Germany -- Social conditions; Reconstruction (1914-1939) -- Germany; Socialism
It ought to have been, and believed itself to be, a simple and obvious
piece of love-service, a pure interchange of spiritual possessions
between class and class, no condescending pity or educative mission.
It was a noble and a splendid error; the movement retained the form of
sacrifice and benefaction. On both sides social feeling was
indifferent to it, or even hostile. What one hand gave, a thousand
others took back; what one hand received, a thousand others rejected.
The collective conscience of a class had never been stirred, it was
merely that the conscience of certain members of upper-class society
had sent out envoys; it had not moved as a body. Individuals were
ready to sacrifice themselves, but the conditions of labour remained
unchanged.
So long as a general wrong is allowed to stand, it gives the lie to
every individual effort. The wrong becomes even more bitter because it
loses its unconsciousness--men know it for wrong, and do not amend it.
For this reason a second movement of importance, that of the People's
High Schools, which has created in Denmark the most advanced
peasant-class in existence, can achieve no social reform in lands
cloven by proletarianism. If in addition to this the High School
movement should depart from its original conception, that of a
temporary community of life between the teachers and the taught, and
should, instead of this, resolve itself into a lecture-institution,
then the danger arises that what is offered will be disconnected
matter, intended for entertainment, and without any basis of real
knowledge, something commonly called half-culture which is worse than
unculture, and is more properly described as misculture.
No work of the charitable type can bring about the reconciliation of
classes or be a substitute for popular education. The reconciliation
of classes, however, even if it were attainable, is by no means our
goal, but rather the abolition of classes, and our ultimate object is
not popular education but popular culture. We do not intend to give
with one hand and take back with the other, we shall not condemn a
brother-people to dullness and quicken a few chosen individuals; no,
we mean to go to the root of the evil, to break down the monopoly of
culture, and to create a new people, united and cultured throughout.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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