A presentation by Bertram D. Wolfe, then director of the Communist Party’s New York Workers’ School, to the Third Annual Conference of Teachers in Workers’ Education held at Brookwood Labor College in February, 1926.

‘What Is Workers’ Education?’ by Bertram D. Wolfe from Workers Monthly. Vol. 5 No. 6. April, 1926.

It seems to me that there are three points of view offered to the worker today in answer to this question.

1. The Point of View of the Philanthropist.

First, there is the point of view of the philanthropist, the social worker. A philanthropist is one who is better endowed with worldly goods and has an excess above his immediate needs. From time to time, he takes a little bundle of his surplus, the things that he feels like giving away and goes into the slums among the poor and distributes a bit here and a bit there. So it is with the philanthropist in workers’ education. He is endowed with a goodly share of the world’s spiritual goods and from time to time, he goes into the intellectual “slums” of the working class, so poverty stricken culturally, with a little bundle of that which he chooses to give away, and hands out a bit here and a bit there to the poor workers. All such cultural philanthropy is soaked thru and thru with a non-working class point of view and has no relation to the needs of the workers. Therefore, we workers reject the so-called workers’ education of the philanthropist.

2. The Point of View of the University Extensionist and Open-shopper.

A second point of view is the point of view of permeation of the working class with a non-working class ideology. The adherents of this school, which is closely akin to that of the philanthropist in its objective results, range all the way from the university extensionists to the open shoppers. Thus, we find Cambridge University declaring that its objective in extending university courses to the workers is “to continue in its hands that permeating influence which it is desirable that it should possess.” There are two universities in New York City that are willing and anxious to extend the “benefits” of their culture to the New York workers, and we must be on our guard against them. Then, there is the Carnegie Corporation with its millions available for the subsidizing and corrupting of workers’ education; there is the Rockefeller Board; there are the government schools with their anti-union “nationalization” and “Americanization” programs.

This point of view is expressed with greatest frankness by the open shoppers. I quote, for example, from Law and Labor, published by the League for Industrial Rights, which is in effect the legal department of the Chamber of Commerce and which was organized to make a fight against the boycott and has extended its work to fighting for injunctions, the outlawing of strikers, etc. In its issue of January, 1926, we find that it is extending its interest to workers’ education and in an article entitled, “Organized Labor and Education,” we find the following clear statement of the open shoppers’ point of view.

“The moment that a system of education is laid down upon the theory that there are a class of persons who need a class education, the purpose of education is defeated.

“In so far as the workers’ education serves to stimulate and keep alive an active interest in universal education and so long as it draws attention to the contribution to social welfare which workers in every age have made, it will serve a purpose not only valuable to workers but to everybody. The moment, however, it attempts to impose a certain curriculum as representative of the needs of wage earners, it must defeat its own purposes and the interests of its supports.

Thus we see that the whole capitalist world, ranging from the philanthropist and social worker thru the university extentionists to the open shoppers, is united in its insistence that workers’ education should be classless, dispensing “sweetness and light” from the surplus store of the privileged classes, and it is easy to understand that, consciously or unconsciously, this point of view will lead to the confusion of the workers, a blunting of their understanding of their own needs and historic mission.

3. The Point of View of the Workers.

To the point of view of the open shoppers, as quoted from their magazine, I oppose the point of view of the workers. I choose to quote from the Brookwood Review.

“The civic viewpoint is not the social viewpoint. It is the viewpoint of the middle class intellectual, of the professional reformer, of the benevolent philanthropist, of the public school pedagogue, but it can not be tolerated by the working class.”

Wm. Morris has rightly said, “An education which does not aim primarily at a reconstruction of society will today only breed tyrants and cowards.”

Thomas Hodgskin, one of the earliest working class economists of England, phrased it even more sharply when he said: “It would be better for men to be deprived of education than to receive their education from their masters; for education in that sense is no better than the training of the cattle which are broken to the yoke.”

This does not mean that the workers reject the spiritual heritage of past cultures, but it does mean that they take from that heritage what serves their purpose and reject the attempt to bewilder and confuse them and feed them opiates that will deaden their understanding of their own needs in place of fitting them for their realization.

Before coming to the question of what working class education is, one word more as to the question of what it isn’t. There was expressed in this conference, once or twice, the point of view that workers’ education should include training to make the worker a better producer and to aid him to rise to higher positions thru technical training. This also the workers must reject.

You heard how Bill Daech of the Miners’ Union expressed the point of view of the miners on this matter. He declared, and rightly:

“We are not trying to make better miners, to make more efficient producers. The bosses will always take care of that. They will see to it that we produce more and more efficiently, in fact, they have made us produce too much and that is why we have so many unemployed in the mining region. We want to teach our miners how to get more of what they already produce and that is the purpose of workers’ education in my sub-district.”

So, in order to come to the workers’ point of view as to workers’ education, in order to answer the question as to what should be taught and how it should be taught, we must ask our- selves: What does the labor movement aim at? On what is the labor movement based?

The Basis of Workers’ Education–The Class Struggle.

The labor movement is based upon the central fact of the class struggle. This applies to all forms of the labor movement however varied they may be and however varied their interpretation of the extent and nature of the class struggle. It ranges from that moderate and conservative point of view, held by some, that the class struggle is purely defensive; that the workers should unite into unions and resist the aggression of the open shoppers and the Chambers of Commerce; to prevent wage cuts and to secure higher wages when the cost of living is rising–to the point of view held by other workers that the class struggle must also have as its aim the taking of the industries by the workers and their administration in the interests of the whole of society. I, of course, adhere to the latter point of view as to the extent and scope of the class struggle, but whatever its extent and scope, all workers’ movements are agreed on basing themselves on this central fact of the class struggle. From this follow many conclusions as to the nature of workers’ education.

Independent Working Class Education.

First, as to its independence. The fact that the workers have come to the conclusion that they must have independent unions, controlled by themselves and not by their bosses, has led us to the conclusion that we must also have independent newspapers. No worker doubts this anymore. He knows that he cannot find, in the bosses’ newspapers, his viewpoint expressed nor the things that he needs to find, nor the truth about his movement. He knows that he must have an independent newspaper, controlled and financed by himself and expressing his own viewpoint. There is a growing understanding, among the workers, that they must also have their own independent political party and cannot be content with the parties controlled by and expressing the interests of their bosses. But peculiarly enough, those who recognize the necessity of independent newspapers, do not always, as yet, recognize the necessity of independent working class education. It is our belief, and it must be the belief of all conscious workers, that the working class must own and control its own educational institutions, and pervade its education with its own point of view. We cannot tolerate the attempts of such institutions as the Carnegie Corporation to finance and thus buy out and control our educational activities.

The Aim of Workers’ Education.

What shall be taught and how it shall be taught should follow from the aim of the labor movement. It must regard workers’ education as an instrument for the organization of the working class politically and industrially and for the development of its consciousness of its own needs and purposes. It is not that the worker does not desire to learn more than this, but he desires to learn this first of all because this is of life and death importance to him. He is culturally oppressed just as he is economically and politically oppressed. His time is so limited. There are industries in which he works a twelve-hour day and a seven-day week. At best, he has but little time for educating himself and therefore he insists upon putting first things first. He knows he has no time to cover all the fields of culture and he wants those subjects which aid him in attaining to political and industrial consciousness and organization.

Now we are prepared to answer the question as to what workers’ education should include. When we say workers’ education, we must mean first and foremost, the social sciences and those subjects auxiliary to them…Whatever subjects aid the workers economically and politically as a conscious class in its struggle for its protection and emancipation, such, and in the order of their importance for this purpose, should make up the curriculum of workers’ education.

The Content of Workers’ Education.

Does this include subjects other than the social sciences? It does, and of various sorts. Thus, for example, we find a class of subjects which aid in the understanding of the social sciences–such as biological evolution and inorganic evolution. I do not believe that in the average brief curriculum of workers’ education these should be independent subjects, but they may occasionally form the basis of a lesson or two in so far as they throw a light on the general subject of Social Evolution.

Then there is a second class of subjects which may be called, “Instruments of Expression.” I refer to such subjects as English, Public Speaking and Journalism. As to English, it might seem that one who holds as I do that the workers’ schools should not teach anything that can be just as well gotten in the government’s schools would leave to the official Public Evening Schools the question of English. But our experience has taught us that we cannot leave the teaching of English to the evening schools. English is not only the teaching of methods of expression, but it always and of necessity includes a content. This content in the government naturalization and Americanization schools is a propaganda for patriotism, jingoism and anti-unionism, in a form that no conscious worker can tolerate. Therefore we have found it necessary to teach English in our school and give it a working class content. As to Public Speaking, it needs no defense. Now a word as to Labor Journalism. The fact that we have independent working class newspapers implies that we must have working class journalists, but recently a new movement has swept over the workers’ newspapers of the entire world–the movement known as Workers’ Correspondence. This is based on the belief that workers in the shops should write their own accounts of their experiences, struggles and sufferings and that the working class papers should not only be read by the workers themselves but should be edited by them also. This gives a new importance to labor journalism and implies a more prominent place for such courses in the curricula of workers schools.

Workers’ education is of course much broader than the limits of the class room. As soon as we begin to think of it in a broader way, we include a third class of subjects such as dramatics, sports, singing, etc. The value of the workers playing together as well as working together and struggling together need not be explained. If sing we must, it is clear that it is better to sing working class songs with words that express our feelings and not feelings alien to us, since the drama plays a part in our recreation it is also better that we have our own plays where the life depicted has our own philosophy underlying it and not a point of view that is consciously or unconsciously hostile to ours.

As I have said, the field of workers’ education is far vaster than the class room as indeed education is acquired much more out of the class room than in it. Workers’ education is at least as broad as the labor movement itself and often must seek its lessons even outside the limits of the labor movement. Learning to work together in co-operatives, learning to struggle together in unions and parties of the workers, is itself education, for it develops that understanding, that feeling and that will which the workers need for carrying out their aims. Education in its broader sense is precisely this–a training of the understanding, the feeling and the will. But we must limit ourselves in this discussion to the field of class room education.

Workers’ Education Here and in Soviet Russia.

We must not confuse the situation of the workers in America with the situation of the workers in Russia. It has been said here that we do not pay enough attention to literature and art, whereas in Russia they pay ample attention to these subjects. Again, it has been said that we do not give technical education to the workers whereas in Russia they do. We must remember that in Russia the problem is a different one. There the workers rule and are responsible for the whole of life and not only for a small portion of it. They have in their charge all education from that of the little child to that of the technical expert and not only the leisure hours of the workers, but the whole of their time. As the whole of everything else is in the workers’ hands, so too is the whole of education.

Away With the Class Monopoly of Culture!

I suppose I shall be told in the discussion that follows that my point of view, which I take to be representative of the point of view of the workers as to their own education, is too narrow. Is it too narrow? I can only answer by reminding you of the cultural plight of the worker and of his economic plight as well; by reminding you of the hopelessly limited time and energy at his disposal for educational purposes; of his crying need to solve the historic problems which face him; to remind you that it is merely a question of putting first things first; a question of conquering the pre-conditions for a higher culture. I must remind you too, that culture is closed to the working class as whole as long as its mind and body are broken by degrading toil in place of joyous work; by long hours; by insufficient income for keeping body and soul together, much less for gaining access to those objects of beauty which will develop in him an appreciation of the beautiful.

Our aim is as broad as that of humanity itself. Our aims is to abolish the class monopoly in culture along with the class monopoly in all of the good things of life. Our aim is to open culture to the whole of humanity; to provide for the artists and singers of the future the widest, the vastest and culturally the deepest audience that the world has ever known, and I think that the workers’ movement holds out to humanity the promise, when it has fulfilled its purpose, of a human culture epoch such as the world has not yet dreamed of.

The Workers Monthly began publishing in 1924 as a merger of the ‘Liberator’, the Trade Union Educational League magazine ‘Labor Herald’, and Friends of Soviet Russia’s monthly ‘Soviet Russia Pictorial’ as an explicitly Party publication. In 1927 Workers Monthly ceased and the Communist Party began publishing The Communist as its theoretical magazine. Editors included Earl Browder and Max Bedacht as the magazine continued the Liberator’s use of graphics and art.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/culture/pubs/wm/1926/v5n06-apr-1926-1B-WM.pdf