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Red Star
“An Earth-man’s journey to the planet Mars, where he is treated to a wondrous vision of a communist future, complete with flying cars and 3D color movies.” —Wonders & Marvels A communist society on Mars, the Russian revolution, and class struggle on two planets is the subject of this arresting science fiction novel by Alexander Bogdanov (1873–1928), one of the early organizers and prophets of the Russian Bolshevik party. The red star is Mars, but it is also the dream set to paper of the society that could emerge on earth after the dual victory of the socialist and scientific-technical revolutions. While portraying a harmonious and rational socialist society, Bogdanov sketches out t...
The Philosophy of Living Experience
The Philosophy of Living Experience is the single best introduction to the thought of Alexander Bogdanov (1873–1928), a Russian polymath who was co-founder, with Lenin, of the Bolshevik Party. His landmark achievements are Empiriomonism (1904–6), a philosophy of radical empiricism that he developed to replace what he considered to be the crude materialism of contemporary Marxists, and Tektology: Universal Organisational Science (1912–17), a precursor of cybernetics and systems theory. The Philosophy of Living Experience (1913) was written at a transitional point between the two; it is a final summing up of empiriomonism, an illustration of his theory of the social genesis of ideas, and an anticipation of Tektology.
Empiriomonism
Empiriomonism is Alexander Bogdanov’s scientific-philosophical substantiation of Marxism. In Books One and Two, he combines Ernst Mach’s and Richard Avenarius’s neutral monist philosophy with the theory of psychophysical parallelism and systematically demonstrates that human psyches are thoroughly natural and are subject to nature’s laws. In Book Three, Bogdanov argues that empiriomonism is superior to G. V. Plekhanov’s outdated materialism and shows how the principles of empiriomonism solve the basic problem of historical materialism: how a society’s material base causally determines its ways of thinking. Bogdanov concludes that empiriomonism is of the same order as materialist systems, and, since it is the ideology of the productive forces of society, it is a Marxist philosophy.
Bogdanov and His Work
Alexander Bogdanov was a co-founder, with Lenin, of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Party in 1904. His ideas on the sociology of culture led to the founding of the Proletkult in 1917 and during the 1920s these ideas were taken up, adapted and often distorted in the course of the 'Cultural Revolution'. Bogdanov's textbooks in sociology and economics were widely used during the 1920s. This bibliography of Bogdanov's works takes advantage of the opening of the Party and State archives and provides references to the principal relevant archives in Europe and the United States. Its publication is a landmark in the history of Bolshevism and in the history of Russian social thought.
A Martian Stranded on Earth
Much like Vladimir Lenin, his onetime rival for the leadership of the Bolshevik party during its formative years, Alexander Bogdanov (1873–1928) was a visionary. In two science fiction novels set on Mars, Bogdanov imagined a future in which the workers of the world, liberated from capitalist exploitation, create a “physiological collective” that rejuvenates and unites its members through regular blood exchanges. But Bogdanov was not merely a dreamer. He worked tirelessly to popularize and realize his vision, founding the first research institute devoted to the science of blood transfusion. In A Martian Stranded on Earth, the first broad-based book on Bogdanov in English, Nikolai Krementsov examines Bogdanov’s roles as revolutionary, novelist, and scientist, presenting his protagonist as a coherent thinker who pursued his ideas in a wide range of venues. Through the lens of Bogdanov’s involvement with blood studies on one hand, and of his fictional and philosophical writings on the other, Krementsov offers a nuanced analysis of the interactions between scientific ideas and societal values.
Alexander Bogdanov and the Origins of Systems Thinking in Russia
The proceedings of a conference at the University of East Anglia, January 1996. The conference assembled some of Russia's leading economists, political theorists and systems thinkers to discuss Bogdanov's theories and their application in economics, politics and psychology.
The October Revolution in Prospect and Retrospect
In a series of probing analytical essays, John Marot tracks the development of Bolshevism through the prism of pre-1917 intra-Russian Social Democratic controversies in politics and philosophy. For 1917, the author presents a critique of social historical interpretation of the Russian Revolution. Turning to NEP Russia, the author applies Robert Brenner's analysis of pre-capitalist modes of production and concludes that neither Bukharin nor Trotsky's NEP-premised programs of economic transformation and advance toward socialism were feasible. At the same time, he rejects the view that Stalinism was pre-destined to supplant NEP. Instead, he hypothesises that the superior alternative to Stalinism was NEP without collectivization and the Five-Year Plans — a outcome that would have been possible had Bukharin and Trotsky joined forces to stop Stalin.
Molecular Red
In Molecular Red, McKenzie Wark creates philosophical tools for the Anthropocene, our new planetary epoch, in which human and natural forces are so entwined that the future of one determines that of the other. Wark explores the implications of Anthropocene through the story of two empires, the Soviet and then the American. The fall of the former prefigures that of the latter. From the ruins of these mighty histories, Wark salvages ideas to help us picture what kind of worlds collective labor might yet build. From the scientific pioneers who were trying to transform science during the Russia Revolution, to visionaries contemplating cyborg possibilities and science fiction dreams in late 20th century California, Molecular Red not only looks at the crisis of climate change that we face but also how we might be able to understand it, and how we might salvage some hope out of the wreckage.
Essays in Tektology
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Shrews, Chromosomes and Speciation
Presents new insights into speciation through an in-depth analysis of extraordinary chromosomal variation in one species written by leading experts.
