(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 ............