Page:Wilhelm Liebknecht - Socialism; What It Is and What It Seeks to Accomplish - tr. Mary Wood Simons (1899).djvu/20

 which all violent passions are unchained and all good customs are shaken to their very foundations. Shall this continue? Socialism provides that the standing army, this means of subjugation and conquest, be disbanded, and that it he replaced, so long as the possibility of war exists, by an army of the people. Each citizen, from his youth, shall be exercised in the use of arms and become qualified for military action. If every citizen is a soldier then every soldier is a citizen, and no tyrant will ever he in a position to offer violence to the people.

At present education is the privilege of a few, and for this few it is not a training for humanity but a preparation to exercise class rule. The great majority of the population receive only a shamefully perverted and insufficient education and are systematically hindered in the development of their talents, since an educated people, a truly well-bred, cultured people, would not bear patiently the present tyrannous political and social condition. For education, true education—not the systematic perversion and doggish breaking-in that to-day is pleased to boast the name of education—is the mother of freedom, justice and equality, and therefore not consistent with the existence of the present class state. Social democracy would provide the highest possible education for each and all, free instruction in the best possible common and high schools (polytechnical, professional and grammar schools, academies and universities). It proceeds from the position that it is the end of the state to care for the physical and spiritual welfare of its members. The socialistic state is therefore in its foundation a great universal educational institution.

In the present class state justice is a mockery of the name. Justice means literally rightness. But how can