While published here in 1920, this wonderful essay by Lunacharsky clearly dates from a couple of years before.

‘Self-Education of the Workers and the Cultural Task of the Struggling Proletariat’ by Anatoly Lunacharsky from Truth (Duluth). Vol. 4 No. 5. January 20, 1920.

The culture of the proletariat struggling to free itself is a class culture, sharply defined, and based on strife. It is romantic, and, from its very intensity, its form suffers, because time does not allow a definite and perfect form to be elaborated from its stormy and tragic substance.

Classes and nations which have reached their highest development are classical in their culture. Classes striving for self-expression are romantic, and their romanticism possesses the typical characteristics of the “storm and stress”; classes doomed to decay assume another form of romanticism, that of melancholy, disenchantment, and decadence.

We must not conclude that there is no intimate relationship between Socialist and proletarian culture because they so substantially differ from each other. 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.

Not only do the very characteristics of this ideal prescribe definite forms of co-operation in the midst of the prevailing world strife: these forms are themselves the direct outcome of the peculiar position occupied by the working class in the capitalist world order, which has forced the workers to be the best organised and most united class in the community.

No ideal can spring from a soil or seed alien to it; the methods and weapons used for its attainment must be in harmony with itself. Therefore from the struggling proletariat we must not expect the splendour of the harvest and the perfection of form and unfettered grace of victorious strength. These will reveal themselves in the future. Nevertheless, we have every reason to expect that proletarian culture, because of its struggle, its toil, and suffering, will possess characteristics which would probably be unthinkable in the social order of a triumphant Socialism.

But the question arises whether this struggling proletariat really has a culture of any sort. Most certainly. In the first place, it possesses in Marxism all that is essential—the fine and powerful investigation of social phenomena, the basis of sociology and political economy, the cornerstone of the philosophic conception of the world. In these the proletariat is already in possession of treasures which can bear comparison with the most brilliant achievements of the human brain.

Moreover, in many countries the proletariat has a remarkable organising power in the political sphere. It is true that the dead creation of the past still holds the new life in its arms; the bourgeois parliamentarianism and nationalism has permeated the young political organism of the proletarian parties and of International itself.

The crisis is acute: the disease, of which the left Social Democrats gave warning whilst it was yet in its incubatory period, is most virulent—indeed, many asserted that it would prove fatal—but one can even now declare that it will be overcome and utilised, and that the political organizations of the proletariat will emerge from the fearful ordeal stronger and more influential than ever.

In the economic aspects of the struggle, one cannot say that the ideal of the thinkers and tacticians of the trade union movement has been reached; but one must be filled with admiration for the complicated and beautiful structure of the industrial and craft organization which, tough as yet incomplete, impresses both friend and foe.

All working-class organisations have undergone a wonderful development.

The International Congress of Stuttgart imbued the trade union movement with Socialist ideals, and by its famous resolution placed the movement on a level with the political Socialist Party.

The Congress of Copenhagen practically did the same for the co-operative (?) movement, and there was every reason to hope that the Congress of Vienna would emphasise the vast importance of the fourth form of proletarian culture, namely, the struggle for education.

The development of the educational movement is seen in the foundation of proletarian colleges by many Socialist parties, the transference to Socialist organisations of a number of schools and Sunday schools, the ever-increasing number of scientific and literary Socialist clubs. The attention paid to child welfare and the education of the young in connection with the organization of proletarian elementary schools will lead to the transformation of working class family life. The woman must cease to be enslaved by the proletarian kitchen and the proletarian nursery; the latter, we must admit, is at present practically non-existent. I merely refer to the most important of the series of questions with which the Socialist proletariat has begun to grapple both theoretically and practically.

Before the war but few Social Democrats had realised the truth, conclusively proved by Spencer, that even the best mental training has little influence on the will unless it be accompanied by the development of the finer human feelings. The ethical and aesthetic education of the workers’ children in the spirit of Socialist ideology is a supreme necessity.

Rosa Luxemburg is more than right when she says: “We shall hardly make any progress without a clear understanding of the work of proletarian self-education.” Comparatively little has been done in this direction, which may be termed the sphere for enlightenment, and in which the creative power of the proletariat must very clearly manifest itself. Even before the war the need for this enlightening self-education was very strongly felt; and work had been started in that direction. But the war so clearly showed the workers the shortcomings of this most important aspect of their culture that, notwithstanding the wholesale waste and destruction in Europe during the past four years, we may expect to see in the near future a great revival of working-class energy in this direction.

Truth emerged from the The Duluth Labor Leader, a weekly English language publication of the Scandinavian local of the Socialist Party in Duluth, Minnesota and began on May Day, 1917 as a Left Wing alternative to the Duluth Labor World. The paper was aligned to both the SP and the I.W.W. leading to the paper being closed down in the first big anti-I.W.W. raids in September, 1917. The paper was reborn as Truth, with the Duluth Scandinavian Socialists joining the Communist Labor Party of America in 1919. Shortly after the editor, Jack Carney, was arrested and convicted of espionage in 1920. Truth continued to publish with a new editor J.O. Bentall until 1923 as an unofficial paper of the C.P.

Access to PDF of full issue: https://www.mnhs.org/newspapers/lccn/sn89081142/1920-01-30/ed-1/seq-1