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Spooner, Lysander, NO TREASON, http://tigerden.com/%7Eberios/spunk/Spunk498.txt
The Constitution has no inherent authority or obligation. It has no authority or obligation at all, unless as a contract between man and man. And it does not so much as even purport to be a contract between persons now existing. It purports, at most, to be only a contract between persons living eighty years ago. And it can be supposed to have been a contract then only between persons who had already come to years of discretion, so as to be competent to make reasonable and obligatory contracts. Furthermore, we know, historically, that only a small portion even of the people then existing were consulted on the subject, or asked, or permitted to express either their consent or dissent in any formal manner. Those persons, if any, who did give their consent formally, are all dead now. Most of them have been dead forty, fifty, sixty, or seventy years. And the constitution, so far as it was their contract, died with them. They had no natural power or right to make it obligatory upon their children.
WITHOUT QUALITY EDUCATIONS, MODERN AMERICANS CANNOT SURVIVE
The National Education Commission, April, 1994, Prisoners of Time
The reality of today's world is that the global economy provides few decent jobs for the poorly educated. Today, a new standard for an educated citizenry is required, a standard suited to the 21st century, not the 19th or the 20th. Americans must be as knowledgeable, competent, and inventive as any people in the world. All of our citizens, not just a few, must be able to think for a living. Indeed, our students should do more than meet the standard; they should set it. The stakes are very high.
THERE HAS BEEN A NATIONAL SCHOOL REFORM MOVEMENT UNDERWAY FOR TEN YEARS
The National Education Commission, April, 1994, Prisoners of Time
For the past decade, Americans have mounted a major effort to reform education, an effort that continues today, its energy undiminished. The reform movement has captured the serious attention of the White House, Congress, state capitals and local school boards.
RAISING STANDARDS BEFORE REFORMING SCHOOL HOURS WOULD BE DISASTROUS FOR DISADVANTAGED STUDENTS
The National Education Commission, April, 1994, Prisoners of Time
Some, however, fear that rigorous standards might further disadvantage our most vulnerable children. In our current time-bound system, this fear is well founded. Applied inflexibly, high standards could cause great mischief.
But today's practices - different standards for different students and promotion by age and grade according to the calendar - are a hoax, cruel deceptions of both students and society.
UNLESS WE EMBRACE EDUCATION AS A PRIME VALUE, AMERICAN SOCIETY WILL SPIRAL PRECIPITOUSLY INTO DECLINE
The National Education Commission, April, 1994, Prisoners of Time
The human ability to learn and grow is the cornerstone of a civil and humane society. Until our nation embraces the importance of education as an investment in our common future - the foundation of domestic tranquility and the cure for our growing anxiety about the civility of this society - nothing will really change.
As a people, we are obsessed with international economic comparisons. We fail to acknowledge that a nation's economic power often depends on the strength of its education system. Parents, grandparents, employers - even children - understand and believe in the power of learning. The strongest message this Commission can send to the American people is that education must become a new national obsession, as powerful as sports and entertainment, if we are to avoid a spiral of economic and social decline.
TECHNOLOGY IS CURRENTLY NOT COMMON IN SCHOOLS YET COULD BE A GREAT BOON TO TEACHING
The National Education Commission, April, 1994, Prisoners of Time
Technology is a great unrealized hope in education reform. It can transform learning by improving both the effectiveness of existing time and making more time available through self-guided instruction, both in school and out. Technology has already changed much of the rest of American society- profit and non-profit, private sector and government alike-because it makes it possible to produce more with less. A similar revolution is possible in education.
At a minimum, computers and other technological aids promise to rid teachers and administrators of the mundane record keeping that is such a characteristic of school life today, permitting teachers to spend more time designing instructional programs for their students.
But the true promise of technology lies in the classroom. Technology makes it possible for today's schools to escape the assembly-line mentality of the "factory model" school. With emerging hardware and software, educators can personalize learning.
HIGHER DEMANDS ON STUDENTS LEADS TO GREATER RATES OF STRESS AND SUICIDE
Hart, Thomas E., of the Oregon School Study Council, February, 1989, Volume 32, No. 6
Stress and suicide are related. If the pressures placed on youngsters by parents, peers, schools, and themselves are not offset by knowledge about how to deal with these often conflicting demands, students can develop such feelings of inadequacy and depression that they become severely distressed. In response to the pressures they feel, an increasing percentage of youth conclude that they are a burden to others or that they are physically and mentally unable to bear the pressures they experience. Many come to view suicide as their only viable option.
Jay, John, October 31, 1787, 2nd Federalist Paper
It has often given me pleasure to observe that independent America was not composed of detached and distant territories, but that one connected, fertile, widespreading country was the portion of our western sons of liberty. Providence has in a particular manner blessed it with a variety of soils and productions, and watered it with innumerable streams, for the delight and accommodation of its inhabitants. A succession of navigable waters forms a kind of chain round its borders, as if to bind it together; while the most noble rivers in the world, running at convenient distances, present them with highways for the easy communication of friendly aids, and the mutual transportation and exchange of their various commodities.
With equal pleasure I have as often taken notice that Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people.
This country and this people seem to have been made for each other, and it appears as if it was the design of Providence, that an inheritance so proper and convenient for a band of brethren, united to each other by the strongest ties, should never be split into a number of unsocial, jealous, and alien sovereignties.
Jay, John, November 10, 1787, 5th Federalist Paper
The most sanguine advocates for three or four confederacies cannot reasonably suppose that they would long remain exactly on an equal footing in point of strength, even if it was possible to form them so at first; but, admitting that to be practicable, yet what human contrivance can secure the continuance of such equality? Independent of those local circumstances which tend to beget and increase power in one part and to impede its progress in another, we must advert to the effects of that superior policy and good management which would probably distinguish the government of one above the rest, and by which their relative equality in strength and consideration would be destroyed. For it cannot be presumed that the same degree of sound policy, prudence, and foresight would uniformly be observed by each of these confederacies for a long succession of years.
Jay, John, November 10, 1787, 5th Federalist Papers
They who well consider the history of similar divisions and confederacies will find abundant reason to apprehend that those in contemplation would in no other sense be neighbors than as they would be borderers; that they would neither love nor trust one another, but on the contrary would be a prey to discord, jealousy, and mutual injuries; in short, that they would place us exactly in the situations in which some nations doubtless wish to see us: formidable only to each other.
Hamilton, Alexander, November 14, 1787, 6th Federalist Paper
A man must be far gone in Utopian speculations who can seriously doubt that, if these States should either be wholly disunited, or only united in partial confederacies, the subdivisions into which they might be thrown would have frequent and violent contests with each other. To presume a want of motives for such contests as an argument against their existence, would be to forget that men are ambitious, vindictive, and rapacious. To look for a continuation of harmony between a number of independent, unconnected sovereignties in the same neighborhood, would be to disregard the uniform course of human events, and to set at defiance the accumulated experience of ages.
Hamilton, Alexander, November 21, 1787, 9th Federalist Paper
A firm Union will be of the utmost moment to the peace and liberty of the States, as a barrier against domestic faction and insurrection. It is impossible to read the history of the petty republics of Greece and Italy without feeling sensations of horror and disgust at the distractions with which they were continually agitated, and at the rapid succession of revolutions by which they were kept in a state of perpetual vibration between the extremes of tyranny and anarchy.
Locke, John, 1690, An Essay Concerning the True Original, Extent, and End of Civil Government
To understand political power aright, and derive it from its original, we must consider what estate all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of Nature, without asking leave or depending upon the will of any other man. ...
But though this be a state of liberty, yet it is not a state of licence; though man in that state have an uncontrollable liberty to dispose of his person or possessions, yet he has not liberty to destroy himself, or so much as any creature in his possession, but where some nobler use than its bare preservation calls for it.
Sharoff, Serge, a professor of philosophy, July 23, 1995, SEHR, vol. 4, issue 2
Intentionality expresses the fundamental feature of consciousness: it is always consciousness about something. Consciousness is not an abstract mechanism that processes raw data; its core structure correlates with and, therefore, depends on grasped phenomena. This ensures the impossibility of a description of consciousness which is separate from perceived objects. Husserl wrote:
In all pure psychic experiences (in perceiving something, judging about something, willing something, enjoying something, hoping for something, etc.) there is found inherently a being-directed-toward.... Experiences are intentional. This being-directed-toward is not just joined to the experience by way of a mere addition, and occasionally as an accidental reaction, as if experiences could be what they are without the intentional relation.
Sharoff, Serge, a professor of philosophy, July 23, 1995, SEHR, vol. 4, issue 2
According to him, New Age metaphysics replaces the world with a representation and a man with a subject. Modeling phenomenological concepts and analyzing consciousness and language without embodying the whole system means that we lose any real engagement with a situation; Husserl's answer to the problem of embodied consciousness, the phenomenology of consciousness, thus had some problems. An attempt to shelter in pure subjectivity might easily fail. When describing a situation it seems difficult to deny the direct, rather than the internalized, influence of external forces.
Sharoff, Serge, a professor of philosophy, July 23, 1995, SEHR, vol. 4, issue 2
Describing meaning in the analytic tradition is radically different. The analytic tradition emphasizes the result of meaning as "objectification"; the meaning is cut off from the intentionality that constituted it, so that the meaning becomes an independently analyzable object. In his later work, Wittgenstein criticized this idea: "We are drawn to a wrong idea that a meaning of a sentence entails it, follows it persistently."
Hatcher, Donald, of Montclair University, 1995, http://www.shss.montclair.edu/inquiry/spr95/hatcher2.html
If the duty to acquire certain epistemic virtues is conditional, then we can form our beliefs in any manner we please, as long as we are willing to accept the consequences. If, on the other hand, there is a moral obligation for all humans to develop intellectual virtues akin to critical thinking, then the justification for teaching students to be critical thinkers is absolute, or, as Kant would say, "categorical." If people can be held morally accountable for the quality of their beliefs just as people are held accountable for other behaviors or character traits, e.g., honesty, showing respect for persons, temperance, and benevolence, then teachers have a duty to help students understand and successfully meet these ethical obligations.
But what sense does it make to say people have a moral obligation to be critical thinkers? I shall argue that how we behave with respect to forming our beliefs is as morally significant as other morally significant actions. As a result, there is a moral imperative to teach critical thinking, and teachers are under a moral obligation to help students acquire those skills and dispositions commonly associated with critical thinking. Not to do so may well be unethical.
U.S. News and World Report, April 1, 1996, The Case For Tough Standards
But the vast majority of American students are still educated at too low a level. Only a third of twelfth graders mastered rigorous reading passages in a 1994 test by the respected National Assessment of Educational Progress. Only 11 percent showed a strong grasp of history. NAEP reports that the average reading level of black 17-year-olds is about the same as that of white 13-year-olds. And the general standards of U.S. schools pale in comparison with those of other industrialized nations. Says Albert Shanker, president of the American Federation of Teachers: "Very few American pupils are performing anywhere near where they could be performing."
U.S. News and World Report, April 1, 1996, The Case For Tough Standards
But at present--and in sharp contrast to other industrialized nations--America has a patchwork system of widely varying standards set largely by some 15,000 local school systems. "We have had, in effect, no standards," says Marc Tucker, president of the National Center on Education and the Economy.
U.S. News and World Report, April 1, 1996, The Case For Tough Standards
Surprisingly, many teachers and principals are "tepid" about "the value of advanced learning and study," according to a report prepared for the Palisades summit by the Public Agenda organization, which has done studies on teacher attitudes. "Far from being strong advocates for high-level learning in their own fields, [they] seem to downplay the importance of the very subjects they teach."
This prevailing anti-intellectualism is reinforced, says Tucker, by "a very strong belief that academic achievement is mostly a matter of natural ability."
U.S. News and World Report, April 1, 1996, The Case For Tough Standards
The U.S. News poll suggests where priorities lie. Nearly 60 percent say that sports and music and other extracurricular programs deserve the emphasis and resources they now receive; only 35 percent say some of the money devoted to extracurricular programs should be diverted into academic programs.
U.S. News and World Report, April 1, 1996, The Case For Tough Standards
Moreover, translating higher standards into higher student achievement is going to cost a lot of money to improve textbooks and the skills of a teaching force that has traditionally only had to educate a relatively small number of students to high levels. One measure of the task: Only 63 percent of high school teachers now have a college degree in the academic subject they teach most frequently. Gerstner of IBM contends that "we should be able to do it out of money we spend today," by making tough choices. But others argue there are huge discrepancies in spending that will make national standards unfair unless the funding playing field is leveled.
U.S. News and World Report, April1, 1996, The U.S. News School Standards Poll
According to a new U.S.News & World Report poll on school standards, three quarters of adult Americans think achievement standards in public schools should be higher than they are, in part because a strong majority of Americans feel school systems around the nation aren't doing a good job of educating kids. In all, 62 percent of Americans think that the education children receive in public schools is fair, poor or very poor.
U.S. News and World Report, April1, 1996, The U.S. News School Standards Poll
Almost nine in ten people -- 87 percent -- think that kids should not be allowed to graduate from high school without passing academic examinations and 58 percent believe employers should screen potential job applicants based on their exams and school grades, according to the poll.
U.S. News and World Report, April1, 1996, The U.S. News School Standards Poll
When the issue is how to treat gifted and talented students, Americans are also deeply divided. Some 46 percent say gifted students should be taught in separate classrooms, while 44 percent think they should be taught in classrooms with other children.
U.S. News and World Report, April1, 1996, The U.S. News School Standards Poll
Overall, Americans think parents are most often to blame for the most serious problems in education. Asked which is the most serious problem for public education in the nation today, 34 percent said parents who are not involved in their kids' education.
U.S. News and World Report, April 27, 1992, Schools for Scandal
Intensifying demand that the nation's $228 billion annual investment in public education pay greater scholastic dividends has put tremendous pressure on teachers and school administrators nationwide to raise standardized-test scores, the most quantifiable measure of achievement. Coupled with astonishingly lax security among the nation's leading standardized basic-skills tests, this pressure has produced a school testing system that is rife with abuse -- and consequently less and less useful as a true measure of educational success.
Blatant cheating -- ranging from supplying students with test answers to actually tampering with answer sheets -- is widespread. And in the highly lucrative but intensely competitive testing market, companies are acutely aware that customers are looking for high scores, and they frequently encourage a variety of practices that artificially drive up the numbers. The reality, laments Bonnie Bracey, an award-winning teacher in the Arlington, Va., school system, is that teachers are under the gun to hike test scores in order to "protect themselves." Consider:
U.S. News and World Report, April 27, 1992, Schools for Scandal
In the face of demands for greater accountability and higher standards, the amount of standardized testing in the nation's public schools has skyrocketed in the past decade, to more than 100 million tests annually -- at a cost of $700 million to $900 million. The tests are required in virtually all of the nation's 15,367 public school systems. And more testing may be on the way.
U.S. News and World Report, April 27, 1992, Schools for Scandal
Any national testing system will have to confront the many problems plaguing current standardized tests. About 80 percent of these are commercially published and measure students' performance against that of a national student sample. Five tests dominate the market. All five tests are largely multiple-choice measures of rudimentary skills. All five are flagrantly abused.
The reason is clear: The stakes in standardized testing have become tremendously high, for everyone from administrators and teachers to parents who own property within a school system's borders. To school superintendents, for instance, high scores frequently mean national reputations and big contracts.
U.S. News and World Report, April 27, 1992, Schools for Scandal
But despite the premium placed on standardized-test scores, test security in the nation's school systems is extraordinarily weak. Teachers have ready access to the tests and answers, since the same tests are often used year after year. And they generally administer the tests to their own students in their own classrooms, frequently scoring them by hand -- all conditions that make cheating easy. The most benign result of such laxness is that teachers are sorely tempted to teach precisely what they know the test will cover -- often to the exclusion of higher skills.
U.S. News and World Report, April 27, 1992, Schools for Scandal
The high price tag for rigorous test security is a major reason for its absence in many states, say Phillips and other experts. Safeguards like tamperproof packaging, last-minute delivery of test booklets to schools and optical scanning of answer sheets add significantly to testing budgets. The most effective deterrents to test tampering -- proctors, frequent in- person audits of test administration and the regular use of new tests -- are still more expensive.
As a result, the administration of standardized tests is left largely in the hands of local teachers and school officials, who increasingly are being judged by the very tests that they are relied on to safeguard. "It's the worst role conflict I can imagine," says Dean Nafziger, head of the Far West Laboratory for Educational Research and Development and a former testing director in the San Diego schools.
U.S. News and World Report, April 27, 1992, Schools for Scandal
Advanced topics that are not tested are ignored in many classrooms, critics charge. Half the teachers in a 1990 study by Janie Hall and Paul Kleine of the University of Oklahoma said they had shifted their teaching strategy to match particular questions on standardized tests. And in her study, Smith found that teachers gave short shrift to science, social studies and writing in favor of reading, vocabulary lists, spelling, punctuation and arithmetic. There is also less student participation in classrooms where tests drive teaching, less debate, and fewer opportunities for students to develop original solutions to problems.
U.S. News and World Report, January 11, 1993, The Perfect School
"Teaching in U.S. schools trivializes by being superficial," says Theodore Sizer, a leading school reformer. "Even in hotshot high schools, the quality of students' writing makes it clear that something is wrong. Kids need to write and rewrite and rewrite. That takes time." Sizer is highly critical of the chaos in the typical curriculum, where "math is unrelated to science is unrelated to French." The solution is to teach fewer subjects in greater depth and better illuminate the connections between them.
U.S. News and World Report, January 11, 1993, The Perfect School
If introduced on a large scale, experts say, cutting-edge technology could improve public education's bottom line significantly. Congress's Office of Technology Assessment recently reported "a general consensus that the appropriate assignment of new technologies within effectively organized schools could make a big difference in academic performance."
Feenberg, Andrew, of San Diego State University, 1996, From Essentialism to Constructivism: Philosophy of Technology at the Crossroads
But there are significant ambiguities in Heidegger's approach. He warns us that the essence of technology is nothing technological, that is to say, technology cannot be understood through its functionality, but only through our specifically technological engagement with the world. But is that engagement merely an attitude or is it embedded in the actual design of modern technological devices? In the former case, we could achieve the free relation to technology which Heidegger demands without changing technology itself. But that is an idealistic solution in the bad sense, and one which a generation of environmental action would seem decisively to refute.
Feenberg, Andrew, of San Diego State University, 1996, From Essentialism to Constructivism: Philosophy of Technology at the Crossroads
Unfortunately, Heidegger's argument is developed at such a high level of abstraction he literally cannot discriminate between electricity and atom bombs, agricultural techniques and the Holocaust. All are merely different expressions of the identical enframing, which we are called to transcend through the recovery of a deeper relation to being. And since he rejects technical regression while leaving no room for a modern alternative, it is difficult to see in what that relation would consist beyond a mere change of attitude.
MUSIC-ENRICHED EDUCATION INCREASES ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT
Akin, Jeane, of California State University, 1987, Northern California Bulletin on Education, # 4
Arts education leads to academic achievement. An educational research firm, CEMREL, Inc., has issued a report in 1980 which concluded that in 67 specific studies made in California, student achievement in reading, writing and math improved when the arts were included in curriculum (Milley, Buchen, Okerlund & Mortarotti, 1983). In an arts enriched instruction, a music accompaniment to reading a foreign language produces accelerated learning and increased retention, according to studies developed by Dr. Georgi Lozanov (Ostrander & Schroder, 1979). Interest in academic learning is increased in an arts enriched curriculum.
MUSIC STUDY ENHANCES ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT AND NEUROLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT
Akin, Jeane, of California State University, 1987, Northern California Bulletin on Education, # 4
Music education has a positive effect on providing opportunities for academic achievement. High school music students have been shown to hold higher grade point averages (GPA) than non-musicians in the same school in a 1981-82 study at Mission Viejo High School in California (Horne, 1983).
The study of music produces the development of academic achievement skills. A 1981 survey revealed that 40% of the Westinghouse Science Talent Search winners were accomplished musicians (California State Department of Education, 1986).
Dr. Frank R. Wilson, assistant a clinical professor of neurology at the University of California School of Medicine, San Francisco, reports that learning to play a musical instrument helps students to develop faster physically, mentally, emotionally, and socially. He states that research shows instrument practice to enhance coordination, concentration, memory, improvement of eyesight, and hearing acuity is possible. He concludes that learning to play an instrument progressively refines the development of the brain and the entire neuromuscular system (Mueller, 1984).
MUSIC EDUCATION LEADS TO RAISED SELF-ESTEEM , LISTENING SKILLS, AND OTHER POSITIVE FACTORS
Akin, Jeane, of California State University, 1987, Northern California Bulletin on Education, # 4
There is a relationship between high self-perception, high cognitive competence scores, general self-esteem, and interest in school music. In a study by the Norwegian Research Council for Science and the Humanities, a connection was found between students having musical competence and high motivation to achieve success in school. Students with interest and competence in school music were found to have positive correlation with cognitive competence scores (Lillemyr, 1983).
Studies have shown that achievement in school music builds student self-image which is a motivation for academic learning among urban Black middle school students (Marshall, 1978). Music lessons can lead to interest in academics. Underachieving, disadvantaged youth were given music lessons and developed improvement in their academic attitude and aspirations; they were motivated to learn academic subjects (Olanoff & Kirschner, 1969).
Music education improves student listening skills. This is reported in many studies, and specifically in a study of the Passaic, New Jersey Public Schools Summer Program for grades 2-6 students in which music was used in the teaching of English to Spanish speakers and reading in English to English-speaking children. The program included vocal and instrumental instruction. All students achieved (Kohanski, 1975).
MUSIC EDUCATION IMPROVES DEVELOPMENT OF DISABLED STUDENTS
Akin, Jeane, of California State University, 1987, Northern California Bulletin on Education, # 4
Music education allows disabled students to achieve significantly. A three-year Arts in Education project in five elementary schools in the Clover Park School District, Tacoma, Washington demonstrated that when basic academic skills were learned through music, a consistent gain of achievement score points was made. Music was found to be highly useful in teaching perceptual skills, and brought a greater interest in language development (Appel & Goldberg, 1979). Achievement in music performance allows mentally disabled students to achieve in other areas as well. Music education, performance, and therapy used to treat the disabled help them to develop self-confidence. This confidence leads to other achievements (Reingold, 1987).
ALTHOUGH EVIDENCE SUGGESTS THAT MUSIC EDUCATION INCREASES ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT, MORE RESEARCH IS NEEDED BEFORE A POLICY DECISION SHOULD BE MADE
Akin, Jeane, of California State University, 1987, Northern California Bulletin on Education, # 4
Interest in developing more research in the area of the cognitive connection between music education and achievement grows as the need to demonstrate music education's value becomes increasing necessary. The data, though sparse, provides evidence that music education has a positive effect on cognition and achievement, including the development of academic learning skills in K-8 students.
Research provides evidence that music curriculum aids students in developing the skills necessary for academic achievement. Studies into arts education; a music curriculum; and pre-learning activities in music, reading and math curriculum give specific evidence of the positive connection between music education and academic achievement. The present evidence, however, needs to be joined by future research which may allow educators to draw definitive conclusions.
ASSESSMENT TESTS DECREASE ARTS EDUCATION
Family Education, 1998, http://www.familyeducation.com/article/0,1120,4-5290,00.html
Gary Marks of the American Association of School Superintendents says that one important reason why arts education isn't more common in public schools is due to the growing emphasis on high-stakes assessment tests. Because these tests focus on core subjects such as math and science, they've had the predictable result of pushing arts further to the margins.
ABSENT ART EDUCATION, AMERICA FACES ECONOMIC FAILURE
Family Education, 1998, http://www.familyeducation.com/article/0,1120,4-5290,00.html
According to the Department of Education, America has flunked art. So, what's our punishment? Beyond the possibility that we aren't developing tomorrow's Mozarts and Picassos, we may also be putting ourselves at economic risk. As Richard Gurin of the National Alliance of Business put it, "Ideas are what built American business, and it is the arts that build ideas and nurture a place in the mind for them to grow. Arts education programs can help repair weaknesses in American education and better prepare workers for the twenty-first century."
THE PLAN CANNOT SOLVE- MOST DROPOUTS LEAVE SCHOOL BEFORE HIGH SCHOOL
Educational Resources Information Center, 1994, School Dropouts: New Information About...
Nevertheless, the dropout rate appears to be declining, although about 381,000 students left school without graduating in 1993. Nearly two-thirds of the dropouts leave before the tenth grade, 20 percent drop out by the eighth grade, and 3 percent do not even complete the fourth grade. Ethnic Differences. Hispanic students are slightly more likely to drop out than African Americans; Asian American and white students are less likely than both those groups. Nearly 40 percent of Hispanic students who drop out do so before the eighth grade.
STOPPING BILINGUAL EDUCATION IS WRONG FOR FIVE REASONS
National Education Association, 1996, http://www.nea.org/society/engonly.html#Reasons
According to the National Education Association 1988 publication Official English/English Only: More Than Meets the Eye, "The English Language Amendment is the wrong remedy for whatever of America's social ills it tries to solve -- for five reasons. It ignores our country's civil rights tradition; it fails to promote the integration of language minority citizens into the American mainstream; it neglects the need for American merchants to communicate with foreign markets; it restricts the government's ability to reach all citizens; and it raises Constitutional concerns." It is an attempt to disenfranchise minority citizens; it promotes divisiveness and hostility toward those whose first language is not English. Now, eight years later, the NEA still holds this position.
THE CURRENT PRACTICE OF VALUING STUDENTS' SELF-ESTEEM ABOVE ALL ELSE FAILS
Shokraii, Nina H., of the Center for Equal Opportunity, 1996, http://www.ceousa.org/self.html
Traditionally, public schools have thought that students' satisfaction will follow on the heels of their academic success. In other words, children who perform well in class will consequently feel good about themselves. But more recent educational theories have reversed this logic. They say that students must secure high self-esteem before they can hope to achieve. In other words, they must feel good about themselves before they can perform well in class.
For all of its current popularity, however, self-esteem theory threatens to deny children the tools they will need in order to experience true success in school and as adults. Compelling research from around the world lends empirical proof to the traditional claim that achievement precedes self-esteem. There is, in fact, almost no correlation between low self-esteem and any number of social pathologies, including poor school performance, drug abuse, and teenage pregnancy.
PUTTING SELF-ESTEEM ABOVE DIRECT ACADEMIC SUCCESS HINDERS EDUCATION AND PRODUCES VIOLENCE
Shokraii, Nina H., of the Center for Equal Opportunity, 1996, http://www.ceousa.org/self.html
Black children are common targets of self-esteem theory, which in their case often goes by the name of Afrocentrism. Yet they are also some of the most vulnerable, since many of them desperately require the same basic academic skills that self-esteem theory subordinates to a shallow, feel-good classroom experience. One study has even shown that inflated self-esteem among adolescent black males can encourage violent behavior.
WE MUST STOP PROMOTING SELF-ESTEEM OF ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT IN ORDER TO EDUCATE STUDENTS
Shokraii, Nina H., of the Center for Equal Opportunity, 1996, http://www.ceousa.org/self.html
Schools must abandon their mindless pursuit of empty self-esteem and return to the fundamental task of helping students do their best. Traditional academic preparation best teaches children how to achieve old-fashioned academic success.
This is fundamentally wrongheaded. There is little reason to believe self-esteem leads to academic achievement, or even that self-esteem is necessary for academic success. It is therefore crucial to delegitimize the education establishment's mindless glorification of self-esteem. As Richard Weissbourd has written, schools gripped by self-esteem theory "are, in essence, producing a generation of poorly educated adults who will lack the habits of hard work and perseverance that have historically been necessary to achieving true success."
STUDIES VALUING STUDENTS' SELF-ESTEEM ARE FLAWED AND INCONSISTANT
Shokraii, Nina H., of the Center for Equal Opportunity, 1996, http://www.ceousa.org/self.html
Neil Smelser noted in his introduction, "One of the disappointing aspects of every chapter in this volume ... is how low the associations between self-esteem and its consequences are in research to date."8 Over the years, other reviewers have offered similar readings of the available research, pointing to results that are unimpressive or characterized by "massive inconsistencies and contradictions."9 Most remarkable about the California Task Force, it was not a disinterested group of scholars. They wanted to find a link. But when their research failed to turn one up, they had the honesty to admit it.
UNLIKE MORE SUCCESSFUL FOREIGN EDUCATORS, AMERICAN TEACHERS BELIEVE IN THE SUPREME IMPORTANCE OF A STUDENT'S SELF-ESTEEM
Shokraii, Nina H., of the Center for Equal Opportunity, 1996, http://www.ceousa.org/self.html
Part of the problem, Stevenson and Stigler found, lies in American teachers' priorities in the classroom. They focus much more on sensitivity to the students' needs, whereas Asians concentrate on their ability to explain things clearly. Indeed, roughly half of the Asian teachers surveyed said that clarity is one of the most important attributes required to be a good teacher. Only 10 percent of them said that sensitivity is equally important. Given the same set of choices, American teachers reversed priorities. Moreover, American teachers avoid exposing their students' poor performance, fearing damage to their self-esteem. Japanese and Chinese teachers, on the other hand, regard mistakes as an index of what remains to be learned through persistence and increased effort. In other words, American schools worry more about how students view themselves than about their actual academic performance.
HIGH SELF-ESTEEM DOES NOT HELP BLACK STUDENTS
Shokraii, Nina H., of the Center for Equal Opportunity, 1996, http://www.ceousa.org/self.html
Because self-esteem theory advertises itself as a quick fix to poor academic achievement, it would make sense that the neediest students are also the most vulnerable to its deceptive message. Indeed, black students enrolled in Afrocentric educational programs receive a full-course diet in self-esteem enhancement, all of it positioned on the shaky theoretical ground that injecting racial pride into black children will help them overcome obstacles to academic success. But again, the value of self-esteem for black children is highly questionable, even if it does not come packaged in Afrocentrism.
EDUCATIONALLY-UNWARRANTED, HIGH SELF-ESTEEM IN BLACKS CAUSES AN INCREASE IN VIOLENCE
Shokraii, Nina H., of the Center for Equal Opportunity, 1996, http://www.ceousa.org/self.html
Those who think low self-esteem is the cause of high crime rates among blacks are also wrong. According to a recent study by psychologists Roy Baumeister, Joseph Boden, and Laura Smart, "first, [this notion] does not fit the transient shifts in the crime rate among African Americans, which is now reaching its highest levels as slavery recedes farther and farther into the background. Second, self-esteem levels among African Americans are now equal to, or higher than, the self-esteem levels of whites. Third, it is far from certain that slaves had a low self-esteem." A study by Jennifer Crocker and Brenda Major of the State University of New York at Buffalo, similarly refuted the psychological theories that claim members of stigmatized groups (blacks, for example) should possess low global self-esteem. They argued that stigmatized individuals are not simply "passive victims but are frequently able to actively protect their self-esteem from prejudice and discrimination."
Ironically, adolescent African-American males living in impoverished neighborhoods are more likely to turn violent if schools bombard them with unearned praise. Baumeister, Boden, and Smart found that when high self-esteem is challenged by others' negative views, egotism is threatened. People will react in one of two ways. They either lower their self-appraisal and withdraw, or they maintain their self-appraisal and manifest negative emotions toward the source of the ego threat. This response can easily become violent in individuals who place high emphasis on their self-appraisal.
ARTIFICIALLY INCREASING THE SELF-ESTEEM OF POOR STUDENTS NEEDLESSLY IMPEDES EDUCATION
Shokraii, Nina H., of the Center for Equal Opportunity, 1996, http://www.ceousa.org/self.html
Every day in the name of self-esteem, however, schools cheat low-income children (many of whom are black) into settling for inflated egos instead of increased knowledge. Such efforts aimed at guaranteeing minorities heightened self-esteem, coupled with lawsuits challenging minimum competency exams and proficiency tests, erroneously assume that these children's self-esteem cannot possibly get proper nourishment in the poor households in which they are reared. Social workers and teachers create special courses and excuses for these children on a regular basis.
In his book The Vulnerable Child, Weissbourd vehemently attacks such efforts, asserting that "although poor children are more likely to suffer an array of ... problems, the great majority of poor children are prepared to learn, at least when they begin school. Developmental delays and serious learning difficulties among children ages three to five, are higher among poor than among middle- and upper-income children ... But over 75 percent of poor children ages 6-11 have never experienced significant developmental delays, or emotional troubles, or a learning disability in childhood." Weissbourd highly discourages enrolling disadvantaged minority kids in remedial courses or special education classes, because it will only make it more difficult for them to move into the mainstream.
OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE HARM THAT SELF-ESTEEM BASED EDUCATION CAUSES IS SUFFICIENT TO WARRANT OUR ENDING OF ITS USE
Shokraii, Nina H., of the Center for Equal Opportunity, 1996, http://www.ceousa.org/self.html
After years of failed experimentation, it is time to stop touting the importance of self-esteem and start providing students with the elements real self-esteem is made of. As this Policy Brief shows, building self-esteem is not only a smokescreen vis-ΰ-vis academic success, it can also lead to considerable harm. After all, as Weissbourd points out "to develop effective coping strategies, children, in fact, need to learn to manage a certain amount of disappointment and conflict."
FOCUSING EDUCATION ON GRADES AND PERFORMANCE INCREASES CHEATING
Peikin, David, of the American Psychological Association, February 27, 1998, eande1@pop.uky.edu
Adolescents who perceive that schools and classroom teachers define achievement primarily in terms of grades and performance are more likely to cheat and believe that cheating is acceptable. Psychologist Eric M. Anderman, Ph.D., and graduate students Tripp Griesinger, M.S., and Gloria Westerfield, M.S., of the University of Kentucky studied 285 middle school science students and examined the link between cheating in science class and the motivational variables behind such behavior. Their findings indicate that students who report cheating tend to perceive their school as focused on grades and ability.
CAPITALISM IS THE SOURCE OF EVIL AND IMPOVERISHMENT.
Einstein, Albert, 1949, Monthly Review, New York
The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil. We see before us a huge community of producers, the members of which are unceasingly striving to deprive each other of the fruits of their collective labor -- not by force, but on the whole in faithful compliance with legally established rules. In this respect, it is important to realize that the means of production -- that is to say, the entire productive capacity that is needed for producing consumer goods as well as additional capital goods -- may legally be, and for the most part are, the private property of individuals.
OUR EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM REENFORCES TECHNOLOGICAL THOUGHT AND CRIPPLING EVILS.
Einstein, Albert, 1949, Monthly Review, New York
There is no provision that all those able and willing to work will always be in a position to find employment; an "army of unemployed" almost always exists. The worker is constantly in fear of losing his job. Since unemployed and poorly paid workers do not provide a profitable market, the production of consumers' goods is restricted, and great hardship is the consequence. Technological progress frequently results in more unemployment rather than in an easing of the burden of work for all. The profit motive, in conjunction with competition among capitalists, is responsible for an instability in the accumulation and utilization of capital which leads to increasingly severe depressions. Unlimited competition leads to a huge waste of labor, and to that crippling of the social consciousness of individuals which I mentioned before.
This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career.
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
SOCIALISM WORKED UNTIL IT WAS CRUSHED BY THE INEQUITIES OF GOVERNMENTS.
Kropotkin, Peter, 1913, The Conquest of Bread (Elephant Edition, 1990), p.17
One of the current objections to Communism and Socialism altogether, is that the idea is so old, and yet it has never been realized. Schemes of ideal States haunted the thinkers of Ancient Greece; later on, the early Christians joined in communist groups; centuries later, large communist brotherhoods came into existence during the Reform movement. ...
At first sight, this objection seems very serious. However, the moment we consider human history more attentively, it loses its strength. We see, first, that hundreds of millions of men have succeeded in maintaining amongst themselves, in their village communities, for many hundreds of years, one of the main elements of Socialism the common ownership of the chief instrument of production, the land, and the appointment of the same according to the labor capacities of the different families; and we learn that if the communal possession of the land has been destroyed in Western Europe, it was not from within, but from without, by the governments which created a land monopoly in favor of the nobility and the middle classes.
Kropotkin, Peter, 1906, The Conquest of Bread (Elephant Edition, 1990), p.26
In our civilized societies we are rich. Why then are the many poor? Why this painful drudgery for the masses? Why, even to the best paid workman, this uncertainty for the morrow, in the midst of all the wealth inherited from the past, and in spite of the powerful means of production, which could ensure comfort to all, in return for a few hours of daily toil?
The Socialists have said it and repeated it unwearingly. Daily they reiterate it, demonstrating it by arguments taken from all the sciences. It is because all that is necessary for production the land, the mines, the highways, machinery, food, shelter, education, knowledge all have been seized by the few in the course of that long story of robbery, enforced migration and wars, of ignorance and oppression, which has been the life of the human race before it learned to subdue the forces of Nature. It is because, taking advantage of alleged rights acquired in the past, these few appropriate today two thirds of the products of human labor, and then squander them in the most shameful way.
Kropotkin, Peter, 1906, The Conquest of Bread (Elephant Edition, 1990), p.31
We cry shame on the feudal baron who forbade the peasant to turn a clod of earth unless he surrendered to his lord a fourth of his crop. We called those barbarous times. But if the forms have changed, the relations have remained the same, and the worker is forced, under the name of free contract, to accept feudal obligations. For, turn where he will, he can find no better conditions. Everything has become private property, and he must accept, or die of hunger.
The result of this state of things is that all our production tends in a wrong direction. Enterprise takes no thought for the needs of the community. Its only aim is to increase the gains of the speculator. Hence the constant fluctuations of trade, the periodical industrial crises, each of which throws scores of thousands of workers on the streets.
Kropotkin, Peter, 1906, The Conquest of Bread (Elephant Edition, 1990), p.33
The system under which we live checks in its turn the growth of the social sentiment. We all know that without uprightness, without self-respect, without sympathy, and mutual aid, human kind must perish, as perish the few races of animals living by rapine, or the slave-keeping ants. But such ideas are not to the taste of the ruling classes, and they have elaborated a whole system of pseudo-science to teach the contrary.
Fine sermons have been preached on the text that those who have should share with those who have not, but he who would carry out this principle would be speedily informed that these beautiful sentiments are all very well in poetry, but not in practice. "To lie is to degrade and besmirch oneself," we say, and yet all civilized life becomes one huge lie. We accustom ourselves and our children to hypocrisy, to the practice of a double-faced morality. And since the brain is ill at ease among lies, we cheat ourselves with sophistry. Hypocrisy and sophistry become the second nature of the civilized man.
But a society cannot live thus; it must return to truth, or cease to exist.
Kropotkin, Peter, 1906, The Conquest of Bread (Elephant Edition, 1990), p.34
All is for all! If the man and the woman bear their fair share of work, they have the right to their fair share of all that is produced by all, and that share is enough to secure them well-being. No more of such vague formulas as "The right to work", or "To each the whole result of his labor". What we proclaim is the right to well-being: Well-being for all!
Kropotkin, Peter, 1906, The Conquest of Bread (Elephant Edition, 1990), p.38
No, plenty for all is not a dream though it was a dream indeed in those days when man, for all his pains, could hardly win a few bushels of wheat from an acre of land, and had to fashion by hand all the implements he used in agriculture and industry. Now it is no longer a dream, because man has invented a motor which, with a little iron and a few sacks of coal, gives him mastery of a creature strong and docile as a horse, and capable of setting the most complicated machinery in motion.
But if plenty for all is to become a reality, this immense capital cities, houses, pastures, arable lands, factories, highways, education must cease to be regarded as private property, for the monopolist to dispose of at his pleasure.
This rich endowment, painfully won, builded, fashioned, or invented by our ancestors, must become common property, so that the collective interests of men may gain from it the greatest good for all.
There must be expropriation. The well-being of all the end; expropriation the means.
Kropotkin, Peter, 1906, The Conquest of Bread (Elephant Edition, 1990), p.46
The wage system arises out of the individual ownership of the land and the instruments of labor. It was the necessary condition for the development of capitalist production, and will perish with it, in spite of the attempt to disguise it as "profit-sharing". The common possession of the instruments of labor must necessarily bring with it the enjoyment in common of the fruits of common labor.
Kropotkin, Peter, 1906, The Conquest of Bread (Elephant Edition, 1990), p.64
All is interdependent in civilized society; it is impossible to reform any one thing without altering the whole. Therefore, on the day a nation will strike at private property, under any one of its forms, territorial or industrial, it will be obliged to attack them all. The very success of the Revolution will impose it.
Besides, even if it were desired, it would be impossible to confine the change to a partial expropriation. Once the principle of the "Divine Right of Property" is shaken, no amount of theorizing will prevent its overthrow, here by the slaves of the field, there by the slaves of the machine.
Kropotkin, Peter, 1906, The Conquest of Bread (Elephant Edition, 1990), p.64
Some Socialists still seek, however, to establish a distinction. "Of course," they say, "the soil, the mines, the mills, and manufactures must be expropriated, these are the instruments of production, and it is right we should consider them public property. But articles of consumption food, clothes, and dwellings should remain private property."
Popular common sense has got the better of this subtle distinction. We are not savages who can live in the woods, without other shelter than branches. The civilized man needs a roof, a room, a hearth, and a bed. It is true that the bed, the room, and the house is a home of idleness for the non-producer. But for the worker, a room, properly heated and lighted, is as much an instrument of production as the tool or the machine. It is the place where the nerves and sinews gather strength for the work of the morrow.
Kropotkin, Peter, 1906, The Conquest of Bread (Elephant Edition, 1990), p.68
"Bread, it is bread that the Revolution needs!"
Let others spend their time in issuing pompous proclamations, in decorating themselves lavishly wit h official gold lace, and in talking about political liberty!...
Be it ours to see, from the first day of the Revolution to the last, in all provinces fighting for freedom, that there is not a single man who lacks bread, not a single woman compelled to stand with the wearied crowd outside the bakerhouse door, that haply a coarse loaf may be thrown to her in charity, not a single child pining in want for food.
It has always been the middle-class idea to harangue about "great principles" great lies rather!
The idea of the people will be to provide bread for all. And while middle-class citizens, and workmen infested with middle-class ideas admire their own rhetoric in the "Talking Shops", and "practical people" are engaged in endless discussions on forms of government, we, the "Utopian dreamers" we shall have to consider the question of daily bread.
We have the temerity to declare that all have the right to bread, that there is bread enough for all, and that with this watchword of Bread for All the Revolution will triumph.
Kropotkin, Peter, 1906, The Conquest of Bread (Elephant Edition, 1990), p.69
So Utopian are we that we go the length of believing that the Revolution can and ought to assure shelter, food, and clothes to all an idea extremely displeasing to middle-class citizens, whatever their party colour, for they are quite alive to the fact that it is not easy to keep the upper hand of a people whose hunger is satisfied.
All the same, we maintain our contention: bread must be found for the people of the Revolution, and the question of bread must take precedence of all other questions. If it is settled in the interests of the people, the Revolution will be on the right road; for in solving the question of Bread we must accept the principle of equality, which will force itself upon us to the exclusion of every other solution.
Kropotkin, Peter, 1906, The Conquest of Bread (Elephant Edition, 1990), p.73
This point cannot be too much insisted upon; the reorganization of industry on a new basis cannot be accomplished in a few days; nor, on the other hand, will the people submit to be half starved for years in order to oblige the theorists who uphold the wage system. To tide over the period of stress they will demand what they have always demanded in such cases communization of supplies the giving of rations.
It will be vain to preach patience. The people will be patient no longer, and if food is not forthcoming they will plunder the bakeries.
Kropotkin, Peter, 1906, The Conquest of Bread (Elephant Edition, 1990), p.84
We must offer to the peasant in exchange for his toil not worthless paper-money, but the manufactured articles of which he stands in immediate need. He lacks the proper implements to till the land, clothes to protect him properly from the inclemencies of the weather, lamps and oil to replace his miserable rushlight or tallow dip, spades, rakes, ploughs. All these things, under present conditions, the peasant is forced to do without, not because he does not feel the need for them, but because, in his life of struggle and privation, a thousand useful things are beyond his reach; because he has no money to buy them.
Kropotkin, Peter, 1906, The Conquest of Bread (Elephant Edition, 1990), p.108
We see that the worker, compelled to struggle painfully for bare existence, is reduced to ignore the higher delights, the highest within man's reach, of science, and especially of scientific discovery; of art, and especially of artistic creation. It is in order to obtain for all of us joys that are now reserved to a few; in order to give leisure and the possibility of developing everyone's intellectual capacities, that the social revolution must guarantee daily bread for all. After bread has been secured, leisure is the supreme aim.
No doubt, nowadays, when hundreds and thousands of human beings are in need of bread, coal, clothing, and shelter, luxury is a crime; to satisfy it, the worker's child must go without bread! But in a society in which all have the necessary food and shelter, the needs which we consider luxuries today will be more keenly felt.
Kropotkin, Peter, 1906, The Conquest of Bread (Elephant Edition, 1990), p.129
Accustomed as we are by hereditary prejudices and our unsound education and training to represent ourselves the beneficial hand of Government, legislation and magistracy everywhere, we have come to believe that man would tear his fellow-man to pieces like a wild beast the day the police took his eye off him; that absolute chaos would come about if authority were overthrown during a revolution. And with our eyes shut we pass by thousands and thousands of human groupings which form themselves freely, without any intervention of the law, and attain results infinitely superior to those achieved under governmental tutelage.
Kropotkin, Peter, 1906, The Conquest of Bread (Elephant Edition, 1990), p.144
They fear that without compulsion the masses will not work.
But during our own lifetime, have we not heard the same fears expressed twice? Once, by the anti-abolitionists in America before the emancipation of the Negroes, and, for a second time, by the Russian nobility before the liberation of the serfs? "Without the whip the Negro will not work," said the anti-abolitionist. "Free from their master's supervision the serfs will eave the fields uncultivated," said the Russian serf-owners. It was the refrain -of the French noblemen in 1789, the refrain of the Middle Ages, a refrain as old as the world, and we shall hear it every time there is a question of sweeping away injustice. And each time the actual facts give it the lie. The liberated peasant of 1792 ploughed with an eager energy, unknown to his ancestors; the emancipated Negro works more than his fathers; and the Russian peasant, after having honoured the honeymoon of his emancipation by celebrating Fridays as well as Sundays, has taken up work with an eagerness proportionate to the completeness of his liberation. There, where the soil is his, he works desperately; that is the exact word for it. The anti-abolitionist refrain can be of value to slave-owners; as to the slaves themselves, they know what it is worth, as they know its motive.
Kropotkin, Peter, 1906, The Conquest of Bread (Elephant Edition, 1990), p.146
Well-being that is to say, the satisfaction of physical, artistic, and moral needs, has always been the most powerful stimulant to work. And where a hireling hardly succeeds to produce the bare necessities with difficulty, a free worker, who sees ease and luxury increasing for him and for others in proportion to his efforts, spends infinitely far more energy and intelligence, and obtains first-class products in a far greater abundance. The one feels riveted to misery, the other hopes for ease and luxury in the future. In this lies the whole secret. Therefore a society aiming at well-being of all, and at the possibility of all enjoying life in all its manifestations, will give voluntary work, which will be infinitely superior and yield far more than work has produced up till now under the goad of slavery, serfdom, or wagedom.
Kropotkin, Peter, 1906, The Conquest of Bread (Elephant Edition, 1990), p.148
We understand that all men have but one dream that of emerging from, or enabling their children to emerge from, this inferior state; to create for themselves an "independent" position, which means what? To also live by other men's work!
As long as there will be a class of manual workers and a class of "brain" workers, black hands and white hands, it will be thus.
Kropotkin, Peter, 1906, The Conquest of Bread (Elephant Edition, 1990), p.148
What interest, in fact, can this depressing work have for the worker, when he knows that the fate awaiting him from the cradle to the grave will be to live in mediocrity, poverty, and insecurity of the morrow? Therefore, when we see the immense majority of men take up their wretched task every morning, we feel surprised at their perseverance, at their zeal for work, at the habit that enables them, like machines blindly obeying an impetus given, to lead this life of misery without hope for the morrow; without foreseeing ever so vaguely that some day they, or at least their children, will be part of a humanity rich in all the treasures of a bountiful nature, in all the enjoyments of knowledge, scientific and artistic creation, reserved today to a few privileged favourites.
It is precisely to put an end to this separation between manual and brain work that we want to abolish wagedom, that we want the Social Revolution. Then work will no longer appear a curse of fate: it will become what it should be the free exercise of all the faculties of man.
Kropotkin, Peter, 1906, The Conquest of Bread (Elephant Edition, 1990), p.150
Wage-work is serf-work; it cannot, it must not, produce all that it could produce. And it is high time to disbelieve the legend which represents wagedom as the best incentive to productive work. If industry nowadays brings in a hundred times more than it did in the days of our grandfathers, it is due to the sudden awakening of physical and chemical sciences towards the end of last century; not to the capitalist organization of wagedom, but in spite of that organization.
Kropotkin, Peter, 1906, The Conquest of Bread (Elephant Edition, 1990), p.156
Somebody has said that dust is matter in the wrong place. The same definition applies to nine tenths of those called lazy. They are people gone astray in a direction that does not answer to their temperament nor to their capacities. In reading the biography of great men, we are struck with the number of idlers' among them. They were lazy so long as they had not found the right path; afterwards they became laborious to excess. Darwin, Stephenson, and many others belonged to this category of idlers.
Very often the idler is but a man to whom it is repugnant to spend all his life making the eighteenth part of a pin, or the hundredth part of a watch, while he feels he has exuberant energy which he would like to expend elsewhere. Often, too, he is a rebel who cannot submit to being fixed all his life to a work-bench in order to procure a thousand pleasures for his employer, while knowing himself to be far the less stupid of the two, and knowing his only fault to be that of having been born in a hovel instead of coming into the world in a castle.
Kropotkin, Peter, 1906, The Conquest of Bread (Elephant Edition, 1990), p.158
Do not you see that by your methods of teaching, framed by a Ministry for eight million scholars, who represent eight million different capacities, you only impose a system good for mediocrities, conceived by an average of mediocrities? Your school becomes a University of laziness, as your prison is a University of crime. Make the school free, abolish your University grades, appeal to the volunteers of teaching; begin that way, instead of making laws against laziness which serve only to increase it.
Kropotkin, Peter, 1906, The Conquest of Bread (Elephant Edition, 1990), p.158
Give the workman who cannot condemn himself to make all his life a minute particle of some object, who is stifled at his little tapping machine, which he ends by loathing, give him the chance of tilling the soil, of felling trees in the forest, sailing the seas in the teeth of a storm, dashing through space on an engine, but do not make an idler of him by forcing him all his life to attend to a small machine, to plough the head of a screw, or to drill the eye of a needle.
Suppress the cause of idleness, and you may take it for granted that few individuals will really hate work, especially voluntary work, and that there will be no need to manufacture a code of laws on their account.
Kropotkin, Peter, 1906, The Conquest of Bread (Elephant Edition, 1990), p.163
They proclaim a revolutionary principle, and ignore the consequences that this principle will inevitably bring about. They forget that the very fact of abolishing individual property in the instruments of work land, factories, roads, capital must launch society into absolutely new channels; must completely overthrow the present system of production, both in its aim as well as its means; must modify daily relations between individuals, as soon as land, machinery, and all other instruments of production are considered common property.
They say, "No private property," and immediately after strive to maintain private property in its daily manifestations.
Kropotkin, Peter, 1906, The Conquest of Bread (Elephant Edition, 1990), p.164
We have said that certain collectivist writers desire that a distinction should be made between qualified or professional work and simple work. They pretend that an hour's work of an engineer, an architect, or a doctor, must be considered as two or three hours' work of a blacksmith, a mason, or a hospital nurse. And the same distinction must be made between all sorts of trades necessitating apprenticeship, and the simple toil of daily labourers.
Well, to establish this distinction would be to maintain all the inequalities of present society. It would mean fixing a dividing line, form the beginning, between the workers and those who pretend to govern them. It would mean dividing society into two very distinct classes the aristocracy of knowledge placed above the horny-handed lower orders the one doomed to serve the other; the one working with his hands to feed and clothe those who, profiting by their leisure, study how to govern their fosterers.
Kropotkin, Peter, 1906, The Conquest of Bread (Elephant Edition, 1990), p.166
"It would be better," so they say, "to see certain artisans receiving a wage two or three times higher than common labourers, than to see a minister receiving in a day what a workman cannot earn in a year. It would be a great step towards equality."
For us this step would be the reverse of progress. To make a distinction between simple and professional work in a new society would result in the Revolution sanctioning and recognizing as a principle a brutal fact we submit to nowadays, but that we nevertheless find unjust. It would mean imitating those gentlemen of the French Assembly who proclaimed on August 4, 1789 the abolition of feudal rights, but who on August 8 sanctioned these same rights by imposing dues on the peasants to compensate the noblemen, placing these dues under the protection of the Revolution. It would mean imitating the Russian Government, which proclaimed, at the time of the emancipation of the serfs, that certain lands should henceforth belong to the nobility, while formerly these lands were considered as belonging to the serfs.
Kropotkin, Peter, 1906, The Conquest of Bread (Elephant Edition, 1990), p.172
Poverty, we have said elsewhere, was the primary cause of wealth. It was poverty that created the first capitalist; because, before accumulating "surplus value", of which we hear so much, men had to be sufficiently destitute to consent to sell their labour, so as not to die of hunger. It was poverty that made capitalists. And if the number of then poor increased so rapidly during the Middle Ages, it was due to the invasions and wars that followed the founding of States, and to the increase of riches resulting from the exploitation of the East. These two causes tore asunder the bonds that kept men together in the agrarian and urban communities, and taught them to proclaim the principle of wages, so dear to the exploiters, instead of the solidarity they formerly practised in their tribal life.
Kropotkin, Peter, 1906, The Conquest of Bread (Elephant Edition, 1990), p.173
For the day on which old institutions will fall under the proletarian axe, voices will cry out: "Bread, shelter, ease for all!" And those voices will be listened to; the people will say: "Let us begin by allaying our thirst for life, for happiness, for liberty, that we have never quenched. And when we shall have tasted of this joy, we will set to work to demolish the last vestiges of middle-class rule: its mine and yours' institutions. In demolishing we shall build', as Proudhon said; and we shall build in the name of Communism and Anarchy.
Kropotkin, Peter, 1906, The Conquest of Bread (Elephant Edition, 1990), p.182
If, however, learned economists were the only ones to preach the permanent and often hereditary division of labour, we might allow them to preach it as much as they pleased. But the ideas taught by doctors of science filter into men's minds and pervert them; and from repeatedly hearing the division of labour, profits, interest, credit, etc., spoken of as problems long since solved, all middle-class people, and workers too, end by arguing like economists; they venerate the same fetishes.
Kropotkin, Peter, 1906, The Conquest of Bread (Elephant Edition, 1990), p.182
We know the consequences of the division of labour full well. It is evident that, first of all, we are divided into two classes: on the one hand, producers, who consume very little and are exempt from thinking because they only do physical work, and who work badly because their brains remain inactive; and on the other hand, the consumers, who, producing little or hardly anything, have the privilege of thinking for the others, and who think badly because the whole world of those who toil with their hands is unknown to them.
Bakunin, Michael, The Commune, the Church, and the State
he organization of the society of the future must and can be accomplished only from the bottom upwards, through the free federation and union of the workers into groups, unions, and societies, which will unite again into districts, communes, national communes, and finally form a great international federation. Only thus can be evolved the true vital order of liberty and happiness for all, the order which is not opposed to the interests of the individual or of society, but on the contrary strengthens the same and brings them into harmony.
Bakunin, Michael, The Commune, the Church, and the State, (Bakunin's Writings, 1947)
I am a passionate seeker for truth and just as strong an opponent of the corrupting lies, through which the party of order this privileged, official, and interested representative of all religions, philosophical political, legal economical, and social outrage in the past and present has tried to keep the world in ignorance. I love freedom with all my heart. It is the only condition under which the intelligence, the manliness, and happiness of the people, can develop and expand. By freedom, however, I naturally understand not its mere form, forced down as from above, measured and controlled by the state, this eternal lie which in reality, is nothing but the privilege of the few founded upon the slavery of all. Nor do I mean that "individualistic," selfish, petty, and mock freedom, which is propagated by J.J. Rousseau and all other schools of bourgeois liberalism. The mock freedom which is limited by the supposed right of all, and defended by the state, and leads inevitably to the destruction of the rights of the individual. No: I mean the only true freedom, that worthy of the name; the liberty which consists therein for everyone to develop all the material, intellectual, and moral faculties which lie dormant in him; the liberty which knows and recognizes no limitations beyond those which nature decrees. In this sense, there are no limitations, for the laws of our own nature are not forced upon us by a law-giver who, beside or above us, sits on a throne.
Bakunin, Michael, 1870, The German Crisis
To strive for international justice, liberty, and perpetual peace, and at the same time to uphold the State, is contradictory and naive. It is impossible to alter the nature of the State, because it is just this nature that constitutes the State; and States cannot change their nature without ceasing to exist. It thus follows that there cannot be a good, just, virtuous State. All States are bad in that sense, that they, by their nature, by their principle, by their very foundation and the highest ideal of their existence, are the opponents of human liberty, morality, and justice.
Bakunin, Michael, 1870, The German Crisis
Whosoever mentions the State, implies force, oppression, exploitation, injustice all these brought together as a system are the main condition of present-day society. The State has never had, and never can have, a morality. Its only morality and justice is its own interest, its existence, and its omnipotence at any price; and before its interest, all interest of humanity must stand in the back-ground. The State is the negation of Humanity. It is this in two ways: the opposite of human freedom and human justice (internally), as well as the forcible disruption of the common solidarity of mankind (externally).The Universal State, repeatedly attempted, has always proved an impossibility, so that as long as the State exists, States will exist and since every State regards itself as absolute, and proclaims the adoration of its power as the highest law, to which all other laws must be subordinated, it therefore follows that as long as States exist wars cannot cease. Every State must conquer, or be conquered.
Bakunin, Michael, 1867, The Workers' Path To Freedom
The inherent principles of human existence are summed up in the single law of solidarity. This is the golden rule of humanity, and may be formulated thus: no person can recognize or realize his or her own humanity except by recognizing it in others and so cooperating for its realization by each and all. No man can emancipate himself save by emancipating with him all the men about him.
My liberty is the liberty of everybody. I cannot be free in idea until I am free in fact. To be free in idea and not free in fact is to be revolt. To be free in fact is to have my liberty and my right, find their confirmation, and sanction in the liberty and right of all mankind. I am free only when all men are my equals. (first and foremost economically.)
Bukharin and Preobrazhensky, 1919, The ABC of Communism
We can perceive without difficulty that capitalist society is far less soundly constructed than it appears to be at the first glance. On the contrary, it exhibits grave contradictions and disastrous flaws. In the first place, under capitalism the production and distribution of goods is quite unorganized; 'anarchy of production' prevails. What does this mean? It means that all the capitalist entrepreneurs (or capitalist companies) produce commodities independently of one another. Instead of society undertaking to reckon up what it needs and how much of each article, the factory owners simply produce upon the calculation of what will bring them most profit and will best enable them to defeat their rivals in the market. The consequence often is that commodities are produced in excessive quantities.
Kropotkin, Peter, an anarchist theorist, 1880, The Spirit of Revolt (within Le Revolt)
By actions which compel general attention, the new idea seeps into people's minds and wins converts. One such act may, in a few days, make more propaganda than thousands of pamphlets. Above all, it awakens the spirit of revolt: it breeds daring. The old order, supported by the police, the magistrates, the gendarmes and the soldiers, appeared unshakable, like the old fortress of the Bastille, which also appeared impregnable to the eyes of the unarmed people gathered beneath its high walls equipped with loaded cannon. But soon it became apparent that the established order has not the force one had supposed. One courageous act has sufficed to upset in a few days the entire governmental machinery, to make the colossus tremble; another revolt has stirred a whole province into turmoil, and the army, till now always so imposing, has retreated before a handful of peasants armed with sticks and stones. The people observe that the monster is not so terrible as they thought they begin dimly to perceive that a few energetic efforts will be sufficient to throw it down. Hope is born in their hearts, and let us remember that if exasperation often drives men to revolt, it is always hope, the hope of victory, which makes revolutions.
Kropotkin, Peter, an anarchist theorist, 1880, The Spirit of Revolt (within Le Revolt)
When a revolutionary situation arises in a country, before the spirit of revolt is sufficiently awakened in the masses to express itself in violent demonstrations in the streets or by rebellions and uprisings, it is through action that minorities succeed in awakening that feeling of independence and that spirit of audacity without which no revolution can come to a head. Men of courage, not satisfied with words, but ever searching for the means to transform them into action,--men of integrity for whom the act is one with the idea, for whom prison, exile, and death are preferable to a life contrary to their principles,--intrepid souls who know that it is necessary to dare in order to succeed,-- these are the lonely sentinels who enter the battle long before the masses are sufficiently roused to raise openly the banner of insurrection and to march, arms in hand, to the conquest of their rights. In the midst of discontent, talk, theoretical discussions, an individual or collective act of revolt supervenes, symbolizing the dominant aspirations.
Kropotkin, Peter, an anarchist theorist, 1880, The Spirit of Revolt (within Le Revolt)
Those who long for the triumph of justice, those who would put new ideas into practice, are soon forced to recognize that the realization of their generous, humanitarian, and regenerating ideas cannot take place in a society thus constituted; they perceive the necessity of a revolutionary whirlwind which will sweep away all this rottenness, revive sluggish hearts with its breath, and bring to mankind that spirit of devotion, self-denial, and heroism, without which society sinks through degradation and vileness into complete disintegration. In periods of frenzied haste toward wealth, of feverish speculation and of crisis, of the sudden downfall of great industries and the ephemeral expansion of other branches of production, of scandalous fortunes amassed in a few years and dissipated as quickly, it becomes evident that the economic institutions which control production and exchange are far from giving to society the prosperity which they are supposed to guarantee; they produce precisely the opposite result. Instead of order they bring forth chaos; instead of prosperity, poverty and insecurity; instead of reconciled interests, war; a perpetual war of the exploiter against the worker, of exploiters and of workers among themselves.
Kropotkin, Peter, an anarchist theorist, 1880, The Spirit of Revolt (within Le Revolt)
There are periods in the life of human society when revolution becomes an imperative necessity, when it proclaims itself as inevitable. New ideas germinate everywhere, seeking to force their way into the light, to find an application in life; everywhere they are opposed by the inertia of those whose interest it is to maintain the old order; they suffocate in the stifling atmosphere of prejudice and traditions. The accepted ideas of the constitution of the State, of the laws of social equilibrium, of the political and economic interrelations of citizens, can hold out no longer against the implacable criticism which is daily undermining them whenever occasion arises,--in drawing room as in cabaret, in the writings of philosophers as in daily conversation. Political, economic, and social institutions are crumbling; the social structure, having become uninhabitable, is hindering, even preventing the development of the seeds which are being propagated within its damaged walls and being brought forth around them. The need for a new life becomes apparent.
Goldmann, Emma, 1940, The Individual, Society, and the State
One of the insane characteristics of this struggle is the complete negation of the relation of the producer to the things he produces. The average worker has no inner point of contact with the industry he is employed in, and he is a stranger to the process of production of which he is a mechanical part. Like any other cog of the machine, he is replaceable at any time by other similar depersonalized human beings.
Goldmann, Emma, 1940, The Individual, Society, and the State
Friedrich Nietzsche called the State a cold monster. What would he have called the hideous beast in the garb of modern dictatorship? Not that government had ever allowed much scope to the individual; but the champions of the new State ideology do not grant even that much. "The individual is nothing," they declare, "it is the collectivity which counts." Nothing less than the complete surrender of the individual will satisfy the insatiable appetite of the new deity.
Goldmann, Emma, 1940, The Individual, Society, and the State
The strongest bulwark of authority is uniformity; the least divergence from it is the greatest crime. The wholesale mechanization of modern life has increased uniformity a thousandfold. It is everywhere present, in habits, tastes, dress, thoughts and ideas. Its most concentrated dullness is "public opinion." Few have the courage to stand out against it. He who refuses to submit is at once labeled "queer," "different," and decried as a disturbing element in the comfortable stagnancy of modern life. ...
In pre-war time the individual could at least escape national and family boredom.. The whole world was open to his longings and his quests. Now the world has become a prison, and life continual solitary confinement.
Goldmann, Emma, 1940, The Individual, Society, and the State
The State, ecclesiastical and secular, served to give an appearance of legality and right to the wrong done by the few to the many. That appearance of right was necessary to rule the people, because no government can exist without the consent of the people, consent open, tacit or assumed. Constitutionalism and democracy are the modern forms of that alleged consent; the consent being inoculated and indoctrinated by what is called "education," at home, in the church, and in every other phase of life.
That consent is the belief in authority, in the necessity for it. At its base is the doctrine that man is evil, vicious, and too incompetent to know what is good for him. On this all government and oppression is built.
Goldmann, Emma, 1940, The Individual, Society, and the State
The individual is the true reality in life. A cosmos in himself, he does not exist for the State, nor for that abstraction called "society," or the "nation," which is only a collection of individuals. Man, the individual, has always been and, necessarily is the sole source and motive power of evolution and progress. Civilization has been a continuous struggle of the individual or of groups of individuals against the State and even against "society," that is, against the majority subdued and hypnotized by the State and State worship. Man's greatest battles have been waged against man-made obstacles and artificial handicaps imposed upon him to paralyze his growth and development. Human thought has always been falsified by tradition and custom, and perverted false education in the interests of those who held power and enjoyed privileges. In other words, by the State and the ruling classes.
Cunningham, Ray, 1997,http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/ws/ws51_education.html
If the economy was to grow, it was no longer enough to have a very narrow layer of highly educated people, now everybody had to have some basic training. You can see the same thing going on today. The workplace is becoming increasingly computerized, employers are complaining that their workforce isn't familiar enough with computers, and so the government is putting money into buying computers for schools and increasing the number of third-level computing courses.
"The end defines the means", is a popular anarchist saying, and we can see the truth of it in our education system today. We learn pieces of information off by heart, so we can pass exams, so we can get a job where we will be given whatever other information we need to do our job. Our schools are just glorified production lines - children go in one end, workers come out the other. There is little room for the idea that knowledge might be a good thing in itself, that there is more to education than making round pegs for round holes.
MacSimσin, Alan, a mine labor reformer, Workers' Solidarity, No.38, 1993
Anyone who talks about 'social partnership', about labor and capital working together for the benefit of all is talking nonsense. What rights we have and gains we have made have been the result of long and often bitter struggles. The bosses only give such rights and concessions as they are forced to. In times of recession, such as now, they try to make workers pay through job losses, cuts in real wages, cuts in public spending, productivity deals, etc. for the crisis that is a periodic and inevitable product of capitalism.
Although capitalism oppresses people on many different levels, race and sex to name but two; it is the exploitation of our labor that is fundamental to the system. It is on this front that the fight for a new society will be won or lost. If we can reclaim that aspect of our lives, the system can be overturned and replaced with something much better.
Bakunin, Mikhail, Letters To A Frenchman
Collectivism can be imposed only upon slaves -- and then collectivism becomes the negation of humanity. Among a free people collectivism can come about only in the natural course of things, by force of circumstances: not by imposing it from above, but by a spontaneous movement from below, which springs forth freely and necessarily when the conditions of privileged individualism -- State politics, the codes of civil and criminal law, the juridical family and inheritance rights -- have been swept away by the Revolution.
Bakunin, Mikhail, The Lullers
We do not want the death of men but the abolition of positions and things.
Bakunin, Mikhail, Statism and Anarchy
When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called "the People's Stick."
Bakunin, Mikhail, Statism and Anarchy
The essential difference between a monarchy and a democratic republic is reduced to the following: In a monarchy, the bureaucratic world oppresses and plunders the people for the greater benefit of the privileged propertied classes as well as for its own benefit, and all that is done in the name of the monarch; in a republic, the same bureaucracy does exactly the same thing, but in the name of the will of the people.
Bakunin, Mikhail, World Revolutionary Alliance of Social Democracy
Equality of political rights, or a democratic State, constitute in themselves the most glaring contradiction in terms. The State, or political right, denotes force, authority, predominance; it presupposes inequality in fact. Where all rule, there are no more ruled, and there is no State.
Bakunin, Mikhail, Protestation of the Alliance
The instinct to command others, in its primitive essence, is a carnivorous, altogether bestial and savage instinct. Under the influence of the mental development of man, it takes on a somewhat more ideal form and becomes somewhat ennobled, presenting itself as the instrument of reason and the devoted servant of that abstraction, or political fiction, which is called the public good. But in its essence it remains just as baneful, and it becomes even more so when, with the application of science, it extends its scope and intensifies the power of its action. If there is a devil in history, it is this power principle.
Henry, Patrick, March 23, 1775
The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone: it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery. Our chains are forged. Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston. The war is inevitable. And let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come! It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry peace, peace, but there is no peace. The war is actually begun. The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms. Our brethren are already in the field. Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? what would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!
Chomsky, Noam, linguist and policy analyst, 1995, interview with Kevin Doyle, http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/rbr/noamrbr2.html
What is called 'capitalism' is basically a system of corporate mercantilism, with huge and largely unaccountable private tyrannies exercising vast control over the economy, political systems, and social and cultural life, operating in close co-operation with powerful states that intervene massively in the domestic economy and international society. That is dramatically true of the United States, contrary to much illusion. The rich and privileged are no more willing to face market discipline than they have been in the past, though they consider it just fine for the general population.
Chomsky, Noam, linguist and policy analyst, 1995, interview with Kevin Doyle, http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/rbr/noamrbr2.html
The general intellectual culture, as you know, associates "anarchism" with chaos, violence, bombs, disruption, and so on. So people are often surprised when I speak positively of anarchism and identify myself with leading traditions within it. But my impression is that among the general public, the basic ideas seem reasonable when the clouds are cleared away.
MALTHUSIAN OVER-POPULATION FEARS IGNORE THE CAPITALIST ROOT OF THE PROBLEM.
Bookchin, Murray, president of Goddard College, 1990, Remaking Society, p.11
The resurgence of a new Malthusianism that contends that growth rates in population tend to exceed growth rates in food production is the most sinister ideological development of all.
The myth that population increases in places like the Sudan, for example, result in famine (not the notorious fact that the Sudanese could easily feed themselves if they were not forced by the American-controlled World Bank and International Monetary Fund to grow cotton instead of grains) typically represents the kind of arguments that are gaining popularity among many environmentalists. "Nature," we are arrogantly told by privileged Euro-Americans who parade as "natural law" theorists, "must be permitted to take its course" as though the profits of corporations, banks, and agribusiness have anything to do with the "course" of nature.
ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENTS THAT WORK WITHIN THE CURRENT SOCIAL FRAMEWORK ARE ULTIMATELY DOOMED TO FAILURE.
Bookchin, Murray, president of Goddard College, 1990, Remaking Society, p.14
The control of these potentially disastrous alternations of the earth's ecological balance has virtually collapsed before the "compromises" and "trade-offs" engineered by liberal environmentalists. Indeed, what renders the liberal approach so hopelessly ineffectual is the fact that it takes the present social order for granted, like the air we breathe and the water we drink. All of these "compromises" and "trade-offs" rest on the paralysing belief that a market society, privately owned property, and the present-day bureaucratic nation-state cannot be changed in any basic sense. Thus, it is the prevailing order that sets the terms of any "compromise" or "trade-off," just like the rules of a chess game and the grid of a chess board determine in advance what the players can do not the dictates of reason and morality.
To "play by the rules" of the environmental game means that the natural world, including oppressed people, always loses something piece by piece until everything is lost in the end. As long as liberal environmentalism is structured around the social status quo, property rights always prevail over public rights and power always prevails over powerlessness.
CAPITALISM DEVOURS NATURE LIKE AN UNTREATED DISEASE.
Bookchin, Murray, president of Goddard College, 1990, Remaking Society, p.15
Finally, liberal environmentalism suffers from a consistent refusal to see that a capitalistic society based on competition and growth for its own sake must ultimately devour the natural world, just like an untreated cancer must ultimately devour its host. Personal intentions, be they good or bad, have little to do with this unrelenting process. An economy that is structured around the maxim, "Grow or Die," must necessarily pit itself against the natural world and leave ecological ruin in its wake as it works its way through the biosphere.
Bookchin, Murray, president of Goddard College, 1990, Remaking Society, p.17
I submit that we must go beyond the superficial layer of ideas created by "biocentricity," "antihumanism," Malthusianism, and "deep ecology" at one extreme, and the belief in growth, competition, human "supremacy," and social power at the other extreme. We must look at the social factors that have created both of these extremes in their many different forms and answer key questions about the human condition if we are to harmonize humanity's relationship with nature.
What, after all, is human society when we try to view it from an ecological perspective? A "Curse?" An unmitigated "blessing?" A "Device" for coping with material needs? Or, dare I say, a product of natural evolution as well as culture that not only meets a wide variety of human needs, but, potentially at least, can play a major role in fostering the evolution of life on the planet.
THE ANTIHUMAN BELIEFS NOW IN FASHION ARE THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT WE NEED IF WE ARE TO SAVE SOCIETY AND NATURE.
Bookchin, Murray, president of Goddard College, 1990, Remaking Society, p.21
We show signs of losing faith in all our uniquely human abilities our ability to live in peace with each other, our ability to care for our fellow beings and other life-forms. This pessimism is fed daily by sociobiologists who locate our failings in our genes, by antihumanists who deplore our "antinatural" sensibilities, and by "biocentrists" who downgrade our rational qualities with notions that are we are no different in our "intrinsic worth" than ants. In short, we are witnessing a widespread assault against the ability of reason, science, and technology to improve the world for ourselves and life generally.
The historic theme that civilization must be pitted against nature, that it is corruptive of human nature, has re-surfaced in our midst from the days that reach back to Rousseau this, precisely at a time when our need for a truly human and ecological civilization has never been greater if we are to rescue our planet and ourselves.
THE SEPARATION OF HUMANITY FROM NATURE OR REDUCTION OF IT TO THE SAME LEVEL AS THE REST OF NATURE ALIENATES US FROM OUR ECOLOGICAL ROOTS.
Bookchin, Murray, president of Goddard College, 1990, Remaking Society, p.23
Finally, by so radically separating humanity and society from nature or naively reducing them to mere zoological entities, we can no longer see how human nature is derived from nonhuman nature and social evolution from natural evolution. Humanity becomes estranged or alienated not only from itself in our "age of alienation," but from the natural world in which it has always been rooted as a complex and thinking life-form.
REDUCING SOCIETY TO A COMMUNITY RISKS CONDONING OPPRESSION AS NATURAL.
Bookchin, Murray, president of Goddard College, 1990, Remaking Society, p.29
If we fail to distinguish animal communities from human societies, we risk the danger of ignoring the unique features that distinguish human social life from animal communities notably, the ability of society to change for better or worse and the factors that produce these changes. By reducing a complex society to a mere community, we can easily ignore how societies differed from each other over the course of history. We can also fail to understand how they elaborated simple differences in status into firmly established hierarchies, or hierarchies into economic classes. Indeed, we risk the possibility of totally misunderstanding the very meaning of terms like "hierarchy" as highly organized systems of command and obedience these, as distinguished from personal, individual, and often short-lived differences in status may, in all too many cases, involve no acts of compulsion.
THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF HUMAN SOCIETY DISPLAY NATURE'S POWER OF CREATIVITY.
Bookchin, Murray, president of Goddard College, 1990, Remaking Society, p.35
None of these remarks are meant to metaphysically oppose nature to society or society to nature. On the contrary, they are meant to argue that what unites society with nature in a graded evolutionary continuum is the remarkable extent to which human beings, living in a rational, ecologically oriented society, could embody the creativity of nature this, as distinguished from a purely adaptive criterion of evolutionary success. The great achievements of human thought, art, science, and technology serve not only to monumentalize culture, they also serve to monumentalize natural evolution itself. They provide heroic evidence that the human species is a warm-blooded, excitingly versatile, and keenly intelligent life-form not a cold-blooded, genetically programmed, and mindless insect that expresses nature's greatest powers of creativity.
Bookchin, Murray, president of Goddard College, 1990, Remaking Society, p.38
The issue, then, is not whether social evolution stands opposed to natural evolution. The issue is how social evolution can be situated in natural evolution and why it has been thrown needlessly, as I will argue against natural evolution to the detriment of life as a whole. The capacity to be rational and free does not assure us that this capacity will be realized. If social evolution is seen as the potentiality for expanding the horizon of natural evolution along unprecedented creative lines, and human beings are seen as the potentiality for nature to become self-conscious and free, the issue is why these potentialities have been warped and how they can be realized.
OPPRESSION OF HUMANS MUST CEASE BEFORE WE CAN STOP OPPRESSION OF NATURE.
Bookchin, Murray, president of Goddard College, 1990, Remaking Society, p.39
Whatever has turned human beings into "aliens" in nature are social changes that have made many human beings "aliens" in their own social world: the domination of the young by the old, of women by men, and of men by men. Today, as for many centuries in the past, there are still oppressive human beings who literally own society and others who are owned by it. Until society can be reclaimed by an undivided humanity that will use its collective wisdom, cultural achievements, technological innovations, scientific knowledge, and innate creativity for its own benefit and for that of the natural world, all ecological problems will have their roots in social problems.
CAPITALISM IS THE SOURCE OF ALL OF OUR SOCIAL EVILS.
Bookchin, Murray, president of Goddard College, 1990, Remaking Society, p.94
Indeed, capitalism completely incarnates Bakunin's notion of "evil" without the qualification that it is "socially necessary." Beyond the capitalist system there are no further "turning points in history." Capitalism marks the end of the road for a long social development in which evil permeated the good and irrationality permeated the rational. Capitalism, in effect, constitutes the point of absolute negativity for society and the natural world. One cannot improve this social order, reform it, or remake it on its own terms with an ecological prefix such as "eco-capitalism." The only choice one has is to destroy it, for it embodies every social disease from patriarchal values, class exploitation, and statism to avarice, militarism, and now, growth for the sake of growth that has afflicted "civilization" and tainted all its great advances.
REFORM-BASED ENVIRONMENTALISM LEADS TO INCREASED OPPRESSION BY THE STATE.
Bookchin, Murray, president of Goddard College, 1990, Remaking Society, p.160
Environmentalism, conceived as a piecemeal reform movement, easily lends itself to the lure of statecraft, that is, to participation in electoral, parliamentary, and party-oriented activities. It requires no great change in consciousness to turn a lobby into a party or a petitioner into a parliamentarian. Between a person who humbly solicits from power and another who arrogantly exercises it, there exists a sinister and degenerative symbiosis. Both share the same mentality that change can be achieved only through the exercise of power, specifically, through the power of a self-corrupting professionalized corps of legislators, bureaucrats, and military forces called the State. The appeal to this power invariably legitimates and strengthens the State, with the result that it actually disempowers people.
A LARGE POPULATION WOULD NOT HINDER ANARCHISM.
Bookchin, Murray, president of Goddard College, 1990, Remaking Society, p.175
Nor can populations be so large or the number of assemblies so numerous that they cannot be coordinated in a manner that perpetuates their integrity as face-to-face policy-making bodies. Delegates to town, city, and regional bodies, can be regarded simply as the walking mandates of the local assemblies.
