Integral Education
Michael Bakunin
Folio 2, March 1986 
ISSN 0267-6141

In the following four essays on education published in 
Eqalite (Geneva) between July and Auust 1869, Bakunin 
argues that where there exists differing degrees of education, 
class society is inevitable.  Anarchists, he insists, must seek 
equality and, therefore, integral education same education 
available for everyone.  ' It is to the interest of both labour 
and science there must no longer be this division into 
workers and scholars - henceforth there must only be men.

The first topic for consideration today is this will it be 
feasible for the working masses to know complete 
emancipation as long as the education available to those 
masses continues to be inferior to that bestowed upon the 
bourgeois, or, in more general terms, as long as there exists 
any class, be it numerous or otherwise, which, by virtue of 
birth, is entitled to a superior education and a more 
complete instruction? Does not the question answer itself? Is 
it not self-evident that of any two persons endowed by 
nature with roughly equivalent intelligence, one will have 
the edge - the one whose mind will have been broadened by 
learning and who, having the better grasped the inter-
relationships of natural and social phenomena (what we 
might term the laws of nature and of society) will the more 
readily and more fully grasp the nature of his surroundings?  
And that this one will feel, let us say, a greater liberty and, in 
practical terms, show a greater aptitude and capability than 
his fellow?  It is natural that he who knows more will 
dominate him who knows less.  And were this disparity of 
education and education and learning the only one to exist 
between two classes, would not all the others swiftly follow 
until the world of men itself in its present circumstances, 
that is, until it was again divided into a mass of slaves and a 
tiny number of rulers, the former labouring away as they do 
today, to the advantage of the latter? 

Now we see why the bourgeois socialists demand only a 
little education for the people, a soupcon more than they 
currently receive; whereas we socialist democrats demand, 
on the people's behalf, complete and integral education, an 
education as full as the power of intellect today permits, So 
that, henceforth, there may not be any class over the workers 
by virtue of superior education and therefore able to 
dominate and exploit them.  The bourgeois socialists want to 
see the retention of the class system each class, they contend, 
fulfilling a specific social function; one specialising, say, in 
learning, and the other in manual labour.  We, on the other 
hand, seek the final and the utter abolition of classes; we 
seek a unification of society and equality of social and 
economic provision for every individual on this earth.  The 
bourgeois socialists, whilst retaining the historic bases of the 
society of today, would like to see them become less stark, 
less harsh and more prettified.  Whereas we should like to 
see their destruction.  From which it follows that there can 
be no truce or compromise, let alone any coalition between 
the bourgeois socialists and us socialist democrats.  But, I 
have heard it said and this is the argument most frequently 
raised against us and an argument which the dogmatists of 
every shade regard as irrefutable - it is impossible that the 
whole of mankind should devote itself to learning, for we 
should all die of starvation.  Consequently while some study 
others must labour so that they can produce what we need to 
live - not just producing for their own needs, but also for 
those men who devote themselves exclusively to 
intellectual pursuits; aside from expanding the horizons of 
human knowledge, the discoveries of these intellectuals 
improve the condition of all human beings, without 
exception, when applied to industry, agriculture and, 
generally, to political and social life; agreed? And do not 
their artistic creations enhance the lives of every one of us?

No, not at all.  And the greatest reproach which we can level 
against science and the arts is precisely that they do not 
distribute their favours and do not exercise their influence, 
except upon a tiny fragment of society, to the exclusion and, 
thus, to the detriment of the vast majority.  Today one might 
say of the advances of science and of the arts, just what has 
already and so properly been said of the prodigious progress 
of industry, trade, credit, and, in a word, of the wealth of 
society in the most civilised countries of the modern world.  
That wealth is quite exclusive, and the tendency is for it to 
become more so each day, as it becomes concentrated into an 
ever shrinking number of hands, shunning the lower 
echelons of the middle class and the petite bourgeoisie, 
depressing them into the proletariat, so that the growth of 
this wealth is 
 the direct cause behind the growing misery of the labouring 
masses.  Thus the outcome is that the gulf which yawns 
between the privileged, contented minority and millions of 
workers who earn their keep by the strength of their arm 
yawns ever wider and that the happier the contented - who 
-exploit the people's labour become the more unhappy the 
workers become.  One has only to look at the fabulous 
opulence of the aristocratic, financier, commercial and 
industrial clique in England and compare it with the 
miserable condition of the workers of the same country; one 
has only to re-read the so naive and heartrending letter 
lately penned by an intelligent and upright goldsmith of 
London, one Walter Dugan, who has just voluntarily taken 
poison along with his wife and their six children, simply as a 
means of escape from the degradation's of poverty and the 
torments of hunger (1) - and one will find oneself obliged to 
concede that the much vaunted civilisation means, in 
material terms, to the people, only oppression and 
ruination.  And the same holds true for the modern 
advances of science and the arts.  Huge strides, indeed, it is 
true But the greater the advances, the more they foster 
intellectual servitude and thus, in material terms, foster 
misery and inferiority as the lot of the people; for these 
advances 
merely widen the gulf which already separates the people's 
level of understanding from the levels of the privileged 
classes.  From the point of view of natural capacity, the 
intelligence of the former is, today, obviously less stunted, 
less exercised, less sophisticated and less corrupted by the 
need to defend unjust interests, and is, consequently, 
naturally of greater potency than the brain power of the 
bourgeoisie: but, then again, the brain power of the 
bourgeois does have at its disposal the complete arsenal of 
science filled with weapons that are indeed formidable.  It is 
very often the case that a highly intelligent worker is obliged 
to hold his tongue when confronted by a learned fool who 
defeats him, not by dint of intellect (of which he has none) 
but by dint of his education, an education denied the 
workingman but granted the fool because, while the fool was 
able to develop his foolishness scientifically in schools, the 
working man's labours were clothing, housing, feeding him 
and supplying his every need, his teachers and his books, 
everything necessary to his education.

Even within the bourgeois class, as we know only too well, 
the degree of learning imparted to each individual is not the 
same.  There, too, there is a scale which is determined, not by 
the potential of the individual but by the amount of wealth 
of the social stratum to which he belongs by birth; for 
example, the instruction made available to the children of 
the lower petite bourgeoisie, whilst itself scarcely superior to 
that which workers manage to obtain for themselves, is next 
to nothing by comparison with the education that society 
makes readily available to the upper and middle bourgeoisie.  
What, then, do we find? The petite bourgeoisie, whose only 
attachment to the middle class is through a ridiculous vanity 
on the one hand, and its dependence upon the big capitalists 
on the other, finds itself most often in circumstances even 
more miserable and even more humiliating than those 
which afflict the proletariat.  So when we talk of privileged 
classes, we never have in mind this poor petite bourgeoisie 
which, if it did but have a little more spirit and gumption, 
would not delay in joining forces with us to combat the big 
and medium bourgeoisie who crush it today no less than 
they crush the proletariat.  And should society's current 
economic trends continue in the same direction for a further 
ten years (which we do, however, regard as impossible) we 
may yet see the bulk of the medium bourgeoisie tumble first 
of all into the current circumstances of the petite bourgeoisie 
only to slip a little later into the proletariat - as a result, of 
course, of this inevitable concentration of ownership into an 
ever smaller number of hands - the ineluctable 
consequences of which would be to partition society once 
and for all into a tiny, overweaningly opulent, educated, 
ruling minority and a vast majority of impoverished, 
ignorant, enslaved proletarians.

There is one fact which should make an impression upon 
every person of conscience, upon all who have at heart a 
concern for human dignity and justice; that is, for the liberty 
of each individual amid and through a setting of equality for 
all.  That is the fact that all of the intelligentsia, all of the 
great applications of science to the purpose of industry, trade 
and to the life of society in general have thus far profited no 
one, save the privileged classes and the power of the State, 
that timeless champion of all political and social iniquity.  
Never, not once, have they brought any benefit to the 
masses of the people.  We need only list the machines and 
every workingman and honest advocate of the 
emancipation of labour would accept the justice of what we 
say.  By what power do the privileged classes maintain 
themselves today, with all their insolent smugness and 
iniquitous pleasures, in defiance of the all too legitimate 
outrage felt by the masses of the people? Is it by some power 
inherent in their persons? No - it is solely through the 
power of the State, in whose apparatus today their offspring 
hold, always, every key position (and even every lower and 
middle range position) excepting that of soldier and worker.  
And in this day and age what is it that constitutes the 
principle underlying the power of the State? Why, it is 
science.  Yes, science - Science of government, science of 
administration and financial science; the science of fleecing 
the flocks of the people without their bleating too loudly 
and, when they start to bleat, the science of urging silence, 
patience and obedience upon them by means of a 
scientifically organised force: the science of deceiving and 
dividing the masses of the people and keeping them allays 
in a salutary ignorance lest they ever become able, by helping 
one another and pooling their efforts, to conjure up a power 
capable of overturning States; and, above all, military science 
with all its tried and tested weaponry, these formidable 
instruments of destruction which 'work wonders' (2): and 
lastly, the science of genius which has conjured up 
steamships, railways and telegraphy which, by turning every 
government into a hundred armed, a thousand armed 
Briareos (3), giving it the power to be, act and arrest 
everywhere at once - has brought about the most formidable 
political centralisation the world has ever witnessed.

Who, then, will deny that, without exception, all of the 
advances made by science have thus far brought nothing, 
save a boosting of the wealth of the privileged classes and of 
the power of the State, to the detriment of the well-being and 
liberty of the masses of the people, of the proletariat? But, we 
will hear the objection, do not the masses of the people 
profit by this also? Are they not much more civilised in this 
society of ours than they were in the societies of byegone 
centuries?

We shall reply to that with an observation borrowed from 
the noted German socialist, Lassalle.  In measuring the 
progress made by the working masses, in terms of their 
political and social emancipation, one should not compare 
their intellectual state in this century with what it may have 
been in centuries gone by.  Instead, one ought to consider 
whether, by comparison with some given time, the gap 
which then existed between the working masses and the 
privileged classes having been noted, the masses have 
progressed to the same extent as these privileged classes.  
For, if the progress made by both has been roughly 
equivalent, the intellectual gap which separates the masses 
from the privileged in today's world will be the same as it 
ever was; but if the proletariat has progressed further and 
more rapidly than the privileged, then the gap must 
necessarily have narrowed; but if, on the other hand, the 
worker's rate of progress has been slower and, consequently, 
less than that of a representative of the ruling classes over 
the same period, then that gap will have grown.  The gulf 
which separates them will have increased and the man of 
privilege grown more powerful and the worker's 
circumstances more abject, more slave like than at the date 
one chose as the point of departure.  If the two of us set off 
from two different points at the same time and you have a 
lead of one hundred paces over me and you move at a rate 
of sixty paces per minute, and I at only thirty paces per 
minute, then after one hour the distance which separates us 
will not be just over one hundred paces, but just over one 
thousand nine hundred paces.

That example gives a roughly accurate notion of the 
respective advances made by the bourgeoisie and the 
proletariat.  Thus far the bourgeoisie has raced along the 
track of civilisation at a quicker rate than the proletariat, not 
because they are intellectually more powerful than the latter 
indeed one might properly argue the contrary case - but 
because the political and economic organisation of society 
has been such that, hitherto, the bourgeoisie alone have 
enjoyed access to learning and science has existed only for 
them, and the proletariat has found itself doomed to a forced 
ignorance, so that if the proletariat has, nevertheless, made 
progress (and there is no denying it has) then that progress 
was made not thanks to society, but rather in spite of it.  To 
sum up.  In society as presently constituted, the advances of 
science have been at the root of the relative ignorance of the 
proletariat, just as the progress of industry and commerce 
have been at the root of its relative impoverishment.  Thus, 
intellectual progress and material progress have contributed 
in equal measure towards the exacerbation of the slavery of 
the proletariat.  Meaning what? Meaning that we have a 
duty to reject and resist that bourgeois science, just as we 
have a duty to reject and resist bourgeois wealth.  And reject 
and resist them in this sense - that in destroying the social 
order which turns it into the preserve of one or of several 
classes, we must lay claim to it as the common inheritance of 
all the world.

[Egalite, 31 July 1869]
***************************

"And in this day and age what is it that constitutes 
the principle underlying the power of the State? Why,
it is science.  Yes, science - Science of government,
science of administration and financial science; the
science of fleecing the flocks of the people without
their bleating too loudly and, when they start to bleat,
the science of urging silence, patience and obedience upon
them by means of a scientifically organised force: the
science of deceiving and dividing the masses of the people
and keeping them allays in a salutary ignorance lest they
ever become able, by helping one another and pooling their
efforts, to conjure up a power capable of overturning States;"

Michael Bakunin 1869