Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution and On the Morrow of the Social Revolution - tr. John Bertram Askew (1903).djvu/98

34 commodities by the individual worker; and third, the production of commodities on capitalist lines.

To the intellectual production of the first kind belongs the entire educational apparatus from the communal school to the university. If we ignore- the unimportant private school the apparatus is now entirely in the hands of society and is worked by it, not on a basis of profit-making or as a trading concern. This applies more especially to the modern national or communal schools; to a great extent, however, also to those schools—chiefly existing as mediaeval survivals—of ecclesiastical organisations and charitable institutions, which are principally to be found in countries of Anglo-Saxon civilisation.

The social educational system is of the highest importance for the intellectual life, especially the scientific, and that not merely on account of its influence on the growing youth. It dominates ever more and more the sphere of scientific research by constituting its teachers, namely, in the high schools, more and more the sole possessors of that scientific apparatus without which scientific research is to-day almost impossible. This applies especially to the domain of natural science, where the technique has developed to such an extent, that apart from a few millionaires, only the State can command the means which are required for the provision and maintenance of the necessary scientific institutions. But in many branches of social science, ethnology, archaeology, and others, the scientific apparatus of research, too, becomes ever more extensive and costly. At the same time, science becomes more and more a non-paying pursuit, by which no human being can live, and to which only those people can devote themselves who are paid by the State for the purpose—unless, indeed, they were careful enough in the selection of their parents or …. their wives. The very acquisition of the necessary preliminaries for scientific activity demands ever larger and increasing means. Thus science becomes more and more a monopoly of the State and the propertied classes.

A proletarian régime cannot but lead to the removal of the conditions hindering the development of scientific activity. It will have, as we mentioned at the beginning, so to organise its educational system as to render it possible for any gifted person to acquire all the knowledge which the educational establishments of society are in a position to impart. It will increase enormously the demand for teaching and therewith for scientific research-power. Finally, it will tend, by the abolition of the class antagonisms, to make the State-paid student of social sciences more free, both outwardly and inwardly; As long as there are class antagonisms, there will always be different standpoints from which one could view society. There can be no greater hypocrisy or self-deception than to talk of a science standing superior to the class antagonisms. Science only exists in the brains of the students, and they, are products of their