Government Schools as a Communist Success

Government schools have been successful at achieving their goals in many societies across large periods of time. The Soviet Union is an example.

There was a weekly journal called 'Soviet Russia' published in New York City in the early 1900s by the Russian Soviet Government Bureau. Yes, the Soviet Union was allowed to publish propaganda openly in the United States. In volume 4, number 18, on April 30, 1921, there's an article by Nikolai Lenin. Yes, that's Vladimir Lenin, he changed his name a few times over his life. The title of the article is 'Political Education in Soviet Russia'.

Here are four selections from that article:

"In such a moment of struggle we must defend our Socialist work of construction and wage a conflict with this bourgeoisie, both in a military and—what is more important—in a spiritual sense, in the way of education."

"Hundreds of thousands of teachers constitute an apparatus that must push our work forward. The fact that the masses of teachers are permeated with the heritage of capitalistic culture, must not and cannot prevent us from placing them in service of Communist education. The Communist active in the field of popular education must learn and understand to conduct this mass, which runs into hundreds of thousands."

"All our propaganda must be conducted in such a way that the result will be a practical control of the national structure."

"We must reeducate the masses, which is possible only by propaganda and agitation."

Notice that communist and socialist are used interchangeably. Notice that it's military and spiritual warfare. Notice that the goal is to take control of the teachers to control the students. Notice that reeducation comes from propaganda and agitation. It's the same playbook and strategy executed in nations around the world.

The Communists killed, starved, and imprisoned many millions. Destroyed entire ethnic groups and cultures. And yet, they not only held power, they became one of the two most powerful nations in the world. The government schools were instrumental in that success.

As Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote in 1848 in 'The Communist Manifesto', as point number 10 in how to turn a country communist, "Free education for all children in public schools."

The importance of government schools for control of the population has been known and used for centuries. In the Prussian Empire schools were used to create obedient soldiers so they could be hired out as mercenaries. Prussian mercenaries were very successful. The Ottoman Turkish Empire took Christian boys as slaves, converted them to Islam, and built the Janissary and Mamluk armies. Janissary and Mamluk armies were very successful. The imperial civil service examinations were used in China for over a thousand years to keep the society under control by having children trained in the way deemed best by the government.

Success depends on the goal you have in mind. People often look at government schools and think that they are failing. But, maybe they are succeeding, and you just don't understand the goal, which might be something you would disagree with if you knew the truth.

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