148 DANGEROUS THOUGHTS

needs and to emergent social aspirations I subscribe to a view
which Luther and John Knox, Lenin or Mr. Victor Gollancz
could equally endorse. Those who would most like to club me
with a Left Book would agree with me in the following statement
of what are the pressing needs of our own time. The advance of
scientific knowledge has placed at our disposal unrecognized
resources for the satisfaction of common human needs and sinister
instruments for self-destruction. The distribution of the benefits
of discovery as dividends to a restricted social class and the
recurrent unemployment of capitalist society have become an
obstacle to further social or cultured progress. The cultural task
of education in the Age of Potential Plenty is to distribute
knowledge of the constructive possibilities of human welfare
within our reach, and to show us how to replace a defective
social mechanism which prevents us from taking advantage of
them. I see no reason for encouraging adult education if it
does not start with this explicitly socialist bias. One of the
reasons why we have universal education is that John Knox
was biased in favour of founding the Kingdom of God in
Edinburgh.

A large number of ordinarily intelligent people have begun to
realize that political democracy is a sham, if it cannot guarantee
a much larger share in the benefits of advancing knowledge and
improved technical skill to the average citizen. A very large
number of ordinarily intelligent people who have no articulate
sympathy for Socialism realize that capitalism has outlived its
usefulness. Many more would come to the same conclusion if
they had more information about the resources which scientific
technology has placed within our reach. The task of salvaging
democracy is a positive one. We shall not resist the challenge of
dictatorship and die downward path from militarism to barbarism
if we are content to defend a democracy which has ceased to
satisfy the social aspirations of men and women. The educational
task of salvaging democracy is to canalize the will to constructive
socid innovation by asserting the reasonable grounds for hopeful-
ness in the human experiment, and to distribute knowledge