Sunday 6 March 2022

Gems of Narodnik Project Mongering - Part 10 of 18

Section IV


Yuzhakov's proposal was that the cost of secondary education would be met by the proceeds from the labour of secondary school students, during Summer.

“That this idea is a correct one, can scarcely be doubted”, he says.

And we agree that this is a correct idea, Lenin confirms. However, this idea was not new, but had already been espoused by the early Utopians, as well as by Marx and Engels.

“This thought was already expressed by the great utopians of the past; and it is fully shared by the “disciples,” who for this reason, incidentally, do not object in principle to female and juvenile labour in industry, regard attempts to completely forbid such labour as reactionary, and only insist on the proper hygienic conditions being created for it.” (p 472)

But, also, if the proposal that universal secondary education was to be accompanied by universal liability to productive labour, should that not also be a requirement of Yuzhakov's plan? But, in fact, Yuzhakov makes no such requirement.

““The purely urban gymnasia for people of means who are prepared to pay the full cost of education in money, might be preserved in their present form” (229). On page 231 “people of means” are classed without more ado as ’categories of the population” not liable to compulsory education in the “agricultural gymnasia.” Thus, in our Narodnik’s opinion, compulsory productive labour is not a condition for general and all-round human development, but simply a means of paying the cost of gymnasium education.” (p 473)

Marx and Engels also realised that, under capitalism, the bourgeoisie would continue to simply pay for the education of their children, without any requirement for such productive employment. But, unlike Yuzhakov, they did not think that the cost of the student's education should be paid for from their own immediate labour. A large part of the cost would come from contributions from all workers' wages, in the locality, an inevitable consequence of the fact that education and training is a key component of the value of labour-power, and so funded from variable capital. But, Marx and Engels also saw this link of education and employment as an advantage for workers over the bourgeoisie, as the earlier quote demonstrated.

Yuzhakov needed to address the question of where the gymnasium farms would obtain the workers for the Winter months, when the students were in classes. In part, he argues that, because the farms would be profitable enterprises, they could employ some wage workers, but his main solution is that, because elementary students would not have had to work, they could simply be required to remain on the farm, for an equivalent period, at the end of their education, thereby, also, providing additional Summer workers, and labour for a range of other tasks such as cooking and so on.

The idea was discussed before, in Lenin's article on Gymnasium Farms. In short, all those that did not go into military service would then be tied to the land well into their 20's, and constrained by a range of paternalistic/feudal conditions not faced by other workers. And, the economic consequences of that for these workers on the farms is made clear by Lenin.

Yuzhakov had detailed to the last kopek all of the costs and benefits involved in his plan, and having done so, it showed that the workers employed on the gymnasium farms, workers whose labour was of higher value, as a consequence of its educated and trained nature, would receive in return the equivalent of 50 Roubles a year.

“What a splendid lesson it will be to “our” present agricultural labourers—who, in their ignorance, rudeness and boorishness, refuse to work for less than 61 roubles a year with board —when they see labourers with a gymnasium education working for 50 roubles a year!” (p 475)


No comments: