Red Hamlet: The Life and Ideas of Alexander Bogdanov

by James D. White

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781642590487
Publisher:	Haymarket Books
Publication date:	12/03/2019
Series:	Historical Materialism
Pages:	494
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

James D. White is Honorary Professor in the Department of Central and East European Studies at the University of Glasgow, UK. He is the author of Marx and Russia: The Fate of a Doctrine (Bloomsbury, 2018), Lenin: The Practice and Theory of Revolution (Macmillan, 2001), Karl Marx and the Intellectual Origins of Dialectical Materialism (Palgrave, 1996) and The Russian Revolution 1917-1921 (Edward Arnold, 1994).

Table of Contents

Preface xi

1 Tula 1

1 Early Life 1

2 Radicalisation 4

3 Back in Tula 10

4 The Short Course of Economic Science 17

5 The Basic Elements of the Historical View of Nature 20

6 The Second Edition of the Short Course 22

7 Agitation 28

8 Kharkov 30

2 Kaluga 33

1 Lunacharsky 33

2 Mach 40

3 Avenarius 43

4 Avenarius and Mach 51

3 Vologda 56

1 The Exiles 56

2 Berdyaev 60

3 The Debates 64

4 What is Idealism? 66

5 Perception from the Historical Point of View 67

6 Problems of Idealism and Studies in the Realist World View 76

7 External Relations 82

4 The Alliance 88

1 Pravda 88

2 Meeting with Lenin 99

3 Our Misunderstandings 103

4 The Alliance 108

5 Pamphlets 112

6 In St Petersburg 115

5 The 1905 Revolution 117

1 After 9 January 117

2 Novaia Zhizn 140

3 Revolution and Philosophy 143

6 Empiriomonism 145

1 Empiriocriticism 145

2 The Meaning of Objectivity 146

3 Universal Validity 147

4 Socially-Organised Experience and Individually-Organised Experience 148

5 Parallelism 150

6 Life and the Psyche 151

7 The First Volume of Empiriomonism 153

8 Akselrod-Ortodoks's Criticism 153

9 The Second Volume of Empiriomonism 158

10 Plekhanov's 'Thing-in-Itself 160

11 The Fourth Congress 163

12 The Third Volume of Empiriomonism and the Conflict with Plekhanov 167

7 Years of Reaction 175

1 The Fifth Congress 175

2 The Kotka Conference 179

3 Religion and Socialism 184

4 The Open Letter to Plekhanov 188

5 Materialismus Militans 189

6 Adventures of One Philosophical School 193

7 Studies in the Philosophy of Marxism 195

8 Socialist Society 198

9 Red Star 200

8 End of an Alliance 210

1 Ten Questions 210

2 The Paris Conference 219

3 God-Building 223

4 The Extended Editorial Board of Proletarii 227

5 Materialism and Empiriocriticism 237

6 The Fall of the Great Fetish 241

9 Vpered 248

1 Party Schools 248

2 The Translation of Marx's Das Kapital 254

3 The Platform of Vpered 257

4 The Tenth Plenum of the Central Committee 261

5 The Bologna Party School 264

6 Longjumeau 268

7 Cultural Tasks of Our Times 269

8 The Course of Political Economy 277

9 Engineer Menni 279

10 The Fate of Vpered 281

11 Pravda Articles 283

10 Tectology 287

1 The Secret of Science 287

2 Tectology as Science 290

3 Organising Methods 292

4 Regulative Mechanisms 295

5 The Stability of Forms 297

6 Divergence and Convergence of Forms 300

7 Crises c and D 308

8 Tectology and General System Theory 311

11 The Philosophy of Living Experience 319

1 Philosophy in Tectological Perspective 319

2 The Materialism of Modern Times 323

3 Empiriomonism 330

4 The Science of the Future 332

5 A Decade of Excommunication from Marxism 334

6 Reaction to the War 338

12 War and Revolution 340

1 Bogdanov in the War 340

2 The Science of Social Consciousness 342

3 World Crises Peaceful and Military 346

4 Disagreement with Skvortsov-Stepanov 348

5 Bukharin 352

6 Will It Be Tomorrow? 353

7 The February Revolution 355

8 Bogdanov in 1917 356

9 What Is It That We Have Overthrown? 361

10 The Commune State 364

11 On Party Unity 366

12 Questions of Socialism 368

13 Proletkult 378

1 Proletarskaia Kultura 378

2 Methods of Labour and Methods of Perception 389

3 The First Conference of Proletkult 391

4 Elements of Proletarian Culture 396

5 The Proletarian University 400

6 The Workers' Encyclopaedia 404

7 International Proletkult 406

14 The Final Decade 408

1 Bogdanov's Influence 408

2 Oppositions 416

3 Lenin's Offensive against Bogdanov 419

4 Bogdanov's Arrest 429

5 The Communist Academy 431

6 Blood Transfusion 443

7 The Struggle for Viability 446

8 A Martyr to Science 450

9 Obituaries 454

Conclusion: Bogdanov in Retrospect 460

Bibliography 467

Index 486