The time in which we live will go down in history under two different names: we call it the era of the “dictatorship of the proletariat,” and at the same time another term is already coming into common use among us: the “transitional period.”
These terms complement each other. The old term, “dictatorship of the proletariat,” expresses the political aspect of our existence; the new one, “transitional period,” speaks to our cultural and economic construction. The conquest of power defines not only our right to build, but also our obligations in this direction. That is why, with the term “transitional period,” we already associate the broadest tasks in the sphere of economic and cultural development. Among these tasks lies the building of a new proletarian science—more precisely, a new systematization of the entire body of knowledge inherited from the past. Indeed, comrades, the dictatorship of the proletariat is only political in the very first moments following its victory. Immediately afterward, the concept of political dictatorship expands, grows, and comes to encompass—one by one—nearly all spheres of life: the economy, law, science, art, everyday life. Everywhere, there is both a rupture and a creative upsurge; and everywhere, the old legacy of human experience, forged under the conditions of the former class society, is sifted through the sieve of new proletarian consciousness. Our material culture and our ideology are being restructured from top to bottom. If one were to look at our creative activity from some distant star, it would appear to the observer that we are constantly passing from one form to another, stumbling, falling, rising again—and moving forward once more in search of new forms of existence.
What, then, is the relationship between the search for new forms of material culture and the formation of a new ideology?
It is time to reflect seriously on this question, comrades. Ideology cannot be reconsidered in isolation, merely as a new superstructure resting atop a new mode of existence. To this well-known truth, we must add another—also not new, but still insufficiently established in our consciousness: the transformation of ideology is itself a factor and a driving force in the transformation of material culture. This becomes especially evident when we speak of scientific knowledge as a driving force in the creation of a new economy.
Indeed, comrades, let us tear ourselves away for a moment from the still quite opportunistic reality in which we live, and imagine—fully and clearly—the economy of the future, the one we are moving toward. Let us cast a glance at the vast world of productive forces which will become the object of organization under the socialist planned economy. Picture, comrades, the modern Russian peasant, standing at the plow, tilling the land with crude, outdated tools, having virtually no economic calculation beyond the tiny patch of land that he cultivates. The limit of his achievements in this domain is the multi-field system, applied within the narrow scope of those few crops known to him and those few desyatins of land (hectares) under his control. He cannot include in his system of economic calculation such factors as atmospheric influences, transportation routes, advanced tools for tilling the land, rational systems of labor, scientific methods for assessing the specific characteristics and qualities of the soil, or, finally, the interconnection between agriculture and other branches of the economy. The scale of his farm and the level of his development are far too insignificant for such things. Now imagine, comrades, a large, rationally managed farm in a developed capitalist country, with more or less accurate planning of crop rotation, of soil and climate conditions, the use of new agricultural implements and labor systems—in short, a far greater accounting of the volume of labor expended and the forms of its return. The complexity of this farm is many times greater than the first one we described. And yet—even this complexity is utterly insignificant compared to the future complexity of the global agricultural accounting toward which we are heading. Global agricultural accounting? What does that mean? I must beg your pardon, comrades, for a certain imprecision: by "global," I do not mean the world in its strict cosmic sense, but merely that small black sphere which occupies a rather modest place among the planets of the solar system—but which we, its inhabitants, nonetheless call “the world.” So then, I am speaking of the construction of an agricultural plan for the entire planet Earth as a whole. Focus your attention, comrades, and imagine how the possessor of the immeasurable riches of the world’s productive forces—that is, humanity—will manage them. From the meager farm of a few desyatins, owned by a single individual, from the well-off bourgeois farm owned by a joint-stock company, we shall move toward these boundless riches—which can only be owned by the giant collective of humanity as a whole. I will pass over the intermediate stage in which entire peoples serve as proprietors—those political formations with which we have dealt up to now—even when they are the largest collectives known to us. I omit it not only for reasons of time, but deliberately: because in the historical course of events, that stage, too, will prove temporary and limited. Once humanity completes its long and arduous transition from a sum of separate farms—even large and rational ones, yet uncoordinated with one another—to what we call a system of national economy, then the next stage—the transition to an international economic system—will already be comparatively easier and swifter.
So then, comrades, imagine that we are tasked with calculating agriculture across the entire planet—with all its immense diversity of climatic, soil, and racial conditions. Here, all those old terms—immeasurable, boundless, incalculable, and so on—must immediately fall away. Everything that was once immeasurable and incalculable must now be encompassed by us and made calculable.
All the crops known to the planet, all labor methods, all conditions for the combination of various crops with one another, all transport routes—in short, comrades, the entire scope of humanity’s agricultural potential and all methods of agricultural labor. But even this is not enough: for agriculture is only a part of the economy. Therefore, the same global-scale calculation must be carried out for other branches of the economy as well—first and foremost, for industry. And then arises the question of the interrelation between all parts, and of that unified economic plan for the entire globe, of which the agricultural plan is only one component. And both the scale of this planned whole and the totality of methods for its implementation will, from the standpoint of the contemporary individual, appear so vast and so complex in their structure, that the mind—his poor mind, shaped under the anarchic economy of capitalism—almost refuses to grasp them. And I am certain, comrades, that many of you, deep down, look upon such possibilities with doubt, and consider them utopian. But to call these plans utopian—is to adopt an opportunist point of view and to abandon socialism in its true sense.
“Socialism is accounting,” said Comrade Lenin once. But we, unfortunately, have understood these words far too narrowly and too trivially—as the accounting of those meager scraps we inherited from the war-ravaged capitalism. In their true and profound meaning, however, these words must be understood differently: “Socialism is the accounting of the world’s productive forces and of the world’s methods and systems of labor.”—this is the broad, concrete meaning that we, communists, who are forging the path to socialism, must give to these words.
And if that is so, we are compelled to pose another question: through what paths will humanity arrive at this collective ownership of the accounted world productive forces? There are different hypotheses on this matter. The English writer H.G. Wells, in his novel When the Sleeper Wakes, depicted a system in which technical improvements in the economy have already reached their highest stage, the accounting of global productive forces is also in place—but these productive forces belong not to all of humanity, but to a single sleeping man who had fallen asleep under present-day capitalism and remained asleep while the world’s wealth passed into his hands. All the riches of the world are managed by a small circle of his close associates, while the rest of humanity is turned into machines, executing their will. In a more structured and less figurative form, we encounter the same idea in the works of some publicists who have allowed for the possibility of a technically planned organization of the economy and labor, while keeping the working masses in a subordinate position, ruled not by the bourgeoisie, but by a class or group of qualified intellectuals. In this view, the very task of calculating and organizing the planned economy, and of implementing it in life, appears achievable by a handful of engineers and statisticians acting as the initiators and managers of labor carried out by half-conscious masses. But comrades, both the figurative conception of Wells and this more formally articulated position suffer from the same utopianism. It is completely impossible to imagine the realization of a new economy without the re-education of the thinking of all participants in production. Where labor is separated from knowledge, where the participants in the labor process are unable to fully comprehend the nature of this process, its scope, and its connection with the labor of others, that ideal organization of human labor we spoke of earlier becomes entirely unfeasible. Collective mastery of the material world presupposes collective mastery of the world of spiritual values. The two elements must merge into one.
The preconditions for the realization of this new system are not only the progressive development of the productive forces, not only the theoretical resolution of the question of an economic system based on maximum social benefit, but also the creation of a new ideology and a new mode of thinking among the participants in the labor system.
Slaves of production, chained to their machines, whose thoughts encompass only the few elements of labor in which they are directly engaged, cannot be active members of a socialist system. The theoretical resolution of the question of socialism by a group of intellectuals alone would precisely lead to a system of organized slavery, as described by Wells, rather than to the free and comradely cooperation to which we aspire.
The difference lies precisely in the proletariat’s mastery of science and its transformation.
Here, we are dealing with two distinct problems: the mastery of science and its transformation.
Upon closer examination, it turns out that the second is a precondition for the first.
Indeed, up to now we have spoken of the possibility of a theoretical construction of a formula for socialism as one among the existing hypotheses. The authors of this hypothesis make two assumptions: 1) That this problem can be solved by a group of theoreticians as a purely theoretical problem; and 2) That it can be solved by contemporary science without any internal transformation of science itself.
We have already seen that if the first assumption turned out to be correct, it would lead to a completely erroneous solution of the question: to new forms of class domination, not to a system of labor equality. But the second assumption, too, could not lead us to the desired outcome. Modern science, despite all its brilliant achievements, is still a science of “fragmented experience,” just like the system that created it. It has developed by solving isolated problems and by constructing autonomous, self-sufficient systems, for such were the tasks set before it by the technical progress of capitalism.
Capitalism created well-organized systems within individual enterprises or groups of enterprises, but it could not, by its very nature, move toward the coordination of these systems into a unified economic and cultural whole. For capitalism, the various branches of production did not constitute coherent systems of enterprises, nor was the economy seen as an integrated system of production and labor methods. The accounting of global productive forces, which we mentioned earlier, could not be one of its tasks, for it was organically alien to it. And even though the development of the productive forces inevitably leads to the necessity of such accounting, the capitalist system places such obstacles in its way that this necessity brings its internal contradictions to a maximum and condemns it to ruin.
The bourgeois science never set itself the task of providing a coherent and integral solution to the problem of socialism, and it remained alien to it—despite its brilliant development over the past centuries, despite its remarkable achievements in solving partial problems.
It was only in the realm of economic thought that a new doctrine was born—one which reflected the ideology of the proletarian class struggle: the doctrine of the new system.
This doctrine was a systematization of the experience of proletarian struggle and a general theoretical construction of its ultimate results. And this systematization came to replace the individualist systems of classical political economy, which had declared the economic categories of capitalism to be immutable.
The same revolution must be carried out in other fields of science as well.
The question of the systematic unity of human experience must be raised by the class that is fighting for the transformation of social existence—and, consequently, of thought itself.
We cannot approach that system of collective world labor, which we mentioned earlier, with the old mental habits. A fundamental shift must take place here as well. In order to become participants in a new global system of labor, we must be able to grasp it mentally—both quantitatively and qualitatively—in its full scope and in all its complexity. And for that, we must adapt and transform our scientific cognition so that it becomes capable of doing precisely that.
This, of course, does not mean that every participant in the global system of labor must literally know all its branches and varieties, or contain within their consciousness the entire sum of humanity’s accumulated experience. The solution to the problem does not lie in mastering an infinitely diverse mass of experiential material, but rather in preparing the mind in such a way that a person can easily grasp new fields of experience and easily transition from one to another. The possibility of such mastery and such transitions grows in proportion to the increasing commonality of the content of experience, its systemic wholeness. What a person must first study is not the conclusions and results of individual branches of labor and thought, but the methods of labor and the methods of knowledge—in their interaction and in their harmonious combination into a single coherent system.
Such is the new science toward which we are moving, the one that the proletariat will crystallize out of all the elements of science it has inherited from the phases of humanity’s development up to now.
But what, then, are the organizational preconditions for such a transformation of science? In what temples of science, and by what forces, will it be accomplished?
We cannot, comrades, concretely and in detail imagine all the forms that this work will take in the future, but we do know one thing: it cannot be accomplished within the walls of our old universities, with their old traditions and old habits. The proletarianization of higher education and the proletarianization of science are not the same thing. This we must firmly remember.
The old universities have, until now, remained alien to the proletarian struggle and proletarian ideals. They have trained either narrow specialists or individuals with an individualistic type of thinking—incapable of comprehending and constructing the theory of socialism.
Against the backdrop of the current post-war economic collapse, such factories of specialists are sometimes mistakenly regarded as the most necessary and useful form of higher education. Likewise, the easing of access to these institutions for workers is also mistakenly taken as the proletarianization of science. To grant a certain portion of the working class the right to be considered specialists of the usual, old type may, perhaps, be practically necessary in the current transitional period. But this is not the main task of the proletariat as the organizing class: in order to realize its highest class goals in the sphere of science, it must create its own class-based universities, where proletarian ideology will not dissolve in the still resilient and enduring ideology of the petty bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie.
Proletarian universities and proletarian studios are the milieu where a new systematization of humanity’s scientific and labor experience can emerge and develop — where the class that first brought to the world the ideal of global solidarity among working people, the class that creates values, can become acquainted with scientific methodology in order to revise it and apply it to the tasks of socialism.
From this perspective, proletarian universities and studios constitute a scientific experiment of extraordinary importance. Alongside the mass introduction of broad layers of workers to scientific thinking, experimental, laboratory work must be conducted on a small scale — but with exceptional depth. The selection of students and professors, and the development of curricula, must be carried out with the utmost care, so as to create the most favorable conditions possible for the experiment being undertaken.
I say, comrades, proletarian universities and studios. But in reality, at this moment, life itself is making a correction to this dual term. While we are forced to defend the revolution on all fronts, the university — as a more complex institution that requires greater expenditure of energy and resources — must yield to the studio, which is a smaller-scale institution and easier to realize.
In the spring of 1919, the Moscow Proletarian University began its work in Moscow. But already in the summer of 1919, its students were mobilized to the front. During the harsh winter of 1919–1920, the Proletarian University in Moscow was not in operation. However, on the southern front, there was an active detachment named after the Moscow Proletarian University — a group that had voluntarily and collectively mobilized itself, and left in the south the graves of three of its best members.
Under such conditions, the task of organizing a full-fledged university must be postponed, and all efforts should for now be concentrated on a more modest task — the organization of a small scientific studio for about 40–50 people.
By working on such a small scale, this experimental initiative can be carried out under the most favorable conditions: one can carefully select the human material both in terms of students and professors. It must be remembered, comrades, that no matter how well an experiment is conceived or how correct the methods of work may be, the results may still turn out negative or doubtful if the experiment is conducted using defective material. This is just as true in a chemical or biological experiment as it is in a social one. Meanwhile, taking into account the class composition of the population of our republic, one can say with confidence that into every so-called "workers’" auditorium, significant numbers of non-proletarian elements — representatives of the peasantry and urban petty bourgeoisie — will inevitably infiltrate.
Quantitatively, the proletariat is now in the minority; qualitatively, it is the class that organizes the new life.
To unite organizationally—both in the sphere of struggle and in the cultural sphere—is one of its most important tasks. The process of consolidation also includes the process of distancing itself from petty-bourgeois elements, which are now infiltrating proletarian political and other organizations in large numbers, bringing with them a corrosive, individualistic psychology. In some areas, it is also necessary to distance ourselves from the peasantry. Politically, an alliance has been concluded between the proletariat and the peasantry, but in the sphere of social construction and cultural achievement, the proletariat inevitably has its own class tasks.
It goes without saying that the doors of higher and all types of education must be opened as widely as possible to the peasantry and all layers of the population. More than that: the school that serves the producers in the countryside must be decentralized and scattered across all agricultural districts, relocated into working regions.
In the city, there must exist two types of higher schools: Some—decentralized and accessible to the broad masses of the working people—are meant to bring knowledge to the deepest layers of the population, touching all its strata. Others—of an experimental nature—are not aimed at disseminating humanity’s already acquired knowledge, but at transforming our cognitive experience itself. Ordinarily, this kind of task is associated with the idea of scientific institutes, where the priests of science search for new paths, having carefully isolated themselves from life and its demands. We, however, introduce a major correction to that notion: We seek not only new paths in science, but new seekers of those paths. We believe that the social character of the seekers themselves cannot help but leave its imprint on the very process of seeking, that in it lies one of the most vital incentives for inquiry. And we strive, through selection, to find those elements of proletarian thought that will prove capable of such searching.
That is why, comrades, the question of correctly selecting the students plays just as colossal a role in this social experiment as the proper choice of materials and instruments does for an experimental scientist in the exact sciences.
What kind of individuals, then, must we draw from the proletarian milieu in order to properly establish our studio?
The most important criteria for selection should be: 1) industrial experience, 2) socio-political experience, and 3) cultural and scientific experience.
First and foremost, comrades, the studio members must be genuine, true proletarians — tempered, as the old expression goes, in the factory cauldron; they must know the labor of factory and plant firsthand and have participated in the struggle between labor and capital. No half-measures are acceptable in this regard. In large-scale experiments, the influence of petty-bourgeois elements that have seeped into the proletarian environment is less significant. But in the case of a studio operating on a small scale, it is of the utmost importance that its composition be purely proletarian. Each of the 40 positions available in the studio rightfully belongs to proletarians, and exceptions are to be made only in the most extreme cases.
The industrial experience of the proletariat is, from the standpoint of instruction, an essential element of the studio participants’ psychological makeup. All of the studio’s curricula—especially those related to the economic sciences—rely on this industrial experience. Therefore, general references to belonging to the proletarian masses or to not belonging to the bourgeoisie are insufficient. It is necessary that the candidate for the studio precisely indicate their productive experience, and that the Proletkult organization delegating them to the studio thoroughly verify their belonging to the class of industrial workers.
But not every factory worker is, however, a candidate for a scientific studio. A second criterion is their socio-political background, and in particular, it is extremely important to determine how the candidate expressed their active participation in: 1) political work in pre-revolutionary times, 2) economic struggle within the factory or trade union during the same period, 3) cultural work both previously and currently, and 4) political and social work after the revolution. The most important thing is to identify in the candidate’s past and present activities the combative and organizational elements that characterize the active nature of their personality and their creative abilities. From this perspective, organizing a strike or leading a party campaign is far more important than listing prominent posts held. It is necessary to thoroughly determine the extent to which the candidate for the studio is an active and consciously developed individual in political and economic struggle, and in socialist construction today, and to what degree the concepts of comradely solidarity in labor and in struggle are real for them—imbued with living content and not merely abstract notions. Here, one must also be wary of the negative traits of contemporary life: careerism and the thirst for power, which often take the place of the desire for creative work and comradely collaboration.
It is also necessary to dwell on the candidate’s educational and cultural background. In this regard, preference should be given to those candidates whose own pronounced traits of scientific curiosity and desire for scientific knowledge prevail over the superficial and externally imposed forms of inquisitiveness. In this field, a well-developed individuality is just as valuable as a strong sense of class solidarity is in the realm of social experience. One thoroughly understood book or theory is more important than a dozen certificates of completed courses or a dozen book titles read. Even more important is the candidate’s striving and interest in independent research. Sometimes the candidate’s thinking has focused primarily on those problems that most directly entered their field of vision: the techniques of production, the class struggle in the past, the construction of socialism in the present and future. But there are also cases when individual traits are more vividly expressed than class ones—when the candidate’s interests are centered predominantly on questions of mathematics, the natural sciences, philosophy, or religion. These factors must by no means be ignored. Provided there is sufficient industrial and socio-political experience, such motivations for scientific work are extremely important—so long as they are sufficiently independent and profound.
In the instructions for selection into the Scientific Studio of the Central Proletkult, comrades, which will be distributed to you, you will find more detailed guidelines on these issues. But their essence remains the same: a strongly developed sense of class solidarity, participation in the work of the grand industrial collective of modern large-scale production, and a sufficiently pronounced individuality in the scientific sphere.
And I hope, comrades, that when you return to your localities, you will closely observe the worker-supporters of proletarian culture and select from among them the candidates we need.
Let us say a few more words about the instructors of the studio. The selection here is even more difficult than the selection of the students. There are almost no scholarly workers of proletarian origin, and we will have to be less demanding in this regard when it comes to their background. Nevertheless, the instructors must not be strangers to factory labor and factory life. Their socio-political experience must be such that it includes observation and study of industrial labor. In short, comrades, they must be Marxists—not bookish Marxists who have spent their entire lives behind desks, but active Marxists, who have studied real life and been drawn into the social struggle between labor and capital. Ideally—though it is difficult to achieve—all instructors, even those teaching the most specialized subjects, should have political experience. And at present, comrades, we have almost formed such a teaching staff: a body in which all instructors possess some degree of political experience and adhere to the Marxist worldview.
The teaching staff must also meet another criterion: it should consist, as far as possible, not only of lecturers, but also of independent researchers. It is one thing to skillfully present the ideas of others, and quite another to be a researcher oneself, even if only within modest limits. A teacher always teaches, above all, their own way of thinking, researching, analyzing. And the more vividly their individuality is expressed in this regard, the more they give to their students.
There is yet another extremely important requirement placed upon teachers: they must stand from the standpoint of the independent position of the working class in the realm of science. This requirement, of course, stems from the very essence of our overall task, and yet it must be emphasized, for it largely determines the approach and methods of our work.
And these methods are not limited merely to teaching, but rather to collaborative research work, in which both teachers and students contribute their respective experiences. Lectures and classroom instruction are only one means of achieving this goal; they are a part of the work, but not the whole — and even a lesser part. They play a role mainly at the beginning, and are then gradually replaced by discussions, in which the teacher serves as a guide, actively stimulating the intellectual initiative of the students, providing them with methods of scientific observation, scientific analysis, and scientific generalization based on material they have already thoroughly mastered.
The final stage is collaborative collective research work, which serves as the transitional boundary from the studio of learning to the studio of creative labor.
In the studio’s program, comrades, we include all those subjects that are of greatest methodological interest and that simultaneously offer the most essential elements for a holistic worldview. Everything that is concrete and utilitarian in nature we leave to the future initiative of the studio participant. As for us, we provide them only with that portable tool of scientific methodology which will enable them to become a fully conscious participant in that collective labor mastery of the material world and the world of ideas, which I spoke of in the first part of this report.
According to this plan, comrades, the following subjects are included in our program: mathematics, physics, technology, biology, history, political economy, methods of statistical-economic research, historical materialism, and the doctrine of proletarian culture as a form of the workers’ movement.
This is the preliminary program for the first year. Further modifications and additions are anticipated, but these will require the cooperation of both teachers and students, and the experience of the first year will be taken into account for putting them into practice.
My time is running out, comrades, but I must say a few more words about one form of activity that will serve as a preparatory stage for studio work. This is the work of the clubs, comrades. It is in the clubs that future studio participants may receive their initial education, and it is there as well that candidates for the scientific studio may be selected. When organizing club work, this must be kept in mind. Workers’ clubs, by their very purpose, are general studios of proletarian everyday creativity, and therefore, the organizers and leaders of the clubs must also bear in mind their preparatory role in relation to the studios.
I must conclude, comrades, and allow me to end this report with the hope that you will carry out, in your localities, the task of selecting those elements of proletarian thought that will enable us to realize our socio-cultural experiment under the most favorable conditions, and that will give scientific thought a powerful impulse in the direction of its proletarianization.
— M. Smit