Beyond Marx and Mach: Aleksandr Bogdanov’s Philosophy of Living Experience

200 Pages·1978·7.61 MB·English

by  K. M. Jensen (auth.)

BEYOND MARX AND MACH
SOVIETICA
PUBLICATIONS AND MONOGRAPHS
OF THE INSTITUTE OF EAST -EUROPEAN STUDIES AT THE
UNIVERSITY OF FRIBOURG/SWITZERLAND AND
THE CENTER FOR EAST EUROPE, RUSSIA AND ASIA
AT BOSTON COLLEGE AND THE SEMINAR
FOR POLITICAL THEOR Y AND PHILOSOPHY
AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MUNICH
Founded by J. M. BOCHENSKI (Fribourg)
Edited by T. J. BLAKELEY (Boston), GUIDO KUNG (Fribourg),and
NIKOLAUS LOBKOWICZ (Munich)
Editorial Board
Karl G. Ballestrem (Munich) Bernard Jeu (Lille)
Helmut Dahm (Cologne) George L. Kline (Bryn Mawr)
Richard T. DeGeorge (Kansas) T. R. Payne (Providence)
Peter Ehlen (Munich) Friedrich Rapp (Berlin)
Michael Gagern (Munich) Andries Sarlernijn (Eindhoven)
Felix P. Ingold (St. Gall) James Scanlan (Columbus)
Edward Swiderski (Fribourg)
VOLUME 41
K. M. JENSEN
University of Colorado
BEYOND MARX
AND MACH
ALEKSANDR BOGDANOV'S
Philosophy of Living Experience
D. R:SIDEL PUBLISHING COMPANY
DORDRECHT : HOLLAND / BOSTON: U.S.A.
LONDON: ENGLAND
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Jensen, Kenneth Martin, 1944-
Beyond Marx and Mach.
(Sovietica ; v. 41)
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Malinovskil, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich, 1873-1928.
Filosofiili zhivogo opyta. 2. Philosophy. 3. Dialectical
materialism. 4. Experience. I. Title. II. Series.
B4249.M33F5434 197'.2 78-12916
ISBN- 13: 978-94-009-9881-0 e-ISBN- 13 : 978-94-009-9879-7
____- '0=-0=-:1: 10.1007/978-94-009-9879-7
Published by D. Reidel PubliShing Company,
P.O. Box 17, Dordrecht, Holland
Sold and distributed in the U.S.A., Canada, and Mexico
by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Inc.
Lincoln Building, 160 Old Derby Street, Hingham,
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All Rights Reserved
Copyright © 1978 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1978
No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording or by any informational storage and
retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner
This book is dedicated to L. Boyd and
Dorothy V. Jensen and to the memory of
Lora H. Joseph
T ABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ix
INTRODUCTION
A. Aleksandr Bogdanov
B. Toward a New Approach to Bogdanov and the Russian
Machists 10
C. Studying Bogdanov 14
D. The Philosophy of Living Experience 17
CHAPTER I. THE CONTEMPORARY PROBLEM OF PHILOSOPHY
AND PHILOSOPHY'S CAREER 22
A. Philosophy and Life 24
B. The Rise and Development of World views 33
C. "What is Materialism?" 41
D. Ancient and Modern Materialisms 50
CHAPTER II. EMPIRIOCRITICISM 67
A. Empiriocriticism Depicted 70
B. Empiriocriticism Criticized 75
C. The Social Roots of Empiriocriticism 81
CHAPTER Ill. DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM 87
A. Bogdanov's Dialectic 90
B. Dialectics Prior to Marx and the Meaning of the Idealist
Dialectic 94
C. The Materialist Dialectic and Marx's Truly Active World-
view 98
D. Joseph Dietzgen and the Russian Dialectical Materialists 106
E. The Real Dialectic and the Task of Philosophy III
CHAPTER IV. EMPIRIOMONISM 115
A. "Labor Causality" 119
B. The Elements of Experience 123
vii
viii TABLE OF CONTENTS
c. Objectivity 127
D. Sociomorphism 132
E. Substitution 134
F. The "Empiriomonistic" Worldpicture 138
CHAPTER V. THE SCIENCE OF THE FUTURE 148
CONCLUSION 160
NOTES 173
BIBLIOGRAPHY 181
INDEX 187
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I wish to express my appreciation to the following:
Professor Thomas Blakeley, for encouraging me to submit this manuscript to
Sovietica and for his handling of it thereafter; Professor Karl Ballestrem, for
reading an earlier version of it and for providing criticisms; Professor Marc
Raeff, for counseling me on the topic and approaches to it; Professor Aoyd
Ratliff, for materials sent me on Ernst Mach and Bogdanov and for his moral
support; and Professor Stephen Fischer-Galati, for taking up the burden of
this work's supervision in its dissertation form. Although these individuals
vouchsafed me considerable aid and good counsel, I am most deeply indebted
to Pamela K. Jensen for support that was as much professional as it was
wifely. Needless to say, none of the above share any responsibility for the
contents of this work.
K.M.J.
ix
INTRODUCTION
A. ALEKSANDR BOGDANOV
On April 7, 1928 the career of one of the most extraordinary figures
of Russian and early Soviet intellectual life came to an abrupt and
premature end. In the process of an experiment on blood transfusion,
Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Malinovsky, better known as Bogdanov, had
exchanged his blood with that of a critically ill malaria victim in hopes
of saving both the patient and his blood. The outcome of this may be
guessed: both doctor and patient died forthwith.! Although an extraordinary
venture on Bogdanov's part, for it was part of a search for the means to
immortality,2 the transfusion experiment was only one of a host of startling
things he had done in his thirty years in Russian politics and public life.
In actuality, the activities and achievement of his two years as director
of the Soviet Union's first institute for the study of blood transfusion
seem virtually insignificant beside the events of earlier years.3 It would
be fair to say that Aleksandr Bogdanov stood in a singularly prominent
position in the political and intellectual life of Russia from the turn of
the century to 1930. Politically, he had been Lenin's only serious rival for
leadership among the Bolsheviks before 1917. In the early years of the
Soviet regime, Bogdanov stood head and shoulders above any other
public figure operating outside the ranks of the Party. Only a handful of
men, i.e., Plekhanov, Bukharin, Berdiaev and Solov'ev, can be compared
to Bogdanov in the extent of their intellectual influence in those years.
In no case was the intellectual career of any of these men so varied and
so continually notable as that of Bogdanov. As we shall see in the biographical
sketch which follows, the first three decades of the twentieth century found
Bogdanov in positions of political, cultural, and intellectual leadership at
every turn.
Bogdanov, like Lenin the son of an educator, was born on August 10,
1873 in Tula. His gymnasium studies highly successful, he entered the natural
science faculty of Moscow University around 1892 and pursued studies there
and in Kharkov, where he received his degree in 1899 as a physician
specializing in psychology.4 Bogdanov tells us in his autobiography that his
2 INTRODUCTION
contempt for authority in educational institutions led him into radical
politics in 1894.5 As was usually the case with student radicals, he began his
career as a populist but was soon converted to' Marxism (1896). Between
1894 and 1904, Bogdanov agitated and wrote propaganda in association with
various worker, student and social-democratic groups in Moscow, Kharkov,
Tula and Vologda. During this time, he developed numerous contacts and
strong ties among the Russian working class in the social-democratic party
and literary circles.6 Arrested numerous times between 1899 and 1901, he
was fmally sent into three-years' exile in Vologda. In those years (1901-
1904), Bogdanov came into contact with many of the leading lights of
Russian social-democracy through association with fellow-exiles in that city.
In Vologda, he had the company of Berdiaev, then the leading figure among
the Legal Marxists, V. Rudnev (pseudonym Bazarov), the co-translator of
Marx's Kapital, I. I. Skvortsov-Stepanov, the other translator, A. V.
Lunacharsky, the future Commisar of Education and others.? In this context,
Bogdanov the propagandist, organizer and theoretician rose to the ranks of
the well known in Russian radicalism. In those years, he took the pseudonym
Bogdanov most often, although he was known to use Maksimov, Rakhmetov,
Reinert, Riadovoi and Verner as well.s While Maksimov stuck with him for a
time, he became universally known as Bogdanov and retained the usage to the
end of his life.9
The term of his exile expired, Bogdanov, who had been attracted to the
Bolsheviks during the debates of 1903-1904, joined Lenin in Switzerland in
the Summer of 1904. Almost immediately, he rose to the position of second-
in-command and became the faction's principal leader in Russia. Both
Georges Haupt and Karl Ballestrem suggest that Bogdanov brought Lenin
out of political isolation at a time when he was set off from the rest of the
social-democratic movement by bringing him the contacts and talent to issue
a Bolshevik paper. lO The contacts were apparently Bogdanov's very numerous
political and intellectual associates in Russia. The talent was provided by
Bogdanov himself and the three important figures he had brought into
Bolshevism in 1904, Bazarov, Lunacharsky and Skvortsov-Stepanov.u From
1904 to 1908, Lenin and Bogdanov formed a firm bloc, with the latter
acting as the former's man in Russia. Although occasionally at odds over
the running of the Bolshevik committee in St. Petersburg and Bogdanov's
experimentation in philosophy,12 the two scrupulously avoided open
disputes.
Although their partnership was continually reaffIrmed, Bogdanov came to
be regarded by many Bolsheviks, and certainly by Lenin himself, as a rival for