The title of this post probably suggested to you one of two things. Either I’m going to make fun of some leftist academic who derides western literature and education as a tool of capitalist oppressors, or I’m going to attack some work of literature that seems to me totalitarian in its ideas.

I’m going to do neither. I’m going to talk about the history of literacy. Because it’s a fact, I believe, that historically, literacy has been a tool of tyranny (Bear with me. It moves on from there).

I came to this realization (which others have doubtless had ahead of me) while reading Torgrim Titlestad’s Viking Norway, which I reviewed a few days ago.

You’ve probably read old books, or seen old movies, where some grizzled old farmer objects to his children getting any of that “new-fangled book-larnin’.” Such attitudes did in fact exist (Abraham Lincoln’s father was like that), and it may have had much of its source in simple social prejudice—the father doesn’t want his children to become one of “them” and to look down on him.

But I suspect that, in many cases, it also had traditional roots that went far back in history.

In Scandinavian history (and I’m sure something of the same sort must have happened in other Germanic societies, such as the English), the old, traditional social structure placed Law on a very high level of respect. There’s a saying from an Icelandic saga that says, “By law shall the land be built, and by lawlessness it shall be laid waste.”

The law back then was an oral tradition. Scandinavian communities would select one of their number as a Lawspeaker. It was his job to have the whole law in his memory, and to recite one third of it every year at the assembly, or Thing. His neighbors would listen respectfully—the younger men to familiarize themselves with it, the older men to watch for mistakes and make corrections if necessary. In this way the law was kept both living and accurate.

Literacy changed all this. The laws were recorded in books. The Lawspeaker’s office became redundant.

But this meant that the law was no longer common property. It became the preserve of those who could read (a distinct minority). The common man now required a lawyer to help him deal with legal problems. He was no longer sure what the fine points of the law were. He was not a participant in the law. He was a subject.

Thus, at that early stage, the literacy of a minority became a tool by which freedom and power were taken away from the common folk, and concentrated in the hands of lawyers, judges, and the nobility that paid them.

No wonder there was a tradition that considered reading and writing dangerous things, tools of the people who cheated “our kind.”

Part of the genius of the American Revolution, and of the Scottish Enlightenment which inspired it (itself inspired by the Reformation), was to change what literacy meant. The new idea was that if you created a literate population, the power of the knowledge of books would be spread to everyone, laws would be generally known and widely debated, and the tool that had propped up tyranny would become every citizen’s tool.

It hasn’t worked out perfectly. But I think it’s been a remarkable achievement.

Hope it lasts a little while longer.