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102 PROBLEMS CONFRONTING RUSSIA
section of humanity which represents brain-power,
knowledge, science, and education in a higher degree to gain
the upper hand over those engaged in manual labour.
If manual labour resorts to strikes, brain-power is in a
position to resort to the same methods of fighting. Hitherto
brain-workers have very rarely availed themselves of this
weapon, owing to the fact that it was found difficult to
reconcile such means with the maintenance of order and
the stability of industrial production. But if emergency
calls for action in this direction, brain-power will not shrink
from taking the step. When Russian extremists under the
leadership of Lenin and Trotsky overpowered the dictator
Kerensky, and took possession of Petrograd, the majority
of the ministries opposed them with a resolution to cease
work, and this sort of passive resistance of the educated
classes and brain-workers went on and counteracted the
carrying out of the socialistic decrees of the Maximalist
Government except in cases where armed force was employed.
This example of resistance may be taken as a fair test of
what may be the outcome of the struggle between
brain-workers and manual labour. Brain-power is unquestionably
the primary factor of any undertaking. Under the present
quite exceptional conditions manual labour has been enabled
to enforce its claims, but when it comes to the test it will
soon become apparent that the reach of brain-power is
wider, its faculty to coerce stronger, and its resources more
manifold for the fight between the two opposing forces.
The labourers will be the first to starve, as the men directing
them by brain and capital have much more resisting power ;
the poor suffer more in an economic crisis than the rich.
As for the socialistic pretence that manual labour should
be rewarded not less than brain-work, such a principle
should be relegated to the realm of theories, which are in
open opposition to the necessary conditions of life in our
present state of culture and civilisation. Manual labour,
and especially skilled labour, of course, represents
brainpower in so far as useful work can only be performed if
controlled by the brain ; but the man doing useful work,
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