Lenin and Art by Lunacharsky

In honor of Lenin on the anniversary of his death, we publish this short essay by Lunacharsky on Lenin’s views regarding art. This text was originally published in “Khudozhnik i Zritel” (Artist and Audience), issues 2-3, March-April 1924, and has been translated by Reuben Woolley. Introduction by Cliff Connolly. The original source of the translation can be found here.

Lunacharsky, third from left, with Lenin, 1920

In the days following Lenin’s death in late January 1924, the Soviet Union was flooded with artistic and literary works commemorating the fallen revolutionary. In his poem The Komsomol Song, Mayakovsky wrote the now-famous words: “Lenin lived, Lenin lives, Lenin is to live forever.” The city of Petrograd was renamed in Lenin’s honor, and the new Leningrad Gublit published a propaganda broadsheet with the poem A Drop of Ilych’s Blood. As the verses suggested, the departed leader continued to give inspiration to millions even in death; a drop of his blood in every communist’s veins. This was the environment that gave birth to the following work from Lunacharsky.

People were hungry for reminiscence to soothe their loss, and Lunacharsky delivered. A longtime Bolshevik and accomplished writer, he was made head of the People’s Commissariat for Education after the October 1917 revolution. In this position, he helped establish the Bolshoi Drama Theatre, protected historic cultural sites, oversaw public art exhibitions and experiments, and facilitated a drastic increase in Russia’s literacy rate. He had a unique perspective on Lenin, being sometimes in agreement with and other times in opposition to the latter’s policy ideas (although the disagreements were always comradely in nature). He also frequently served as an intermediary between Lenin and the art world, often taking measures to safeguard artistic institutions that Lenin was harshly critical of.

One such institution was that of Proletkult, a federated collective of avant-garde artists working mainly in drama, literature, and the visual arts. Over half a million members participated in its studios, clubs, and factory circles. The controversial organization sought to prefigure a purely proletarian culture untainted by capitalism, and produce works that would reflect this aesthetic. While Lunacharsky was a huge proponent and succeeded in acquiring state funding for Proletkult projects, others took issue with its founding ethos. Lenin in particular was concerned that it amounted to no more than a group of “bourgeois intellectuals” trying to create a culture from thin air and impose it on the working class.

Throughout this memoir of his time with Lenin, Lunacharsky paints a picture of a man with a passionate yet strangely distant relationship to art. Lenin loves music, but “it upsets him.” Lenin loves art history, but cannot devote enough time to it to form an opinion. Lenin has trouble funding an opulent theatre when there are run-down schools but refuses to close it. On matters of sculpture, Lenin defers to the judgment of others and then is elated to hear their learned conclusions match his insufficiently educated opinion. Overall, this is totally in line with the character of a disciplined revolutionary who avoids speaking on topics he hasn’t thoroughly investigated. The resulting quirks are entertaining and were precisely what a nation in mourning needed in the wake of a popular leader’s death.

It’s worth noting that the author did not originally intend this piece for publication, and didn’t bother editing closely after writing the piece essentially in note-form. The tone and pacing is somewhat strange in the original Russian, and this is exacerbated by its translation into another language. While not a perfect piece of prose, it still holds a great deal of merit and is well worth a read. Thanks to Lunachasky’s written memories, we know Lenin truly lived. In reading these words almost a hundred years after they were written, we see that Lenin lives. In our daily work as communist militants and organizers, we ensure that Lenin is to live forever.

Lenin and Art by Anatoly Lunacharksy (1924)

Lenin had very little time during his life to devote any concerted attention to art, and so he had always considered himself profane on the subject; he disliked making statements about art, as he always found dilettantism alien and hateful. His tastes, nevertheless, were strongly defined. He loved the Russian classics, realism in literature, portraiture, and so on.

Back in 1905, during the first revolution, he once had to spend the night at the flat of comrade D. I. Leshchenko, where, as it happened, there was a complete collection of Knackfuss’ publications, dedicated to the world’s greatest artists. The next morning, Vladimir Ilyich said to me: “What an engaging topic the history of art is. There is so much work here for a communist to do. I couldn’t get to sleep until morning, and spent the whole time looking through book after book. It tormented me to realize that I have not had the time to work at all with art, and will never have such time in the future.” I remember these words of Ilyich’s extremely distinctly.

I had to meet with him several times after the revolution to take part in various juries on artistic matters. In one such case, for example, I remember him calling for me, then he, Kamenev and I went to an exhibition of designs for statues to replace the figure of Alexander III, which had been torn from its luxurious plinth besides the temple of Christ the Savior. Vladimir Ilyich surveyed all of the statues with a strongly critical eye. He didn’t like a single one. He stood particularly intrigued in front of a design of the futurist school, but when asked for his opinion, said: “I can’t understand anything here, ask Lunacharsky.” Upon hearing me state that I could not see a single worthy piece, he looked elated, and said: “my, I thought that you were going to put any old futuristic scarecrow up there.”

Another time, the question at hand was a memorial for Karl Marx. The renowned sculptor M.¹ showed particular obstinacy in the matter. He presented a design for a grand statue: “Karl Marx, standing atop four elephants.” Such an unexpected subject struck us all as bizarre, Vladimir Ilyich very much included. The artist began reworking his memorial, eventually doing so three times, not wishing to relinquish his victory in the competition on any grounds whatsoever. When the jury, under my chairmanship, finally rejected his design and settled on a collective piece by a group under the leadership of Aleshin, sculptor M. burst into the office of Vladimir Ilyich and complained to him directly. Vladimir Ilyich took his complaint to heart, and called me directly to summon a new jury. He said that he would come personally to view the Aleshin design alongside the design of sculptor M. And so he came. The Aleshin design was found to be perfectly satisfactory, sculptor M.’s design was rejected.

At the 1st of May celebration of the same year, in the same place that the construction of the Marx memorial had been proposed, the Aleshin group built a small-scale model of their piece. Vladimir Ilyich travelled there especially. He walked around the memorial several times, asked how large it was going to be, and eventually gave his approval, but not before saying: “Anatoly Vasilievich [Lunacharsky – trans.], instruct the artist specifically that the head must come out similar enough, that one gets the same impression of Karl Marx that one would get from his best portraits; the likeness here is somewhat diminished.”

Back in 1918 Vladimir Ilyich called me and said that we must propel art forwards as an agitational material, and with this in mind he laid out two projects. Firstly, in his opinion, we had to decorate buildings, fences, and other such places where there are usually posters with grand revolutionary slogans. He immediately suggested some such slogans himself.

This project was taken up wholeheartedly by comrade Brikhnichev, when he was in charge of the Gomel Department for People’s Education. I later saw that Gomel was absolutely covered in such slogans, all containing worthy ideas. Every single mirror in one grand old restaurant in particular, which had by then been transformed into an educational institute, was now covered in aphorisms penned by comrade Brikhnichev.

In Moscow and Petrograd, not only did this not catch on in such a grandiose manner, but not even according to Ilyich’s initial vision.

The second project concerned the placement of temporary alabaster statues of great revolutionaries on an unusually large scale, across both Petersburg and Moscow. Both cities responded eagerly to my suggestion that they put Ilyich’s idea into practice, suggesting even that each statue should have a ceremonial opening with a speech about the revolutionary in question, and that underneath each statue they would place explanatory plaques. Vladimir Ilyich termed this “monumental propaganda.”

In Petrograd this “monumental propaganda” was relatively successful. The first such statue was of Radishchev, designed by Leonid Shervud. A copy of it was erected in Moscow. Unfortunately, the Petrograd statue broke and was not replaced. Generally speaking, the majority of the wonderful Petersburg statues didn’t hold out, on account of their brittle material, but I remember some fine figures: busts of Garibaldi, Shevchenko, Dobroliubov, Herzen, and several others. Left-deviationist statues came out worse. For example, upon the unveiling of a cubist rendition of the head of Perovskaya, some just recoiled in shock, and Z. Lilina demanded in no uncertain terms that the statue be taken down immediately. I remember just as clearly that many found the statue of Chernyshevsky exceedingly ornate. Best of all was the statue of Lassale. This work, erected outside the former city Duma, remains there to this day. It’s like it was cut from bronze. The full-size statue of Marx, made by the sculptor Matveev, was also extremely successful. Sadly, it broke and has been replaced in the same spot – that is, next to the Smolny Institute – by a bronze bust of Marx in a more or less regular style, without Matveev’s original sculptural rendering.

In Moscow, where the statues could be seen at once by Vladimir Ilyich, they were not such a success. Marx and Engels were depicted in some sort of basin and earned themselves the nickname “the bearded swimmers”. The Sculptor K.², however, managed to outdo everyone. For a long time, people and horses, walking and driving down Myasnitskaya, would glance fearfully at some enraged figure, who had been boarded up out of precaution. This was the respected artist’s depiction of Bakunin. If I’m not mistaken, the statue was immediately destroyed by anarchists upon its unveiling; despite all their progressiveness, they didn’t wish to suffer such harsh sculptural “mockery” of their great leader’s memory.

Generally speaking, there were very few successful statues in Moscow. Arguably better than most was the statue of the poet Nikitin. I don’t know if Vladimir Ilyich looked at them in any detail, but either way he told me, with some dissatisfaction, that nothing had come of monumental propaganda. I responded with reference to the experience in Petrograd and the report of Zinoviev. Vladimir Ilyich shook his head doubtfully and said “what, you’re telling me that every single talent gathered themselves in Petrograd, and Moscow is entirely worthless?” Indeed, I couldn’t explain to him such a strange occurrence.

He was distinctly doubtful of the memorial plaque for Konenkov. He didn’t consider it very convincing. Konenkov himself, incidentally, called this work his “imaginary-realist plaque”, not without a touch of sardonicism. I also remember the artist Altman gifting Vladimir Ilyich a bas-relief depicting Khalturin. Vladimir Ilyich liked the bas-relief very much, but he asked me, did this work not strike me as futuristic? His opinions regarding futurism were entirely negative. I wasn’t present for his conversation in Vkhutemas, whose accommodation he once visited, if I’m not mistaken because some young relative of his was living there.³ I was later told of the long conversation between him and, of course, the left-wing ‘Vkhutemastsy’. Vladimir Ilyich wrote them off, laughing a little condescendingly, but then stated that he wouldn’t personally take up the task of talking seriously on such matters, as he felt himself to be insufficiently competent. The youths themselves he found to be very nice, and their communist disposition pleased him.

Vladimir Ilyich rarely managed to enjoy art during the final period of his life. He went to the theatre a few times, seemingly exclusively the Khudozhestvenny, which he valued very highly. Plays in that theatre would invariably leave a wonderful impression on him.

Vladimir Ilyich had a strong love for music, but it would upset him. At one point I had impressive concerts arranged in my apartment. Shalyapin sang, Meichik, Romanovsky, the Stradivarius quartet, Kusevitsky on the contrabass and several others all played. I invited Vladimir Ilyich repeatedly, but he was always busy. One time he said to me directly: “of course it’s wonderful to listen to music, but you know, it upsets me. I somehow find it hard to bear.” I remember that comrade Tsiurupa, who managed to get Vladimir Ilyich to come twice to his home concerts with that same pianist Romanovsky, also told me that Vladimir Ilyich had enjoyed the music very much, but was visibly agitated.

I will add that Vladimir Ilyich was very irritated by the Bolshoi Theatre. I had to indicate to him several times that the Bolshoi cost us comparatively little, but nevertheless, at his insistence, its grant was reduced. Vladimir Ilyich was led in this by two considerations. One of them he admitted upfront: “I find it uncomfortable,” he said, “that we sustain such a luxurious theatre for great amounts of money, when we lack the resources to sustain even the simplest of village schools”. The other consideration was elaborated when I disputed his attack on the Bolshoi Theatre during a meeting. I pointed out the theatre’s undeniable cultural significance. Upon hearing this, Vladimir Ilyich wryly squinted at me, and said: “But regardless, it is a remnant of landlord culture, no one could possibly argue otherwise.”⁴

This is not to say that Vladimir Ilyich was entirely inimical to the culture of the past. He found the entire pompous-gentry tone of opera to be specifically landlord-like. On the whole he valued the visual art of the past, especially Russian realism (including, for example, the Peredvizhniki), very highly indeed.

1920 Bolshevik poster, reads “Citizens, preserve monuments of art”

Thus ends the factual information that I am able to offer the reader from my memories of Ilyich. But I will remind you that Vladimir Ilyich at no point used his aesthetic sympathies or antipathies to form any of his most fundamental ideas.

Comrades with an interest in art will remember the address to the Central Committee on questions of art which was quite sharply directed against futurism. I am no more familiar with this topic than others are, but I think it was one in which Vladimir Ilyich saw himself as having a genuine and serious contribution to make.⁵

At the same time, and entirely mistakenly, Vladimir Ilyich considered me not quite a supporter of futurism, but not quite entirely pandering to his own view either, and probably as a result he did not consult me before the publication of the Central Committee rescript, through which he intended to correct my stance.

Vladimir Ilyich also diverged from me quite sharply in relation to Proletkult. On one occasion, he even strongly scolded me. I’ll state first of all that Vladimir Ilyich absolutely did not deny the significance of workers’ circles for the production of writers and artists from a proletarian background, and promoted their national unification as a desirable aim, but he was very afraid of the feeble attempts of Proletkult to produce alongside this a proletarian science, as well as proletarian culture on a much larger scale. This, firstly, seemed to him a completely untimely task for which they lacked the capabilities; secondly, he thought that such ideas, which were of course still underdeveloped, distanced the proletariat from study, and from embracing the fundamentals of already-developed science and culture; thirdly, Vladimir Ilyich was evidently nervous to make sure that there was not, stirring in Proletkult, the beginnings of some kind of political heresy. He was considerably displeased, for example, with the large role played in Proletkult at the time by A. A. Bogdanov.

During the time of the Proletkult congress, which I believe was in 1920, he instructed me to travel there and state, in no uncertain terms, that Proletkult should be placed under the leadership of Narkompros, consider itself a Narkompros organisation, and so on. In short, Vladimir Ilyich wanted us to pull Proletkult in line with the state, at the same time as he took measures to pull it in line with the party. The speech that I gave at the congress I then made sure to edit in an evasive and appeasing manner. It didn’t seem right for me to come in with some sort of attack, upsetting the workers who had decided to gather together. This speech was shown to Vladimir Ilyich in an even softer revision. He called me to his office, and gave me a good dressing down. Later, Proletkult was restructured in accordance with Vladimir Ilyich’s orders. I repeat, he never so much as thought of its abolishment. On the contrary, he had great sympathy for its purely artistic aims.

The new artistic and literary formations that came into being during the revolution, for the most part, evaded Vladimir Ilyich’s attention. He simply had no time to devote to them. All the same, I can say that he definitely did not appreciate Mayakovsky’s 150,000,000. He found the book to be overly flowery and pretentious. One can’t help but regret that he was no longer able to pass judgement on the other, more insightful transformations in revolutionary literature that came later.

Everyone is well aware of the enormous interest Vladimir Ilyich had in cinematography.

2020.10.25

Knowledge Democratization, Bourgeois Specialists and the Organization of Science in the Early Soviet Union

For the first installment of our in-depth study of Soviet Science, Djamil, Donald and Rudy sit down to discuss the scientific institutions and the practice of Science in the early Soviet Union up to the conclusion of the Stalin Revolution. They start off with a survey of the Tsarist Academy, and what kind of structures and specialists the Bolsheviks inherited. The conversation continues with the changing ways the Bolsheviks related to specialists during the Civil War and the NEP, and how they were trying to assimilate the culture of specialists when they realized it was impossible to seize cultural power, and how this relates to the present-day debate around the Professional Managerial Class. They then discuss the role of the two anti-specialist trials that kick off the Stalin revolution: the Shakhty affair and the Industrial Party Trial, and how that served to strengthen Stalin’s hand in taking over the politbureau and resulted in a culture of blaming specialists for the failure of five-year plans. They finish by analyzing the resulting academy and intelligentsia of the 1930s, fully loyal to Stalin, and how that sets the stage for the rise of someone like Lysenko.

Culture Beyond Capital: Art, Authenticity, and the 21st Century Workers’ Movement

The course of the twentieth century has seen art and culture become increasingly subsumed into the logic of capital. A crucial element of a base-building strategy must be to foster an alternative proletarian culture outside the sphere of commodity production for the cultural enrichment and self-expression of workers, argues Cliff Connolly.

“The culture of the proletariat struggling to free itself is a class culture, sharply defined, and based on strife. We must bear in mind that the struggle is one for an ideal: that of the culture of brotherhood and complete freedom; of victory over the individualism which cripples human beings; and of a communal life based not on compulsion and the need of man to herd together for mere self-preservation, as it was in the past, but on a free and natural merging of personalities into super-personal entities.”

-Anatoly Lunacharsky, 1918

Capitalism allowed the creation of great cultural works that never would have been possible under previous modes of production. However, it has outlived its role as champion of the humanities and now serves only to smother the working artist. Authentic artistic expression can only be practiced by those free from its shackles. Artists in every medium are subject to soft censorship from their corporate benefactors and contractual obligations to produce particular content. While this enables them to share their creations with a mass audience, it compromises their integrity and precludes them from freely developing their ideas. Many regard “authenticity of expression” as a measure of originality, but this view does not hold up to close investigation. Completely original and unique ideas untainted by the input of others do not exist. No one is entirely isolated and unaffected by their environment. The self is created socially; it can only be found in and expressed with others. Thus, a certain degree of conformity with the ideas of others is not an automatic indicator of inauthenticity. It is not, as John Merrill puts it, “individual authenticity“¹ being sacrificed to conform with capital, but social authenticity.

The legal protection of “intellectual property” is another means by which capital stifles artistic expression. The internet is filled with creative and innovative new takes on existing film series, video games, and other works that will never find an audience due to copyright. While some may claim that this serves to protect the artist’s work from adulteration, it in fact serves to ensure the property owner’s ability to profit from merchandise and advertising. This creates an artistic environment in which large corporations like Disney can buy legal rights to an idea such as the Star Wars series, declare forty years of literature noncanonical, and sue any artist who attempts to write the next great Star Wars book or film without their approval. With all artistic expression made subservient to the profit-mongering of a few capitalists, how are working people to find their voice? Socialization of artistic expression must be realized for the vast majority of humanity, the working class, to live freely and authentically together.

The music of Ariana Grande, for example, can be liked or disliked, but by no means can it be considered authentic once the property relations wrapped up in it are considered. While it is the author’s opinion that Grande’s incredible talent is beyond reproach, the music is tailored to and marketed at a specific audience and thus confined within certain norms. There is a safe formula that will reliably produce revenue for the media conglomerate with rights to the music and all income it generates. Experimentation would inevitably decrease Republic Records’s revenue, affecting the financial health of its parent company Vivendi (founded in 1853 by Napoleon III, currently worth roughly 34 billion dollars). This dynamic exists everywhere that art is chained to capital.

Authentic art, then, can only be found in artists who either lack access to capital or consciously struggle against its control. Although it may be tempting for the class reductionist to assert that authenticity is only possible for those alienated from capital, this is not reflected in reality. There are those who have access to private funding but do not allow it to control their artistic decision-making. A prime example of such artists is those found among the creators of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Rob McElhenney, Glenn Howerton, and Charlie Day pitched their low-budget pilot to many networks and ultimately signed with the one that ceded them full creative freedom. In an interview filmed shortly after the show’s second season, McElhenney explained: “I wanted to lay out exactly what it is that was gonna happen if they bought the show. The only way that we’ll do it is if I’m the showrunner and executive producer, Glenn and Charlie are executive producers, and we write the show and we act in the show and you can’t change the cast. So, I wasn’t really sure what anybody’s response was gonna be, and a couple networks’ responses was: get out.” After successfully negotiating terms with FX, they went on to garner a cult following and are now approaching their fourteenth season.

It is of utmost importance for communists to understand the value of nurturing artistic authenticity both for healthy socialization and as a propaganda tool in societies dominated by the Frankenstein popular culture of capitalism. This process can help build healthy, independent proletarian communities where disparate groups of alienated individuals were once estranged from each other. Agitating against the domination of art by capital, in addition to its domination of people, can bring the working class together in a common struggle against artificial, meagre life within the confines of property relations. Genuine collaborative spectacle can replace premeditated celebrity beefs and manufactured romantic comedies in the minds of workers. We cannot fall prey to the pessimistic lament of the Frankfurt School, insisting that the workers have been conquered by the culture industry of capital and are no longer capable of revolution. Numerous acts of heroism from mutinous soldiers in Vietnam, the Black Panthers, and countless others demonstrate a continued commitment to revolution. Nor can we accept the Situationist assertion that the workers can simply use detournement and elaborate pranks to overthrow the bourgeoisie through spectacle alone. Were that the case, Eric Andre would have seized power and legalized ranch by now. The way forward is concrete political organizing coupled with a conscious effort to foster an alternative proletarian culture. Progress towards one task will advance our work in the other.

A historic example of this phenomenon can be found in the early Soviet Union. In the aftermath of the Russian revolution, theatre became mass media in a way never before seen. Once reserved for the well-to-do, it was brought to the streets of Petrograd and Moscow before being exported all over the country. The stage became a place of both recreation and political struggle for workers and peasants who had been excluded from artistic pursuits under the old order. Millions of people whose only option for an aesthetic experience had been the church finally had access to expressive activity. In his introduction to Three Soviet Plays (1966), Michael Glenny writes:

“This explosion of activity began with the revolution, as being virtually the only media for addressing large numbers of people simultaneously. The theatre also moved out of doors to deliver the revolutionary message to vast crowds who had never seen any kind of dramatic performance. The methods used were inevitably crude, but they were highly effective as a means of democratizing the theatre and of awakening a taste for drama and spectacle among the masses. Life was often hard and drab, but there was always the theatre, now available to all.”

The new Soviet government made a conscious effort to change the role of art in civil society, and found massive success. What had been a decadent ornament of the ruling class became a powerful instrument of the people. The masses of Russia, spread across eight million square miles and alienated from one another for centuries, were now forming a common community.

The revolutionary left in the United States once had mass cultural institutions to augment its political organizations too. In 1929, writers at the New Masses newspaper formed the first John Reed Club: “The purpose of the Club is to bring closer all creative workers; to maintain contact with the American revolutionary labor movement. Discussions, literary evenings, and exhibits will be organized.” This is not an obsolete historical footnote, but a strong example for us to follow in present circumstances. Our artists can and should be rallied around a common program to promote proletarian cultural development.

Communists today have to grapple with the task of promoting authentic proletarian culture just as the Bolsheviks did. However, we must remember that a new culture cannot be forced into existence without the participation of the masses we strive to serve. A healthy atmosphere of artistic experimentation must be fostered so the people can work out for themselves what their culture will look like. While we cannot prescribe a dry regimen of artistic pursuits to achieve this, we can take inspiration from working class artists exploring their craft today. The Chicago-based collective Neo-Futurist Theater provides an interesting example. Their mission is to create “theater that is a fusion of sport, poetry and living-newspaper. Non-illusory, interactive performance that conveys our experiences and ideas as directly and honestly as possible. Work that embraces those unreached or unmoved by conventional theater– inspiring them to thought, feeling and action.” Fellow traveler and playwright Kevin Michael Wesson envisions how this style of theater can be utilized by the workers’ movement:

“It is within the proletariat’s budget, interest, and future to make performing art honest and authentic[…]If the same feeling can be evoked in a $50,000 budget, three hour[…]play, as a zero budget two-minute[…]play, what is the point of capital if only to starve the honest artist?”²

These artists show us how innovation can compensate for a lack of funds in developing alternative proletarian culture.

In overcoming the limitations of capital and intellectual property, we should remember the lessons of the 20th century. The restrictions that previous socialists put on themselves must be avoided if a healthy culture is to be built. Censorship is a dangerous tool that is best employed with a light hand. Only the most heinous organs of reaction should be suppressed, and even then as a last resort. Open debate is always preferable to censorship in the realm of ideas; in the realm of action, other strategies are necessary. History shows the consequences that come with the bureaucratization of art: stifled creativity, conformity to official genre requirements, and state persecution of artists guilty of deviating from the norm. Recounting the demise of the free Soviet theatre, Michael Glenny writes:

“To circumscribe the writers’ freedom even further, Zhdanov defined the official doctrine of ‘Socialist Realism’ at the first Congress of Soviet Writers in 1934. From now on they were required to write nothing but stereotyped pieces on a few officially approved themes.”

Many great socialist artists were harassed, arrested, and even pushed to suicide by the Stalinist bureaucracy. In addition to the loss of life and freedom, these tragic instances were the beginning of the end for authentic proletarian culture in the Soviet Union. The proletariat today cannot lose sight of those mistakes; we must vigilantly guard our movement from their repetition.

Perhaps the most impactful tool in the communists’ belt for cultural development is education. Lunachasky’s insight is again worth noting:

“We must never lose sight of the fact that the chief aim of education is the knowledge of the various forms of human culture, which, in its turn, includes all forms of mental and manual activity. The artistic and physical education must be the fitting completion of the technical. There must be educational freedom and freedom in the school. We hope to see the birth of an art completely in touch with the emotions of the modern world: of an art that will lead us to further conquests for liberty.”

Workers taking education into their own hands is nothing new in the United States — our movement has a long history of organizing workers’ night schools and party education centers. Moreover, these institutions were often on the cutting edge of progressive pedagogy for their time- with the New York Workers School being a prime example. According to Richard H. Rovere,

“By…1938, the Workers School had developed its own pedagogic method, forsaking the traditional academic format of lecture and recitation for a variation of the Socratic method in which short lectures were made with a view to posing of key questions for joint discussion by students. This teaching method, borrowed from a small set of elite liberal arts colleges in the New England region, was intended to shift the responsibility for learning to the students themselves.”³

This example should be exciting to anyone committed to the project of socialist base-building. The infrastructure and resources required to put such a school together are minimal, and certainly within the realm of possibility in the near future. A hundred or so dues-paying members of workers’ and tenants’ unions could easily find the money, location, and staff to host a weekly lesson or two. The American working class speaks countless languages that should be learned by organizers, our history should be taught to fill in the omissions in public school textbooks, and the finer points of Marxist theory should be made easily understandable to those of us who can’t afford a graduate degree. These tasks cannot be accomplished without a strong communist focus on education. Moreover, these schools will inevitably bring together budding proletarian artists and give them a space for collaboration and experimentation.

Whether it be red theater in the streets, workers’ night schools, or unionized cafes with domino tables and 99 cent coffee, new spaces for healthy socialization among workers must be created. It is in these spaces that communists can advocate our ideas and organize our institutions. Our dual task is to nurture an alternative proletarian culture and a democratic proletarian party. Achieving these aims will lay the foundation for a new century of class struggle that will shine brighter than the last.