Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution and On the Morrow of the Social Revolution - tr. John Bertram Askew (1903).djvu/100

36 to him, he will co-operate in an organised manner with the architect, as was the case during the most flourishing periods of art, in Athens under Pericles and during the Italian Renlaissance; and one art will support and raise the other, artistic work will acquire a conscious social aim, therefore its influence, its surroundings and its public will not depend on chance.

On the other hand, however, there will no longer be any necessity of producing works of art for sale as commodities. In fact, the necessity of performing intellectual labour, be it as wage-labour or as production of commodities, for money-making purposes will altogether cease.

I have already pointed out that a proletarian régime will endeavour, as is from the standpoint of the wage-workers only too natural, to reduce- the hours of labour and to raise the wages. I have also shown to what a great extent this could be done even at once in a country with a highly-developed capitalist industry, simply by closing the backward concerns, and working to the utmost those whose organisation is the most perfect. It is not at all fantastic to assume that it is possible to double the wages and to reduce the hours of work by half immediately. And the technical sciences are advanced enough to permit us to expect a rapid progress in this field. The greater the progress in the domain of technique, the greater the possibility afforded to those employed in material production to devote themselves also to intellectual activity, such activities even as bring no material profit, as are themselves their own reward; in other words, the highest kind of intellectual activity. The increased leisure may partly—nay, mainly—lead to mere intellectual enjoyment. With gifted persons it will set free the creative activity and hiring about a union of material production with that of art, or fiction, or science.

But this union will not merely be a possibility, it will also be an economic necessity. We have seen how a proletarian régime must endeavour to make education general. If, however, we were to spread education in the present-day fashion, we would only secure that the growing generation would become unfit for all material production, that is, the foundations of society would be undermined. To-day, the social division of labour is carried out in such a way that material labour and intellectual are almost mutually exclusive. Material labour takes place under conditions which permit only a few individuals, favoured by nature or circumstances, to perform, in addition, the higher intellectual work. On the other hand, intellectual labour, as it is carried on to-day, renders men incapable of, and averse to, bodily labour. To provide all mankind with education would mean, under the circumstances, to render all material production impossible, because nobody would be found who could and would carry it on. If, therefore, intellectual labour is to become a common possession, without endangering the existence of society, not only pedagogy but also economic necessity