By Robert Blatchford.
I promised to give a working-class reader a few hints on the hostility of certain manual workers towards what they call "The Intellectuals."
I am not quite sure as to what those workers imply by the word intellectuals, but I am quite clear as to my own meaning when I use the term "trained minds," or "trained intelligence."
When we speak of a man as intellectual we mean that he has good, or very good, intellect: that he is what we call "brainy." Such men as Shakespeare, Bacon, Darwin, and Newton are intellectual men.
But when we speak of trained minds we do not mean, necessarily, men of especially good intellect. We mean men who have been trained to use their minds for certain special purposes.
An average surgeon may not be nearly so intellectual as many authors, or poets, or statesmen; but he is of more use in a dressing station or hospitals than Shakespeare or Oliver Cromwell would be. And he is more use there than a private soldier, or a mechanic. Even though the private and the mechanic are naturally his intellectual superiors.
So, again, the captain of a tramp steamer may not be intellectual; but he understands navigation; and if he had on board as passengers President Wilson, Lloyd George, and Marshal Foch, not one of those intellectual men would think of usurping his place as master of the ship.
Men like Sir Douglas Haig, Sir David Beatty, Sir Eric Geddes, the late Sir Hiram Maxim, and Lord Leverhulme, are not valuable as intellectuals, but as men of specially trained ability. Men of equally good mental endowment without their special training and experience would be unable to do the work of these highly-trained minds.
There is another class of men, such as authors, poets, economists, musicians, and artists, who may be more or less intellectual and more or less specially trained.
There is yet another class of men who may or may not be intellectual, and may or may not have been trained. I shall call these "pushful persons." They are men of energy and push, and not uncommonly are egoists. We find them very often amongst our politicians, our business men, and our orators. We find them invariably at the head, or at the back of strikes, riots, mutinies and revolutions.
Now the Bolshevik revolutionary lumps all those cases or kinds of men together under the head of intellectuals or bourgeoisie; and all successful men, all men of property or wealth, all men of culture and brains, all professional men, all highly educated men, and all men of business or science, together with all officers of the Navy and Army, he denounces as "the hated bourgeoisie."
His object, as a Bolshevik, is to kill, or degrade, or expel all such men, and fill their places with "soldiers and peasants."
That, translated into terms of reason, means that the crowd of untrained minds propose to get rid of all the trained minds, and run the State without them.
This is a double error. In the first place, the State cannot be run without trained minds, and the attempt of the untrained mob to run it results in ruin and chaos.
In the second place—and I particularly press my correspondent to consider this point carefully, no nation, or army, or revolution, or mob ever will get rid of what the Bolshevist calls intellectuals.
When the revolutionaries have killed or expelled every woman and man of trained ability they have to reckon with the kind of men I have called Pushful Persons.
That is what I meant when I said that every violent revolution carries within itself the seeds of its own disaster.
They have, in fact, to reckon with Robespierre or Trotsky.
"We want none of your intellectuals," my correspondent tells me. I answer you cannot get rid of them you cannot do without them; at the long last you have go to submit to them. If you kill one lot, another lot will take their place. If you get rid of those you have, you will assuredly get worse.
Who ever heard of a mutiny without ringleaders? Take the case of the second Russian revolution. What has happened? The intellectuals dethrone the Czar, Kerensky took the Czar's place. Trotsky has driven out Kerensky, and sleeps in the Czar's bed.
It is the same on the Clyde. The crowd of strikers has elected leaders. These are pushful persons. The crowd cannot get rid of them; they can only be removed by the action of other pushful persons, who will take their place.
Just now we hear a lot about the new houses that are to be built for working men and soldiers. Do those who want the houses propose to begin by burning all the houses now standing and killing all the architects, contractors, masons, joiners, plumbers and bricklayers? No. Even a Bolshevik mob would not be so idiotic as that.
Yet the Bolshevik policy of saving the nation by destroying the national fund of trained ability is one and the same thing.
Now, consider the Socialist alternative. The Socialist does not say "let us blow out the national brains." He says, "let us organise the intellect and trained ability, the skill, the wealth and the means of wealth production, and let us so regulate the distribution as to abolish idleness and want.
Signor Caruso is paid £1000 a night; Jack Johnson has made perhaps five times as much. I wonder how much was paid to the inventor of radium.
The other day I commented on the fact that a Lord Chancellor had been paid £10,000 for one year's work, and had since drawn a pension of £5000 a year. And a few days ago I read that Admiral Tyrwhitt, for distinguished naval service in several desperate battles, has been granted a pension of £150 a year.
What is the remedy? Shall we murder all our admirals and Lord Chancellors and fill their places with shop stewards from the Clyde?
We cannot get rid of our intellectuals and pushful persons. Nature will not permit it. Nature turns them out at the rate of one to the thousand, according to their degree, and they will always beat the crowd, or over-reach them, or make themselves necessary to them.
The mad policy of making all men equal by killing the ablest is doomed to failure. Nature will produce more; and the existing lot can never be destroyed without the help of others— and these others will take their places.
The idea that all ability and all virtue are confined to the uneducated manual workers, and that all trained, educated, and successful men are thieves and parasites, seems to be very current just now. I will give you the names of three British Socialists and democrats, all men of the aristocracy or bourgeoisie, all intellectuals all men of culture and education. They are William Morris, R. B. Cuninghame Graham and H. M. Hyndman. Can anyone find three democrats to match them amongst the ranks of the shop stewards? Would it be policy to open a revolution by murdering such men?
I will give you two other names, two Russian aristocrats. Count Tolstoy and Prince Kropotkin. Both those men were intellectuals, both were democrats.
When the executioner held up to the crowd the head of Sir Walter Raleigh, some man called out, "There is not such another head on any pair of English shoulders." I do not think there are many such brains or hearts amongst the Russian Bolsheviks as the brain and heart of Peter Kropotkin.
My correspondent seemed annoyed because I suggested that our manual workers are not qualified by education and special training to run the universe. What can one think of the knowledge and sagacity of men who can listen to such insane doctrines and follow such crazy leaders?
—"The Clarion," London.
Richmond Guardian (Vic. : 1907 - 1920), Saturday 23 August 1919, page 6
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