The Daily Worker Newspaper, June 28, 1924, Page 11

os Sn, a) -|Culture Versus Life - - ghee means Nature utilizes to ac- complish her ends are cruel, im- modest, wasteful. The ends she achieves are oftimes good, beautiful and models of economy. A lily is lovely even tho it has grown on a dung hill. The lily is Nature’s end, the dung hill, Nature’s means. Per- sons who by temperament or training dedicate themselves to an apprecia- tion of the perfected lily over-emplia- size the importance of culture. Cul- ture is too frequently the anaesthetic in lieu of travail. Persons who by compulsion of circumstance live close to the dung hill learn to overvalue life. They scoff at culture. To them it symbolizes anaesthetics, The con- flict between lily-lovers and dung-hill dwellers has been bitter and long drawn out. It will continue to divide humans into-the elite and rabble un- til the toilers collectively learn to condition the distribution of work and of leisure. Culture versus life sym- bolizes the historic struggle between leisure and drudgery: No one need » feel shocked at the “ignorant” sus- Ppicions of the manual ‘laborer that none but his ilk do any useful la- bor. Viewing “life” from his own darkling window, he can’t inderstand what greater measure of joy or of freedom the “brain workers” haye brought as a peace offering to him. His toil is endless; his life so hard that bitterness is his sole resource in "an exhausting conflict with a world he does not understand: a hostile, ‘crooked world. How does it happen that Superior Brains, since the begin, ning of Pithecanthroyus Erectus’ jour- ney thru space, has held itself aloof from Inferior Brains? To those who can face the problém without any #elusions about Superior Brains the explanation is simple. How did a clever few manage to evade toil? -Why were the credulous many made brothers to the ox? We must use eur imaginations to recon- struct that earlier time wnen dramatic contrasts of life and death, sleep and awakeness, believing and thinking, praying and starving, were superstiti- ous sources of abject mental and phy- sical slavery. We must enter our in- itial assumptions here. First, let us assume a starving pop- ulation in love with the law of self. preservation and victims of the fetich of self-reproduction. Secondly, let us assume the presence amongst them ofa few natively cleverer individuals in love with their own vanity and with the desire to avoid pain. Under these conditions what must have oc- curred to produce that enduring cleav- age in Society between Workers and Shirkers, which persists in our midst in our own day? How did the cunning few manage to effect that illusion of theatricalism whereby the enslaved wotkers did homage to the exalted shirkers as their superiors? To estab- lish one’s superiority over the illiter- ate one need only exploit their puerile fear of the unknown. The Priest is invoked to befuddle the over-credulous. | er will some day be held in dignified | Hocus-Pocus is erected as the wor- shipful Totem. Salvation by genu- flection (that the benighted worship- pers may not-see their own sad plight) is instituted. Fear stalks everywhere. And Fear throttles the passion to doubt. ‘ - All the accessories are thus splen- didly . staged for ~the historic melo- drama of Toilers Versus Parasites. The stage managers are Cunning and Priestcraft. .The major characters are Fear and Starvation and Credulity; the minor, the enslaved workers. The prologue was long ago enacted in the Valleys of the Nile, the Tigris and the Euphrates. The first act was per- formed in Greece; the second in Rome; the third in the Dark Ages; the fourth produced the thrilling and still reverberant climax, gravely called The French Revolution (though it was more “Revolution” than “French”). The last act is unfolding before our eyes. For the edification of the reader it may be hinted that “poetic license” requires the death of the major characters,—the strutting protagon- ists. (Also, Nota Bene: a new spirit is abroad in the land and the stage managers will be constrained to re- spond to this newer public demand for less gruesome protagonists. Peevishly and reluctantly, but mone the less surely, Melodrama will yield its dominion to the social drama of amelioration. The tendency of all ripe drama is at present to avoid startling contrasts and limelight antagonism. The minor characters now have digni- fied parts to play even as their luckier comrades in their major roles. The Drama has become socialized. When the historic curtain rises again whether in Europe, Asia, or North America, the spokesmen for the leisure Class will speak winged words to the spokesmen of the Working Class!) In an economy where the leisure class is almighty, it is true that those who fear to doubt shall slave in darkness. The workers have believed too much, As a penalty to match their crime of over-credulity, they have been saddled with the weight of excessive toil. Their cun- ning superiors have sat tight in the saddle enjoying their elevated posi- tion. To’ this day, the dignity of labor is article of the leisure-economy. Those, whose excess of leisure drives them to praise of honest toil glorify most vociferously a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay. (Beware of the man who first calls “Stop Thief.” He may be a practical psychologist.) They fear the awakening of the common toiler. To them Edwin Markham’s great poem, “The Man with the Hoe” is a work of blasphemy. So were Shelley and the Brownings and Swin- burne, blasphemous poets; they dis- closed some revolutionary truths about “our betters” which made smug respectability’s hair stand on edge. To preach the dignity of labor in a competitive age which mercilessly de- stroys human-beings for the iron ideal of “efficiency,” is to make a tra- gedly of humor. Laboring and labor- (Continued from page 6) ress on the industrial field. Naturally it expresses the cruel struggle for existence, which demands of men ex- traordinary effort. There is in the New World hardly any respite in the pursuit of the dollar, and those who, in momentary reflection relax, or fail to avail themselves of the chance, must perish. It is to con- centrate on general s when JACK LONDON AND MAXIME GORKY cause he considers outward drama of accident and adventure more inter- esting than inward drama of stirring emotion, and partly because otherwise his books would find no readers. This explains why Jack London por- trays so few soul movements and in- ward struggles. The battle here is al- ways external, upon the open stage, in the snow deserts of Alaska, in the of the Rocky Mountains, in the and in this he evinces confidence in general prob- These he does not care to esteem, That day our own genera- tion will not behold. Why does the dignity of labor need so insistent an advertising? Is the fact so obvious, that the leisured well-wishers of the poor and thrifty must take upon them- selves the thankless duty of calling attention to it? “Honest Toil” is an- other delicious mouthful. Why the coupling adjectives “honest”? Is it secretly assumed that he who does not toil is—not—quite honest? Or is the leisure class so indebted to the toilers that, a8 a token of its touching gratitude, it will_praise labor for its commendabte honesty, if not for its (commendable) lack of cleverness? The leisure folk are as honest as the workers encourage them to be. Revolutions in morals, both busi- ness and professional, must proceed from the enlightened scepticism of the wage-earners. Haughty culture camé into this in- stinct-driven world when economic se- curity relieved: cunning of the need ‘for daily drudgery. Cunning in sheer desperation, took to learning things; preferably the means of perpetuating its own filched privileges. Leisure in- evitably becamewa class prerogative. Culture was the especial attribute of the shirkers. By dramatic juxtaposi- tion, mere drudgery became the sign of mental inferiority. Thus the cleay- age has continued thruout the ages. Scott Nearing says: “The pages of history may be searched in vain for the records of a civilization which did not evolve some device whereby the strong or-tlfé astute could live at the expense of the weak and the less able. The parasitic class has always bul- warked its position by the ownership of something. The land, which was originally common property, was grad- ually absorbed by a small landholding aristocracy or oligarchy, which was enabled by the possession of proper- ty titles, franchises, and special privi- leges to enjoy the fruits of other men’s labor. As social organization has grown more complex the oppor- tunities for parasitism have become greater. In primitive society, the pow- er of the parasites was ephemeral. They held their prerogatives by might. For them, eternal vigilance was the price of living at the ex- pense of the workers. As civilization advanced, the spiritual ss well as the physical forces of the worid were called upon to place additional con- trolling power in the hands of the ruler. “The church held out the threat of hell. The state, with gallows, jails, and stocks,drove the unfortunate sub- jects into line. The name ‘tax gath- erer’ grew to be a name of reproach, because tax gathering was the out- ward manifestation of organized, le- galized, sanctified and time-honored exploitation; it was the process whereby the few who did not work lived at the expense of the many who did work.”... “The recipients of prop- erty income are the beneficiaries of power. Behind ‘them they have con- stitutions, laws, customs, beliefs, phi- losophies, practices and convention- alities that are ages old. They draw upon the resources of @ system of so- cial organization that has been evolv- ing with the evolution of eivilization. Their econome advantage isthe di- rect outcome of the repressive coer- cive activities of vested interests all thru the ages. They constitute one generation in the lineal descent of ex- ploiters—monarchs, landlords, slave- owners, Capitalists, and all of those who have devised means of living at the expense of the toil of their fel- lows. Those who receive incomes from property rights, hold their titles and draw their income out of the struggles which the propertied class have waged, and thus far successfully, to keep in their hands the power to tax the labor of mankind.” Why mar- vel that the Drudges are the sworn enemies of the Leisures? Culture, a beautiful end in itself when humanely attained and equitably apportioned, is the lily on the dung hill. The sweat and grime and ignorance and pain of a billion befuddled dunces have been the hideous fertilizers for the subsoil whence Culture, radiant with its har- lot beauty, has bloomed. Culture ver- By a Teacher template. Leisure and Culture once secured, the shirker class irresistibly came to appraise their own intellectual vanity and love of the Metaphysical as the desiderata of the Superior Life, The masses were held in unabashed con- tempt. Their problems, quintessen- tially physical and sordid, were re- garded with an equal aversion. A lack of communal experiences, and inferentially, of fraternal sympathy, engendered the Metaphysical attitude toward concrete life. In his “Revolt of the Angels,” Anatole France clever- ly satirizes the barren metaphysi- cians; “,..metaphysic or metaphysics, that is to say, all that is connected with physics and has no other name, 80 impossible is it to designate by a substantive that which has no sub- stance, and is but a dream and an il- lusion. Here you may contemplate with admiration philosophers address- ing themselves to the solution, dis- - solution, and resolution of the Abso- lute, to the determination of the In- determinate and to the definition of the Infinite.” ,.. The metaphysiaal easi- ly merged into a superior attitude. Barren abstractions naturally ab- sorbed the serious. energies of the haughty-cultured, while the masses were groveling in filth, ignorance and fear. (If haughty-thinkers dared to realize the staggering costs of their “superiority,” they would commit sui- cide out of sheer self-respect.) What more natural.than that the knowledge of most worth to the cultured should have been the knowledge of least util- ity to the toilers? We suffer today from this inherited opposition: Cul- ture versus Life has split. humanity into the alien orders of caste and class. The student must therefore be on his guard when he reads great men’s disquisitions on What Knowl- edge is of Most Worth. A Howard Taft or an Arthur Balfour, profes- sionally alienated from the aspira- tions of the common people, will stress subject matter and ideals as hostile to the work-a-day welfare of common folk as barren metaphysics is remote from experimental science. It was Balfour, the cultured snob, who advised the British association for the Advancement of Science to court single mindedly but one ideal: “Theoretical Inquiry.” Practical science (for the household uses of Mr. Average Man) too common- place, too utilitarian. Let scientists play with unreality provided only they were being inspired to theorize broadly and transcendentally. Of this same heavily educated Balfour, Mr. Brailsford said: “He has all the in- dolence and indecision of Mr. Asquith, with a fastidiousness and aloofness of his own.” Judge Edward Parry furnishes an additional clue to the na- ture of Caste Culture when he in- forms us that: “Mr. Balfour’s. ob- servation that among all the social evils which meet us in every walk of life, every sphere of activity, the greates’ of all evils is the evil of in- temperence is useful as a peroration to any platform speech on the sub- ject, but only makes the judicious grieve that with the opportunity to do exactly as he Kked and the ability to draft useful legislation, Mr. Balfour did nothing whatever to improve mat- ters and diminish the evtlof which he was so sensible.” ... This intellectual aloofness from current concerns is of a piece with the heart-rending wail of the so-called classicists beseeching an ignorant electorate to restore Greek and Latin to their positions of pristine vigor, It is the cry of de- spair of an irreparably wounded Vanity impotent to saddle a practical world with its own antiquated ideals. Established 1899 JOHN B. HESSLER SHOES FOR MEN, WOMEN & CHILDREN - 2720 North Ave. PITTSBURGH, PA. _ DR. RASNICK DENTIST Rendering Expert, Dental Service * CHICAGO for ‘ea gus ‘Lite is a terrible reality to con-| f{fp°METHEIELD sity Near ten Aye