The Proletariat and Education: The Necessity for Labor Colleges

Full text online at Marxist Internet Archive

• Feudalism, whatever may be said of it otherwise, was at least based on an personal relationship: capitalism, on the other hand, is a relationship of things. The difference in the two is vast; and the difference in the outlook engendered in the community is also vast.

• With the proper understanding of the economic system, the workers will soon find means to end that system, and to raise on its ruins a development of society having for its goal the benefit of the whole, instead of a part, of the community.

• If we turn back to the time when the first compulsory education act was passed, we find that the capitalists of England fought these acts with all their might, but that they soon withdrew their opposition and supported them. For the employers recognised that though the children would know a little more, the amount could be so restricted that the result would only be to make them better wage slaves, knowing no more of freedom than what we have known and experienced of it.