We often believe with
criminal superficiality that to educate the masses politically is to deliver a
long political speech from time to time. We think that it is enough that the
leader or one of his lieutenants should speak in a pompous tone about the
principle events of the day for them to have fulfilled this bounden duty to
educate the masses politically. Now, political education means opening their
minds, awakening them, and allowing the birth of their intelligence … it is ‘to
invent souls’. To educate the masses politically does not mean, cannot mean
making a political speech. What it means is to try, relentlessly and
passionately, to teach the masses that everything depends on them; that if we
stagnate it is their responsibility, and that if we go forward it is due to
them too, that there is no such thing as a hero that will save them with his
magic hands, that there is no famous man who will take the responsibility for
everything, but that the hero is the people themselves and the magic hands are
finally only the hands of the people.
- The Wretched of the Earth, 1961
- The Wretched of the Earth, 1961
