LECTURE13

Innovative Educational Technologies in Higher Education System.

 

Theme: Innovative Educational Technologies in Higher Education System.

v      Testing communication style.

v     Communication Styles of Nurse Practitioners.

 

Every individual needs to communicate in one or the other way. It takes many forms such as writing, speaking and listening. Communication is the life blood of every organization and its effective use helps build a proper chain of authority and improve relationships in the organization.

Communication is a process of transferring information from one entity to another. Communication processes are sign-mediated interactions between at least two agents which share a repertoire of signs and semiotic rules. Communication is commonly defined as "the imparting or interchange of thoughts, opinions, or information by speech, writing, or signs". Although there is such a thing as one-way communication, communication can be perceived better as a two-way process in which there is an exchange and progression of thoughts, feelings or ideas (energy) towards a mutually accepted goal or direction (information).

Communication is a process whereby information is enclosed in a package and is channeled and imparted by a sender to a receiver via some medium. The receiver then decodes the message and gives the sender a feedback. All forms of communication require a sender, a message, and a receiver. Communication requires that all parties have an area of communicative commonality. There are auditory means, such as speech, song, and tone of voice, and there are nonverbal means, such as body language, sign language, paralanguage, touch, eye contact, and writing.

 

Two literatures have shaped much of the writing in the educational foundations over the past two decades: Critical Thinking and Critical Pedagogy. Each has its textual reference points, its favored authors, and its desired audiences. Each invokes the term "critical" as a valued educational goal: urging teachers to help students become more skeptical toward commonly accepted truisms. Each says, in its own way, "Do not let yourself be deceived." And each has sought to reach and influence particular groups of educators, at all levels of schooling, through workshops, lectures, and pedagogical texts. They share a passion and sense of urgency about the need for more critically oriented classrooms. Yet with very few exceptions these literatures do not discuss one another. Is this because they propose conflicting visions of what "critical" thought entails? Are their approaches to pedagogy incompatible? Might there be moments of insight that each can offer the other? Do they perhaps share common limitations, which through comparison become more apparent? Are there other ways to think about becoming "critical" that stand outside these traditions, but which hold educational significance? These are the questions motivating this essay.

We will begin by contrasting Critical Thinking and Critical Pedagogy in terms of their conception of what it means to be "critical." We will suggest some important similarities, and differences, in how they frame this topic. Each tradition has to some extent criticized the other; and each has been criticized, sometimes along similar lines, by other perspectives, especially feminist and poststructural perspectives. These lines of reciprocal and external criticism, in turn, lead us to suggest some different ways to think about "criticality."

At a broad level, Critical Thinking and Critical Pedagogy share some common concerns. They both imagine a general population in society who are to some extent deficient in the abilities or dispositions that would allow them to discern certain kinds of inaccuracies, distortions, and even falsehoods. They share a concern with how these inaccuracies, distortions, and falsehoods limit freedom, though this concern is more explicit in the Critical Pedagogy tradition, which sees society as fundamentally divided by relations of unequal power. Critical Pedagogues are specifically concerned with the influences of educational knowledge, and of cultural formations generally, that perpetuate or legitimate an unjust status quo; fostering a critical capacity in citizens is a way of enabling them to resist such power effects. Critical Pedagogues take sides, on behalf of those groups who are disenfranchised from social, economic, and political possibilities. Many Critical Thinking authors would cite similar concerns, but regard them as subsidiary to the more inclusive problem of people basing their life choices on unsubstantiated truth claims — a problem that is nonpartisan in its nature or effects. For Critical Thinking advocates, all of us need to be better critical thinkers, and there is often an implicit hope that enhanced critical thinking could have a general humanizing effect, across all social groups and classes. In this sense, both Critical Thinking and Critical Pedagogy authors would argue that by helping to make people more critical in thought and action, progressively minded educators can help to free learners to see the world as it is and to act accordingly; critical education can increase freedom and enlarge the scope of human possibilities.

Yet, as one zooms in, further differences appear. The Critical Thinking tradition concerns itself primarily with criteria of epistemic adequacy: to be "critical" basically means to be more discerning in recognizing faulty arguments, hasty generalizations, assertions lacking evidence, truth claims based on unreliable authority, ambiguous or obscure concepts, and so forth. For the Critical Thinker, people do not sufficiently analyze the reasons by which they live, do not examine the assumptions, commitments, and logic of daily life. As Richard Paul puts it, the basic problem is irrational, illogical, and unexamined living. He believes that people need to learn how to express and criticize the logic of arguments that underpin our everyday activity: "The art of explicating, analyzing, and assessing these ‘arguments’ and ‘logic’ is essential to leading an examined life" (Paul 1990, 66). The prime tools of Critical Thinking are the skills of formal and informal logic, conceptual analysis, and epistemology. The primary preoccupation of Critical Thinking is to supplant sloppy or distorted thinking with thinking based upon reliable procedures of inquiry. Where our beliefs remain unexamined, we are not free; we act without thinking about why we act, and thus do not exercise control over our own destinies. For the Critical Thinking tradition, as Harvey Siegel states, critical thinking aims at self-sufficiency, and "a self-sufficient person is a liberated person...free from the unwarranted and undesirable control of unjustified beliefs" (Siegel, 1988, 58).

The Critical Pedagogy tradition begins from a very different starting point. It regards specific belief claims, not primarily as propositions to be assessed for their truth content, but as parts of systems of belief and action that have aggregate effects within the power structures of society. It asks first about these systems of belief and action, who benefits? The primary preoccupation of Critical Pedagogy is with social injustice and how to transform inequitable, undemocratic, or oppressive institutions and social relations. At some point, assessments of truth or conceptual slipperiness might come into the discussion (different writers in the Critical Pedagogy tradition differ in this respect), but they are in the service of demonstrating how certain power effects occur, not in the service of pursuing Truth in some dispassioned sense (Burbules 1992/1995). Indeed, a crucial dimension of this approach is that certain claims, even if they might be "true" or substantiated within particular confines and assumptions, might nevertheless be partisan in their effects. Assertions that African-Americans score lower on IQ tests, for example, even if it is a "fact" that this particular population does on average score lower on this particular set of tests, leaves significant larger questions unaddressed, not the least of which is what effect such assertions have on a general population that is not aware of the important limits of these tests or the tenuous relation, at best, between "what IQ tests measure" and "intelligence." Other important questions, from this standpoint, include: Who is making these assertions? Why are they being made at this point in time? Who funds such research? Who promulgates these "findings"? Are they being raised to question African-American intelligence or to demonstrate the bias of IQ tests? Such questions, from the Critical Pedagogy perspective, are not external to, or separable from, the import of also weighing the evidentiary base for such claims.

Now, the Critical Thinking response to this approach will be that these are simply two different, perhaps both valuable, endeavors. It is one thing to question the evidentiary base (or logic, or clarity, or coherence) of a particular claim, and to find it wanting. This is one kind of critique, adequate and worthwhile on its own terms. It is something else, something separate, to question the motivation behind those who propound certain views, their group interests, the effects of their claims on society, and so forth. That sort of critique might also be worthwhile (we suspect that most Critical Thinking authors would say that it is worthwhile), but it depends on a different sort of analysis, with a different burden of argument — one that philosophers may have less to contribute to than would historians or sociologists, for example.

The response, in turn, from the Critical Pedagogy point of view is that the two levels cannot be kept separate because the standards of epistemic adequacy themselves (valid argument, supporting evidence, conceptual clarity, and so on) and the particular ways in which these standards are invoked and interpreted in particular settings inevitably involve the very same considerations of who, where, when, and why that any other social belief claims raise. Moreover, such considerations inevitably blur into and influence epistemic matters in a narrower sense, such as how research questions are defined, the methods of such research, and the qualifications of the researchers and writers who produce such writings for public attention.

But neither the Critical Thinking nor the Critical Pedagogy tradition is monolithic or homogeneous, and a closer examination of each reveals further dimensions of these similarities and differences.

Critical Thinking

A concern with critical thinking in education, in the broad sense of teaching students the rules of logic or how to assess evidence, is hardly new: it is woven throughout the Western tradition of education, from the Greeks to the Scholastics to the present day. Separate segments of the curriculum have often been dedicated to such studies, especially at higher levels of schooling. What the Critical Thinking movement has emphasized is the idea that specific reasoning skills undergird the curriculum as a whole; that the purpose of education generally is to foster critical thinking; and that the skills and dispositions of critical thinking can and should infuse teaching and learning at all levels of schooling. Critical thinking is linked to the idea of rationality itself, and developing rationality is seen as a prime, if not the prime, aim of education (see, for example, Siegel 1988).

The names most frequently associated with this tradition, at least in the United States, include Robert Ennis, John McPeck, Richard Paul, Israel Scheffler, and Harvey Siegel. While a detailed survey of their respective views, and the significant differences among their outlooks, is outside our scope here, a few key themes and debates have emerged in recent years within this field of inquiry.

To Critical Thinking, the critical person is something like a critical consumer of information; he or she is driven to seek reasons and evidence. Part of this is a matter of mastering certain skills of thought: learning to diagnose invalid forms of argument, knowing how to make and defend distinctions, and so on. Much of the literature in this area, especially early on, seemed to be devoted to lists and taxonomies of what a "critical thinker" should know and be able to do (Ennis 1962, 1980). More recently, however, various authors in this tradition have come to recognize that teaching content and skills is of minor import if learners do not also develop the dispositions or inclination to look at the world through a critical lens. By this, Critical Thinking means that the critical person has not only the capacity (the skills) to seek reasons, truth, and evidence, but also that he or she has the drive (disposition) to seek them. For instance, Ennis claims that a critical person not only should seek reasons and try to be well informed, but that he or she should have a tendency to do such things (Ennis 1987, 1996). Siegel criticizes Ennis somewhat for seeing dispositions simply as what animates the skills of critical thinking, because this fails to distinguish sufficiently the critical thinker from critical thinking. For Siegel, a cluster of dispositions (the "critical spirit") is more like a deep-seated character trait, something like Scheffler’s notion of "a love of truth and a contempt of lying" (Siegel 1988; Scheffler 1991). It is part of critical thinking itself. Paul also stresses this distinction between skills and dispositions in his distinction between "weak-sense" and "strong-sense" critical thinking. For Paul, the "weak-sense" means that one has learned the skills and can demonstrate them when asked to do so; the "strong-sense" means that one has incorporated these skills into a way of living in which one’s own assumptions are re-examined and questioned as well. According to Paul, a critical thinker in the "strong sense" has a passionate drive for "clarity, accuracy, and fairmindedness" (Paul 1983, 23; see also Paul 1994).

This dispositional view of critical thinking has real advantages over the skills-only view. But in important respects it is still limited. First, it is not clear exactly what is entailed by making such dispositions part of critical thinking. In our view it not only broadens the notion of criticality beyond mere "logicality," but it necessarily requires a greater attention to institutional contexts and social relations than Critical Thinking authors have provided. Both the skills-based view and the skills-plus-dispositions view are still focused on the individual person. But it is only in the context of social relations that these dispositions or character traits can be formed or expressed, and for this reason the practices of critical thinking inherently involve bringing about certain social conditions. Part of what it is to be a critical thinker is to be engaged in certain kinds of conversations and relations with others; and the kinds of social circumstances that promote or inhibit that must therefore be part of the examination of what Critical Thinking is trying to achieve.

A second theme in the Critical Thinking literature has been the extent to which critical thinking can be characterized as a set of generalized abilities and dispositions, as opposed to content-specific abilities and dispositions that are learned and expressed differently in different areas of investigation. Can a general "Critical Thinking" course develop abilities and dispositions that will then be applied in any of a range of fields; or should such material be presented specifically in connection to the questions and content of particular fields of study? Is a scientist who is a critical thinker doing the same things as an historian who is a critical thinker? When each evaluates "good evidence," are they truly thinking about problems in similar ways, or are the differences in interpretation and application dominant? This debate has set John McPeck, the chief advocate of content-specificity, in opposition to a number of other theorists in this area (Norris 1992; Talaska 1992). This issue relates not only to the question of how we might teach critical thinking, but also to how and whether one can test for a general facility in critical thinking (Ennis 1984).

A third debate has addressed the question of the degree to which the standards of critical thinking, and the conception of rationality that underlies them, are culturally biased in favor of a particular masculine and/or Western mode of thinking, one that implicitly devalues other "ways of knowing." Theories of education that stress the primary importance of logic, conceptual clarity, and rigorous adherence to scientific evidence have been challenged by various advocates of cultural and gender diversity who emphasize respect for alternative world views and styles of reasoning. Partly in response to such criticisms, Richard Paul has developed a conception of critical thinking that regards "sociocentrism" as itself a sign of flawed thinking (Paul 1994). Paul believes that, because critical thinking allows us to overcome the sway of our egocentric and sociocentric beliefs, it is "essential to our role as moral agents and as potential shapers of our own nature and destiny" (Paul 1990, 67). For Paul, and for some other Critical Thinking authors as well, part of the method of critical thinking involves fostering dialogue, in which thinking from the perspective of others is also relevant to the assessment of truth claims; a too-hasty imposition of one’s own standards of evidence might result not only in a premature rejection of credible alternative points of view, but might also have the effect of silencing the voices of those who (in the present context) need to be encouraged as much as possible to speak for themselves. In this respect, we see Paul introducing into the very definition of critical thinking some of the sorts of social and contextual factors that Critical Pedagogy writers have emphasized.

Critical Pedagogy

The idea of Critical Pedagogy begins with the neo-Marxian literature on Critical Theory (Stanley 1992). The early Critical Theorists (most of whom were associated with the Frankfurt School) believed that Marxism had underemphasized the importance of cultural and media influences for the persistence of capitalism; that maintaining conditions of ideological hegemony were important for (in fact inseparable from) the legitimacy and smooth working of capitalist economic relations. One obvious example would be in the growth of advertising as both a spur to rising consumption and as a means of creating the image of industries driven only by a desire to serve the needs of their customers. As consumers, as workers, and as winners or losers in the marketplace of employment, citizens in a capitalist society need both to know their "rightful" place in the order of things and to be reconciled to that destiny. Systems of education are among the institutions that foster and reinforce such beliefs, through the rhetoric of meritocracy, through testing, through tracking, through vocational training or college preparatory curricula, and so forth (Bowles & Gintis 1976; Apple 1979; Popkewitz 1991).

Critical Pedagogy represents, in a phrase, the reaction of progressive educators against such institutionalized functions. It is an effort to work within educational institutions and other media to raise questions about inequalities of power, about the false myths of opportunity and merit for many students, and about the way belief systems become internalized to the point where individuals and groups abandon the very aspiration to question or change their lot in life. Some of the authors mostly strongly associated with this tradition include Paulo Freire, Henry Giroux, Peter McLaren, and Ira Shor. In the language of Critical Pedagogy, the critical person is one who is empowered to seek justice, to seek emancipation. Not only is the critical person adept at recognizing injustice but, for Critical Pedagogy, that person is also moved to change it. Here Critical Pedagogy wholeheartedly takes up Marx's Thesis XI on Feuerbach: "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it" (Marx 1845/1977, 158).

This emphasis on change, and on collective action to achieve it, moves the central concerns of Critical Pedagogy rather far from those of Critical Thinking: the endeavor to teach others to think critically is less a matter of fostering individual skills and dispositions, and more a consequence of the pedagogical relations, between teachers and students and among students, which promote it; furthermore, the object of thinking critically is not only against demonstrably false beliefs, but also those that are misleading, partisan, or implicated in the preservation of an unjust status quo.

The author who has articulated these concerns most strongly is Paulo Freire, writing originally within the specific context of promoting adult literacy within Latin American peasant communities, but whose work has taken on an increasingly international interest and appeal in the past three decades (Freire 1970a, 1970b, 1973, 1985; McLaren & Lankshear 1993; McLaren & Leonard 1993). For Freire, Critical Pedagogy is concerned with the development of conscienticizao, usually translated as "critical consciousness." Freedom, for Freire, begins with the recognition of a system of oppressive relations, and one’s own place in that system. The task of Critical Pedagogy is to bring members of an oppressed group to a critical consciousness of their situation as a beginning point of their liberatory praxis. Change in consciousness and concrete action are linked for Freire; the greatest single barrier against the prospect of liberation is an ingrained, fatalistic belief in the inevitability and necessity of an unjust status quo.

One important way in which Giroux develops this idea is in his distinction between a "language of critique" and a "language of possibility" (Giroux 1983, 1988). As he stresses, both are essential to the pursuit of social justice. Giroux points to what he sees as the failure of the radical critics of the new sociology of education because, in his view, they offered a language of critique, but not a language of possibility. They saw schools primarily as instruments for the reproduction of capitalist relations and for the legitimation of dominant ideologies, and thus were unable to construct a discourse for "counterhegemonic" practices in schools (Giroux 1988, 111-112). Giroux stresses the importance of developing a language of possibility as part of what makes a person critical. As he puts it, the aim of the critical educator should be "to raise ambitions, desires, and real hope for those who wish to take seriously the issue of educational struggle and social justice" (Giroux 1988, 177).

For both Critical Thinking and Critical Pedagogy, "criticality" requires that one be moved to do something, whether that something be seeking reasons or seeking social justice. For Critical Thinking, it is not enough to know how to seek reasons, truth, and understanding; one must also be impassioned to pursue them rigorously. For Critical Pedagogy, that one can critically reflect and interpret the world is not sufficient; one must also be willing and able to act to change that world. From the standpoint of Critical Pedagogy the Critical Thinking tradition assumes an overly direct connection between reasons and action. For instance, when Ennis conceives Critical Thinking as "reasonable reflective thinking focused on deciding what to believe or to do," the assumption is that "deciding" usually leads relatively unproblematically to the "doing" (Ennis 1987). The model of practical reasoning on which this view depends assumes a relatively straightforward relation, in most cases, between the force of reasons and action. But for Critical Pedagogy the problems of overcoming oppressed thinking and demoralization are more complex than this: changing thought and practice must occur together; they fuel one another. For Freire, criticality requires praxis — both reflection and action, both interpretation and change. As he puts it, "Critical consciousness is brought about not through intellectual effort alone but through praxis — through the authentic union of action and reflection" (Freire 1970a, 48).

Critical Pedagogy would never find it sufficient to reform the habits of thought of thinkers, however effectively, without challenging and transforming the institutions, ideologies, and relations that engender distorted, oppressed thinking in the first place — not as an additional act beyond the pedagogical one, but as an inseparable part of it. For Critical Thinking, at most, the development of more discerning thinkers might make them more likely to undermine discreditable institutions, to challenge misleading authorities, and so on — but this would be a separate consequence of the attainment of Critical Thinking, not part of it.

A second central theme in Freire’s work, which has fundamentally shaped the Critical Pedagogy tradition, is his particular focus on "literacy." At the ground level, what motivated Freire’s original work was the attempt to develop an adult literacy program, one in which developing the capacity to read was tied into developing an enhanced sense of individual and collective self-esteem and confidence. To be illiterate, for Freire, was not only to lack the skills of reading and writing; it was to feel powerless and dependent in a much more general way as well. The challenge to an adult literacy campaign was not only to provide skills, but to address directly the self-contempt and sense of powerlessness that he believed accompanied illiteracy (Freire 1970b). Hence his approach to fostering literacy combined the development of basic skills in reading and writing; the development of a sense of confidence and efficacy, especially in collective thought and action; and the desire to change, not only one’s self, but the circumstances of one’s social group. The pedagogical method that he thinks promote all of these is dialogue: "cultural action for freedom is characterized by dialogue, and its preeminent purpose is to conscientize the people" (Freire 1970a, 47).

Richard Paul says similarly that "dialogical thinking" is inherent to Critical Thinking (Paul 1990). However, there is more of a social emphasis to dialogue within Critical Pedagogy: dialogue occurs between people, not purely as a form of dialogical thought. Here again Critical Pedagogy focuses more upon institutional settings and relations between individuals, where Critical Thinking’s focus is more on the individuals themselves. In other words, dialogue directly involves others, while one person’s development of "dialogical thinking" may only indirectly involve others. Yet the work of Vygotsky and others would argue that the development of such capacities for individuals necessarily involves social interactions as well. Paul addresses this point, but it does not play the central role in his theory that it does for Freire and other Critical Pedagogues — still, Paul appears to us to be somewhat of a transitional figure between these two traditions.

The method of Critical Pedagogy for Freire involves, to use his phrase, "reading the world" as well as "reading the word" (Freire & Macedo 1987). Part of developing a critical consciousness, as noted above, is critiquing the social relations, social institutions, and social traditions that create and maintain conditions of oppression. For Freire, the teaching of literacy is a primary form of cultural action, and as action it must "relate speaking the word to transforming reality" (Freire 1970a, 4). To do this, Freire uses what he calls codifications: representative images that both "illustrate" the words or phrases students are learning to read, and also represent problematic social conditions that become the focus of collective dialogue (and, eventually, the object of strategies for potential change). The process of decodification is a kind of "reading" — a "reading" of social dynamics, of forces of reaction or change, of why the world is as it is, and how it might be made different. Decodification is the attempt to "read the world" with the same kind of perspicacity with which one is learning to "read the word."

In this important regard, Critical Pedagogy shares with Critical Thinking the idea that there is something real about which they can raise the consciousness of people. Both traditions believe that there is something given, against which mistaken beliefs and distorted perceptions can be tested. In both, there is a drive to bring people to recognize "the way things are" (Freire 1970a, 17). In different words, Critical Pedagogy and Critical Thinking arise from the same sentiment to overcome ignorance, to test the distorted against the true, to ground effective human action in an accurate sense of social reality. Of course, how each movement talks about "the way things are" is quite different. For Critical Thinking, this is about empirically demonstrable facts. For Critical Pedagogy, on the other hand, this is about the intersubjective attempt to formulate and agree upon a common understanding about "structures of oppression" and "relations of domination." As we have discussed, there is more to this process than simply determining the "facts"; but, in the end, for Freire as for any other Marxist tradition, this intersubjective process is thought to be grounded in a set of objective conditions.

Critical Thinking and Critical Pedagogy

In the discussion so far, we have tried to emphasize some relations and contrasts between the Critical Thinking and Critical Pedagogy traditions. To the extent that they have addressed one another, the commentary has often been antagonistic:

The most powerful, yet limited, definition of critical thinking comes out of the positivist tradition in the applied sciences and suffers from what I call the Internal Consistency position. According to the adherents of the Internal Consistency position, critical thinking refers primarily to teaching students how to analyze and develop reading and writing assignments from the perspective of formal, logical patterns of consistency....While all of the learning skills are important, their limitations as a whole lie in what is excluded, and it is with respect to what is missing that the ideology of such an approach is revealed (Giroux 1994, 200-201).

Although I hesitate to dignify Henry Giroux’s article on citizenship with a reply, I find it hard to contain myself. The article shows respect neither for logic nor for the English language....Giroux’s own bombastic, jargon-ridden rhetoric...is elitist in the worst sense: it is designed to erect a barrier between the author and any reader not already a member of the "critical" cult (Schrag 1988, 143).

There are other, more constructive engagements, however. Certain authors within each tradition have seriously tried to engage the concerns of the other — although, interestingly, the purpose of such investigations has usually been to demonstrate that all of the truly beneficial qualities of the other tradition can be reconciled with the best of one’s own, without any of the purported drawbacks:

It should be clear that my aim is not to discredit the ideal of critical thinking. Rather, I question whether the practices of teaching critical thinking...as it has evolved into the practice of teaching informal logic issufficient for actualizing the ideal. I have argued that it is not sufficient, if "critical thinking" includes the ability to decode the political nature of events and institutions, and if it includes the ability to envision alternative events and institutions (Kaplan 1991/1994, 217, emphasis added).

Postmodernism, or any other perspective which seriously endorses radical or progressive social and educational change, requires an epistemology which endorses truth and justification as viable theoretical notions. That is to say: Postmodern advocacy of radical pedagogies (and politics) requires Old-Fashioned Epistemology (Siegel 1993, 22).

From the perspective of Critical Thinking, Critical Pedagogy crosses a threshold between teaching criticality and indoctrinating. Teaching students to think critically must include allowing them to come to their own conclusions; yet Critical Pedagogy seems to come dangerously close to prejudging what those conclusions must be. Critical Pedagogy see this threshold problem conversely: indoctrination is the case already; students must be brought to criticality, and this can only be done by alerting them to the social conditions that have brought this about. In short, we can restate the problem as follows: Critical Thinking’s claim is, at heart, to teach how to think critically, not how to think politically; for Critical Pedagogy, this is a false distinction.

For Critical Pedagogy, as we have discussed, self-emancipation is contingent upon social emancipation. It is not only a difference between an emphasis on the individual and an emphasis on society as a whole; both Critical Pedagogy and Critical Thinking want "criticality" in both senses (Missimer 1989/1994; Hostetler 1991/1994). It is rather that, for Critical Pedagogy, individual criticality is intimately linked to social criticality, joining, in Giroux’s phrase, "the conditions for social, and hence, self-emancipation" (Giroux 1988, 110). For Critical Thinking, the attainment of individual critical thinking may, with success for enough people, lead to an increase in critical thinking socially, but it does not depend upon it.

These traditions also explicitly differ from one another in the different problems and contexts they regard as issues. Critical Thinking assumes no set agenda of issues that must be addressed. To try to bring someone to criticality necessarily precludes identifying any fixed set of questions about particular social, moral, political, economic, and cultural issues, let alone a fixed set of answers. As already noted, this is not to say that those involved in the Critical Thinking movement do not think that social justice is an important issue; nor to say that people such as Ennis, Paul, and Siegel do not wish to see those sorts of issues addressed — in fact, they occasionally assert quite explicitly that they do. It is rather that, as Critical Thinking understands criticality, "impartiality" is a key virtue. They strive not to push their students along certain lines, nor to impose certain values (the fact/value distinction is a central thesis of the analytical tradition that informs much of Critical Thinking). Socially relevant cases might be pedagogically beneficial as the "raw material" on which to practice the skills and dispositions of Critical Thinking, because they are salient for many learners in a classroom. But they are not intrinsically important to Critical Thinking itself; in many cases purely symbolic cases could be used to teach the same elements (as in the use of symbols or empty X’s and Y’s to teach logic).

Hence, Critical Thinking tends to address issues in an item-by-item fashion, not within a grand scheme with other issues. The issues themselves may have relations to one another, and they may have connections to broader themes, but those relations and connections are not the focus of investigation. What is crucial to the issue at hand is the interplay of an immediate cluster of evidence, reasons, and arguments. For Critical Thinking, what is important is to describe the issue, give the various reasons for and against, and draw out any assumptions (and only those) that have immediate and direct bearing on the argument. This tends to produce a more analytical and less wholistic mode of critique.

When Critical Pedagogy talks about power and the way in which it structures social relations, it inevitably draws from a context, a larger narrative, within which these issues are framed; and typically sees it as part of the artificiality and abstractness of Critical Thinking that it does not treat such matters as central. Critical Pedagogy looks to how an issue relates to "deeper" explanations — deeper in the sense that they refer to the basic functioning of power on institutional and societal levels. For Critical Pedagogy, it makes no sense to talk about issues on a nonrelational, item-by-item basis. Where Critical Thinking emphasizes the immediate reasons and assumptions of an argument, Critical Pedagogy wants to draw in for consideration factors that may appear at first of less immediate relevance.

We do not want to imply merely that Critical Pedagogy wants people to get the "big picture" whereas Critical Thinking does not. Oftentimes, their "big pictures" are simply going to be different. The important point is why they are different, and the difference resides in the fact that whereas Critical Thinking is quite reluctant to prescribe any particular context for a discussion, Critical Pedagogy shows enthusiasm for a particular one — one that tends to view social matters within a framework of struggles over social justice, the workings of capitalism, and forms of cultural and material oppression. As noted, this favoring of a particular narrative seems to open Critical Pedagogy up to a charge of indoctrination by Critical Thinking: that everything is up for questioning within Critical Pedagogy except the categories and premises of Critical Pedagogy itself. But the Critical Pedagogue’s counter to this is that Critical Thinking’s apparent "openness" and impartiality simply enshrine many conventional assumptions as presented by the popular media, traditional textbooks, etc., in a manner that intentionally or not teaches political conformity; particular claims are scrutinized critically, while a less visible set of social norms and practices — including, notably, many particular to the structure and activities of schooling itself — continue to operate invisibly in the background.

In short, each of these traditions regards the other as insufficiently critical; each defines, in terms of its own discourse and priorities, key elements that it believes the other neglects to address. Each wants to acknowledge a certain value in the goals the other aspires to, but argues that its means are inadequate to attain them. What is most interesting, from our standpoint, is not which of these traditions is "better," but the fascinating way in which each wants to claim sovereignty over the other; each claiming to include all the truly beneficial insights of the other, and yet more — and, as we will see, how each has been subject to criticisms that may make them appear more as related rivals than as polar opposites.

Criticisms of Critical Thinking and Critical Pedagogy

It will not have been lost on many readers that when we listed the prime authors in both the Critical Thinking and Critical Pedagogy traditions, all listed were male. There are certainly significant women writing within each tradition, but the chief spokespersons, and the most visible figures in the debates between these traditions, have been men. Not surprisingly, then, both traditions have been subject to criticisms, often from feminists, that their ostensibly universal categories and issues in fact exclude the voices and concerns of women and other groups.

In the case of Critical Thinking, as noted earlier, this has typically taken the form of an attack on the "rationalistic" underpinnings of its epistemology: that its logic is different from "women’s logic," that its reliance on empirical evidence excludes other sources of evidence or forms of verification (experience, emotion, feeling) — in short, that its masculinist way of knowing is different from "women’s ways of knowing" (for example, Belenky et al. 1986; Thayer-Bacon 1993). Other arguments do not denigrate the concerns of Critical Thinking entirely, but simply want to relegate them to part of what we want to accomplish educationally (Arnstine 1991; Garrison & Phelan 1990; Noddings 1984; Warren 1994). Often these criticisms, posed by women with distinctive feminist concerns in mind, also bring in a concern with Critical Thinking’s exclusion or neglect of ways of thought of other racial or ethnic groups as well — though the problems of "essentializing" such groups, as if they "naturally" thought differently from white men, has made some advocates cautious about overgeneralizing these concerns.

Critical Pedagogy has been subject to similar, and occasionally identical, criticisms. Claims that Critical Pedagogy is "rationalistic," that its purported reliance on "open dialogue" in fact masks a closed and paternal conversation, that it excludes issues and voices that other groups bring to educational encounters, have been asserted with some force (Ellsworth 1989; Gore 1993). In this case, the sting of irony is especially strong. After all, advocates of Critical Thinking would hardly feel the accusation of being called "rationalistic" as much of an insult; but for Critical Pedagogy, given its discourse of emancipation, to be accused of being yet another medium of oppression is a sharp rebuke.

Are these criticisms justified? Certainly the advocates of these traditions have tried to defend themselves against the accusation of being "exclusionary" (Siegel 1996; Giroux 1992c). The arguments have been long and vigorous, and we cannot recount them all here. But without dodging the matter of taking sides, we would like to suggest a different way of looking at the issue: Why is it that significant audiences see themselves as excluded from each of these traditions? Are they simply misled; are they ignorant or ill-willed; are they unwilling to listen to or accept the reasonable case that advocates of Critical Thinking and Critical Pedagogy put forth in response to their objections — or is the very existence of disenfranchised and alienated audiences a reason for concern, a sign that Critical Thinking and Critical Pedagogy do not, and perhaps cannot, achieve the sort of breadth, inclusiveness, and universal liberation they each, in their own way, promise? We find it impossible to avoid such a conclusion: that if the continued and well-intended defense and rearticulation of the reasons for a Critical Thinking or a Critical Pedagogy approach cannot themselves succeed in persuading those who are skeptical toward them, then this is prima facie evidence that something stands beyond them — that their aspirations toward a universal liberation, whether a liberation of the intellect first and foremost, or a liberation of a political consciousness and praxis, patently do not touch all of the felt concerns and needs of certain audiences, and that a renewed call for "more of the same," as if this might eventually win others over, simply pushes such audiences further away.

For this reason and others we do not want to see an "erasure" of Critical Thinking by Critical Pedagogy, or vice versa. Though each, from its own perspective, claims sovereignty over the other, and purports to have the more encompassing view, we prefer to regard the tension between them as beneficial. If one values a "critical" perspective at all, then part of that should entail critique from the most challenging points of view. Critical Thinking needs to be questioned from the standpoint of social accountability; it needs to be asked what difference it makes to people’s real lives; it needs to be challenged when it becomes overly artificial and abstract; and it needs to be interrogated about the social and institutional features that promote or inhibit the "critical spirit," for if such dispositions are central to Critical Thinking, then the conditions that suppress them cannot be altered or influenced by the teaching of epistemological rigor alone (Burbules 1992, 1995).

At the same time, Critical Pedagogy needs to be questioned from the standpoint of Critical Thinking: about what its implicit standards of truth and evidence are; about the extent to which inquiry, whether individual or collective, should be unbounded by particular political presuppositions; about how far it is and is not willing to go in seeing learners question the authority of their teachers (when the teachers are advocating the correct "critical" positions); about how open-ended and decentered the process of dialogue actually is — or whether it is simply a more egalitarian and humane way of steering students toward certain foregone conclusions.

And finally, both of these traditions need to be challenged by perspectives that can plausibly claim that other voices and concerns are not addressed by their promises. Claims of universalism are especially suspect in a world of increasingly self-conscious diversity; and whether or not one adopts the full range of "postmodern" criticisms of rationality and modernity, it cannot be denied that these are criticisms that must be met, not pushed off by simply reasserting the promise and hope that "you may not be included or feel included yet, but our theoretical categories and assumptions can indeed accommodate you without fundamental modification." The responses to such a defense are easily predictable, and understandable.

One of the most useful critical angles toward both the Critical Thinking and Critical Pedagogy traditions has been a poststructural examination of how they exist within a historical context as discursive systems with particular social effects (Cherryholmes 1988: Gore 1993). The contemporary challenge to "metanarratives" is sometimes misunderstood as a simple rejection of any theory at all, a total rejection on anti-epistemological grounds; but this is not the key point. The challenge of such criticisms is to examine the effects of metanarratives as ways of framing the world; in this case, how claims of universality, or impartiality, or inclusiveness, or objectivity, variously characterize different positions within the Critical Thinking or Critical Pedagogy schools of thought. Their very claims to sovereignty, one might say, are more revealing about them (and from this perspective makes them more deeply akin) than any particular positions or claims they put forth. It is partly for this reason that we welcome their unreconciled disputes; it reminds us of something important about their limitations.

Here, gradually, we have tried to introduce a different way of thinking about criticality, one that stands outside the traditions of Critical Thinking and Critical Pedagogy, without taking sides between them, but regarding each as having a range of benefit and a range of limitation. The very tension between them teaches us something, in a way that eliminating either or seeing one gain hegemony would ultimately dissolve. Important feminist, multiculturalist, and generally postmodernist rejections of both Critical Thinking and Critical Pedagogy, which we have only been able to sketch here, are of more recent provenance in educational discourse — but about them we would say the same. There is something about the preservation of such sustained differences that yields new insights, something that is lost when the tension is erased by one perspective gaining (or claiming) dominance. But the tension is also erased by the pursuit of a liberal "compromise"; or by the dream of an Hegelian "synthesis" that can reconcile the opposites; or by a Deweyan attempt to show that the apparent dichotomy is not real; or by a presumption of incommensurability that makes the sides decide it is no longer worth engaging one another. All of these are ways of making the agonistic engagement go away. We prefer to think in terms of a criticality that is procedural: What are the conditions that give rise to critical thinking, that promote a sharp reflection on one’s own presuppositions, that allow for a fresh rethinking of the conventional, that fosterthinking in new ways?

Toward an Alternate Criticality

The starting point of this alternative is reflecting upon criticality as a practice — what is involved in actually thinking critically, what are the conditions that tend to foster such thinking, and so on. Here we can only draw the outlines of some of these elements, each of which merits extended discussion.

First, criticality does involve certain abilities and skills, including but not limited to the skills of Critical Thinking. These skills have a definite domain of usefulness, but learning them should include not only an appreciation for what they can do, but an appreciation for what they cannot do. For example, methods of analysis, across different disciplines from the scientific to the philosophic, involve removing the object of study from its usual context in order (1) to focus study upon it and it only and (2) to be able to parse it into component elements. This is true of all sorts of analysis, whether the analysis of an organism, a chemical analysis, or an analysis of a concept. There is value to doing this, but also a limit, since removing a thing from its usual context changes it by eliminating the network of relations that give rise to it, interact with it, and partly define it. If any amount of wholism is true, then such decontextualizing and/or dissecting into components loses something of the original.

In addition to these logical and analytical skills, we would emphasize that criticality also involves the ability to think outside a framework of conventional understandings; it means to think anew, to think differently. This view of criticality goes far beyond the preoccupation with not being deceived. There might be worse things than being mistaken; there may be greater dangers in being only trivially or banally "true." Ignorance is one kind of impotence; an inability or unwillingness to move beyond or question conventional understandings is another. This is a point that links in some respects with Freire’s desire to move beyond an "intransitive consciousness," and with Giroux’s call for a "language of possibility." But even in these cases there is a givenness to what a "critical" understanding should look like that threatens to become its own kind of constraint. Freire’s metaphor for learning to read is "decodification," a revealing word because it implies a fixed relation of symbol to meaning and reveals an assumption usually latent within Critical Pedagogy: that the purpose of critical thinking is to discern a world, a real world of relations, structures, and social dynamics, that has been obscured by the distortions of ideology. Learning to "decode" means to find the actual, hidden meaning of things. It is a revealing choice of words, as opposed to, say, "interpretation," which also suggests finding a meaning, but which could also mean creating a meaning, or seeking out several alternative meanings. This latter view could not assume that "critical" literacy and dialogue would necessarily converge on any single understanding of the world. Yet it is a crucial aspect of Critical Pedagogy that dialogue does converge upon a set of understandings tied to a capacity to act toward social change — and social change of a particular type. Multiple, unreconciled interpretations, by contrast, might yield other sorts of benefits — those of fecundity and variety over those of solidarity.

Much more needs to be said about how it is possible to think anew, to think otherwise. But what we wish to stress here is that this is a kind of criticality, too, a breaking away from convention and cant. Part of what is necessary for this to happen is an openness to, and a comfort with, thinking in the midst of deeply challenging alternatives. One obvious condition here is that such alternatives exist and that they be engaged with sufficient respect to be considered imaginatively — even when (especially when) they do not fit in neatly with the categories with which one is familiar. This is why, as noted earlier, the tensions between radically conflicting views are themselves valuable; and why the etic perspective is as potentially informative as the emic. Difference is a condition of criticality, when it is encountered in a context that allows for translations or communication across differences; when it is taken seriously, and not distanced as exotic or quaint; and when one does not use the excuse of "incommensurability" as a reason to abandon dialogue (Burbules & Rice 1991; Burbules 1993, forthcoming).

Rather than the simple epistemic view of "ideology" as distortion or misrepresentation, we find it useful here to reflect on Douglas Kellner’s discussion of the "life cycle" of an ideology (Kellner 1978). An ideology is not a simple proposition, or even a set of propositions, whose truth value can be tested against the world. Ideologies have the appeal and persistence that they do because they actually do account for a set of social experiences and concerns. No thorough approach to ideology-critique should deny the very real appeal that ideologies hold for people — an appeal that is as much affective as cognitive. To deny that appeal is to adopt a very simplistic view of human naivetй, and to assume that it will be easier to displace ideologies than it actually is. Both the Critical Thinking and Critical Pedagogy traditions often make this mistake, we believe. As Kellner puts it, ideologies often have an original appeal as an "ism," as a radically new, fresh, challenging perspective on social and political concerns. Over time, the selfsame ideologies become "hegemonic," not because they change, but because circumstances change while the ideology becomes more and more concerned with its own preservation. What causes this decline into reification and stasis is precisely the absence of reflexiveness within ideological thought, the inability to recognize its own origins and limitations, and the lack of opportunities for thinking differently. In the sense we are discussing it here, criticality is the opposite of the hegemonic.

This argument suggests, then, that one important aspect of criticality is an ability to reflect on one’s own views and assumptions as themselves features of a particular cultural and historical formation. Such a reflection does not automatically lead to relativism or a conclusion that all views are equally valid; but it does make it more difficult to imagine universality or finality for any particular set of views. Most important, it regards one’s views as perpetually open to challenge, as choices entailing a responsibility toward the effects of one’s arguments on others. This sort of critical reflection is quite difficult to exercise entirely on one’s own; we are enabled to do it through our conversations with others, especially others not like us. Almost by definition, it is difficult to see the limitations and lacunae in our own understandings; hence maintaining both the social conditions in which such conversations can occur (conditions of plurality, tolerance, and respect) as well as the personal and interpersonal capacities, and willingness, to engage in such conversations, becomes a central dimension of criticality — it is not simply a matter of individual abilities or dispositions. The Critical Pedagogy tradition has stressed some of these same concerns.

Yet at a still deeper level, the work of Jacques Derrida, Gayatri Spivak, Judith Butler, and others, challenges us with a further aspect of criticality: the ability to question and doubt even our own presuppositions — the ones without which we literally do not know how to think and act (Burbules 1995). This seemingly paradoxical sort of questioning is often part of the process by which radically new thinking begins: by an aporia; by a doubt that we do not know (yet) how to move beyond; by imagining what it might mean to think without some of the very things that make our (current) thinking meaningful. Here, we have moved into a sense of criticality well beyond the categories of both Critical Thinking and Critical Pedagogy; to the extent that these traditions of thought and practice have become programmatic, become "movements" of a sort, they may be less able — and less motivated — to pull up their own roots for examination. Their very success as influential areas of scholarship and teaching seems to have required a certain insistence about particular ways of thinking and acting. Can a deeper criticality be maintained under such circumstances? Or is it threatened by the desire to win over converts?

The perspective of viewing criticality as a practice helps us to see that criticality is a way of being as well as a way of thinking, a relation to others as well as an intellectual capacity. To take one concrete instance, the critical thinker must relish, or at least tolerate, the sense of moving against the grain of convention — this isn’t separate from criticality or a "motivation" for it; it is part of what it means to be critical, and not everyone (even those who can master certain logical or analytical skills) can or will occupy that position. To take another example, in order for fallibilism to mean anything, a person must be willing to admit to being wrong. We know that some people possess this virtue and others do not; we also know that certain circumstances and relations encourage the exercise of such virtues and others do not. Once we unravel these mysteries, we will see that fostering such virtues will involve much more than Critical Thinking instruction typically imagines. Here Critical Pedagogy may be closer to the position we are proposing, as it begins with the premise of social context, the barriers that inhibit critical thought, and the need to learn through activity.

Furthermore, as soon as one starts examining just what the conditions of criticality are, it becomes readily apparent that it is not a purely individual trait. It may involve some individual virtues, but only as they are formed, expressed, and influenced in actual social circumstances. Institutions and social relations may foster criticality or suppress it. Because criticality is a function of collective questioning, criticism, and creativity, it is always social in character, partly because relations to others influence the individual, and partly because certain of these activities (particularly thinking in new ways) arise from an interaction with challenging alternative views (Burbules 1993).

These conditions, then, of personal character, of challenging and supportive social relations, of communicative opportunities, of contexts of difference that present us with the possibility of thinking otherwise, are interdependent circumstances. They are the conditions that allow the development and exercise of criticality as we have sketched it in this essay. They are, of course, educational conditions. Criticality is a practice, a mark of what we do, of who we are, and not only how we think. Critical Thinking and Critical Pedagogy, and their feminist, multiculturalist, and postmodern critics, apprehend parts of this conception of criticality. Yet, we find, the deepest insights into understanding what criticality is come from the unreconciled tensions amongst them — because it is in remaining open to such challenges without seeking to dissipate them that criticality reveals its value as a way of life.

UP to now we have used the term Socialism as though it were identical with the teachings of Marx and Engels, founders of scientific socialism. Marx and Engels, however, called themselves communists; it is therefore important that at the very outset we state precisely what socialism means and what is its distinction from communism. A proper understanding of these two terms is imperative in the light of the confusion in usage that prevails today. For example, Russia now designates itself a Socialist Soviet Republic, although it is controlled by a Communist Party under Stalin which affirms that it can build socialism in one country alone. On the other hand, members of the Socialist Party declare that the regime in Russia is not socialist at all, but is restoring capitalism. Between the socialists and the communists there has been a very bitter and sanguinary struggle. Again, still other people designate as Socialism a situation wherein the government takes over railroads and nationalizes a certain amount of property.

 

In the days of Marx and Engels, the term Socialist had been used by Robert Owen and others and had come to mean ideas and plans for a new society put forth by declassed elements of the upper classes. These socialists were utopians who, regardless of their specific plans, had certain basic characteristics in common. According to them, socialism consisted of a grand plan conceived in the brain of the utopian genius. The plan was to be realized by means of peaceful, rational discussion. All the utopians were firm believers in the power of reason to change the world, and all they wanted was the opportunity to persuade others of the justice and reasonableness of their position. All their plans were static, completed blueprints, eternal and immutable.(*1) None of them understood the meaning of history or of evolution.

 

None of these dreamers relied upon the working class. They had no conception of the class struggle, but rather appealed to the wealthy to help them to ameliorate the lot of the poor, either, as Robert Owen, for philanthropic reasons, or, as Saint-Simon and Fourier, as a reaction from the terror of the French Revolution. None of these men conceived of the new social order as being a product of violence. They hated the insurrections of the mob and rabble led by communists. The movement was to be led entirely from the top and not from the bottom.

 

All of these people were extremely critical of the capitalist order, being opposed to competition, and wanting to terminate the privileges of the industrialists. Against all forms of anarchy and chaos, the utopians sought refuge from the existing interminable clash to secure eternal harmony within society, harmony of the social order with nature. To usher in the new utopia, they worked out schemes of mutual co-operation and mutual aid of a more or less authoritarian nature. These aspects of the utopians gave them the name Socialists. (*2)

 

The plans of social inventors like Owens, Saint-Simon, Fourier, and others, could easily have become the ideology of reactionary collectivists, and, indeed, they do form the prototypes of the plans of twentieth century fascism. However, in those days, capitalism had no need of such schemes. The industrialists were thinking, not of crushing the labor movement, but of using the poor for their own political advantage and bringing peace and order to society not by authoritarian utopias but by the anarchy of capitalism. Thus the critical doctrines of the utopians could be taken up only by the victims of capitalism who gave to them certain interpretations which made them the precursors of scientific socialism.

 

It was imperative that Marx and Engels, who proceeded in an entirely different manner, should separate themselves from this utopian planfulness. If the utopians called themselves Socialists, Marx and Engels called themselves Communists and put out their Communist Manifesto, forming their Communist League, etc. Marx and Engels created a movement and relied upon the working class to carry forward the traditions of the peasant war, of the Paris Commune in the French Revolution, and of Baboeuf and the other communists. Insurrection, class struggle, the proletariat, these were the factors of Marxist political theory, rather than any pale philanthropic and timid scheme of "harmony."

 

Before Marxism arises, the disciples of Robert Owen, Fourier, Saint- Simon, and such elements, color the movements of the working class. The adherents of Saint-Simon, for example, were against exploitation, against private property, and against capitalism, as then extant. They favored a tax on land and producers' co-operatives. The Saint-Simonians always thought of society with a capital "S" and regarded all the members of the nation as included in one collective organization. Thus it is that the terms "Socialism" and "Social Democracy" came to be taken over by the workers who fought many battles under this name.

 

The Marxist could not ignore this situation and when, in Germany and elsewhere, working class organizations arose that called themselves Socialist or Social Democratic, it was not for Marx and Engels to stand aloof from these movements because of a name.

 

Of course, the fact that the name Socialism was chosen to designate the vague gropings of the proletariat in itself showed how immature and confused the working class was. Nevertheless, as Marx himself had declared, the workers had to learn from their own experiences; they would not accept learned dissertations imposed upon them by some intellectual. It was necessary for Marx to penetrate that movement, to work within it, and to nurture there the seeds of Marxism that would eventually win over the labor elements to scientific socialism.

 

Thus it was that by the '60's of the last century, Marx was willing to accept the term Socialism, since it no longer represented the old blueprint plans of the utopian, and Friedrich Engels could write his book, Socialism, Utopian and Scientific.

 

After the death of Marx and with the rise of the Second International, the term Socialism took complete possession of the field and became synonymous with communism. This was all the easier since socialism had always been understood as a future transition stage of society leading to communism, as the first or lower stage of communism. However, it soon became plain that the abandonment of the term "Communism" had in reality covered the abandonment of the revolutionary class struggle. After the debacle of the World War, the revolutionary socialists split away from the others, under Lenin, and retook the name Communist.

 

Thus we see that, even when used exactly, the term Socialism can have three distinct meanings. First, it can mean a future system of society characterized, as described by Marx, by the fact that capitalism, with its markets, commodities, values, prices, exchange, surplus value, capital, money, competition, etc., is no more; instead, there is a conscious, planful society where production is for use on such an enormously improved technical plane that there will be plenty for all. This society will be a stage between capitalism and communism and will retain some remnants of the former in the mental make-up of the individual. The State, however, will have withered away, together with religion, recognized as the opium of the people. Socialism will gradually give way to communism.

 

Another meaning of the term Socialism has to do with the Dictatorship of the Proletariat that initiates socialism. The Soviet Union, for example, is legitimately called the "Socialist" Republic, not because the stage of society known as socialism exists in Russia, but rather because the Dictatorship of the Proletariat existing in Russia has abolished to a very considerable extent private ownership of the means of production and has laid the basis for the extinction of capitalism, leading to socialism. This was the usage of Lenin. Under Stalin, the theory has been stretched to mean that the Dictatorship of the Proletariat itself is socialism, that socialism is compatible with an army, with a State, with class struggles, with markets, wages, etc. We shall take this up later. It is well, however, to note that under Lenin, socialism could mean not only a future state of society as laid down by Marx, but also could be a designation of a transition regime --- Dictatorship of the Proletariat-leading to socialism.

 

The third meaning of the term Socialism is to signify the program of the Socialist parties as distinct from that of the Communist. In short, here socialism is opposed to communism. In the present chapter we shall use socialism in this last sense of the term, namely, to mean the program and practice of the Socialist parties as separate from and in conflict with those of the Communist.

 

It is true that the Socialist parties agree with the Communist that socialism, as a stage of society, is the end of their striving. It is also true that very often the Socialist parties fervidly maintain their adherence to the doctrines of Marx, claiming only to interpret them in another direction. In fact, the literary heirs of Marx and Engels, like Karl Kautsky, Eduard Bernstein, and others, became leaders, not of a "Communist" movement but of the "Socialists." Today, however, what we must stress is not the agreement in ultimate goal that the socialists have in common with the communists, but rather the struggles between them that have led to the breaking up of the labor movement and to tremendous convulsions all over the world.

 

If at present we see some signs of the mitigation of these splits and a tendency for socialists and communists to come together, it is only because the blows of fascism have compelled them to unite on the one hand, while, on the other, the large Communist parties connected with Russia have so degenerated towards the socialist position as practically to be indistinguishable from their erstwhile enemies. We must not, however, confuse "united front" with "unity" and the fact that the socialists and communists are willing to unite on a common field of action does not necessarily mean that they will not fight each other to the death under other circumstances.

 

The earliest of the utopians of the nineteenth century from the point of view of influence was Saint-Simon, a French nobleman who, at an early age, had volunteered to fight in the American Revolution, but had later become frightened by the effects of the French Revolution. To Saint-Simon,"Progress is achieved in one of two ways, by revolution or dictatorship, and dictatorship was preferable to revolution." (*3) Revolution was an anachronism that would become unnecessary were society changed. Denouncing the sovereignty of the people, Saint-Simon went so far as to propose an alliance between the Bourbons and the industrial classes in order to achieve his plan for preventing revolution; he asked the King to declare himself the chief of the kingdom and to adopt his plan by royal ordinance. Thus the plans of Saint-Simon were anti-revolutionary and anti-democratic from the very beginning.

 

What Saint-Simon desired was an industrial State directed by modern science. (*4) "Saint-Simon's creed can best be described as 'industrialism' plus a slight admixture of Socialism. . . ." (*5) He advocated the abolition of the landed idle class and the limitation of society to two classes only, the learned and the industrial. (*6) Standing armies and war should be abolished. (*7) The good of society was attained by the satisfaction of its physical and moral wants. The object of government was to apply knowledge and wealth to that end. To Saint-Simon, liberty was not an end or even a means to an end. It was a result, the result of man's progressive mastery of nature; man freed himself through society. Tremendously impressed by the power of industry, Saint-Simon believed it was necessary to harness industry and its technical progress to the social order to obtain a better social system. Thus, in his plans there were to be no parasites; his was to be a regime where industry dominated.

 

Saint-Simon invented an industrial parliament of three chambers, the first, a chamber of invention; the second, of examination; the third, of execution. The First Chamber was to have three hundred engineers, poets, scholars, musicians, and such, of whom two hundred were to be engineers. This body would initiate all legislation. The Second Chamber was also to contain three hundred, of which one hundred were to be mathematical physicists, one hundred metaphysicians, and one hundred physicians. This Chamber was to examine the laws. The Third Chamber was to be composed of the "captains of industry," a term which Saint-Simon was the first to coin. This body alone was to execute the laws. Thus, the industrialist was to have the power of administration entirely in his hands.

 

Labor was the highest duty of a citizen and only the worker could govern society. Saint-Simon, however, included the industrialist as part of labor and drew no distinction between him and his employed worker. Indeed, at this time in France, to draw such a distinction would have seemed strange, since the entrepreneurs took an active part in organizing the labor process. To accomplish the rule of labor, Saint-Simon planned a widespread general education, the abolition of poverty, and the preeminence of learning and industry. In his last work, Saint-Simon raised his utopia to the level of a religion, exhorting all to love one another; to raise the moral and physical condition of man by industry and education; to let the captains of the three leading departments of knowledge, of art, and of industry conduct and constitute the government; to give to every man according to his needs and exact from every man according to his capacity; to supply work with the head or hand for everyone."

 

The opinions of Saint-Simon, so violently a reaction against the anarchical Liberalism of the French Revolution, easily are revealed as merely a rationalization of the system of French affairs which Napoleon attempted to develop. We have here, as under Napoleon, great praise for industry, a theory of government of talents, an idealization of work without talk, a theory of the necessity of religion and of the ubiquity of the government, a denunciation of the old regime and a criticism of laissez faire Liberalism, with control in the hands of the dictator, the agent of industry. Some of these plans of Saint-Simon are even today being taken over by fascist groups in Europe.

 

If Saint-Simon became a respectable figure in the eyes of the workers, it was not so much because of his theories, but rather owing to the work of his disciples, the Saint-Simonians, who, made up of petty-bourgeois elements, heavily stressed their critique of anarchical industrial society and thus played into the hands of working-class and middle-class elements who were moving in a progressive and radical direction. As we have seen, Saint- Simon had great influence over Auguste Comte, founder of sociology, and the Saint-Simonians were able to influence some of the intellectuals on the continent and in England, especially John Stuart Mill and Carlyle.

 

Later to achieve recognition was the work of Charles Fourier. One may say that Fourier and Saint-Simon together constitute one whole, each being regarded as the complement of the other. "Saint-Simonism represented the principle of authority, of centralization; while Fourier made all possible provision for local and individual freedom. With Saint- Simonism the State is the starting point, the normal and dominant power; in Fourier the like position is held by a local body corresponding to the commune, which he called the phalange. (*8)

 

Fourier's starting point in his criticism of the present order of things was not the injustice of the distribution of social wealth, or the suffering of the poor, but rather the anarchic wastefulness of modern production and the repellent condition of labor. Fourier does not address himself to the sentiments of man, but to their material interests. "His battle-cry is not 'justice,' but 'order,' and the general prosperity and happiness of mankind is but an incident of the universal harmony of his system, not its primal aim." (*9) As Brisbane, one of his disciples, put it: The universe was governed by fixed and mathematical laws the discovery of which would usher in the law of harmony on earth with the result that man would rule nature, rule himself and become attuned to the cosmos. (*10) The genius of Fourier penetrated into these secrets and gave them to the world, not as a fantasy of wish-fulfillment, but as a mere statement of the scientific law of universal harmony.

 

Under Fourier's true order of society there would be established universal wealth and prosperity, universal knowledge and intelligence, attractive industry, permanent peace and social concord, unity of all interests, universal co-operation and association, practical liberty in all relations, social equality of the race, universal health and vigor, passional harmony and social unity. (*11) Fourier stressed above all two important principles: first, industrial activity could be made really attractive; secondly, the solidarity of the human race. Fourier, like most Frenchmen, wanted social science to be a social science.

 

Fourier obtained his principles of harmony from a grand study supposedly embodying the entire universe. His theory included four movements, social, animal, organic, and material, and in all of these different worlds one law prevailed, the law of attraction, which is the idea of God. (*12) "God, in requiring of any of his creatures the performance of a work or function, employs no other lever or agent than Attraction; he never resorts to coercion, constraint or violence in any form; he governs the Universe by this power alone; he impels all beings to fulfil their Destiny from the pleasure, the charm, the delight, he connects with it, and not from fear of pain or punishment." (*13)

 

Far more than Saint-Simon, Fourier attempted to work out the laws of evolution, and insisted that even under the Harmonic Order there would still be differences of opinion, contrasts of character and personal antipathies, the abolition of which would destroy the very spice of life. These individual clashes, far from leading to discord, would stimulate a competition for the mutual good. However, here again, thanks to the utopian colonies of his disciples and to his own penchant for meticulously closed systems, what remains of Fourierism is not a theory of evolution but some schematic blue-print in which Fourier predicts that in due time wild animals will associate with man as soon as man overcomes his vices, that the light from the Aurora Borealis will be transformed into dew that will make the North Pole have the climate of sunny Italy and the oceans taste like lemonade. (*14)

 

According to Fourier, the trouble with industry was that it was neither attractive nor effective. It was his task to lay down a theory of how to make industry attractive and to secure a regime of harmony. To accomplish this, industry must be organized on the basis of a study of human passions. All must be productive laborers, organized in Commune co-operatives where the individual can develop freely. The Communes are to have local autonomy. The State is to be reduced to nothing.

 

By no means was Fourier a communist. He was vehemently opposed to the schemes of Robert Owen. In his organized Commune known as the Phalanx, no community of property existed; private capital was retained, as well as the right of inheritance. All those within the Phalanx were to labor and, of the proceeds of their labor, five-twelfths were to go to the laborer, four-twelfths to capital, and three-twelfths to the talented ones (management), of whom, no doubt, Fourier was to be the leader. (*15) Thus, capital was to be made a permanent institution, but in such a guise as to make Fourier's new industrialism a weapon against red revolution. While the Saint-Simonians believed in nationalization of property, the Fourierists were associationists, more individualistic in character, and insisting that the individual should not be merged in the mass but must be safeguarded by means of small autonomous groups. Federation would be entirely voluntary; all unity would be prompted from within rather than imposed from without.

 

From one angle, Fourier was thus connected with Proudhon. From another angle, Fourier became a starting point for the theories of those who later were to espouse guild socialism. While Saint Simon thought in terms of national economy, Fourier thought in terms of a garden city where, with his Phalanstery carefully ordered and regulated, (*16) the distinction between industry and agriculture was to be wiped out and within the city there was to be an intimate correlation of both. Fourier, therefore, is a reaction against the heaped up monuments of stone that make up a modern city; as he feared revolution, so did he fear Paris, and desired to transform its narrow streets into large boulevards surrounded by fields where the healthy organism could flourish.

 

The features of Fourier's utopia appealed mightily to reformers in America, and while the system of Saint-Simon found no echo in the United States, that of Fourier was seized upon in an emphatic and practical manner. After all, the Americans were nothing if not practical. America had always been the land of utopia; here was an opportunity to carry out what was an eminently respectable doctrine, not at all revolutionary, but rather a backfire for revolution, although the Americans had no such fear of revolution as Fourier. Fourierism appealed to them because it was an attempt to organize on a small scale an ideal system of society, retaining capitalism, retaining individualism, reducing the State to nil, escaping the conflicts of society which the intellectuals of America could see so clearly were at hand.

 

From early times, colonists had come to America to build utopia. In the eighteenth century these utopias were entirely of an agrarian and religious nature, made up of foreign-born elements. "It is safe to say that considerably over one hundred, possibly two hundred, communistic villages have been founded in the United States, although comparatively few yet live. There are perhaps from seventy to eighty communities at present in the United States, with a membership of from six to seven thousand, and property the value of which may be roughly estimated at twenty-five or thirty million dollars." (*17) It has been estimated that the number of persons who at one time or another participated in utopian experiments in the United States in the nineteenth century has run into the hundreds of thousands. (*18)

 

In the early nineteenth century, those addicted to utopian plans of such a nature were mostly Germans and later, French. In the 1820'S, utopianism took the form of adherence to the views of Robert Owen, who came to this country to establish his utopian colonies and had great influence here, being invited several times to speak privately before the members of the Congress of the United States, the President, and other important officials. Upon the failure of Owenism, the utopian reformers, 1840-1850, eagerly went towards Fourierism, yielding, from 1848 on, to the utopian plans of Cabet.

 

The Fourierists were able to win a number of talented admirers. (*19) In 1814, Brisbane published the work of Fourier under the title of Social Destiny of Man, and two years later, in New York, Brisbane inaugurated a regular column for the propagation of Fourier's ideas. The magazine, The Phalanx or journal of Social Science, was issued; it was rechristened The Harbinger in 1845, when it was transferred to the Brook Farm Colony. It passed from existence in 1849 along with Brook Farm. (*20) Thus, the Fourierist schemes were closely tied up with the transcendentalism of the Concord School of Liberal thinkers, who, in theory and in practice, attempted to run away from reality.

 

The third utopian of importance in the early nineteenth century was Robert Owen, whose chief theoretical contribution was the plan for the formation of producers' co-operatives taking in all the industries of a locality organized in a thoroughly centralized communist manner. The vital principle of the new industrialism must be co-operation; competition was to be no more.

 

"In this above all else Owen's significance lies. It is the idea that unifies all his varied activities. Whether he is pleading for a Factory Act to protect the helpless servants of the new machines, or for a universal system of liberating education, or for trade unions, or for his own scheme of co-operative communities, the dominant idea in his mind is the need for the social control of the new productive power. (*21)

 

Unlike Fourier and Saint-Simon, Robert Owen did not represent a reaction from the violence of the French Revolution as such. His opinion was that politics wasn't of any great importance, since it was but a result of economic relations. The thing to do was to change the economic relations and the social environment. A typical Englishman, Owen believed that man owed his character entirely to social environment and that, if this could be changed, man could be entirely transformed. (*22)

 

The fundamental principles that Owen espoused could be reduced to five: (1) that man was a product of environment; (2) that feelings and convictions were independent of our will; (3) that feelings produced the motive to action (will); (4) that no two humans were ever similar exactly; (5) that every normal individual can be raised or lowered by social influence. (*23) In line with these principles, Owen took an aggressively anti-religionist position.

 

Robert Owen spent his life attempting to carry out his ideas. A wealthy manufacturer, he was able to form a model village, to pose as a moral reformer, philosopher and uplifter of society. He paid great attention to infant schools and to the education of the workmen at a time when such education was woefully lacking. His idea was, "Happiness cannot be isolated among a few human beings." (*24) He reduced the hours of labor and introduced his own factory legislation to improve working conditions.

 

All the while, Owen was proving that these reforms only brought more profit to him, that philanthropy paid handsomely. And, indeed, "Although the wages given to the workmen were lower than were paid elsewhere, it caused no discontent among the people, and New Lanark escaped the disturbances and protracted strikes so general among cotton-spinners in England and Glasgow." (*25) This success led Owen to appeal to the rich to emulate him.

 

Robert Owen, however, knew exactly from whence his large wealth came. He stated emphatically: "It is a common mistake arising from the confusion of ideas inseparable from the present erroneous system of society, to believe that the rich provide for the poor and working classes; while in fact the poor and working classes create all the wealth which the rich possess .... The rich ... actually prevent them from creating a supply of wealth that would be sufficient to preclude all from becoming poor ...." (*26)

 

Owen was no disciple of Malthus. The poor need not always be with us; labor could always produce a surplus. Owen never tired of showing the contrast between rich and poor and of arguing for a system where all would get the produce of their labor and form communities to this end. The workers produced forty times as much as before and yet they were in terrible circumstances. (*27) In his report on the causes of poverty, made in 1817, Owen pointed to the effects of the introduction of machinery in this regard and urged that employment be found for those thrown out of work by the introduction of a system whereby each city would provide a farm and factory for employment of the poor. In his report he actually went to the extent of working out the minute details of his projected scheme of Parallelograms. In a later work he expanded his ideas. Society was to be divided into four classes: (1) paupers, to be taken care of as above; (2) workmen; (3) small proprietors; (4) idlers with big capital. The last group was to hire workmen under conditions whereby the workers would control. Each workman was to work in comfort for seven years, then to be given one hundred pounds and placed in class three --- or he could work five years more and be given two hundred pounds.

 

With Owen the problem was not production but proper distribution of wealth. Sturdy advocate of co-operation, completely refusing to recognize the worth of the State, and contemptuous of politics, Robert Owen terminated his activities in England only to re-engage in them on a grander scale in America, where his utopia could be put into full effect. He invested much money in his venture at New Harmony, Indiana, but by 1830 his village of co-operation, with its labor notes, was forced to close down. (*28)

 

However, the idea of co-operation did not disappear, and, after the Reform Bill of 1832, which failed to enfranchise them, groups of workers in England became active in organizing co-operative societies. The trade unions themselves conceived of their function as instruments of collective bargaining to be merely secondary to their ideas for a co-operative system. In 1834, indeed, Robert Owen headed a grand trade union movement, only to see it collapse that very year. Robert Owen could not endure long as a trade union leader. "He had been too much used, as an employer, to playing the benevolent autocrat.... The cause was, in his eyes, essentially a crusade for the moral regeneration of society as a whole, and not a war of class against class. The struggle to achieve a wage advance here, or to resist a wage reduction there, did not interest him; for to his mind trade-unionism and co-operation were of account only as means to the establishment of the 'New Moral World." (*29)

Besides Robert Owen, who was above all a practical philanthropist and a dreamer who had pictured that he could universalize under the capitalist system the social conditions which he had been able to construct in his village of New Lanark, there arose in Britain a school of socialists stemming from Ricardo. They included such people as William Thompson, John Gray, Thomas Hodgskin, and John Francis Bray. Some of these writers connected themselves with the school of Welfare-Liberalism typified by John Stuart Mill.

 

The fundamental principle of Ricardo's work was that the exchangeable value of commodities, or their relative worth as compared with each other, depends exclusively on the quantities of labor necessary to produce them and bring them to market. Adam Smith had done this before but had assumed that after rent had been established and capital accumulated, values fluctuated according to variations of rent and wages. Ricardo showed this to be wrong both in regard to rent and in regard to wages. To Ricardo it was not true that if wages rose prices had to rise, as Adam Smith believed, and "There can be no rise in the value of labour without a fall of profits." (*30) Naturally, such views could be taken up by workingmen.

 

William Thompson, (*31) an economist, was interested not in production, but in the distribution of wealth to insure the greatest happiness to the greatest number. Like Bentham, he began to study the laws of happiness and came to the conclusion that, as all men are susceptible to equal amounts of happiness, only full equality would lead to justice. Since all men are naturally nearly equal and all wealth is the product of labor, great wealth must come from robbery. The rich were, therefore, robbers.

 

To Thompson, three different systems of industrial organization were possible: (1) the present method of theft and frauds, where wealth is for the few and is taken from the many; (2) the system of "security" where each is to have the whole produce of labor; and (3) a system of "equality" which may be considered as flowing from the principle of utility. Thompson himself favored the third, trying to follow two masters, both Bentham and Robert Owen, although he agreed with Owen's co-operatives.

 

Thompson took his stand against the Malthusian restriction of population. He exposed the Corn Repeal laws agitation as purely capitalistic, and took the side of labor. Capital was unproductive; only labor created value. The worker was correct in joining unions, but the weapon of the partial strike was extremely limited and could get the worker nowhere.

 

John Gray (*32) agreed with Thompson that the foundation of all property is labor. Gray's method was to study the distribution of wealth in a given society, estimating the total wealth and discovering what portion each class got. To do this, Gray had to analyze class relations to find out which were productive and what proportion of the wealth each section received.

 

Gray thought only those who worked by manual labor and produced material wealth were productive, though some producers were useless --- those producing luxury articles-while some non-producers were engaged in useful services. "The productive class, Gray concluded, received only a trifle more than one-fifth of their produce, while the remaining four-fifths were absorbed by landlords and capitalists." (*33)

 

Gray denounced the occupations of one-third of the population as useless. The very name soldier was a disgrace to human nature. (*34) Rent was robbery; lawyers were useless; doctors would pass away under a new social order.

 

Gray's great contribution was to show that production is restricted and confined by competition and exchange. Abolish competition and exchange and there would be no limit to production. He denied the right of an individual to own land, since all have an equal right to develop; thus he stood for land nationalization as well as for a system of small farms. This economist believed in co-operatives, but in exchange and not in production. He wanted a national bank with paper notes based on goods.

 

Gray sums up his argument as follows: "We have endeavored to show by whom wealth is created, and by whom it is consumed. We have endeavored to show that it is from human labor that every description of wealth proceeds; that the productive classes DO NOW support, not only themselves, but every unproductive member of society; that they only are productive members of society who apply their own hands either to the cultivation of the earth itself, or to the preparing or appropriating the produce of the earth to the uses of life; . . .

 

"We have endeavored to show that the real income of the country, which consists in the quantity of wealth annually created by the labour of the people, is taken from its producers, chiefly, by the rent of land, by the rent of houses, by the interest of money, and by the profit obtained by persons who buy their labour from them at one price, and sell it at another; that these immense taxes of rent, interest and profits on labour, must even continue while the system of individual competition stands; that in the new communities all would be productive members of society; excepting only the persons absolutely required in occupations, who would also devote their time and talents to the general good. . . ." (*35)

 

Gray's conclusions should have led him ultimately to communism, but neither Gray nor Thompson went that far. Both wanted the laborer to receive the full product of his labor, but both insisted that the laborer could do as he pleased with this product and could start his own enterprise by himself. This could lead only to individualism again. In this way, the communistic theories of Thompson and Gray were stultified by the limitations of their times.

 

Starting from an entirely different premise, Thomas Hodgskin argued that labor was the source of all wealth, that all exchangeable value is produced by labor. (*36) Landlords and capitalists produce nothing. Capital is not stored-up labor as others believe; even wages are the produce of labor which is entitled to everything it produces. Instead of arriving at communism, however, Hodgskin embraced the theory of laissez faire which to him represented a theory of the laws of the harmony of nature. (*37) Thus Hodgskin was very close to the utilitarian and philosophic Radical school. He denounced Ricardo as being wholly interested in profits, but at the same time he also condemned the theory that capital and labor have contrary interests, believing that both capital and wages could be increased simultaneously. He wanted the master manufacturers to be paid as laborers for the value of their services in the factory, although he was opposed, on the basis of natural rights, to the capitalists receiving an income from their property holdings.

 

Hodgskin was jealous of governmental powers which checked the individual and thus became opposed to the national system of education by government, favoring the creation of private mechanics institutes instead. Likewise, he was opposed to parliamentary regulation of factory laws, to the taxation of alcohol, and to any interference in the relations of capital and labor. Thus to Hodgskin, socialism was a reaction from and not a correction of the errors of capitalism, and, like some of the Anarchists of the day, his real thesis was to perpetuate true competition by depriving property holders of their privileges.

 

If we say that Hodgskin belongs to the economic school of Ricardian socialists of the day, it is simply because of his declaration that labor is the source of all value, and his conclusion that capitalists should receive no income from their holdings. In effect, Hodgskin was far closer to the socialistic Anarchism of Proudhon than to the views of Karl Marx.

 

To John Francis Bray, the root of all social wrong was the institution of property as it then existed. (*38) Political equality unaccompanied by economic equality was impossible, as would soon be demonstrated in the evolution of America, as well as already having been amply proven in Europe.

 

Like Owen and Thompson, Bray declared that man is a creature of circumstances which he cannot change and which he is forced to obey. All men are equal and have the duties of equal labor and the rights of equal wealth and social ownership of land. Since men are more or less equal in labor, wages should be more or less equal.

 

Bray realized vaguely that the workers were exploited, although he could not state the fact clearly, implying rather that the worker is cheated in the process of exchange. He did exclaim, however, that the worker gives the employer six days labor for an equivalent worth four days labor, and that all gain is extracted from the productive classes. The gain of the capitalist is the loss of the workman. (*39)

 

Bray characterized the present system as follows: "Under the present social system, the whole of the working class is dependent upon the capitalist or employer for the means of labour; and where one class by its position in society, is thus dependent upon another class for the MEANS of LABOUR, it is dependent likewise for the MEANS OF LIFE . . . ." (*40) He recommended that all should labor, all exchanges should be equal.

 

The only possible remedy was the abolition of the private ownership of wealth and of the right of inheritance. The productive class should take over the State and issue paper money in terms of labor to buy out the capitalist. Since money and banking were the great weapons of the capitalists, these were to be replaced by labor notes.

 

"Society was to undertake the physical, intellectual, and moral education of all children, leaving to parents as individuals only the 'caressing of parental love."' (*41) Women were to be freed from economic dependence and political inferiority; thus, like William Thompson and John Stuart Mill, who had also evoked great interest in the woman question, Bray became a champion for the development of womanhood. He also stood for a complete system of social insurance and protection of labor.

 

All of these Ricardian socialists with their theories of value as labor were limited by the defects of utopians generally. First, as a rule they were unable to take an historical perspective. Second, they were rationalists, believing in the power of peaceful persuasion to move the world. Third, they had no connection with the labor movement, but were intellectual elements of the bourgeoisie, keen enough to begin to infer what was wrong with the world and to draw radical conclusions from orthodox, classical, economic theory.

 

None the less, they foreshadowed the works of Marx and Engels and reflected the claims and pretensions of the labor movement then clamorously arising in Chartist agitations and in the revolutions of Europe.

 

At this time, other groups also appeared to criticize the industrial system and to espouse the cause of the under-dog. A Christian Socialist movement arose in England. Later on, in Europe, there would appear a Catholic Socialism, a State Socialism, and a Guild Socialism. These movements, however, presented themselves, generally after the rise of Marxism, in order to fight and destroy revolution. Thus, these other socialist movements were not the forerunners of Marxism, but were rather its enemies. Their theories could very well be adopted by reactionary collectivists as seen today in the fascist camp. We shall treat this type of socialism under fascism.

The conditions which were arising prior to 1848 were such as to make inevitable expressions leading to the conclusions later embodied by Marx. It would be well to pause to describe briefly the conditions of the time as they affected the working class, conditions normally bad, made infinitely worse by the periodic cyclical crises of overproduction and unemployment which were then setting. in and which found the worker completely unprotected.

 

In Paris, for example, it was estimated in 1836 that 100 out of every 1,232 people were below the poverty line and that 9 out of every 24 deaths took place in the hospices, that is, in the alms houses. During the crisis of 1847, one-third of the population was in receipt of charity, with 450,000 food tickets issued, (*42) while in July 1848, two-thirds of the workers were unemployed in Tourcoing, three-fourths in Calais, two-thirds in St. Etienne, etc.

 

In England the situation was dramatized by the flow of emigration. In 1838, emigration was about 33,000; in 1842, it rose to 128,000. For the eight years 1846 to 1854, emigration totaled over 2,500, 000. (*43) With the Irish famine, the population of Ireland became rapidly depleted, almost a million people perishing.

 

The figures of the criminal rates also are illustrative of the situation. Whereas the population of Great Britain increased but 79 per cent between 1805 and 1841, crime committals increased 482 per cent, reaching a total of 174.6 to every hundred thousand.

 

The situation in the United States can be seen from the reports in the New York Daily Tribune. ". . . the average earnings of those who live by simple labor in our city --- embracing at least two-thirds of our population --- scarcely, if at all, exceed one dollar per week for each person subsisting thereon." (*44) The typical wage of a needle worker is given as follows: "Work which had brought 971/2 cents in 1844 was paid Only 371/2 cents in 1845 The average earnings of these women were $1.50 to $2 a week, though many of them could not earn more than $1." (*45)

 

As for working conditions, we cite the following: "The length of a day's labor varied from twelve to fifteen hours.... The regulations at Patterson, New Jersey, required women and children to be at work at half past four in the morning.... Operatives were taxed by the companies for the support of religion; . . . Windows were nailed down and the operatives deprived of fresh air.... Women and children were urged on by the use of a cowhide, and an instance is given of a little girl, eleven years of age, whose leg was broken with a ‘billet of wood. Still more harrowing is the description of the merciless whipping of a deaf-and-dumb boy by an overseer.... He received ... one hundred blows. At Mendon, Mass., a boy of twelve drowned himself in a pond to escape factory labor." (*46)

 

In 1849, social conditions were investigated by the City of Boston. Dr. Clark officially reports: "One cellar was reported by the police to be occupied nightly as a sleeping-apartment for thirty-nine persons. In another, the tide had risen so high that it was necessary to approach the bedside of a patient by means of a plank which was laid from one stool to another; while the dead body of an infant was actually sailing about the room in its Coffin." (*47) An investigation held at practically the same time in New York City declares the fact that by no means were such conditions peculiar to Boston but were common to practically every large city in the country.

 

Under such circumstances, it was no wonder that, especially within the ranks of labor, opinions adumbrating those of Marx appeared everywhere. Among the Chartists, for example, Ernest Jones declared: "Money-capital did not create labor, but labor created money-capital; machinery did not create work, but work created machinery. It therefore follows that labour is, by its own nature the sovereign power, and that it owes no allegiance, gratitude or subjection to capital." (*48)

 

Another leader, J. Brontierre O'Brien,,did much to popularize the phrase "wage slavery." He translated the work of Buonarotti on the Baboeuf ,movement in the French Revolution, and thus helped to bring the attention of the English workman to the early French Communist movement. Even in America "the term 'wage-slave' had a much better standing in the forties than it has today." (*49)

 

Among the Chartists, G. J. Harnay could declare, "As regards the workingman exterminating other 'classes, the answer is easy. Other classes have no right to exist. To prepare the way for the absolute supremacy of the working classes ... preparatory to the abolition of the system of classes, is the mission of the Red Republican." (*50)

 

One writer could actually call for an industrial republic similar to Soviets. "Have the shoemakers a representative in the House of Commons? There are 133,000 shoemakers in the country, and these, with their wives and families, make upwards of half a million of human beings in this country, all living by shoemaking. Yet not one representative have they....." (*51)

 

Thus we may conclude that the writings of the scientific socialists were fully the product of their times, the result of sharp economic contradictions and crises, of violent political revolutions. Had Marx and Engels not lived, there is no doubt that other writers would have elaborated the same points of view.

 

After the Revolution of 1830, repressive measures were increased by the reactionary forces in control of Central Europe. In Germany, the protests of intellectual radicals against the old order led to large-scale banishments from the country. These exiles, in 1834, were able to organize in Paris the League of the Banished. Soon a Right and Left Wing developed within the group, the Left Wing splitting in 1836 to form the League of the Just. This latter organization did away with the dictatorial tendencies of the former and established an administrative committee democratically elected to head its work. It read revolutionary and socialistic works and was extremely interested in the utopian writing of Cabet who was the leader in appealing directly to the working class for the establishment of his utopias.

 

The League of the Just did not content itself with abstract propaganda, but began secretly, in Germany and elsewhere, to organize branches of the society which functioned under the guise of educational and singing societies and which began the task of building labor unions. The League of the Just contained within it many communists, the leading figure being Wilhelm Weitling. Several of the League were imprisoned for taking part in the communist attempt of Blanqui in France in 1839.

 

It was this group that later was forced to emigrate to England, and which founded a German Workers Educational Union, which became the Communist Labor Educational Union. These bodies, together with the League of the Just, formed, in 1847, the Communist League headed by Marx and Engels.

 

At this point we do not wish to analyze the activity of the Communist League, which we leave for another chapter. Suffice it to say that the League played an important role in the political turmoils and revolutions of 1848. Through the Communist League, Marx and Engels were induced to write their remarkable Communist Manifesto which, translated into every European language, became a sort of bible of the working class. Thus the Communist League prepared the way for the international action of the workers which was first realized on a large scale in the First International formed in 1864.

 

The Communist League was a strictly communist organization with a definite philosophy, communist procedure, trained cadres. The First International was an entirely different body.

 

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

 

A. Principal:

 

.The upbringing of children - http://www.fatheralexander.org/booklets/english/child.htm

2.http://www.thewaytotruth.org/pearls/upbringing.html

3.Principles of Upbringing children - http://www.al-islam.org/upbringing/

4.Moral Education - http://libr.org/isc/issues/ISC23/B8%20Susan%20Devine.pdf

5.BERKOWITZ, MARVIN W., and OSER, FRITZ, eds. 1985. Moral Education: Theory and Application. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

6.Moral Issues - http://www.hi-ho.ne.jp/taku77/

7.Education - http://www.educativ.info/edu/dezvedue.html