Otto Rühle increasingly places education at the forefront, declaring its role in the revolution as ever more significant. He arrives at highly extreme statements such as:
“Capitalist education is the most powerful means of preventing the proletarian revolution.”1
“The true and thus actual revolution is the revolution of the inner human.”
“If dismantling authority is the most urgent revolutionary task, then anti-authoritarian (or better: non-authoritarian) education is today the most significant means of solving this task.”
Education, therefore, stands at the center of the class struggle. It is important to engage with this perspective, not because it is a symptom of our current situation. We are—it’s no use denying it—pushed out of the center of political struggle because it has taken forms that have nothing to do with revolution. We stand at outposts, forced to content ourselves with enlightening propaganda. This is deeply regrettable. But it doesn’t make things better—rather, a thousand times worse—if one suddenly presents what one is compelled to do out of necessity as the only true revolutionary path. We have alarming examples of this danger. Before the war, Social Democracy was forced by circumstances to fight against the monarchy for the daily demands of the proletariat. From this, revisionism developed the theory that socialism would emerge through reforms.
The step from enlightening propaganda to education is outwardly not very large; the way back, when the time for actual struggle comes again, from education to real struggle will be impossible for many once the theory of the “inner revolution” takes root. Therefore, it must be fought against from the outset.
Let us, however, closely examine Rühle’s reasoning, as it appears irrefutable, relying as it does on the latest psychology (the science of the soul), thus an exact science.
We speak of the development of the proletariat’s self-consciousness. By this, we mean that it’s not enough for the proletariat to instinctively resist its oppressors in the struggle for higher wages; rather, it must become conscious of its class position. Only then will it seek to overcome it, whereas otherwise it will only ever want slightly higher wages.
Rühle says the following about the development of the proletariat’s self-consciousness in his essay in Einheitsfront:
“Self-conscious means independent, with a proletarian revolutionary identity. It means a sense of full worth as a personality within the framework of class struggle and class consciousness.” (Emphasis mine. R.)
Here, class consciousness is not merely the recognition of one’s class position, at best a readiness to jointly defend against threats facing the proletariat, but rather the recognition of the proletariat’s historical mission, expressed in its revolutionary role, and active participation in fulfilling that role. The AAU [General Workers’ Union] has recognized that the development of proletarian self-consciousness must begin with dismantling the authoritarian principle.
It is obvious that this lengthy explanation contains two entirely different things. What we consider essential is tucked in between; at the beginning and end is what Rühle primarily focuses on, as the following will show.
What does the “authoritarian principle” mean? For there to be authorities, there must be belief. By accepting an institution, doctrine, etc., as correct—not because I am convinced of it, but simply because it comes from “above”—I make that institution, doctrine, or person an authority. Today’s world, up to its highest echelons, is permeated by the belief in the correctness of everything that comes from “above.” That is why it is built on the authoritarian principle.
But Rühle means even more by this, giving the “authoritarian principle” a broader meaning. He speaks of the “authority within us.” What does he mean by this? The modern human not only believes in authority but wants to be an authority themselves. For whoever has authority—that is, whoever others believe in and look up to—has power. Now it becomes clear that the whole thing must be turned around: because humans strive for power, because they want to dominate others, they establish authority, teaching that one must believe in the higher, wiser, or elder.
But it is still not entirely clear why Rühle primarily demands the “dismantling of this power-seeking, this authority within us.” He provides two reasons: It shows how the pursuit of status and superiority psychologically distances and isolates people. The ability to connect is lost. One becomes another’s competitor, rival, adversary, devil. True friendship and camaraderie become mere phrases. There is no more solidarity. The fiercer the mutual struggle, the more bitter the fight for superiority, the more frequent the disappointment, the more devastating the impact of failure on the human soul. The image of discord, hostility, tearing apart, and disunity that the workers’ movement presents today is the result of an increasingly dubious wrestling match for personal validation. In a multitude of private conflicts and struggles, an enormous amount of psychic energy is wasted, which is lost to the class struggle. Man and woman, parents and neighbors, colleagues and comrades in organizations and friends constantly face each other as bitter enemies. Even the poorest and most oppressed find no path to genuine camaraderie; they snatch the last crumb of bread from each other instead of sharing it, push each other away instead of reaching out, and drive each other into ruin.
But it’s not just that energy is lost; the authoritarian person also sees the world entirely differently, in a way that makes revolution impossible: with a bourgeois (i.e., authoritarian. R.) orientation, the human constructs—from the objective components and conditions in economy, politics, and society—a justification and preservation of the inherited world with private interests, individualism, egoism, power-seeking, and authority. Hence: “There is no revolution that has not first passed through the brain, consciousness, and soul of the human.”
This establishes why education must play such a prominent role and simultaneously sets a specific task to be accomplished through education: the authority within us must be destroyed. How this is possible is shown by the “newer psychology,” Alfred Adler’s individual psychology (not to be confused with the “Marxist” Max Adler). It teaches us where the drive for power actually comes from. It originates in early childhood. Indeed, the very first cry of a child is an expression of it. Let Rühle speak for himself again:
The core of every childhood situation is the feeling of weakness and inferiority, and the content of every goal is the attainment of a sense of power and superiority.
Every human enters as a child into a foreign, unknown, incomprehensible world, among a group of adults who command, reward, or punish them, who appear to the child as free, powerful, and great. The contrast between small and large, weak and strong, is felt excessively by every child and is fixed in the image of below–above, female–male. If, in addition to these, albeit exaggeratedly perceived but real oppositions, the child faces the disadvantage of a social environment, an uncomprehending authoritarian education, and the disadvantage of physical defects or ailments, all conditions are present to provoke a heightened sensitivity in the child, sharpening their faculties for measuring and comparing, and instilling in them a very low opinion of themselves and an excessively high opinion of others and the environment. The feeling of inferiority becomes the pivot of all psychological experiences.
This feeling of inferiority does not merely seek balance or compensation; it acts in the soul with such painful intensity that it demands an emphasis in the opposite extreme, an overcompensation. The goal that the soul envisions as suitable for this overcompensation is called power and superiority. From actual or even just perceived inferiority, the soul—mostly in its unconscious regions—develops strategic guidelines leading to the goal of superiority and a sense of worth. The entire psyche is subjected to the law of this life plan, and memory, reason, and will work tendentiously in its service. Behaviors and attitudes—such as defiance, heightened aggression against people and life, or humility and compulsive submission (a desire to triumph with male or female weapons, as the case may be)—are tested. What is frequently practiced carves grooves; thus, character is formed. It is not something innate and unchangeable but a product built from all behaviors aimed at alleviating the burdensome, discouraging feeling of inferiority and preparing for a future endowed with all splendor.
Thus: because the child is oppressed, it feels inferior. But it wants to be fully valued. It wants to overcome, balance (compensate), and possibly overcompensate its inferiority complex. Why it wants this, we unfortunately don’t learn from the “newer psychology.” We must simply believe it.
Similarly, we must believe that every human—consciously or, as is usually the case, unconsciously—suffers from inferiority complexes. This has only been established in relatively few mentally ill individuals (and even then, often unconvincingly). But we won’t dwell on this very shaky foundation of the entire theory here. These two critical remarks are only meant to prevent the “newer psychology” from being erected as a new authority, which is clearly in line with Rühle’s intent.
However, there is another difficulty with this theory—and this gives Rühle the opportunity to establish a particularly close connection between Adler’s individual psychology and Marxism. The question is why compensation and overcompensation almost always take the form of authoritarian, anti-communal, egoistic behavior; why humans don’t just as readily compensate their inferiority complex through actions for the benefit of humanity. This does happen: if an innate sense of community has not yet completely atrophied, the individual will direct their drive for expansion toward community-promoting paths and strive for recognition through outstanding achievements. (This is where genius has its roots.) For example, Beethoven is said to have composed his great works to compensate for the inferiority complex caused by his poor hearing! We learn that humans have an innate sense of community. However, this is said to wither as the drive for power increasingly dominates. These two drives—power and community—define the human. In prehistoric times, they were likely equal. Over time, however—with advancing division of labor, the rise of private property, etc.—the community drive has increasingly atrophied. Future development must strengthen the community drive again. (Why?) Rühle believes that Marx observed the same development in economics as Adler did in the realm of the soul: thus, Marxism and individual psychology largely align in their views of the past, the advantages of the present, and their demands for the future.
These are the main points of Rühle’s line of thought. It combines elements from two entirely different perspectives, as Rühle himself often emphasizes: Marxism and individual psychology. Both take on a new face in the process, unfortunately not to their advantage. We won’t delve into psychology here2 , but we will address Marxism. We aim to show that it does not need the much-praised supplementation by individual psychology.
Conclusion.
It is completely incorrect and incompatible with Marxism to claim that the authoritarian human poses such an insurmountable obstacle to the revolution. Secondly, it is factually incorrect and simply does not align with reality to claim that the authoritarian human, as Rühle describes them, represents the type of today’s human, especially the proletarian. Both errors are interconnected and stem from a fundamental reinterpretation of Marxism.
Let’s address the second claim first. It is essentially a question of fact, and a Marxist should treat it as such. Rühle does not; instead, he answers the question about the nature of modern humans based on a theory of individual psychology. Anyone who observes reality sees that such a simple, uniform answer cannot be given. Certainly, it cannot be denied that there is a struggle everywhere for the best place in the sun, that everyone, so to speak, fights for as much power as possible. But is that really all one sees? Doesn’t a sense of fateful solidarity, a storm of collective outrage, shared hatred, or shared sorrow break through again and again? Aren’t the organizations supporting political prisoners and our newspapers created through the collective work of many? This shows how flawed Rühle’s explanation of self-consciousness development, cited at the beginning, is. Naturally, one finds nothing of class consciousness or solidarity if one searches instead for personalities with a sense of full worth, for “non-authoritarian” individuals.
Just as a collective phenomenon affecting a group of people as a whole—namely, the development of self-consciousness—is reinterpreted here as a question concerning the individual, so too is Marxism, the doctrine of societal development, reinterpreted as a doctrine of the individual and their development. It’s no use if Rühle tries to resolve this contradiction with Marxism by saying that body and mind are not fundamentally different but merely two inseparable manifestations of the one fundamental fact: human life. The question here is not about body and mind but about the position of the individual in society. It can be conceded that Marx wasn’t sufficiently clear on this point; Karl Liebknecht developed it further fruitfully. But the solution Rühle finds must be deemed entirely wrong. For example, to counter an emerging contradiction between Marxism and individual psychology, Rühle says: “Since the economic-social nature of humans also only appears within their consciousness, thus psychologically, and only receives impulses for further development from this consciousness, there is no contradiction here.” Or: To see humans as the medium through whose consciousness ideas derived from socioeconomic necessities and conditions pass, to then find realization as political postulates that best meet the class’s needs at the time—this is properly understood Marxism.
It must be explicitly emphasized that this is not about the base-superstructure question, as it’s obvious that only the individual human has a brain, can think, and form an ideology. Rather, it’s about whether this thinking and feeling human is truly such an isolated individual as individual psychology and Rühle portray, or whether they are firmly tied to the class, sometimes even to the entirety of humanity with whom they live, and can only think in step with their environment. Everything depends on stating precisely what one means and not resorting to vague phrases. Rühle also says that humans are social beings. But for him and bourgeois psychology, this only means that the individual interacts with others. In the Marxist sense, however, the class, for example, is something far more real than just a sum of individuals with similar thoughts, perhaps bound by a sense of community. Class consciousness is truly the consciousness of the class, which no individual could have alone. That’s why Marxism doesn’t end, as Rühle believes, with the “living human” but with the class. This is the final and decisive reason why no individual psychology or education can help us. It’s not about making the individual proletarian self-conscious or fully valued, but the class. We must fail at the first task, despite all individual psychology. For if the “authoritarian” human is a result of the inferiority complex, and this is a result of constant oppression from above, how can there be a path to salvation other than through communism?
We don’t want to throw out the baby with the bathwater. We don’t deny that education is also a task. But it must be assigned its proper place. It has no place in the proletariat’s struggle; it would not only be a waste of energy but a wrong path. Like all life-reform movements, a rational education—unless it’s aware that it’s not an end in itself but only a small aid—can benefit the proletariat in its struggle by making the individual proletarian stronger and more robust. But education has nothing to do with class struggle.