"KARL MARX'S 'EDUCATION OF THE FUTURE'" ENDNOTES
[1]. Michael Harrington, The Twilight of Capitalism (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1976), v.
[2]. Erich Fromm, Marx's Concept of Man (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1971), 3.
[3]. Terry Eagleton, Why Marx Was Right, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011), 86, Kindle.
[4]. Marx's calls for child labor as part of education only scratch the surface of his anti-liberal beliefs—dangerous beliefs that played a direct role in the horrors that befell the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the People's Republic of China, "Democratic" Kampuchea, and so on. First and foremost among the anti-liberal beliefs on which Marx's thinking is based is the compulsory duty of "from each according to their ability." This duty turns the time in our lives into what socialism treats as "society's time," society's property to control.
Socialist duty is based on the repudiation of the key premise of the liberal philosophy that underpins our current society: the idea that we should not be born owing our time and talents to others. As detailed in the Red Flags Press paper "The Ripple Effects of Socialist Duty," socialism's foundation on this requirement of duty is behind such ugly aspects of socialism as its obsession with alleged "parasites." Hundreds of thousands of those deemed to be "parasites" have perished at the hands of their socialist governments.
Another example of Marx's anti-liberal beliefs is found in the fact he dismisses human rights as "rubbish" and "trash" and states that he objects to the entire concept of rights. Yes, the most important figure in socialist philosophy dismisses our individual rights. The Red Flags Press paper "Our 'So-Called' Rights" provides an overview of socialism's view of rights relative to duty.
Marx didn't simply dismiss the general concept of rights; he called for suppression of key rights we have in liberal society, including our "private labor" rights—the right to choose any career we wish. To learn more about socialism's plan to replace our "private labor" rights with what Marx called "directly social labor," our work under society's direct control, see Red Flags Press paper "A 'Defect' of Liberalism: It Treats Your Life as Your Own."
[5]. Karl Marx, Capital, trans. Ben Fowkes and David Fernbach, 3 vols. (London: Penguin Classics, 1978–1981), 1:614. The first volume of Capital was originally published in German in 1867.
[6]. Marx, Capital, 1:614, emphasis added.
[7]. Karl Marx, "Instructions for the Delegates of the Provisional General Council," in Karl Marx: On the First International, ed. and trans. Saul K. Padover (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1973), 26.
[8]. Marx, Capital, 1:614.
[9]. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr and Company, 1910), 42. The Communist Manifesto was originally published in German in 1848.
[10]. One of the reasons this work, written in 1875 but first published in 1891, qualifies as one of Marx's most important is that it contains his famous-in-socialist circles statement that there would be two phases of socialist society, including a "higher phase" that would be based on the principle "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." It was Marx's adoption of this phrase (originated by Louis Blanc in the 1840s) that made it the most famous saying of socialism and its defining promise. Karl Marx, "Critique of the Gotha Program," in The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Robert Tucker(New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1972), 388.
[11]. Marx, "Critique of the Gotha Program," 398.
[12]. Friedrich Engels, Anti-Dühring: Herr Eugen Dühring's Revolution in Science, trans. Emile Burns (New York: International Publishers, 1966), 360. In this work originally published in German in 1878, Engels quotes in full Marx's discussion of the Education of the Future in Capital (pp. 360–61). Engels praises Marx's ideas on the subject and criticizes competing socialist theorist Eugene Dühring for having "backboneless" ideas about combining education and work as compared to those of Marx.
[13]. Marx, "Instructions for the Delegates," 26.
[14]. Marx, "Instructions for the Delegates," 26: "Children and young persons of both sexes divided into three classes, to be treated differently; the first class to range from 9 to 12; the second, from 13 to 15 years; and the third, to comprise the ages of 16 and 17 years. We propose that the employment of the first class in any workshop or housework be legally restricted to two; that of the second, to four; and that of the third, to six hours. For the third class, there must be a break of at least one hour for meals or relaxation."
[15]. Marx, Capital, 1:618.
[16]. Marx, Capital, 1:617.
[17]. Marx, Capital, 1:447.
[18]. Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1956; orig. 1847), 144. Noted socialist thinker G. A. Cohen asserts that, as Marx uses the term, "idiocy" refers to "narrow parochialism" and "not feeble intelligence" (G. A. Cohen, "Marx's Dialectic of Labor," Philosophy & Public Affairs 3, no. 3, [Spring 1974], 248). But this argument is undercut by the fact that Marx effectively labels craftspeople pinheads (individuals with "the knowledge and the consciousness of the pin") in the same paragraph in which he writes that "the automatic workshop wipes out specialists and craft-idiocy." Moreover, whatever meaning we ascribe to Marx's use of "idiocy," he's certainly not promoting craftwork as an option in socialist society, much less as part of socialist child labor as education. In Cohen's article, he states that Marx's socialism would "banish" (256) craft until socialism produced an ultra-automated fantasy future in which literally all work had ceased to exist (257).
[19]. As explored more fully in the Red Flags Press paper "Why Socialism Says Craftwork Is 'Idiocy,'" Marx attacks the specific nature of craft production: the fact that the craft artisan performs all steps in the production of an item. He writes that this style of labor creates workers who have "the knowledge and the consciousness of the pin" (Marx, Poverty of Philosophy, 144). Working as the craftsperson does results in having the smarts of a pin; in other words, it makes you a pinhead—an idiot.
[20]. Sean Sayers, "The Concept of Labor: Marx and His Critics," Science & Society 71, no. 4 (October 2007): 449.
[21]. Marx, Capital, 614.
[22]. Marx and Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, 42.
[23]. Louis Blanc is typically credited with, in the 1840s, defining the specific wording of socialism's requirement of duty to society: "from each according to his abilities." Writing in 1880, he explains: "The more one can, the more one must. … Hence the axiom: From each, according to his abilities. That is the DUTY" ("Plus un homme peut, plus il doit … D'où l'axiome : De chacun, selon ses facultés. Là est le DEVOIR"). Louis Blanc, La Historie de la Révolution de 1848, vol. 1 (Paris: C. Marpon, 1880), 148.
[24]. Marx, "Instructions for the Delegates," 26.
[25]. Marx, Capital, 1:614.
[26]. Karl Marx, Capital, trans. E. Paul and C. Paul (London: J. M. Dent, 1930), 522.
[27]. As one example, socialist Istvan Meszaros writes: "As is well known, Marx had great expectations of 'the social revolution of the nineteenth century.'" Meszaros continues explaining that Marx "hoped, and explicitly said" that socialist revolutions in the 1800s would "take the capitalist order into its grave." Istvan Meszaros, Beyond Capital (New York: Monthly Review, 2010), 917, Kindle.
[28]. That today's "democratic" socialism remains founded on the duty of "from each according to their ability" is demonstrated by the fact that countless socialist writers who present themselves as democratic socialists continue to reference this standard in their works. Three examples:
Michael Harrington, the founder of the Democratic Socialists of America, writes that "the goal of socialism, clearly is to … act on the basis of 'to each according to his/her need, from each according to his/her ability.'" Michael Harrington, "What Socialists Would Do in America—If They Could," Dissent, Fall 1978, 445.
In his recent book The Morality of Radical Economics, Ron Baiman defines democratic socialism by this very standard: "The only way that the current capitalist … as opposed to democratic socialist ('from each according to ability, to each according to their need'), economics can be justified…" Ron P. Baiman, The Morality of Radical Economics (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2016), 276.
Robert Sewell writes in a recent article that socialism is to mean that "society will be based on the principle 'from each according to their ability, to each according to their need.'" Robert Sewell, "Why You Should Be a Socialist," Socialist Appeal, September 4, 2015, https://www.socialist.net/why-you-should-be-a-socialist.htm.
[29]. The Marx's Education of the Future idea represents an important exception to his vow that he would not "write recipes" for the socialist future. Marx laid out a specific vision—a fixed-course menu if you will—of what would constitute a socialist society. For example, he said that a socialist society would be one in which there is no buying or selling, no money, and not a single private business. But while he provided a high-level picture of what qualifies as a socialist society, Marx famously (at least among knowledgeable socialists) said that he was going to "confine myself to the mere critical analysis of actual facts, instead of writing recipes for the cook-shops of the future" (Marx, Capital, 1:99).
Given Marx's outsized importance to socialism, his "no recipes" pledge has become a socialist standard, one reprised by dozens of socialist thinkers. Marx by and large abided by his own rule. He provided relatively scant details about how socialist society would operate day to day. But then there's his Education of the Future idea. Here Marx writes a recipe for a specific operational aspect of socialist society. He gets into such details as the age when child labor would begin, how many hours kids would be made to work, and so on.
The fact Marx broke his own rarely broken "no recipes" rule, and did so repeatedly, reinforces the importance Marx placed on the Education of the Future. Yet when socialists write about Marx and his socialism, almost all of them fail to remark about this remarkable aspect of his thought.
[30]. Fromm, Marx's Concept of Man, 76.
[31]. Fromm uses the 1906 Charles H. Kerr edition of Marx's Capital, vol. 1,as his source in Marx's Concept of Man. The footnote for "fully developed human beings" on page 76 of Marx's Concept of Man points to pages 529-30 in this edition of Marx's Capital. These are the pages on which Marx outlines "the education of the future."
[32]. Jean Anyon, Marx and Education (New York: Taylor and Francis, 2011). In addition to being a devout socialist, Dr. Jean Anyon was a professor at the City University of New York.
[33]. Mandan Sarup, Marxism and Education (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, Ltd., 1978).
[34]. See Sarup, Marxism and Education, 108–28; Anyon, Marx and Education, 6–14.
[35]. Two examples from Mandan Sarup's Marxism and Education:
Sarup writes that the goal of his book is to present a theory of education that stems from a "libertarian Marxism" (8). The preposterous notion of a libertarian Marxism would fail instantly if Sarup had included details about Marx's Education of the Future plan in his book. Compulsory child labor as education is as far removed from libertarianism as it's possible to imagine.
Sarup references Marx's attack on writing recipes about the socialist future (125), while suppressing all details about Marx's thinking on education—thinking that represents a flagrant violation of this "no recipes" rule.
[36]. Sarup, Marxism and Education, 135.
A third example of a socialist work specifically on Marxism and Education that buries what Marx had to say about the Education of the Future is Mike Cole, Marxism and Education Theory (New York: Taylor and Francis, 2008). The word "future" appears seventy-five times in this book. But not one them is Cole quoting Marx's discussions of the Education of the Future.
At one point in this book of over two hundred pages, Cole makes a brief reference to the fact Marx believed in "combining education with labour" (30). But he then provides a misleading explanation of Marx's goal in desiring this combination: that it was to "increase general awareness of the (exploitative) nature of capitalism." The "exploitative" in parentheses appears as part of Cole's original text. Cole's explanation of Marx's intent is a complete distortion. As the quotes from Marx in the body of the present paper demonstrate, Marx wanted child labor because he believed it was "the only method of producing fully developed human beings." He wanted factory labor by children to be the gold standard for education in socialist society—a world in which kids would perform years of forced labor for society, but magically, it would not be "exploitative."
Cole must have struggled with his fib about Marx's goals for child labor as education, because he also includes a brief footnote that explains Marx and Engels believed that adding work to traditional schooling would aid "in the construction of a socialist future." The sole purpose of Cole's footnote is to hide this statement that at least addresses Marx's actual intent and contradicts the notion that Marx wanted child labor as a means to give kids and their families firsthand experience with exploitation. Surely this more accurate statement, along with quotes from Marx and additional meaningful details, should have appeared in the body of the text in lieu of the misleading sentence that actually appears.
[37]. Burke, "Karl Marx and Informal Education," in The Encyclopedia of Pedagogy and Informal Education, www.infed.org/thinkers/et-marx.htm.
[38]. Barry Burke, "Karl Marx and Informal Education."
[39]. The content of Anyon's and Sarup's books makes it clear they're intimately familiar with Marx's writings. It would be astonishing for them (both long-time socialist academics in the education field) to be unaware of what Marx had to say about education and "the only method of producing fully developed human beings." And the possibility that Burke was unaware of Marx's calls for child labor as education seems equally remote. Burke's article includes a lengthy discussion of points Marx made in The Communist Manifesto and also quotes from it. Burke could not have missed what The Communist Manifesto says about the "combination of education with industrial production."
[40]. Fromm, Marx's Concept of Man, 3.
[41]. Not only was Bax a founder and leader in the Social Democratic Federation (SDF), but he was editor of its paper Justice. Details about Bax's involvement with the SDF and the Socialist League are available at the socialist-run website Marxists.org biography of Bax, preserved at Archive.org: https://web.archive.org/web/20211104141436/https://www.marxists.org/glossary/people/b/a.htm.
[42]. A biography of Bax hosted on the socialist-run website Marxists.org (see n. 41) states that Bax was "important as the first source through which many of the Marxist and materialist ideas of history were disseminated through the English speaking world. Marx noted his efforts with approval."
[43]. Ernest Belfort Bax, The Ethics of Socialism: Being Further Essays in Modern Socialist Criticism (London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co, 1893), 21.
[44]. Ernest "Che" Guevara, "On Creating a New Attitude," in Venceremos! The Speeches and Writings of Che Guevara, ed. John Gerassi (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968), 337.
[45]. See n. 28 for three examples of present-day democratic socialists indicating that today's socialism remains based on socialism's 170-year-old duty of "from each according to their ability."
[46]. See the Red Flags Press paper "The Ripple Effects of Socialist Duty" for an overview of the ways in which socialism's foundation on the duty of "from each according to their ability" has contaminated numerous aspects of socialist philosophy.
[47]. See n. 4 for examples of Marx's many other dangerous anti-liberal beliefs and goals.