Page:Nikolai Bukharin - Programme of the World Revolution (1920).djvu/14

 schools and the Church, aided by the capitalist press. It is a known fact that pig-breeders can breed such stock as are incapable of moving owing to the vast accumulation of fat; but such pigs are extremely suitable for slaughter. They are bred artificially on special fattening food. The bourgeoisie deals with the working class in exactly the same way. It is true it gives them little enough substantial food—not enough to get fat on. But day by day it offers to the workers a specially-prepared mental food which fattens their brains and makes them incapable of thought. The bourgeoisie wants to turn the working class into a herd of swine, docile and fit for slaughter, not capable of thinking and ever subservient. This is the reason why, with the help of schools and the Church, the bourgeoisie tries to instil into the minds of children the idea that it is necessary to obey the Authorities, as they hold their power from heaven (and the Bolsheviks, instead of prayers, have drawn on themselves the curses of the Church, because they have refused to grant any State subsidies to these cassocked frauds). This is also the reason why the bourgeoisie is so anxious to circulate its lying press far and wide.

The powerful organisation of the bourgeois class enables them to retain private property. The rich are few in number, but they are surrounded by a large number of faithful, devoted and handsomely-paid servants: ministers, directors of works, directors of banks, and so on; these latter are again surrounded by a still greater number of retainers who get paid less, but who are entirely dependent on them, and are educated along the same lines. They are themselves on the look-out for such posts, should they be lucky enough to attain them. These again are followed by minor officials, agents of capital, etc., etc. It is just as the Russian nursery tale has it: "Grandad holds on to the turnip, grandma on to grandad, grandchild on to grandma," and so on; in short they follow one another in an interminable chain united by the general organisation of the bourgeois State and other industrial combines. These organisations cover all countries with a net out of which the working class struggles in vain to get free. Every capitalist State is in reality one vast economic union. The workers toil—the masters enjoy themselves. The workers carry out orders—the masters lord it over them. The workers are deceived the masters deceive them. Such is the state of things called capitalistic, which the capitalists and their servants—the priests, intellectual classes,