"But," you say, "it is this very division of labour, the freeing men of
science and of art from the necessity of earning their bread, that has
rendered possible the extraordinary success in science which we see
to-day.
"If everybody were to plough, these enormous results would not be
attained; you would not have those astonishing successes which have so
enlarged man's power over nature; you would not have those discoveries
in astronomy which so strike the minds of men and promote navigation;
there would be no steamers, railways, wonderful bridges, tunnels,
steam-engines, telegraphs, photographs, telephones, sewing-machines,
phonographs, electricity, telescopes, spectroscopes, microscopes,
chloroform, Lister bandages, carbolic acid."
I will not attempt to enumerate all the things of which our century is
proud. This enumeration, and the ecstasy of the contemplation of
ourselves and of our great deeds you can find in almost every newspaper
and popular book. And these raptures are so often repeated, and we are
so seldom tired of praising ourselves, that we really have come to
believe, with Jules Verne, that science and art never made such progress
as in our time. And as all this is rendered possible only by division of
labour, how can we avoid countenancing it?
Let us suppose that the progress of our century is really striking,
astonishing, extraordinary; let us suppose, too, that we are
particularly lucky in living at such an extraordinary time: but let us
try to ascertain the value of these successes, not by our own
self-contentment, but by the very principle of the division of labour;
that is, by the intellectual labour of scientists for the advantage of
the people which has to compensate for the freedom of its servants from
manual toil.
This progress is very striking indeed; but owing to some bad luck,
recognized, too, by the men of science, this progress has not yet
ameliorated, but has rather deteriorated, the condition of working men.
Though a working man, instead of walking, can use the railway, it is
this very railway which has caused his forest to be burned and has
carried away his bread from under his very nose, and put him into a
condition which is next door to slavery to the railway proprietor.
If, thanks to steam-engines and machines, a workman can buy cheap and
bad calico, it is these very engines and machines which have deprived
him of his livelihood and brought him to a state of entire slavery to
the manufacturer.
If there are telegraphs, which he is not forbidden to use but which he
does not use because he cannot afford it, still each of his productions,
the value of which rises, is bought up at low prices before his very
eyes by capitalists, thanks to that telegraph, before he has even become
aware that the article is in demand.
If there are telephones and telescopes, novels, operas,
picture-galleries, and so on, the life of the workman is not at all
improved by any of them, because all, owing to the same unlucky chance,
are beyond his reach.
So that, after all, these wonderful discoveries and productions of art,
if they have not made the life of working-people worse, have by no means
improved it: and on this the men of science are agreed.
So that, if we apply, not our self-contemplating rapture, but the very
standard on which the ground of the division of labour is
defended,--utility to the working-world,--to the question as to the
reality of the successes attained by the sciences and arts, we shall see
that we have not yet any sound reason for the self-contentment to which
we consign ourselves so willingly.
A peasant uses the railway; a peasant's wife buys calico; in the cottage
a lamp, and not a pine-knot, burns; and the peasant lights his pipe with
a match,--all this is comfortable; but what right have I from this to
say that railways and factories have done good to the people?
If a peasant uses the railway, and buys a lamp, calico, and matches, he
does it only because we cannot forbid his doing so: but we all know very
well that railways and factories were not built for the use of the
people; and why, then, should the casual comfort a workman obtains by
chance be brought forward as a proof of the usefulness of these
institutions to the people?
We all know very well that if the engineers and capitalists who build a
railway or a factory thought about the working-people, they thought only
how to make the most possible use of them. And we see they have fully
succeeded in doing so in Europe and America, as well as in Russia.
In every hurtful thing there is something useful. After a house has been
burned down we can sit and warm ourselves, and light our pipes from one
of the fire-brands; but should we therefore say that a conflagration is
beneficial?
Whatever we do, do not let us deceive ourselves. We all know very well
the motives for building railways and factories, and for producing
kerosene and matches. An engineer builds a railway for the government,
to facilitate wars, or for the capitalists for their financial purposes.
He makes machines for manufacturers for his own advantage and for the
profit of capitalists. All that he makes or plans he does for the
purpose of the government, the capitalists, and other rich people. His
most skilful inventions are either directly harmful to the people, such
as guns, torpedoes, solitary prisons, and so on; or they are not only
useless but quite inaccessible to them, such as electric light,
telephones, and the innumerable improvements of comfort; or lastly, they
deprave the people and rob them of their last kopek, that is, their last
labour, for spirits, wine, beer, opium, tobacco, finery, and all sorts
of trifles.
But if it happens sometimes that the inventions of men of science and
the works of engineers, are of use to the people, as, for instance,
railways, calicoes, steel, scythes, it only proves that in this world of
ours everything is mutually connected, and that out of every hurtful
activity there may arise an accidental good for those to whom the
activity was hurtful.
Men of science and of art could say that their activity was useful for
the people, only if in their activity they have aimed at serving the
people, as they now aim to serve the government and capitalists.
We could have said that, only if the men of science and art made the
wants of the people their object; but such is not the case.
All learned men are occupied with their sacred businesses, which lead to
the investigation of protoplasms, the spectrum analysis of stars, and so
on: but concerning investigations as to how to set an axe, or with what
kind it is more advantageous to hew; which saw is the most handy; with
what flour bread shall be made, how it may best be kneaded, how to set
it to rise; how to heat and to build stoves; what food, drink or
crockery-ware it is best to use; what mushrooms may be eaten, and how
they may be prepared more conveniently,--science never troubles itself,
or does so very slightly.
Yet all this is the business of science.
I know that, according to its own definition, science must be useless;
but this is only an excuse, and a very impudent one.
The business of science is to serve people. We have invented telegraphs,
telephones, phonographs, but what improvements have we made in the life
of the people? We have catalogued two millions of insects! but have we
domesticated a single animal since biblical times, when all our animals
had long been domesticated, and still the elk and the deer, and the
partridge and the grouse and the wood-hen, are wild?
Botanists have discovered the cells, and in the cells protoplasms and in
protoplasms something else, and in this something else again.
These occupations will go on for a long time and evidently never end,
and therefore learned men have no time to do anything useful. Hence from
the times of the ancient Egyptians and Hebrews, when wheat and lentils
were already cultivated, down to the present time, not a single plant
has been added for the nourishment of the people except potatoes, and
these were not discovered by science. We have invented torpedoes and
house-drains; but the spinning-wheel, weaving-looms, ploughs and
axe-handles, flails and rakes, buckets and well-sweeps, are still the
same as in the time of Rurik. If some things have been improved, it is
not the learned who have improved them, but the unlearned.
The same is the case with art. Many people are acclaimed as great
writers. We have carefully analyzed their works, have written mountains
of critiques and criticisms upon criticisms, and still more criticisms
on criticisms; we have collected pictures in galleries, and thoroughly
studied in detail different schools of art; and we possess symphonies
and operas that it is with great difficulty we ourselves can listen to;
but what have we added to the folk-lore, legends, tales, songs for the
people? what pictures, what music, have we created for the people?
Books and pictures are published, and harmoniums are made for the
people, but we did not participate in either.
What is most striking and obvious is the false tendency of our science
and art, which manifests itself in those departments which, according to
their own propositions, would seem to be useful to people, but which,
owing to this tendency, appear rather pernicious than useful. An
engineer, a surgeon, a teacher, an artist, an author, seem by their very
professions to be obliged to serve the people, but what do we see? With
the present tendency, they can bring to the people nothing but harm. An
engineer and a mechanic must work with capital: without capital they are
good for nothing.
All their training is of such a nature that, in order to make use of it,
they need capital and the employment of work-people on a large scale, to
say nothing of the fact that they themselves are accustomed to spend
from fifteen hundred to a thousand rubles a year on themselves, and
therefore cannot go to live in a village, since no one there can give
them any such remuneration: from their very occupations they are not fit
for the service of the people.
They understand how to calculate the arch of a bridge by means of the
higher mathematics, how to calculate power and the transfer of power in
an engine, and so on: but they are at a loss to meet the plain
requirements of common labour; they do not know how to improve the
plough or the cart; or how to make a brook passable, taking into
consideration the conditions of a workman's life.
They know and understand nothing of all this, less even than the poorest
peasant does. Give them workshops, and plenty of people, order engines
from abroad, and then they will arrange these matters. But to find out
how to ease the labour of the millions of the people in their present
conditions, they do not know, and cannot do it; and therefore, by their
knowledge and habits and wants, they are not at all fit for this
business.
A surgeon is in a still worse condition. His imaginary science is of
such a nature that he understands how to cure those only who have
nothing to do and who can utilize other men's labour. He requires a
countless number of expensive accessories, instruments, medicines,
sanitary dwellings, food, and drains, in order that he may act
scientifically: besides his fee he demands such expenses that, in order
to cure one patient, he must kill with starvation hundreds of those who
bear this expense.
He has studied under eminent persons in the capital cities, who attended
only to those patients whom they may take into hospitals, or who can
afford to buy all the necessary medicines and machines, and even go at
once from north to south, to these or those mineral waters, as the case
may be.
Their science is of such a kind that every country surgeon complains
that there is no possibility of attending to the work-people who are so
poor that they cannot afford sanitary accommodations, and that there are
no hospitals, and that he cannot attend to the business alone, that he
requires help and assistant-surgeons.
What does this really mean?
It means this,--that the want of the necessaries of life is the chief
cause of people's misfortunes, and the source of diseases as well as of
their spreading and incurability. Now science, under the banner of "the
division of labour," calls its champions to help the people. Science has
settled satisfactorily about the rich classes, and seeks how to cure
those who can get everything necessary for the purpose; and it sends
persons to cure in the same way those who have nothing to spare. But
there are no means; and therefore they must be raised from the people,
who become ill and catch diseases, and cannot be cured for want of
means.
The advocates of the healing art for the people say, that, up to the
present time, this business has not been sufficiently developed.
Evidently it is not yet developed, because if (which God forbid!) it
were developed among our people, and, instead of two doctors and
mid-wives and two assistant-surgeons in the district, there should be
twenty sent, as they want, then there would soon be no one left to
attend to. The scientific co-operation for the benefit of the people
must be of quite a different kind. And this, which ought to exist, has
not yet begun.
It will begin when a man of science, an engineer, or a surgeon, ceases
to consider lawful that division of labour, or rather that taking away
other men's labour, which now exists, and when he no longer considers
that he has the right to take,--I do not say hundreds of thousands,--but
even a moderate sum of one thousand or five hundred rubles as
compensation for his services; but when such a man comes to live among
labouring-people in the same condition and in the same way as they, and
applies his information in mechanics, technics or hygiene, to cure them.
But at present, scientific men, who are fed at the expense of the
workman, have quite forgotten the conditions of the life of these men:
they ignore (as they say) these conditions, and are quite seriously
offended that their imaginary knowledge does not find application among
the people.
The departments of the healing art as well as of the mechanical have not
yet been touched: the questions how best to divide the period of labour,
how and upon what it is best to feed, how best to dress, how to
counteract dampness and cold, how best to wash, to suckle, and swaddle
children, and so on, and all these applied to the conditions in which
the workers now exist,--all these questions have not yet been faced.
The same applies to the activity of scientific teachers,--the
pedagogues. Science has arranged this business, too, in such a way, that
teaching according to science is possible only for those who are rich;
and the teachers, like the engineers and surgeons, are involuntarily
drawn towards money, and among us in Russia especially towards the
government.
And this cannot be otherwise, because a school properly arranged (and
the general rule is that the more scientifically a school is arranged
the more expensive it is), with convertible benches, globes, maps,
libraries, and manuals for teachers and pupils, is just such a school to
maintain which it is necessary to double the taxes of the people. So
science wants to have it. The children are necessary for work, and the
more so with the poorer people. The advocates of science say, "Pedagogy
is even now of use for the people; but let it develop, then it will be
still better." But if it will develop till instead of 20 schools in a
district there will be 100--all of them scientific,--and the parents
forced to keep up these schools? Then they will be still poorer, and
will want the labour of their children still more urgently.
What is to be done then?
To this they will reply, "The government will establish schools, and
will make education obligatory as it is in the rest of Europe." But the
money will still have to be raised from the people, and labour will be
still harder for them, and they will have less time to spare from their
labour, and there will then be no obligatory education at all.
There is, again, only one escape,--for a teacher to live in the
conditions of a workman, and to teach for that compensation which will
be freely offered him.
Such is the false tendency of science which deprives it of the
possibility to fulfil its duty in serving the people. But this false
tendency of our educated class is still more obvious in art-activity,
which, for the sake of its very meaning ought to be accessible to the
people.
Science may point to its stupid excuse that "science is acting for
science," and that, when fully developed it will become accessible to
the people; but art, if it is art indeed, ought to be accessible to all,
especially to those for whose sake it is created. But our art strikingly
denounces its factors in that they do not wish, and do not understand,
and are not able to be of use to the people. A painter, in order to
produce his great works, must have a large studio, in which at least
forty joiners or boot-makers might work, who are now freezing or
suffocating in wretched lodgings. But this is not all: he requires
models, costumes, journeys from place to place. The Academy of Art has
spent millions of rubles, collected from the people, for the
encouragement of art; and the productions of this art are hung in
palaces, and are neither intelligible to the people nor wanted by them.
Musicians, in order to express their great ideas, must gather about two
hundred men with white neckties or in special costumes, and spend
hundreds of thousands of rubles arranging operas. But this
art-production would never appear to the people (even if they could
afford to use it) as anything but perplexing or dull.
The authors, writers, would seem not to need any particular
accommodations, studios, models, orchestras, or actors; but here also it
turns out that an author, a writer, in order to prepare his great works,
wants travelling, palaces, cabinets, enjoyments of art, theatres,
concerts, mineral waters, and so on; to say nothing of all the comforts
of his dwelling and all the comforts of his life. If he himself has not
saved up enough money for this purpose he is given a pension in order
that he may compose better. And, again, these writings, which we value
so highly, remain for the people, rubbish, and are not at all necessary
to them.
What if, according to the wish of men of science and art, such producers
of mental food should so multiply, that, in every village it would be
necessary to build a studio, provide an orchestra, and keep an author in
the conditions which men of art consider indispensable to them? I dare
say working-people would make a vow never to look at a picture, or
listen to a symphony, or read poetry and novels, in order only not to be
compelled to feed all these good-for-nothing parasites.
And why should not men of art serve the people? In every cottage there
are holy images and pictures; each peasant, each woman of the people,
sings; many have instruments of music; and all can relate stories,
repeat poetry; and many of them read. How came it to pass that these two
things, which were as much made for one another as a key for a lock,
were separated, and why are they so separated that we cannot imagine how
to re-unite them?
Tell a painter to paint without a studio, models, costumes, and to draw
penny pictures, and he will say that this would be a denial of art as he
understands it. Tell a musician to play on a harmonium and to teach
country-women to sing songs; tell a poet to throw aside writing poems
and novels and satires, and to compose song-books for the people, and
stories and tales which might be intelligible to illiterate
persons,--they will say you are cracked.
But is it not being worse than cracked when the men who have freed
themselves from labour because they promised to provide mental food for
those who have brought them up, and are feeding and clothing them, have
afterwards so forgotten their promise that they have ceased to
understand how to make food fit for the people? Yet this very forsaking
of their promises they consider dignifies them.
Such is the case everywhere, they say. Then everywhere the case is very
unreasonable. And it will be so while men, under the pretext of division
of labour, promise to provide mental food for the people, but only
swallow up the labour of the people. Men will serve the people with
science and art only when living among them and in the same way as the
people do, putting forth no claims whatever, they offer to the people
their scientific and artistic services, leaving it to the free will of
the people to accept or refuse them.