In the first full-length biography of Alexander Bogdanov, James D. White traces the intellectual development of this key socialist thinker, situating his ideas in the context of the Russian revolutionary movement. This sweeping and informative volume examines the part Bogdanov played in the origins of Bolshevism, his role in the revolutions of 1905 and 1917, and his conflict with Lenin which lasted well after the revolution. The book goes on to examine Bogdanov's intellectually legacy—a legacy that, despite being deliberately obscured and distorted, was considerable and of lasting significance.
Bogdanov was an original and influential interpreter of Marx. He attained mastery of many spheres of knowledge, and employed this varied expertise in writing his chief theoretical work, Tectology, which anticipates modern systems theory.
Publication date: December 3, 2019
Table of Contents
Preface
1 Tula
1 Early Life
2 Radicalisation
3 Back in Tula
4 The Short Course of Economic Science
5 The Basic Elements of the Historical View of Nature
6 The Second Edition of the Short Course
7 Agitation
8 Kharkov
2 Kaluga
1 Lunacharsky
2 Mach
3 Avenarius
4 Avenarius and Mach
3 Vologda
1 The Exiles
2 Berdyaev
3 The Debates
4 What is Idealism?
5 Perception from the Historical Point of View
6 Problems of Idealism and Studies in the Realist World View
7 External Relations
4 The Alliance
1 Pravda
2 Meeting with Lenin
3 Our Misunderstandings
4 The Alliance
5 Pamphlets
6 In St Petersburg
5 The 1905 Revolution
1 After 9 January
2 Novaia zhizn
3 Revolution and Philosophy
6 Empiriomonism
1 Empiriocriticism
2 The Meaning of Objectivity
3 Universal Validity
4 Socially-Organised Experience and Individually-Organised Experience
5 Parallelism
6 Life and the Psyche
7 The First Volume of
8 Akselrod-Ortodoks's Criticism
9 The Second Volume of Empiriomonism
10 Plekhanov's &'thing-in-itself'
11 The Fourth Congress
12 The Third Volume of Empiriomonism and the Conflict with Plekhanov
7 Years of Reaction
1 The Fifth Congress
2 The Kotka Conference
3 Religion and Socialism
4 The Open Letter to Plekhanov
5 Materialismus Militans
6 Adventures of One Philosophical School
7 Studies in the Philosophy of Marxism
8 Socialist Society
9 Red Star
8 End of an Alliance
1 Ten Questions
2 The Paris Conference
3 God-Building
4 The Extended Editorial Board of Proletarii 5 Materialism andEmpiriocriticism 6 The Fall of the Great Fetish 9 Vpered 1 Party Schools 2 The Translation ofMarx'sDasKapital 3 The Platform of Vpered 4 The Tenth Plenum of the Central Committee 5 The Bologna Party School 6 Longjumeau 7 Cultural Tasks of Our Times 8 The Course of Political Economy 9 Engineer Menni 10 The Fate of Vpered 11 Pravda Articles 10 Tectology 1 The Secret of Science 2 Tectology as Science 3 Organising Methods 4 Regulative Mechanisms 5 The Stability of Forms 6 Divergence and Convergence of Forms 7 Crises C and D 8 Tectology and General System Theory 11 The Philosophy of Living Experience 1 Philosophy in Tectological Perspective 2 The Materialism of Modern Times 3 Empiriomonism 4 The Science of the Future 5 A Decade of Excommunication from Marxism 6 Reaction to the War 12 War and Revolution 1 Bogdanov in the War 2 The Science of Social Consciousness 3 World Crises Peaceful and Military 4 Disagreement with Skvortsov-Stepanov 5 Bukharin 6 Will It Be Tomorrow? 7 The February Revolution 8 Bogdanov in 1917 9 What Is It That We Have Overthrown? 10 The Commune State 11 On Party Unity 12 Questions of Socialism 13 Proletkult 1 Proletarskaia Kultura 2 Methods of Labour and Methods of Perception 3 The First Conference of Proletkult 4 Elements of Proletarian Culture 5 The Proletarian University 6 The Workers' Encyclopaedia 7 International Proletkult 14 The Final Decade 1 Bogdanov's Influence 2 Oppositions 3 Lenin's Offensive against Bogdanov 4 Bogdanov's Arrest 5 The Communist Academy 6 Blood Transfusion 7 The Struggle for Viability 8 A Martyr to Science 9 Obituaries Conclusion: Bogdanov in Retrospect Bibliography Index
“As a revolutionary whose vision rivaled Vladimir Lenin's and a thinker who laid the foundations for systems theory, Alexander Bogdanov has merited greater attention from biographers than he has so far received. James D. White's biography of him remedies this neglect.”
—Barbara Allen, The Russian Review
“With Red Hamlet, The Life and Ideas of Alexander Bogdanov, James D. White [explores] the life of one of the [Russian Revolution’s] most original and influential thinkers, Alexander Bogdanov [...] as a comprehensive catalogue of Bogdanov’s works the study will be a useful addition to the reading list of both scholars and students of the Russian Revolution.”
—Iva Glisic, Europe-Asia Studies
“As the first comprehensive English-language biography of Bogdanov, Red Hamlet is a welcome addition to the literature on Russian Marxism [...] the author musters an exhaustive list of rare Russian publications (as well as secondary literatures in five languages) to paint a compelling picture of a long-neglected Bolshevik.”
—Nicholas Bujalski, Marx & Philosophy Review of Books