as“elements of political andgeneral education”or“elements of enlightenment
and progress.”In bothcases,Bildungis seen as an integralpart of culture.¹⁴On
the other hand,Bildungrefers toarevolutionary project that aims at the trans-
formationofthe workers into an emerging class readytoprevent the expansion
of capital. In this explicitlypolitical sense,Bildungis always translated as forma-
tion. By combiningbothmeanings, the Marxist conception ofBildungestablish-
ed the parallel projects of aesthetic education and class formation and defined
their contribution to themaking of the proletarian dream.
Reread in light of these additional meanings,the two Liebknecht speeches
performedthe commitmentto education as part of the Social Democrats’general
response to the profound changes broughtabout by industrialization, moderni-
zation, urbanization, and capitalist development.Hard-foughtreductions in
workinghours and increases in real wages finallyallowed industrial workers
to take advantage of educational opportunities and pursue professional qualifi-
cations. Greater funding for public schools, stricter regulations for parochial ed-
ucation, and newapproachesto teachingand learning helpedtoraise literacy
rates andmake basic culturalcompetencies an integralpart both of the social-
ization of the workingclass and of the reproduction of labor power.
During the earlytransition from an estates-based society toaclass-based
one, the promise that“education setsyoufree”(Bi ldung machtfrei), aslogan at-
tributed toJoseph Meyer, founder of the famousMeyersKonversations-Lexikon,
had served largelystabilizing and integrative functions.¹⁵The earlyArbeiterbil-
dungsvereine(workers’educational associations) of the 1840s turned to educa-
tion to achievegreater equalityand opportunity in bourgeois society.Unlike
the conservativeVolksbildungsbewegung(people’seducation, or adulteducation
movement), which used people’slibraries and peoplesbook series to promote’
social peace and maintain the status quo, the workers’educational associations
Karl Marx andFriedrich Engels,“Manifest derKommunistischen Partei”and“Manifesto of
the Communist Party,”https://www.marxists.org/deutsch/archiv/marx-engels/1848/manifest/
and https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/,1March2017.
Forhistorical overviews,see Karl Birker,Die deutschen Arbeiterbildungsvereine 1840– 1870
(Berlin: Colloquium, 1973); foralonger period, also seeJosef Olbrich with Horst Siebert,Ge-
schichte der Erwachsenenbildung in Deutschland(Opladen: Leske+Budrich,2001).Women
playedagrowing roleinthe postwar debates on worker’seducation both inside and on the mar-
gins of SPD and KPD initiatives, as can be seen in books such as Gertrud Hermes’sDiegeistige
Gestalt des marxistischen Arbeiters und die Arbeiterbildungsfrage(1926)and Hilde Reisig’s1933
dissertation onDer politische Sinn der Arbeiterbildung(republished in 1975). The local nature
of these educational associations has been documented inWolfgangSchröder,Leipzig—die
Wiege der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung.Wurzeln undWerden des Arbeiterbildungsvereins 1848/
49 bis 1878/81(Berlin:Karl Dietz,2010).
162 Chapter8