Alexander Berkman - ABC of anarchism

PREPARATION years of heroic effort to undo, to some extent, the effe~ts of that fratricidal war. . . Let us !cam this valuable 1 lesson frhom~hded 1 Ru 1 ss1an,;xpenmbe?t. " But professional m~n b~ odngd ~? t e m1 e c asses, you o Ject, " d they are bourgeois-mm e , aTn men of the· professions generally have a bourgeois attitude rue, k' I b . towards things; but are nothmos 00 t whormg mend _aso .hou~ge~1sininded ?I It merely ~eans t ~t . t are steepe m aut on!an~n d capitalistic preJud1ces. It 1s JUStthese that must be eradicated :; enlightening and educating the p~ople, be th~y manual or br~in workers. That is the first step m preparation for the social revolution. ·But it is not true that professional men, as such, necessarily. belong to the middle classes. The real interests of the so-called intellectuals are with the workers rather than with the masters. To be sure, most of them do not realise that. But no more does the comparatively highly-paid railroad conductor or locomotive engineer feel }vmself a member of the working class. By his income and attitude he also belongs to the bourgeoisie. But it is not income or feeling that determines to what social class a person belongs. If the street beggar should fancy himself a millionaire, would he thereby be one? What one imagines himself to be does not alter his actual situation. And the actual situation is that whoever has to sell his labour is an employee, a salaried dependent, a wage earner, and as such his true interests are those of employees·and he belongs to the working class. As a matter of fact, the intellectual proletarian is even ·more subject to his capitalistic master than the man with pick and shovel. The latter can easily change his place of employment. If he does not care to work for a certain boss he can look for another. The intel~ectualyroletarian, on the other hand, is much more dependent 0n.his J?art1cularjob. His sphere of exertion is more limited. Not i!illed m any trade and physically incapable of serving as a day fboure~, he 1s{as a rule) confined to the comparatively narrow field h' architecture, engineering, journalism, or similar work. This puts h!m•mo~e at the mercy of his employer and therefore also inclines imkto side with the latter as against his more independent fellowwor er at the bench. lec!u\ whatever the attitude of the salaried and dependent intelto ;a.' h~ belongs to the proletarian class. Yet it is entirely false again a:nthn that the intellectuals always side with the masters as fana/ ! e workers. " Generally they do," I hear some radical ic Interject. And the workers? Do they not, generally, 61 B bllotec, G ro Bianco

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