Labour is necessary, not only for the healthy physical development of the children, but also for the proper development of all their faculties. Experience shows that the time they spend at school in practical work, far from retarding their progress in all kinds of theoretical knowledge, contributes greatly to their advance in the theoretical field.
Finally, for communist society, the labour school is absolutely indispensahle. Every citizen in such a society must be acquainted with the elements, at least, of all crafts. In communist society there will be no close corporations, no stereotyped guilds, no petrified specialist groups. The most brilliant man of science must also be skilled in manual labour. To the pupil who is about to leave the unified labour school, communist society says: “You may or may not become a professor; but in any case you must produce values.” A child’s first activities take the form of play; play should gradually pass into work by an imperceptible transition, so that the child learns from the very outset to look upon labour, not as a disagreeable necessity or as a punishment, but as a natural and spontaneous expression of faculty. Labour should be a need, like the desire for food and drink; this need must be instilled and developed in the communist school.
In communist society, with its vigorous technical progress, there will inevitably be vast and rapid transferences of labour power from one department to another. For example, a discovery in the weaving or the spinning industry may reduce the need for weavers and spinners, and