.

The Rest is Silence

Dr. Dalton, bright star in the Labour firmament, has published the first instalment of his three volume autobiography. Apart from a few admissions and statements, the book has no merit either as a work of literature or a study of political events. In the normal course of events this book would not be mentioned in these columns as it would be a waste of space to do so. But some of the disclosures are worthy of comment because they throw a significant light on the present Labour leaders who pretend to be more prescient, and more faithful to the cause than the idols of yesteryear.

Dr. Dalton tells us in 1953, that he knew in 1924 or 1925 that Ramsay MacDonald was vain, conceited, snobbish and untrustworthy. But between those years and 1931 Dalton was his supporter and indeed served under him in the second Labour Government. Never, until after the debacle of 1931, did Dalton and the rest of the gang who pretend to have known all along, say one word which would lead either the electorate or rank and file Labourites to believe that all was not well with the Party leadership. On the contrary their mouths dripped honeyed words of admiration.

Dalton quotes Tom Johnston as saying “If the party meeting only got to know of a few things like this, they’d all be climbing up the walls, not just the I.L.P. but the soberest trade unionists in the Party.” But if Dalton knew and Johnston knew how was it that the Party meeting did not know? The truth was concealed.

We are left then with two conclusions. If MacDonald betrayed the Labour Party and was suspect all the time then those who suspected him were culpable. If on the other hand, they did not know, but pretend to do so in order to appear wise, then what reliance can be placed on them? Here they were, working day by day with men whom they now call traitors and they remained blithely innocent of the fact. Are these the leaders who ask for support because of their qualifications?

We are also indebted to Dalton for telling us something of the quality of the Labour leadership. He tells us that when the Labour Government was being formed in 1929, would-be Ministers besieged MacDonald and some of them wept and fainted in their anxiety. What a disgusting spectacle.

That is the sort of thing that goes on when Leaders take refuge in secrecy and when they rely for support as they must do (or they wouldn’t be leaders), on the political ignorance of their followers.

Who knows but that in another twenty-five years we may be reading some future Dalton on some present day traitor or betrayer of the Labour Party. For judging on past experience we don’t know.what goes on in the hierarchical section of the Labour Party; the Party meeting does not know and the rank and file do not know. We can only guess. And we are on reasonably safe ground if we venture to predict that the present day Labour Leaders are as anxious as those of the past to remain leaders, and to take power in order to run capitalism.

Whose Mother isn’t using Persil?

Among the American prisoners released by the Koreans are a small group, who according to the Authorities have been infected with Communist propaganda. And, since the United States is a land of freedom, and the right to think as one pleases is upheld by the American Constitution, this small group has been sent to a hospital for treatment. The treatment will consist of reading books and seeing newsreels approved by the authorities, so that they may be cured of their infection. The State Department announces: “The privations, and dangers suffered by prisoners of the Communists, may have made them susceptible to the Communist brain-washing techniques.”

Here is some peculiar reasoning. Are we to understand that the way to make people agree with and become permeated by one’s ideas is to make them suffer privations and dangers? If it is true, as we have been told by sundry journalists, that American prisoners of war were badly treated by the Chinese and Koreans then how could a “small group” become infected with their oppressors ideas? No one has heard of any Jew who suffered in concentration camps at the hands of Hitler, having to be "brainwashed” because he had become convinced that the Germans were a "Master race.” How then could prisoners subjected to "privations and dangers ” by their captors become convinced of the benefits to be derived from their ideas?

If it is because of the ill-treatment, are these returned prisoners to be even worse-treated so that they may become imbued with the benefits and joys of the "American way of life ”?

As if these unfortunate prisoners have not had enough, psychiatrists have been turned loose on them in order to "brainwash” them back to a belief in free enterprise, democracy, and Americanism. It has not yet occurred to these psychiatrists and “brainwash” experts that men who have been held prisoners for many years and whose subsequent release is dependent upon their change of attitude, will "brainwash” themselves so fast as to outdo any claim made by the makers of Persil soap.

If it were not so tragic this whole episode would make a good subject for an Aldwych farce!

S.A.

Blogger's Note:

The February 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard carries an interesting article by 'Ivan' on Rowton Houses.

Whose thoughts are you thinking? (2006)

From the December 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Richard Dawkins, the biologist, has become something of a celebrity through his outspoken advocacy of atheism as in his new book “The God Delusion”. But his approach to religion is still an idealist one.

The Dawkins approach to the question of religion is, like religion itself, an idealist one: religion is false, rationally unsustainable; morally enfeebling and a basis for hatred and division. Presumably Dawkins sees the death or meaningful diminution of religion by means of secularist persuasion just as religion hopes to resist secularisation by what it sees as ethical persuasion.

Dawkins looks into the biological evolution of homo sapiens for the origin and growth of the multiplicity of religious faiths. He is speculative rather than dogmatic on the issue but much more convincing when showing how the stringency of faith-based social morality has been softened over time by an intellectual response to the social development of society. He recognises this but, unlike Marx and Engels on the question of religion, simply reports it as a phenomenon under the label of moral Zeitgeist.

Unlike Dawkins, the pioneers of scientific socialism sought to show religion as a reflex of the social organisation of society. Marx, in the Introduction to his Critique of Hegel’s of Philosophy of Right, wrote:

“This state, this society, produces religion, a reversed world consciousness, because they are a reversed world. Religion is the general theory of that world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritualistic point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction. The struggle against religion is therefore immediately the fight against the other world of which religion is the spiritual aroma. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people.” (original italics)

It wasn’t simply a question of religion being false, or brutal or divisive; it was a weapon of the ruling class, a bulwark in the way of the emancipation of the working class, a hurdle to be overcome in the progress to socialism nor could it be overcome while the conditions that nourished it continued to exist. Thus, the socialist sees religion as an integral part of the class struggle while the secularist sees it simply as a harmful, false premise on which to base a system of moral rectitude. As far as capitalism’s subject class is concerned, whether those who govern it or those who exploit it reject or accept faith is irrelevant; the morality of capitalism is not governed either by humanistic or religious considerations but by the constraints and compulsions of the marketplace.

Inculcating religion

Dawkins deals well, even poignantly, with the religious indoctrination of children pointing, for example, to the absurd practice of labelling young children with the faith identity of their parents or guardians. Even very young children, as young as three or four are referred to as, for example, ‘Catholic’, ‘Protestant’ or ‘Muslim’ children because society accepts the legitimacy of parents or guardians or clerics or teachers hijacking the innocence of children for the inculcation of beliefs more likely to be resisted if they were offered initially to an older person. Dawkins rightly calls it child abuse with ramifications sometimes even more devastating than the sexual abuse of children.

Obviously socialists agree that the indoctrination of children is a contemptible invasion of the rights of a child but, grave as it is, it is less socially heinous than the ruthless inculcation of the appalling precepts and values of capitalism – accompanied usually by the notion of a ubiquitous Divine Policeman – to which both children and adults of all ages are remorselessly exposed.

Science and the system

Indoctrination makes a nonsense of the claim that we live in a democracy. Democracy is about choice and choice is based on information and knowledge. But nowhere in the world of capitalism are the people offered the slightest hint that there could be a way of running our society that might free us from the appalling problems that are built-in, inevitable aspects of global capitalism. Instead we have intense conditioning and thought control to the extent were we look on the utterly absurd, like war and world hunger, as natural and as inevitable as the seasons.

Capitalism and its institutions rape our consciousness and rob us of the ability to think independently. Every situation must be reasoned within the paradigm of a world in which we are beholden to a class of owners not only for our daily bread but for every aspect of our life-functions from the cradle to the grave and unless our needs are consistent with the profit needs of the owning class they will not be met.

Richard Dawkins sings the praises of science and in a general sense socialists join in the chorus. But science, possibly more than most other disciplines, is a prisoner of capitalism. The scientists have to beg at the table of the system for funding to pursue their projects; their sponsors are usually largely mammoth capitalist enterprises bent on discerning means of further enriching their directors and shareholders or capitalist governments dedicated to the overall concerns of national capitalism.

Just like the rest of us, the scientist is a prisoner of the crazy logic of the system and just  like the rest of us if his or her dedicated function does not hold promise of profit for those who directly or indirectly employ them, irrespective of the potential social benefits of their work, it will be denied funding.

The first phase in the struggle to end the political and economic exploitation of our class is to learn to question the thoughts we inherit from well-intentioned parents and teachers; to challenge the strictures of the priests, parsons, rabbis and mullahs and to question why in a world of potential abundance, where a parasite class of non-productive money shufflers and profit-takers are rich beyond measure, and the working class that produces all real wealth endure mere want or dire poverty.

Richard Montague

50 Years Ago: Conscription (1962)

The 50 Years Ago column from the December 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

The question as to whether or not conscription will, in the near future, become a necessity, appears to be once again very much “in the air." Lord Roberts, in the course of a recent speech, during which he implied the failure, and foreshadowed the disintegration, of the Territorial force, advocated more strenuously than ever his pet notion of universal military service. In this advocacy he is, of course, acting quite logically —more logically, indeed, than those “lovers of peace” (chiefly to be found among the Liberals and Labourists) who, while upholding and using all their efforts to maintain the present capitalist social system, at the same time deprecate what is, in reality, quite in accordance, morally and politically, with the development of capitalism.

*

To a man such as Lord Roberts, who has managed to make a fortune and win a title through professional soldiering, military service will, of course, seem all that is desirable. But what the devil is the poor drudge of capitalism, the wage slave, to get out of it? A fortune and a title? Hardly! At what should be the best portion of his life — his early manhood — he would be taken, numbered like a convict or a beast of burden at a cattle show, herded with his fellow beasts in compounds, trained and drilled and bullied and brow-beaten, taught to walk upright and to handle a rifle, taught to shoot sufficiently straight to kill and maim certain of his fellows (whom he has never seen before and with whom he has no quarrel), coming out of the Army at the end of his term with all the virtues of an efficient, non-thinking, non-questioning wage-slave, with all the initiative and all the self-confidence knocked out of him. Truly a delightful prospect!

[From the Socialist Standard, December 1912.]

What’s happening in China (1965)

From the November 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

The so-called communist rulers of China are in trouble. They are trying to achieve two impossible feats; to make exploitation popular with the Chinese workers and to kid them along that the form of capitalism which is developing there is socialism.

The latest campaign to accomplish this is called the “Socialist Education Campaign”, now in full swing, which was recently commended by the Chinese premier as being “of great revolutionary and historical significance”. Such campaigns are no novelty in “communist” China, where the workers seem to need a lot of convincing.

Previous campaigns have been passed off as methods of getting rid of the remains of capitalism or as part of the building-up of a “communist” system of society, or as the eradication of specific errors and failings of the Old China. They were represented as a necessary process of cleaning up and modernising the social structure and they dealt largely with problems that were laid at the door of the old era.

But this time it is different, in that the government leaders have to deal with problems which, they frankly proclaim arise directly from the present system of society. The “Socialist Education Campaign” is teaching workers, both in industry and the civil service, to deal with the new problems caused by the creation of a modern, technically developed state from a recently backward country. It is this which enables Premier Chou-En-lai to assign “historical significance” to the current campaign.

To enable them to reconcile awkward facts with an incorrect interpretation of society, the Chinese have to be dosed with plenty of “communist” education.

One problem with which they have to deal is that of the new “managerial class”. Mao-Tze-tung, Chou-En-lai and the rest of the old die-hards of the Communist Party, were tough, unscrupulous but courageous labour leaders tested in battle and called upon for great personal sacrifices in prompting the Communist Party to the leadership of what they may have once believed was a different system of society.

But the old guard are getting older, and they are finding it difficult to select their successors from the ranks of the new business bureaucracy who seem to be taking their place. These young people are slick, well educated executive types who are rising to the top in the nationalised concerns and government departments. They have little understanding of political theory, little desire to make personal sacrifices, but, like business executives the world over, are ambitious to rise in the hierarchy and enjoy the luxuries which only the possession of money makes possible. Such is a thumb-nail sketch of one of the groups that the die-hards are trying to impregnate with so-called communist ideology. But the die-hards are as horrified at this developing class, as the swan was when it found it had hatched a duckling. Capitalist society develops along its own lines, irrespective of the muddled thinking of its apologists.

An Tzu-wen, Director of the Organisation Department of the Party’s Central Committee, considered the nature of some of these groups in some detail in an article which appeared in the Party journal Red Flag on 22/9/64 and which was reported in the China Quarterly April/June 1965. An is primarily concerned with the campaign to train successors to the present leadership. He distinguishes between the older cadres of pre-liberation vintage who have failed to adapt themselves to the technical and organisational development going on, and the younger ones who have not the political benefit of those who went through the Civil War.

It is from An’s article that it is possible to build up a picture of the various groups he sees developing around him. His criticisms have been publicised to the greatest extent possible in the Chinese national press and on the radio. He said that the gravest dilemma for the Chinese leaders may be the conflict between their own background and the need for modernisation in economic planning.

Chou-En-lai made it clear in his report last December that one of the main motives behind the “Socialist Education Movement’’ was the need to prepare the country for economic expansion. He speaks of the need for a “scientific and realistic approach”. An calls on the older cadres to adapt themselves and he describes the movement as “a mass movement for studying Marxist-Leninist and Mao Tse-tung ideology with emphasis in its flexible interpretation and application”.

The Chinese Government are training the new managerial class to a degree which must involve contact with the thinking of the outside world and they are at the same time inducing the old die-hards to work efficiently in the fervent atmosphere of industrial capitalism, misnamed “socialist expansion”.

Another section being “educated” are the Chinese followers of the Russian communist party. Since it now seems that many of the interests of the Chinese ruling class are opposed to those of .the Russian, Chinese supporters must be “re-educated” to enable them to make an intellectual somersault. China is living in a capitalist world jungle and must be prepared, in its own interests, to support a war against its erstwhile “comrades”. There must be no fifth column in the Chinese camp.

Another homegrown problem is the rise of the wealthy farmer, a new economic group since the seizure of governmental power by the Chinese “communists”. With their surpluses of commodity crops they have made a mockery of the food and clothing rationing which still obtains in China. The black market is now known as the free market and is officially recognised by the Government. Any of the rationed goods can be obtained at a higher price and this is part of a process whereby the rural rich are becoming richer. Universal rationing for all has become rationing by price, officially lauded by the authorities. This, of course, is the state of affairs to which the workers of the rest of the world are accustomed, whether they are starving in the backward countries or the “affluent” of western capitalism.

China has had a somewhat different history of social development to the West over the centuries, so that capitalism there is a little different from capitalism here in some of the details. But Chinese workers have basically the same economic interests as the workers here; and the so-called communist government there behaves domestically and in its foreign policies, like the capitalist power that in fact it is.

Frank Offord

On campus—USA (1984)

From the Winter 1984 issue of the World Socialist

The educational system functions to serve the needs of the capitalist society in which it resides. Its objective is to produce educated and competent workers, including managers and military personnel; in addition, knowledgeable, sophisticated members of the capitalist class. The subjects and training cover a vast complex field that assures the owners of a qualified work force that can do everything that is necessary to produce, distribute and market commodities for sale and profit, in line with existing technologies. And of vital importance is the fact that initially a working class is produced that has been subtly brain-washed and seduced into social and political acceptance of capitalism. The majority of students, when their formal education has been concluded, embrace the wages system without question. Their labour power is ready to be marketed. They, in turn, are willing to conform with docility and eagerness to all the standard norms of capitalist society which, in effect, will maintain their rulers in power in contrast to their own commitment to subservience. Although they have been informed of revolutions in the past, they enter into their new careers with a tacit acknowledgement that the existing society is the beginning and end all for them, and for everyone else; imbued with personal ambition which is devoid of a proper understanding of the social nature of their new environment. Sure, capitalism may always need improvement—but never elimination. This latter, they are not taught—nor ever will be within the boundaries of their formal education.

We do not imply that there has been some malevolent conspiracy at work engineered on an in-depth discerning level by the capitalist class and their agents. In most instances, both the rulers and the ruled are unaware of the economic causes and social consequences of the system they uphold. The superstructure of society, in this instance the educational system, is determined and conditioned by its economic base—the dynamics for its existence. Capitalism is a social organization wherein a minority own and control the means of production and distribution for the purpose of capital accumulation through the realization of profit based upon large-scale wage labour. The educational system is locked into this process in every conceivable manner, both directly and otherwise. There has never been a practical need for the capitalist class to properly understand their own system, notwithstanding the fact that Karl Marx in Das Kapital had most thoroughly accomplished the analysis. Capitalism, regardless of manipulation, follows its own pattern, and conditions the education of the working class to conform to all of its many requirements under the tutelage of the exploiters and their agents. This immense task is by no means an easy one, cut and dried, without its problems, complications and financial burdens. It is always an ongoing operation, subject to continuous reformation which revolves around the "quality" of the education supplied together with its costs and sources of revenue.

Political indoctrination 

Political indoctrination commences with millions of school children, throughout the land, starting the day by reciting in unison the patriotic litany:

I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands; one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

To quite literally add injury to insult (which such trivia is to a young, uncluttered mind) it was reported in a news item on January 2, 1983, in the Arizona Daily Star, and I quote:

Each year, 1.5 million school children in the United States are physically punished under the authorization of principals and other school administrators. This figure does not include informal slappings or beatings meted out by teachers, coaches, bus drivers and other school employees. The schools most inclined to punish are those in Florida, followed by those in Arkansas and Mississippi. In Florida, one out of eight public school students receives corporal punishment in a typical year. The national average is one out of 28. Black school children are victimized most often; one out of three is punished nationwide in a typical year.

An award of commendation goes to Hawaii's board of education, which refuses to allow corporal punishment.

I presume that this treatment prepares the recipients somewhat for the brutality of capitalism that they will eventually encounter in later life.

The state, which exists to preserve, maintain and administrate capitalism, bears the responsibility for the bulk of the educational system; in addition, there are schools, colleges and universities that are either privately or parochially endowed, in many cases receiving added subsidizing from the government. It is therefore surely obvious that such a structure can never be expected to allow or instigate any teachings that will directly challenge or threaten its position. All educational reforms will ultimately prove of prime benefit to the rulers, because to the extent that the educational system is successful in producing competency and political acquiescence within the working class, so to that degree profits will be generated and protected to the highest maximum possible, subject to general market conditions and the prevalent militancy of the workers. This does not imply that the education received by workers cannot be used by them for their own interests. In fact, the mandatory exposure that they receive, especially in subjects exclusive of the social sciences, provides the basis for their ultimate comprehension of the socialist case.

Subjects such as reading, writing, mathematics, chemistry, physics, astronomy, mechanics, geology, accounting, languages, law, medicine, computers, business administration, engineering, architecture, pharmacy, military science, aerospace, agriculture are all essential to the pursuit of profits and are approached scientifically within the confines of budgetary allowances. But the social studies such as history, economics, sociology, political science, theology, anthropology, are handled with biased restraint and the investigations are by no means impartial. Evidence unfavourable to the existing scheme of things is either suppressed, ignored or perverted.

Weeding-out process

The whole curriculum, from start to finish, is conducted within an atmosphere of competition and stress together with a weeding-out process which segregates those with supposedly superior talents from those less fortunate. This is accomplished through the use of tests, examinations, and grading, all of which have a direct bearing upon ultimate occupations and potential earnings. Such an environment prevents the pleasurable pursuit of education as a primary end in itself. The young find themselves involved in an intensive training programme, presented under the guise of education, which will ultimately affect the price of their labour power and in many instances can prove disastrous health-wise.

In an article on February 5, 1978, in the Arizona Daily Star, it stated that:

Why are child suicides increasing in Japan? Last year more than 700 children and teenagers took their lives there. Japanese authorities offer two reasons: (1) the country's fiercely competitive educational system in which the road to success in later life is linked to passing difficult examinations to leading universities; (2) the reaction of some children to the mounting pressures of excessively regulated lives.

A further quote in the same article stated:

The educational pressures in Japan are unremitting and not only cause ulcers in children but in many cases lead to suicide. Prof. Masayoshi Namiki recently told an international medical convention that he had come across 19 children, none older than 14, with ulcerated stomachs, "dramatic evidence of the unnatural life-style our children are forced into under the pressures of our educational system".

An article in the Wall Street Journal dated June 10, 1980, entitled "Why Are They Cheating?", written by a member of the Journal's Washington bureau which covers education, states:

In addition, statistics show that the rate of campus homicides, suicides, illegitimate births and drug abuse has been steadily increasing for more than two decades, says Edward Wynne, associate professor at the University of Illinois and editor of a magazine called Character. Cheating is just another indication of a "change for the worse", he says.

It is common knowledge that drugs and violence are two of the major problems to be found within the school system today—coupled with large numbers of students who are leaving school with an inability to properly read and write or perform well in simple mathematics. The International Reading Association in Newark, Del., estimates that some 20 million English-speaking, native-born American adults read or write so poorly that "they have trouble holding jobs or suffer loss of self-esteem." In the Wall Street Journal on January 22, 1981, Samuel Halperin, director of the Institute for Educational Leadership at George Washington University, was quoted as follows:

Schools can't teach drug abuse, sex education, driver's education and still teach reading, writing and arithmetic well. And you can't buy that much these days with $2.39—the average hourly amount spent last year on each public-school student.

The perpetual conflict within the educational system is the attempt to produce the desired results, at a budget price, within a competitive, stressful environment harmful to both students and teachers. The teachers themselves, in similar fashion to their students, have been graded and selected to perform at certain levels in different categories. Their own education has been, in many instances, limited by economic and material circumstances beyond their control. They find themselves frustrated by rigid guidelines that apparently do not bring out the best in their students, especially those who come from broken, badly poverty-stricken homes. In addition, just like their fellow workers, they are forced to eke out a marginal existence finely honed to a limited wage. And when they sometimes are forced to rise in protest and strike, they are criticized and condemned for having acted in a supposedly anti-social manner, ignoring the needs of their pupils.

Direct relationship with business world

The educational system abounds with a never-ceasing variety of seemingly insoluble problems which relate to the economic considerations of a cost-conscious administration where the individual needs of the student rarely, if ever, get priority. Instead, education receives the same approach as that given to commodities which have to be produced in a given period of time, at a certain price, for a particular market, with a quality-control that leaves much to be desired. In a Washington (AP) news item on February 1, 1978, Kenneth Clark, in an address sponsored by the US Office of Education, and I quote:

attacked the system of "tracking" in which talented students are steered to elite high schools or courses while the majority of young people are considered "educationally expendable". Clark said American high schools neither facilitate upward mobility nor promise equal opportunity. 

"In fact, under the guise of democracy in selection and the maintenance of standards of merit, they are very effective instruments for the maintenance of racial and class distinctions and the resulting discriminations and inequities," he said.

One might well ask, whose needs are being served here? Those of the students who have been discarded along the wayside, or those of the prospective employers who eventually will be presented with a selected so-called "cream-of-the-crop", the result of a weeding-out process accomplished on a cut-rate budget basis.

There is an interdependence, a direct relationship, between the educational system and the business world. The capitalist class are forever watchful that their source of future wealth, the embryonic working class, receive adequate preparation for the jobs that lie ahead, notwithstanding the prevailing shortcomings. Beyond this point, at the university level, business and higher education in many instances are inter-locked in associations that virtually incorporate the educational machine into the production process. The Associated Press, in an article on December 14, 1982, states:

Scores of universities have entered research contracts with big business, in partnerships that both sides believe will help America regain pre-eminence in world markets such as automobiles and electronics.

And further:

Industry-funded research centers are springing up at Princeton University, Carnegie-Mellon, Stanford University and elsewhere. For business, it means a valuable source of brainpower. For cash-trapped universities, it means millions of dollars, new facilities, and a way to keep top faculty members in the thick of developments in their fields.

Starting with first grade children, a concept called "career education" has been used which in theory is supposed to permeate all academic subjects at all levels of education, from kindergarten through junior college. Typically, simple field trips are made into stores, etc.; workers are observed at their jobs, and high-school students sometimes have mock interviews with prospective employers in order to develop their job-finding skills. In an article in the Wall Street Journal dated November 26, 1976, it was stated:

Career education began taking hold five years ago when Sidney Marland Jr., then US Commissioner of Education, coined the phrase and gave the concept top priority. Since then, according to the American Institutes for Research, some 9,000 of the country's 17,000 school districts have launched programs.

The article further states that endorsements have poured in from numerous big organizations which have included the US Chamber of Commerce and several blue-chip companies. For those who support capitalism, such a program no doubt seems practical and worthwhile (although many teachers have been critical and have not jumped on the band wagon). However, to the socialist such exposures to the existing system that are obviously done in an uncritical, prejudiced manner, without an in-depth economic evaluation of the exploitive nature of present-day society, are a flagrant one-sided approach to reality.

Education true and false

It would be Utopian thinking to expect the educational system under capitalism to be different from what it is, or to anticipate anything radical in the way of change. It is a creature of its environment, tailored to the needs of the ruling class that it serves. A vast conglomeration of facts and misrepresentations have been assembled, masqueraded under the banner of "education". This knowledge, liberally interspersed with falsehoods, is crammed into minds that assimilate a proportion, become bored with much that is offered and quickly forget a great deal after examinations are over. Frequently, the unhappy student seeks escape in various unhealthy pursuits.

True education, whereby the pupil is taught in an environment without stress and competition, where time is not at a premium, where financial considerations are non-existent, where individual needs are in harmony with society's, has never been given an opportunity to work its potential wonders. Education, properly organized under these conditions, will become delightful— pleasurable, without undue burden. The process will be a continuous one that will not commence and finish at a given age, but rather will be recognised as a never-ceasing quest for individual improvement throughout the whole of our lives. Blueprints cannot be supplied until socialism has been established, but it should be obvious that education will not be prostituted to the needs of a class minority or the demands of a market place—because neither will exist. All healthy individuals will be able to satisfy their desire for knowledge unhampered by economic restrictions or barriers. The whole of society will in a sense become a perpetual seat of learning wherein schooling, travel and the productive process can become beneficially interrelated. In socialism, assuming intelligent organization, the world itself can become the classroom.

Samuel Leight

(World Socialist Party of the United States)