‘There is still a third category of proletarians that has gone far on the road to its complete development – the educated proletarians. Education has become a special trade under our present system. The measure of knowledge has increased greatly and grows daily. Capitalist society and the capitalist state are increasingly in need of men of knowledge and ability to conduct their business, in order to bring the forces of nature under their power. But not only the hard-working small farmer, mechanic or the proletarian in general have no time to devote themselves to science and art; the merchant, the manufacturer, the banker, the stock-jobber, the landlord – all are in the same situation. Their whole time is taken up with their business and their pleasures. In modern society it is not, as it used to be under previous social orders, the exploiters themselves, or at least a class of them, who foster the arts and sciences. The present exploiters, our ruling class, leave these pursuits to a special class whom they keep in hire. Under this system education becomes a merchandise.
‘A hundred years or so ago this commodity was rare. There were few schools; study was accompanied with considerable expense. So long as small production could support him, the worker stuck to it; only special gifts of nature or favorable circumstances would cause the sons of the workers to dedicate themselves to the arts and sciences. Though there was an increasing demand for teachers, artists and other professional men, the supply was definitely limited.
‘So long as this condition of things lasted, education commanded a high price. Its possession produced, at least for those who applied it to practical ends, very comfortable livings; not infrequently it brought honor and fame. The artist, the poet, the philosopher, were, in monarchical countries, the companions of royalty. The aristocracy of intellect felt itself superior to the aristocracy of birth or money. The only care of such was the development of their intellect. Hence it happened that people of culture could be, and often were, idealists. These aristocrats of education and culture stood above the other classes and their material aspirations and antagonisms. Education meant power, happiness and worth. The conclusion seemed inevitable that in order to make all men happy and worthy, in order to banish all class antagonisms, all poverty, all wickedness and meanness out of the world, nothing else was needed than to spread education and culture.
‘Since those days the development of higher education has made immense progress. The number of institutions of learning has increased wonderfully, and in a still larger degree, the number of pupils. In the meantime the bottom has been knocked out of small production. The small property holder knows today no other way of keeping his sons from sinking into the proletariat than sending them to college; and he does this if his means will at all allow. But, furthermore, he must consider the future not only of his sons, but also of his daughters. The development in the division of labor is rapidly encroaching on the household; it is converting one household duty after another into a special industry, and steadily diminishing household work. Weaving, sewing, knitting, baking, and many other occupations that at one time filled up the round of household duties, have been either wholly or partially withdrawn from the sphere of housekeeping. As a result of all this, marriage in which the wife is to be the housekeeper only, is becoming more and more a matter of luxury. But it so happens that the small property holder and producer is at the same time sinking steadily, and steadily becoming poorer; more and more he loses the means to indulge in luxury. In consequence of this the number of unmarried women increases, and ever larger is the number of those families in which mother and daughter must become wage-earners. Accordingly the number of women wage-earners increases, not only in large and small production and commerce, but in government offices, in the telegraph and telephone service, in railroads and banks, in the arts and sciences. However loudly personal interests and prejudices may rebel against it, the labor of women presses itself forward more and more into the various professional pursuits. It is not vanity, nor forwardness nor arrogance, but the force of economic development that drives women to labor in these as well as in other fields of human activity. If men have succeeded in preventing the competition of women in certain branches of intellectual labor which are still organized on craft lines, women workers tend to crowd all the more into the pursuits not so organized, for example, authorship, painting, music.
‘The result of this whole development is that the number of educated people has increased enormously. Nevertheless, the beneficent results which the idealists expected from an increase of education have not followed. So long as education is a merchandise, its extension is equivalent to an increase in the quantity of that merchandise, consequently to the falling in its price and the decline in the condition of those who possess it. The number of educated people has grown to such an extent that it more than suffices for the wants of the capitalists and the capitalist state. The labor market of educated labor is today as overstocked as the market of manual labor. It is no longer the manual workers alone who have their reserve army of the unemployed and are afflicted with lack of work; the educated workers also have their reserve army of idle, and among them also lack of work has taken up its permanent quarters. The seekers for public office find that avenue of employment crowded. Those who seek openings elsewhere experience the extremes of idleness and excessive work just as do the manual workers, and like them are the victims of wage-slavery.
‘The condition of the educated workers deteriorates visibly; formerly people spoke of the “aristocracy of intellect,” today we speak of the “intellectual” or “educated” proletariat.
‘The time is near when the bulk of these proletarians will be distinguished from the others only by their pretensions. Most of them still imagine that they are something better than proletarians. They fancy they belong to the bourgeoisie, just as the lackey identifies himself with the class of his master. They have ceased to be the leaders of the capitalist class and have become rather their defenders. Place-hunting takes more and more of their energies. Their first care is, not the development of their intellect, but the sale of it. The prostitution of their individuality has become their chief means of advancement. Like the small producers, they are dazzled by the few brilliant prizes in the lottery of life; they shut their eyes to the numberless blanks in the wheel and barter away soul and body for the merest chance of drawing such a prize. The barter and sale of one’s convictions and the marriage for money are, in the eyes of most of our educated proletarians, two means, as natural as they are necessary, to “make one’s fortune.”
‘Still, the supply of this class grows so rapidly that there is little to be made out of education, even though one throws his individuality into the bargain. The decline of the mass of educated people into the class of the proletariat can no longer be checked.
‘Whether this development will result in a movement of the educated people to join the battling proletariat in mass and not, as hitherto, singly, is still uncertain. This however, is certain: The fact that the educated people are being forced into the proletariat has closed to the proletarians the only gate through which its members could, by dint of their own unaided efforts, escape into the class above.’ (The Erfurt Programme Explained (1892), chapter 2 section 6)
Notes in the Margins of the Days 