File:F. Tompsett (2019) Alexander Bogdanov and Independent Working-Class Education (PSE 95).pdf

Summary[edit]

After many years in obscurity, the name of the Russian political activist Alexander Bogdanov (1873-1928) is starting to achieve the sort of recognition it deserves. At the time of the split between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks, he was a prominent Bolshevik who perhaps rivalled Lenin in reputation. However, from the start, Bogdanov was developing a different approach from Lenin: an approach which envisaged a revolutionary movement growing out of the development of advanced workers by their own efforts, regardless of the extent to which the ‘educated representatives of the propertied classes’ elaborate a socialist ideology (What is to be Done? 1902). Although the row which later developed between Lenin and Bogdanov focused around certain philosophical issues, I shall here focus on Bogdanov’s approach to Independent Working-Class Education (IWCE).