Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution and On the Morrow of the Social Revolution - tr. John Bertram Askew (1903).djvu/101

Rh demands that this should be done in such a way as to make the rising generation in the school conversant not only with intellectual but also with bodily labour, and to implant in them the habit of associating intellectual and material production.

There are two ways in which the proletarian régime will have to introduce among the mass of the people the union of material with intellectual production and therewith bring about the emancipation of the latter from its present material limits. On one hand by shortening the labour of the so-called manual worker as a consequence of the progressive productivity of labour, thus affording more and more leisure for those active in the material field to work at intellectual pursuits. On the other hand, by an increase of physical labour of the educated, as a necessary consequence of the continual increase of the number of the latter.

It is, however, obvious, that under such a union physical labour will become industrial labour, obligatory labour in the service of society, whilst intellectual labour will become voluntary labour as the activity of the individual freed from all social compulsion. For intellectual labour is far less compatible with such a compulsion than physical. The emancipation of intellectual labour by the proletariat is not merely the pious wish of utopists, but is an economically necessary consequence of its victory.

Finally, we have to consider the third form of intellectual production carried on on capitalist lines of exploitation. If the first of the three forms of intellectual production embraces principally science, the second the fine arts, then here we are concerned with all spheres of intellectual activity, mainly, however, with the heroes of the pen and the stage, who are confronted with publishers, newspaper proprietors and managers of theatres as their capitalist employers.

To continue capitalist exploitation of that nature under a proletarian régime will be impossible. That exploitation rests, however, on the fact that intellectual products in question can only be conveyed to the public by means of a costly, technical apparatus, and the co-operation of many persons. The single individual can by himself accomplish here nothing. Does not that mean that here, too, the alternative to a capitalist concern is a concern carried on by the State? If so, would not the State organisation of so large and important a part of the intellectual life threaten it with the very worst that can befall it—viz., monotony and stagnation? True, the State ceases to be the organ of a class; but does it not become the organ of the majority? Is it possible to make intellectual life dependent on the decisions of a majority? Was not every new truth, every new idea and feeling first grasped and championed only by an insignificant minority? Does not this new order threaten to bring into constant conflict with the proletarian régime, just the best and the bravest of the intellectual champions in the most varied fields ? And even if the proletarian régime does