File:Tompsett Fabian 2017 Proletcult IWCE and the Russian Revolution.pdf

Summary[edit]

This article is a continuation of a previous one, ‘The IWW and the Plebs League’, which appeared in PSE 87. That article discussed links between the development of the Plebs League and the IWW. Here we continue the theme of developing an international perspective in our understanding of Independent Working-Class Education by looking at the work of Alexander Bogdanov (1873-1928) and the Proletkult movement which emerged following the February 1917 Revolution. We will then examine how Eden and Cedar Paul used the term Proletcult in their 1921 publication simply called Proletcult. They borrowed a definition from the Plebs League when they described the purpose of pre-revolutionary Proletcult: ‘to further the interests of Independent Working- Class Education as a partisan effort to improve the position of labour in the present, and ultimately to assist in the abolition of wage-slavery’.