(discusses scientific, artistic and religious activities, as a superstructure built upon the foundation of the standard wage.)
karl kautsky, intellectual leader of the german social-democracy, gives in his book, "the social revolution," a useful formula as to the organization of the future society. this formula is: "communism in material production, anarchism in intellectual production." it will repay us to study this statement, and see exactly what it means.
material production depends directly upon things; and as there is only a limited quantity of things in the world, if any one person has more than his share, he deprives some other person to that extent. so there have to be strict laws concerning the distribution of material products. but with intellectual things exactly the opposite is the case. there is no limit in quantity, and any one person can have all he wants without interfering with anybody else. everybody in the world can perform a play by shakespeare, or play a sonata by beethoven, and everybody can enjoy it as much as he pleases without keeping other people from enjoying it all they please. also, material production can be standardized; we can have great factories to turn out millions of boxes of matches, each match like every other match, and the more alike they are the better. but in intellectual affairs we want everyone to be different, or at least we want everyone to be free to be different, and if some one can become much better than the others, this is the most important kind of production in the world, for he may make over our whole intellectual and moral life.
for the production of material things our new society has great factories owned in common, and run by majority vote of the workers, and we place the products of that factory at the disposal of all members of society upon equal terms. that is our "communism in material production." on the other hand, in our intellectual production we leave everybody free to live his own life, and to associate himself with others of like aims, and we place as few restrictions as possible upon their activities. this is the method of free association, or "anarchism in intellectual production."
our problem would be simple if material and intellectual production never had to mingle. but, as it happens, every kind of intellectual production requires a certain amount of material, and every kind of material production involves an intellectual element. therefore, our two methods have to be combined, and we have a complex problem which we have to solve in a variety of different ways, and upon which we must experiment with open minds and scientific temper.
first, let us take the intellectual elements involved in the production of purely material things, such as matches and shoes and soap. let us take invention. naturally, we do not want to go on making matches and shoes and soap in the same old way forever. on the contrary, we want to stimulate all the workers in these industries to use their wits and improve the processes in every possible way. the whole of society has an interest in this, and the soap workers have an especial interest. our soap industry has an invention department, with a group of experts appointed by the executive committee of the national council of soap workers. all soap workers are taxed, say five cents a day, for the support of this activity. likewise the state contributes a generous sum out of its income toward the work of soap research. in addition to this, the soap industry offers prizes and scholarships for suggestions as to the improvement of every detail of the work, and at meetings of every local of soap workers somebody makes new suggestions as to methods of stimulating their intellectual life—not merely as regards soap, but as regards citizenship, and art and literature, and human life in general. our soap workers, you must understand, are no longer wage-slaves, brutalized by toil and poverty; they are free citizens of a free society. our soap workers' local in every city has its own theatre and concert hall and lecture bureau, and publishes its own magazine.
every industry has its immediate intellectual problems, its trade journals in which these are discussed, and its research boards in which they are worked out. the ambitions of the young workers in that industry are concentrated upon getting into this intellectual part of their trade. examinations are held and tests are made to discover the most competent men, and written suggestions are considered by boards of control. it is, of course, of great importance to every worker that the channels of promotion should be kept open, and that the man who really has inventive talent shall get, not merely distinction and promotion, but financial reward, so that he may have time and materials to continue his experiments.
this research department, you perceive, is a sort of superstructure, built upon the foundation of our standard wage; and this same simile applies to numerous other forms of intellectual production. for example, our community paper mills turn out paper, and our community printers are prepared to turn out millions of books. how shall we determine what is to be the intellectual content of these material books? there are many different methods. first, there is the method of individualism. a man has something to say, and he writes a book; he works in the soap factory, and saves a part of his standard wage, and when he has money enough he orders the community printers to print his book, and the community booksellers to handle it for him, and the community postoffice to deliver it for him. again, a group of men organize themselves into an association, or club, or scientific society, and publish books. the authors' league takes up the work of publishing the writings of its members, and the poetry society does the same.
this is the method of anarchism, or free association. but there is no reason why we should not have along side it the method of socialism; there is no reason why we should not have state publishing houses, just as we have state universities and state libraries. the state should certainly publish standard works of all sorts, bibles and dictionaries and directories, and cheap editions of the classics. in this new world our school boards are not chosen by business men for purposes of graft, they are chosen by the people to educate our children; so it seems to us perfectly natural that the national educational association should conduct a publication department, and order the printing of the school books which the children use.
in the same way, anyone is free to write a play, or to put on a play, and invite people to come and see it. but, like the individual farmers and the individual mothers of families, the play-producer in our society is in competition with great community enterprises, which set a high standard and make competition difficult. the same thing applies to the opera, and to concerts, and to all the arts and sciences. you can start a private hospital if you wish, but you will be in competition with public institutions, and you can only succeed if you are a man of genius—that is, if you have something to teach, too new and startling for the public boards of control to recognize. you try your new method, and it works, and that becomes a criticism of the public boards of control, and before long the people by their votes turn out the old board of control and put you in.
that is politics, you say; but we in our new world do not use the word politics as one of contempt. we really believe that public sentiment is in the long run the best authority, and the appeal to public sentiment is at once a social privilege and a social service. what we strive to do is to clear the channels of appeal, and avoid favoritism and stagnation. to that end we maintain, in every art and every science and every department of human thought, endless numbers of centers of free, independent, co-operative activity, so that every man who has an inspiration, or a new idea, can find some group to support him or can form a new group of his own.
this is our "anarchism in intellectual production," and it is the method under which in capitalist society men organize all their clubs and societies and churches. devout members of the roman catholic church will be startled to be told that theirs is an anarchist organization; but nevertheless, such is the case. the catholic church owns a great deal of property, and speculates in real estate, and to that extent it is a capitalist institution. it holds a great many people by fear, and to that extent it is a feudal institution. but in so far as members of the church believe in it and love it and contribute of their free will to its support, they are organizing by the method which all anarchists recommend and desire to apply to the whole of society. anarchist clubs and christian churches are both free associations for the advocacy of certain ideas, the only difference being in the ideas they advocate.
in our new world such organizations have been multiplied many fold, and form a vast superstructure of intellectual activity, built upon the foundation of the standard wage. in this new world all the people are free. they are free, not merely from oppression, but from the fear of oppression; they have leisure and plenty, and they take part naturally and simply in the intellectual life. the old, of course, have not got over the dullness which a lifetime of drudgery impressed upon them, but the young are growing up in a world without classes, and in which it seems natural that everyone should be educated and everyone should have ideas. they earn their standard wage, and devote their spare time to some form of intellectual or artistic endeavor, and spend their spare money in paying writers and artists and musicians and actors to stimulate and entertain them.
these latter are the ways of distinction in our new society; these are the paths to power. the only rich men in our world are the men who produce intellectual goods; the great artists, orators, musicians, actors and writers, who are free to serve or not to serve, as they see fit, and can therefore hold up the public for any price they care to charge. just now there is eager discussion going on in our world as to whether it is proper for an opera singer, or a moving picture star, or a novelist, to make a million dollars. our newspapers are full of discussions of the question whether anyone can make a million dollars honestly, and whether men of genius should exploit their public. some point out that our most eminent opera singer spends his millions in endowing a conservatory of art; but others maintain that it would be better if he lowered his prices of admission, and let the public use its money in its own way. the extremists are busy founding what they call the ten-cent society, whose members agree to boycott all singers and actors who charge more than ten cents admission, and all moving picture stars who receive more than a hundred thousand dollars a year for their service. these "ten-centers" do not object to paying the money, but they object to the commercializing of art, and declare especially that the moral effect of riches is such that no rich person should ever, under any circumstances, be allowed to influence the youth of the nation. in this some of the greatest writers join them, and renounce their copyrights, and agree to accept a laureateship from some union of workers, who pay them a generous stipend for the joy and honor of being associated with their names. the greatest poet of our time began life as a newsboy, and so the national newsvenders' society has adopted him, and taken his name, and pays him ten thousand dollars a year for the privilege of publishing his works.
