Learning on the Pathway to Communism
LOS ANGELES, USA — Tracy (not her real name) was eighteen and recently out of prison. She had no parents, no high school diploma, no job, no money, no home. She desperately wanted to go to community college because “it’s where you learn things.”
But Tracy wasn’t able to pass an “ability to benefit” literacy test. She couldn’t get financial aid. The college doors slammed shut.
Imagine how different Tracy’s life would be in a real communist system without money! Like everyone else, she would have a home – without needing wages from a job to pay for it. There would be useful work for her to do. Even if her parents were gone, her co-workers and other comrades would provide loving support. She would never have been imprisoned.
And communism would provide Tracy with many opportunities to learn. She would learn new skills at work – perhaps many different kinds of work. She would get the help she needed to learn to read. She would take part in study groups on political themes and other things that interested her.
In communism, Tracy would teach others things that she already knew. All the learning resources available today – books, videos, labs, studios etc. – would be at her disposal. So would other methods and materials that communist-led workers will invent and create.
Communist education will build and reinforce the social relationships of collectivity and comradeship at the core of communist society.
Pathways to Exploitation
Are capitalism’s community colleges really places “to learn things”? Not so much.
Capitalism’s schools and colleges build and reinforce the social relationships of exploitation at the core of capitalist society. For example, those attended mainly by working-class students promote the illusion that “anyone can make it” and the lie that “if you don’t make it, it’s your own fault.”
Often students (like Tracy) are passed along from year to year without ever really learning basic skills in reading, writing and math. Teachers are told to blame students and their parents. Parents are told to blame teachers. But these “failures” are really a success for the capitalist rulers, who need an obedient, passive and uncritical workforce and army.
The big buzz-word in US community colleges today is “pathways.” Last fall the California Community Colleges trumpeted their “improved transfer pathways … as part of a historic pilot program aimed at meeting the needs of the state’s changing economy.”
The same report bragged of new community college bachelor’s degree programs in “career technical education fields… that are hiring and need more skilled workers.” For example, “Antelope Valley College’s new airframe manufacturing technology degree embraces the unique training needs of the Antelope Valley’s aerospace economy.”
In the past, factories and other workplaces trained young workers on the job. Now the government uses workers’ tax money to save the employers the expense of training. Increasingly, community college is where you learn the things that big capitalists need you to know so they can exploit your labor.
Education for liberation… Or liberation before education?
It’s not surprising that many students have absorbed the bosses’ message that schooling is not about “learning” at all. Instead, it’s mainly about showing up on time and doing the routine tasks you’re assigned. Why? To get “points” that get you “grades” so that you can “earn a degree.”
That is, capitalist schooling for workers’ children (especially black and immigrant children) is training for wage slavery.
Some students and their parents, though, trust the bosses’ hype. They see schooling and a professional career as the pathway to “helping my people.” Many teachers push this idea.
We can all learn a lot from the struggle against Apartheid schools in South Africa in the 1970s-1980s. Masses of young anti-racist rebels embraced the slogan, “liberation before education.” They played a key role in bringing down Apartheid.
In contrast, the opposing “education before liberation” faction helped to build the black bourgeoisie that participates in oppressing and exploiting masses of black and other workers in South Africa today.
Today we see things differently. Our best opportunities for education are in the very process of mobilizing the masses for communism – now and in the future.
Today that includes party study groups and communist schools. It includes reading, discussing, producing, and writing for Red Flag. It means active participation in party collectives that plan, carry out and evaluate our political work.
Opportunities for communist education will continue to expand as communist class struggle breaks through to communist revolution. And even more as we organize communist production and build communist society.
Fighting for communism is really where we learn things.
