by Andreas Peglau
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Manufactured immaturity
In 1784, the 60-year-old philosopher Immanuel Kant published his essay Answering the Question: What is Enlightenment? Kant begins with a bang:
„Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without the guidance of another . This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in a lack of understanding, but in a lack of resolve and courage to use it without the guidance of another. Sapere aude! Have the courage to use your own understanding! is therefore the motto of enlightenment.“[1]
Kant sees „laziness and cowardice“ as the deeper causes of „why so many people“, including „the entire fair sex“,
„gladly remain immature throughout their lives; and why it is so easy for others to set themselves up as their guardians. It is so convenient to be immature. If I have a book that has understanding for me, a pastor who has a conscience for me, a doctor who judges my diet for me, etc., then I do not need to make any effort myself.“[2]
The „step towards maturity“ is „inconvenient“. The fact that it is – wrongly – considered dangerous at the same time
„is ensured by those guardians who have kindly taken on the supervision […]. After first making their domestic animals stupid and carefully preventing these quiet creatures from venturing a step outside the pram in which they are locked up, they then show them the danger that threatens them if they try to walk alone.“[3]
It is therefore „difficult for each individual to work his way out of the immaturity that has almost become second nature to him. He has even grown fond of it and is for the time being truly incapable of using his own understanding, because he has never been allowed to try.“[4]
Of course, from today’s perspective, there is much to criticise, such as the devaluation of women, the fixation on „reason,“ and the blanket accusation that immaturity is due to laziness and cowardice. But Kant’s article contained something that was missing from the sentence in the 1848 manifesto – „The ruling ideas of each age have always been the ideas of its ruling class“[5] – statements about authoritarian character and social structures and considerations of how these are created and how they can be shaken off. Taking into account the socially conditioned inner resistance to independent thinking and action,[6] Marx and Engels could have made less optimistic but more realistic predictions.[7]
Ulrich Pagel, co-editor of the reconstructed German Ideology, points out that the „classical Enlightenment thinkers of the 18th century“ – including Kant – shared the conviction that prevailing power relations were the „result of relationships entered into on the assumption of their supposed necessity,“ which people therefore „ultimately entered into voluntarily.“
According to Pagel, this view was also characteristic of Max Stirner.[8]
Inculcated submissiveness
Stirner, who worked as a teacher, understood more concretely than Kant how the psychological deformation known as education begins in childhood. In 1842, he wrote in one of his newspaper articles:[9]
„As in certain other spheres, in the educational sphere too, freedom is not allowed to break through, the power of opposition is not allowed to have its say: submissiveness is what is wanted. Only formal and material training is intended […]. Our good stock of naughtiness is forcibly stifled, and with it the development of knowledge of free will. […] Just as we became accustomed in childhood to finding ourselves in everything that was assigned to us, so later we find and send ourselves into positive life, send ourselves into time, become its servants and so-called good citizens. Where, then, is a spirit of opposition strengthened in place of the submissiveness that has been nurtured until now, […] where is the free human being considered the goal, and not merely the educated one?“
In The Ego and Its Own, Stirner’s book, which Marx and Engels worked on in 1845/46, it was then said about the „effectiveness of sanctimonious minds“ that their „moral influence“ begins „where humiliation begins; indeed, it is nothing other than this humiliation itself.“ In this way, man should be made to
„bow down […] be obedient […] surrender their will to a foreign one that is established as a rule and law; they should humble themselves before a higher power: self-humiliation. […] Yes, yes, children must be encouraged to be pious, godly and respectable from an early age; a well-educated person is one who has been taught and impressed upon, drummed into, hammered into and preached to about ‚good principles‘.“[10]
And this not only by teachers and priests, but starting in the family. Stirner reports how the „punishing rod“ and „stern expression of the father“ feared by the child ultimately become the conscience that torments adults throughout their lives.[11] Sigmund Freud would later summarise this in the term „superego“. Stirner sums up what authoritarian education leaves as an alternative: „either the stick overcomes the person or the person overcomes the stick“.[12]
Ulrich Pagel therefore rightly praises „the exposure of power relations as power relationships that owe their existence and rigidity to unconscious and constantly repeated acts of submission“ on the part of the subjects as a „fundamental component“ of Stirner’s work: Stirner saw „not only the emergence, but also the continued existence of conditions worthy of criticism“ as „a consequence of the actions of concrete human individuals“.[13]
As a way out of subjugation, Stirner had already named „revealing“ and „finding oneself,“ the „disposal of all authority,“ in 1842.[14] The Ego and Its Own reads like an individualistic roadmap for achieving this goal, only touching on socio-economic issues. I therefore believe that Stirner needed to supplement his ideas with the insights of Marx and Engels in this regard. But the reverse was also true: Marx and Engels would have been well advised to use Stirner’s approaches for a psychological understanding of social processes.
However, how the psychological structure of people outside and prior to the sphere of production, especially in childhood, was shaped was of marginal interest to Marx and Engels at best. Coupled with the overvaluation of „work“ and their belief in progress, this led Marx to conclusions that I find inhumane.
Child labour
In 1866, Marx wrote „Instructions for the Delegates of the Provisional Central Council“ of the International Workingmen’s Association. It stated:
„We regard the tendency of modern industry to draw children and young people of both sexes into the great work of social production as a progressive, healthy and justified tendency, although the manner in which this tendency is realised under the rule of capital is abominable.“[15]
In other words: child labour should be maintained because it is progressive in principle. Therefore, it would continue to be necessary even under socialism:[16]
„In a rational state of society, every child from the age of 9 should become a productive worker, just as no adult capable of working should be exempt from the general law of nature, namely to work in order to eat , and to work not only with the brain, but also with the hands.[17] […]
For physical reasons, we consider it necessary that children and young people of both sexes be divided into three groups, which must be treated differently. The first group should comprise those aged 9 to 12, the second those aged 13 to 15, and the third those aged 16 and 17. We propose that the employment of the first group in any workshop or domestic work be limited by law to two hours, that of the second to four hours, and that of the third to six hours. For the third group, there must be a break of at least one hour for meals or rest.“[18]
Marx seems to have regarded the propagation of this vision as the implementation of his demand set out in the „Instructions“: „The rights of children and young people must be protected. They are not capable of acting for themselves. It is therefore the duty of society to stand up for them.“[19] In this sense, he also demanded that child labour at night and in occupations harmful to health be prohibited and that it be combined with „elementary education“: „Neither parents nor employers should be allowed […] to employ young people unless it is connected with education.“ This should be understood to mean: „Intellectual education. […] Physical education, as provided in gymnastic schools and through military exercises [!]. […] Polytechnic education, which teaches the general principles of all production processes.“[20]
A year later, in 1867, Capital stated that the „seed of the education of the future, which will combine productive work with instruction and gymnastics for all children above a certain age,“ was „not only […] a method of increasing social production, but […] the only method of producing fully developed human beings.“[21] So once again, human beings were to be „produced“: Marx could not escape the economics of it all.
In 1875, he still considered a „general ban on child labour“ to be
„incompatible with the existence of large-scale industry and therefore an empty pious wish. Its implementation – if possible – would be reactionary [!], since, with strict regulation of working hours according to different age groups and other precautions to protect children, the early combination of productive work with education is one of the most powerful means of transforming today’s society“.[22]
As Marx knew and had documented on several occasions, every month of child labour cost thousands of children their health or their lives. Nevertheless, he considered it more important to promote the socialist transformation of society through child labour – supposedly. „Large-scale industry“ would later prove that Marx’s assertion of its dependence was incorrect: since the 20th century, the European economy has increasingly managed without child labour.
The existence of child labour probably made it easier for Marx to maintain his thesis that people are shaped by work. However, even in the mid-19th century, children spent most of their early lives at home; their „social existence“ was initially a family one. Child labour began at a later age, and not at all for middle-class children.[23]
Although parents and educators usually imparted social, and not least authoritarian, norms and values, neither families nor schools, universities, nor the kindergartens that emerged in the 19th century applied exactly the same rules as businesses.
What is also specific to the upbringing of children is that it affects beings who are completely dependent and emotionally „malleable“. This has a lasting impact on their psychological structures: before any direct contact with production. Individual „humanisation“ has always begun long before „work“.
Taking this into account would have been extremely important for assessing possible changes in consciousness within the proletariat. For their ingrained psychological structures in turn influenced their approach to „work“.
The more intensively they were trained to be submissive in childhood, the more willing they were likely to be to allow themselves to be bullied by bosses (and politicians) in the future. And: the harder it must have been for them to rebel against it.
So anyone who wanted people to defend themselves against unreasonable living conditions would have had to start in childhood, as Stirner suggested, and not just when training proletarians.[24]
*
Continue reading in Part 9: Vulgar psychology, half-hearted mitigations and conclusion
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Sources of the entire text (mostly in German).
German version of part 8.
Notes
[1] Kant 2004, p. 5.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Marx/Engels 1972b, p. 480.
[6] Fromm (1989a) then called it „fear of freedom“.
[7] On the intellectual gains that Marx and Engels were able to derive from reading Kant: Schmidt 1903; Vorländer 2011.
[8] Pagel 2020, p. 386.
[9] Stirner 2023, p. 45f.
[10] Stirner 2016, p. 90f.
[11] Ibid., pp. 19f.
[12] Ibid., p. 19.
[13] Pagel 2020, pp. 386, 388.
[14] Stirner 2023, p. 43f.
[15] Marx 1962a, p. 193.
[16] In 1819, the first „Workers‘ Protection Act“ was enacted in England for the widespread textile industry. It included a ban on the employment of children under the age of 9. Marx therefore complied with the legal requirements in this case. However, compliance with this law was initially hardly monitored (Schultz 1948, pp. 27f.). In the 1830s, further regulations followed in England and Prussia to restrict child labour (cf. Bönig 2012).
[17] This „general law of nature,“ from which one could surprisingly be „exempt,“ does not exist either. As already quoted, Marx (1983b, p. 384) wrote of „migration“ as „the first form of existence“ in which „the tribe […] grazes on whatever it finds.“ For himself, the intellectual Marx does not seem to have considered this law of nature to be valid anyway.
[18] Marx 1962a, p. 193f.
[19] Ibid., p. 194.
[20] Ibid., p. 194f.
[21] Marx 2021, p. 508.
[22] Marx 1973a, p. 32.
[23] See Budde 1994. The Communist Manifesto stated in 1848: „The bourgeois phrases about family and education, about the intimate relationship between parents and children, become all the more disgusting as a result of large-scale industry, which tears apart all family ties for the proletariat and turns children into mere commodities and instruments of labour“ (Marx/Engels 1972b, p. 478). However, this „use“ was impossible for babies and small children, and it did not apply equally to middle-class children later on either.
[24] It is now known that imprinting begins in the womb, where the effects of social existence are only very indirect (Janus 1993; Peglau/Janus 1994; Hüther/Krens 2010). On imprinting during pregnancy, birth and childhood: Reich 2018; Peglau 2019a; Neill 1992 and https://www.summerhillschool.co.uk/.