Proletcult- IWCE and the Russian Revolution
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Post-16 Educator 88 IWCE 21 Proletcult: IWCE and the Russian Revolution Fabian Tompsett his article is a continuation of a previous Philosophy of Living Experience as a new translation Tone, ‘The IWW and the Plebs League’, has just come out in paperback. It was originally which appeared in PSE 87. That article published in Russian in 1913. The book, however, discussed links between the development of the related to a previous period in Bogdanov’s life when Plebs League and the IWW. Here we continue the he was developing his ideas of workers education theme of developing an international perspective in with Russian exiles in Italy in 1908-09. our understanding of Independent Working-Class In this book Bogdanov outlines what he calls Education by looking at the work of Alexander Empiriomonism. Here he argues that ‘the practice of Bogdanov (1873-1928) and the Proletkult movement machine production contains a new point of view’ which emerged following the February 1917 (p202), and that this is the product of a fourth stage Revolution. We will then examine how Eden and of social evolution whereby the collective activity of Cedar Paul used the term Proletcult in their 1921 the working class would overcome the exchange- publication simply called Proletcult. They borrowed based individualistic basis of capitalist society. A a definition from the Plebs League when they new social-labour world view would emerge (p210). described the purpose of pre-revolutionary Proletcult: This would be socialist and would be based upon ‘to further the interests of Independent Working- the living experience of the masses - and Class Education as a partisan effort to improve the industrialisation brought more and more workers into position of labour in the present, and ultimately to industrial production. This experience, he argued, assist in the abolition of wage-slavery’. based on comradely social collaboration, primarily in It is worth briefly tracing the origins of the the actual production process, would result in the Russian Proletcult movement back to a split within development of a ‘proletarian culture’ which would the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Socialist overcome the individualistic limitations characteristic Democratic Labour Party which occurred in 1908- of the market relations of bourgeois society, and so 1910. Following the failure of the 1905 Revolution in become generalised, breaking down the separation Russia the differences between the two most of knowledge into different disciplines. It would be prominent theorists in the Bolshevik faction became this seizure of the industrial apparatus of society more intense. Alexander Bogdanov became an which would enable the political transformation of advocate of an empiricist approach to Marxism society, rather than the seizure of the state. which, although owing much to the Austrian Proletarian science would truly become a general physicist Ernst Mach, actually deserves to be science of organisation. understood in its own right. I won’t discuss the full One characteristic of this approach was range of his prolific writing, but just focus on The Bogdanov’s monism, the view that the world is a 22 IWCE Post-16 Educator 88 single whole rather than being composed separately Independent Working Class Education and also in of the psychical and the physical. He views this the Workers Socialist Federation, which briefly was empiriomonism as a development of the monism of a part of the emergent Communist Party of Great Joseph Dietzgen (1828-88), who had become so Britain, but ultimately never accepted the Leninist popular as a working-class philosopher across the basis of the party. world - and had indeed been taken up by the Plebs Eden Paul (1865-1944) came from a middle class League as presenting a powerful working-class background, his father being the publisher Charles approach to philosophy. And it was precisely upon Kegan Paul. Cedar Paul (1880-1972) was the his philosophical outlook that Lenin took Bogdanov daughter of the composer/musical professor Francis to task, writing Materialism and Empiriocriticism as William Davenport. they were married around 1915 an attack on these ideas in 1909. The split between and became prolific translators of socialist and Lenin and Bogdanov was bitter and neither had Marxist literature. They wrote a series of articles for much to do with the other after Bogdanov was Workers Dreadnought and in 1918 these were expelled from the editorial board of the Bolshevik summarised in the pamphlet Independent Working magazine Proletary in June of that year. Class Education - Thoughts and Suggestions. Here Following the overthrow of the tsar in the February they advocate an experimental approach to the Revolution of 1917, 120 delegates of the Petrograd education of children using the Montessori system. Soviet - the unifying body of the workers in that city - This was a new approach to education which had an set in motion the establishment of Proletkult. Its first emphasis on the free development of the child real conference occurred on the eve of the Bolshevik through a constructivist approach where children seizure of power, popularly known as the October learn through discovery and practical activity rather Revolution. Although many of the key figures were than through instruction. They opposed teaching members of the Bolshevik Party, Bogdanov was socialism by rote, but rather argued that the New never reconciled with the Party. Proletkult School should be ‘a laboratory of practical maintained a separate existence from the Party, and pedagogy’. They suggested their ideas were more Lenin always treated it with particular scorn. revolutionary than what was commonly advocated for By 1920 Proletkult claimed a total of 84,000 the Plebs League and they discuss the activities of members in 300 local groups, with an additional Emmy Freundlich (1878-1948) in Austria very 500,000 more casual followers. There were fifteen positively. Proletkult publications, most notably Proletarskaia In a subsequent book Creative Revolution (1920) Kultura (Proletarian Culture; 1918 to 1921) and Gorn they develop their idea of ‘ergatocracy’, a term which (Furnace; 1918 to 1923). Although there was a side never caught on. They defined it as ‘the session of the 2nd Congress of the Third administration of the workers, for the workers, by the International at which Kultintern was established, workers’. They very much saw this as replacing the very little came of this. (However, Tom Quelch and representative democracy of parliament by the direct William McLaine from the UK were elected to the democracy of the Soviets or Workers Councils. The International Bureau - McLaine was active in the book is dedicated to Lenin, but in reality the ideas Plebs League and the National Council of Labour expressed are much more those of Council Colleges). Proletkult was wound down after Communism - which Lenin denounced in Left-Wing December 1920 with all cultural activity being more Communism An Infantile Disorder (1920). Reading tightly overseen by the Commissariat of contemporary accounts of the support for Lenin at Enlightenment or by the Party itself. this period, it is clear that this was before Lenin’s Although it is in many ways remembered for its prescriptions for the political activities of Communist influence on the arts - the Russian film-maker Sergei Parties in Western Europe had become widely Eisenstein was greatly influenced by it - for understood, or perhaps even properly formulated. Bogdanov its educational and scientific role was The Pauls were aligned with anti-parliamentarism of perhaps more important. He viewed it as functioning the Workers Socialist Federation, its leader, Sylvia alongside the Proletarian University established in Pankhurst, being directly criticised by Lenin in his this same period as a means to place the working booklet. class at the centre of the production and distribution In Creative Revolution the Pauls argue that it is of scientific knowledge and education. the struggle against slavery which is more important I shall now pick up the story in the British Isles than the struggle against poverty. After critically during the period of revolutionary struggle which took discussing Bertrand Russell’s vews as being off following the end of the fighting in the First World aristocratic they argue: War but which went into decline after Black Friday - Had Russell been more in touch with the real 15th April 1921. It was during this period that Eden working-class movement, he would have known that and Cedar Paul were active as advocates of everywhere, and pre-eminently in Britain, that Post-16 Educator 88 IWCE 23 movement is throwing up its own intellectuals; that material had arrived too late for inclusion. They syndicalism has a proletarian intellectual side as envisaged this would be available in a second edition well as a semi-bourgeois intellectual side; that the which never materialised. Plebs League and the Labour Colleges are the They compare the cumbersome term working-class counter-blast to the middle-class ‘Independent Working-Class Education’ (IWCE) with National Guilds League and the Workers’ the ‘fire-new’ term Proletcult, saying they are Educational Association; and that the proletarian practically synonymous. They review the use of the movement, not the semi-bourgeois movement, is term internationally, differentiating between the pre- the true inheritor of the liberty-ensuing energies of revolutionary nature of IWCE compared to the syndicalism. He would have known further that on broader aims - particularly concerning the arts and the industrial side, with constructive political ‘graces of life’ - which can only properly be taken up possibilities of the widest scope, there has now once the capitalist state has been overthrown. They developed the shop stewards’ and workers’ predicted a great blossoming of creativity in a post- committees’ movement, a spontaneous British revolutionary society, and say how this has given development, and simultaneously the British rise to Proletcult in Russia. However they prefer to counterpart of the soviet evolution and revolution in use a broader definition encompassing both pre- and Bolshevist Russia.