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Adams, Brooks, 1848-1927

"The Theory of Social Revolutions"

One source of capitalistic weakness comes
from a lack of proper instruments wherewith to work, even supposing the
will of capital to be good; and this lack of administrative ability is
somewhat due to the capitalistic attitude toward education. In the
United States capital has long owned the leading universities by right
of purchase, as it has owned the highways, the currency, and the press,
and capital has used the universities, in a general way, to develop
capitalistic ideas. This, however, is of no great moment. What is of
moment is that capital has commercialized education. Apparently modern
society, if it is to cohere, must have a high order of generalizing
mind,--a mind which can grasp a multitude of complex relations,--but
this is a mind which can, at best, only be produced in small quantity
and at high cost. Capital has preferred the specialized mind and that
not of the highest quality, since it has found it profitable to set
quantity before quality to the limit which the market will endure.
Capitalists have never insisted upon raising an educational standard
save in science and mechanics, and the relative overstimulation of the
scientific mind has now become an actual menace to order because of the
inferiority of the administrative intelligence.


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