And we owe all this wonderful success to the division of labour, so how can we fail to acknowledge it?
Let us grant that the successes achieved in our age are really striking, wonderful, and extraordinary. Let us admit that we are such peculiarly fortunate people as to live in such an extraordinary time. But let us try to value these successes not by our self-satisfaction but by that same principle of division of labour in defence of which they are quoted: that is by the mental work of the men of science for the benefit of the people, which is to pay for the scientists’ and artists’ emancipation from labour. All these successes are very wonderful, but by some unfortunate accident admitted by scientists themselves-up to now these successes have not improved the condition of the labourer but rather have made it worse.
If a workman instead of walking can go by train, on the other hand the railroad has consumed his forest, carried away the grain from under his nose, and brought him to a condition not far removed from slavery to those who own the railroad.
If, thanks to the steam-engines and machines, the labourer can buy wretched cotton prints, those steam-engines and machines have deprived him on the other hand of earnings at home, and have reduced him to a condition of complete slavery to the manufacturer.
If there are telegraph stations which he is not forbidden to use but which his means do not allow him to use, on the other hand his produce, as soon as the price is rising, thanks to
the telegraph system gets bought up from under his nose by capitalists before the labourer hears of the demand there is for it.
If there are telephones and telescopes, verses, novels, theatres, ballets, symphonies, operas, picture galleries, and so forth, the workman’s life is not improved by all this, for by the same unfortunate accident it is beyond his reach. So that in general up to now-as men of science admit-all these extraordinary inventions and productions of art, if they have not injured have quite failed to improve the labourer’s life.
So that if the question of the reality of the successes achieved by science and art is measured not by our raptures over ourselves, but by the same standard by which the division of labour is defended-namely that of advantage to the labouring people, we shall see that we have as yet no firm basis for the self-satisfaction to which we so willingly yield.
A peasant goes by rail, his wife buys cotton prints, they have a lamp in their hut instead of a wooden torch, and the man lights his pipe with a match-that is convenient; but what right have I to say that the railroad and factories have benefited the people?
If the peasant travels on the railroad and buys a lamp, cotton prints, and matches, this is only because it is impossible to forbid him to do so, but we all know that the railroads and the factories were not built for the benefit of the labouring people, so why bring forward accidental conveniences, of which the peasants chance to be able to avail themselves, as proofs of the utility of those institutions to the people?
For we all know that if the technicians and capitalists who built the railroads and the factories thought about the workers, it was only of how to squeeze the last bit of work out of them. And as we have seen, both among ourselves and in Europe and America, they have fully succeeded in doing this.
In all harmful things there is some good. After a conflagration we can warm ourselves and light our pipes with the glowing charcoal; but why say that the conflagration is useful?
Let us at least not deceive ourselves. We all know the motives which prompt the building of railroads and factories and the production of kerosene and matches.
The engineer builds the railroad either for the government for military purposes or for capitalists for financial purposes. He makes machinery for the factory-owner for his own profit and for that of the capitalist. All that he makes and devises he makes and devises for the purposes of the government or of the capitalist and the rich people.
The most cunning of his inventions are directly aimed either at injuring the people-as with cannon, torpedoes, solitary confinement cells, apparatus for the spirit-monopoly, telegraphs, and so forth, or for producing things that not only are not useful but are quite beyond the reach of the people, such as electric light, telephones, and all the innumerable appliances for the increase of comfort-or, finally, for things by which people can be corrupted and induced to part with the last of their money-that is, their last labour-such as, first of all vodka, spirits, beer, opium, and tobacco, then cotton prints, kerchiefs, and all sorts of trifles.
If it happens that the inventions of men of science and the work of engineers sometimes is of use to the people, as with railroads, cotton prints, iron pots, and scythes, that only
proves that everything in the world is connected, and from any harmful activity some chance advantage may accrue even to those for whom the activity is generally harmful.
The scientists and artists could only say that their activity was useful to the people if they made it their aim to serve the labourers as they now make it their aim to serve the governments and the capitalists.
We could say it if scientists and artists set themselves the aim of serving the people’s needs, but there are none who do so.
All the learned people are absorbed with their priestly occupations, from which result the investigations of protoplasm, spectral analyses of the stars, and so forth. But with what kind of axe and what kind of axe-handle it is best to chop, what sort of saw works best, how best to knead bread, what flour to use, how to set it, how to make a fire, and how to build the stove, what food, what drink, and what dishes, to use, which mushrooms should be eaten and how best to prepare them-about these things science never reflects. Yet it is all matter for science to deal with.
I know that by its definition science should be useless, but that is an obvious and too impudent excuse. The business of science is to serve men. We have invented telegraphs, telephones, and phonographs; but in real life, in the people’s work, what progress have we made? We have enumerated two million insects! But have we domesticated a single new animal since Biblical times when the animals we now have, had already long been domesticated?
The elk, the stag, the partridge, the quail, and the grouse, are all still wild. Our botanists have discovered the cell, and in the cell protoplasm, and in protoplasm something else, and in that again something else. These occupations will evidently not end for a long time-because there can be no end to them; and so they have no time to occupy themselves with what people need. And then again, since Egyptian and Jewish antiquity, when wheat and lentil were already cultivated, down to our own time, not a single plant has been added to the food of the people except potatoes, and it was not science that gave us them.
They have invented torpedoes, appliances for the use of the spirit-monopoly, and for privies, but our spinning-wheel, peasant-woman’s loom, village plough, hatchet, flail, rake, and the yoke and bucket, are still the same that they were in the times of Rurik,1 or if they have been altered it has not been done by scientists.
The same is true in regard to art. We have raised a multitude of men to the rank of great writers, have analysed them minutely, and written mountains of criticisms, and criticisms of those criticisms, and criticisms of the criticisms of the criticisms, and have collected galleries of pictures, and have studied all the schools of art acutely, and we have such symphonies and operas that it becomes hard for us ourselves to listen to them. But what have we added to the folk-tales and legends and stories and songs? What pictures have we given to the people and what music? In Nikolski-street2 books and pictures for the people are produced, and in Tula concertinas are made, but in neither have we taken any part.
1 The first Russian Prince (830 to 879 A.D.).-A. M.
2 A street in the centre of Moscow, where cheap chapbooks for the peasants were sold.-A. M.
Most striking and obvious is the false direction of our science and art in the very branches which, one would think, should by their very purpose be of use to the people, but which in consequence of the false direction appear harmful rather than useful.
The engineer, doctor, teacher, artist, author, by the very purpose of their calling, one would imagine, should serve the people-and what happens? Under the present tendency they can bring nothing but harm to the people.
An engineer, a mechanic, must work with capital. Without capital he is useless. All his knowledge is such that, to apply it, he needs capital and the exploitation of labour on a large scale, and not to mention that he is himself accustomed to spend at least fifteen hundred to two thousand rubles a year, and therefore cannot live in a village, where no one could give him such a remuneration, his occupation itself prevents his serving the people. He can by higher mathematics reckon the span of a bridge, calculate the power and efficiency of a motor, and
