Alexander Bogdanov (Malinovsky). From philosophy to organizational science

From philosophy to organizational science
Alexander Bogdanov (Malinovsky)

Publication date: January 8, 2003

Printed with abbreviations. The entire text will be published in the first (2003) issue of the journal "Problems of Philosophy"

I am not an Esperantist; I recognize that attempts [to create] an international artificial language express the deep vital need of humanity for a single means of communication, but I believe that its real satisfaction on a global scale will be achieved along a different path, less artificial, although, unfortunately, also more spontaneous, more long and hard. But, since Esperantism is a fact and since groups of its adherents in the most diverse countries actually use it as an instrument of living communication, I gratefully accepted the offer of the editors of the Esperantist magazine to characterize in its pages the work to which I devoted my energies entirely. Perhaps, in the utopians I like, a single world language that breaks national boundaries will find an echo of the idea, more prepared by historical development, of a unified world science that breaks the boundaries of special studies.

Karl Marx, in his 11 Theses on Feuerbach three quarters of a century ago, outlined a program for revolutionary philosophy. Its essence is this.

It is necessary to consider reality as a living concrete practice (theses 1, 5), and, moreover, as a social practice, because in his activity a person is a social being (theses 6, 8). Practice is an objective criterion of truth (thesis 2). Philosophy, from this point of view, should become not a simple explanation, interpretation of the world, but a means of changing the world (thesis 11).

Historical materialism was the fulfillment of this program in the field of social philosophy. Fulfilling [it] on a general philosophical scale is also an urgent task for the working class. I have devoted my energies to this task and have been working on it for more than a quarter of a century.

To consider the world of phenomena as a social practice means to see in it a field of collective labor, where human activity and spontaneous resistance collide, where humanity fights with nature and defeats it at the cost of continuous efforts, and sometimes heavy defeats. Activities and resistances are correlative, they constantly change places; both in human life and in nature, we use one or another designation for them, depending on the point of view we choose. Consequently, the various activities-resistances represent those elements from which our research must proceed.

But we are talking about transforming the world, about changing its forms. What are these forms? They are the result of various combinations of the same activities-resistances, they are their “complexes” or “systems”. In continuous interaction, sometimes destroying each other, sometimes combining again, they change and develop. This change, this development is regulated by the law of selection : forms “less adapted” disappear, “more adapted” to their environment are retained. And more adapted means: more organized , those who combine a larger sum of activities-resistances in a more harmonious combination.

This results in a universally generalizing point of view - an all-organizational point of view. Its roots lie in the same social practice, in collective labor. For its whole meaning can be expressed this way: to organize human activities in order to, defeating the elements, further and further organize the world for humanity .

This point of view was alien to bourgeois society with its individualism, fragmentation, and internal anarchy; but [it] is close and natural to the proletariat, an all-organizing class by nature. The working class organizes things in its work, organizes people - itself - in its social struggle and in its construction, organizes ideas in the development of its class consciousness. Therefore, he [is] called upon by history to systematically and harmoniously organize the life of humanity as a whole.

The picture of the world arising from our point of view presents us with the Universe (Universum) as a continuous chain of forms passing through struggle and interaction from lower levels of organization to higher ones; Moreover, we must examine these forms and their development in their relation to the highest of them - the labor collective of humanity, which for the first time begins to recognize itself in the person of the proletariat as an internationally organized class.

I called this picture of the world “empiriomonism”, i.e. "unity of experience" It is nothing more than a diagram of organizational philosophy. In a number of works I substantiated it on data from natural sciences and social sciences.

Here I had to establish my attitude to the latest philosophy of natural science - to the school of Mach-Avenarius. I gave its systematic criticism in the article “Philosophy of the Modern Naturalist” (collection “Essays on the Philosophy of Collectivism”, published by “Znanie”, 1909; more concisely in Chapter IV of the book “Philosophy of Living Experience” [St. Petersburg, ed. M .I. Semenov, 1913], giving a general presentation). I found that it corresponds to the life trends, of course, not of the proletariat, but of the scientific and technical intelligentsia who direct production under industrial capitalism. In general, it is not characterized by a revolutionary active attitude to reality, a collective labor point of view; This school still bears the imprint of a more contemplative worldview, which Marx considered a shortcoming of all old materialism, up to and including Feuerbach. But it also has great advantages: deep realism, positivism; a relentless critique of entrenched, rigid concepts; destruction of many fetishes of knowledge. And this is understandable: after all, the scientific and technical intelligentsia is closely connected with production, with its living experience, although it is not with their own hands that they fight against the activities and resistance of spontaneous nature. One of my articles about the positive significance of Mach's school was published in a German translation under the title "[Ernst] Mach und die Revolution."

The philosophical concept of “matter” has changed many times throughout history. The simple and clear matter of the atoms of Democritus is completely different from the “matter” of Holbach, about which he says that “we know neither its essence nor its true nature, although by its effect on us we can judge some of its properties” ( sympathetically quoted by Plekhanov in Notes to the translation of Engels' "Ludwig Feuerbach", p. 100). And if historical materialism recognizes the material side as the basis of social life, then by it it means production with its technology and economics, the consciously active influence of society on nature, including the enormous role of what Plekhanov calls “spirit.” And how vague and historically unstable the concept of “spirit” is in philosophy, I think this does not need to be explained.

Science, on the other hand, relates to matter in its own way, does not abstractly construct its concept, but actually studies it; and on this path the concept of matter is undergoing a profound revolution in our era. The main characteristic of matter - “mass” - turned out to be an electrodynamic quantity and was reduced to energy. How far is the idea of ​​matter, for example, of Einstein, who identifies it with the electromagnetic field, from the more recent purely mechanical understanding of it! Here, in science, matter appears not as a “thing in itself” at which the path of knowledge ends, but as a real complex of activities and resistances, as a living experience, as a riddle that requires a solution.

I have tried to systematically apply the organizational point of view in various areas and have constantly found that it facilitates the resolution of many issues, and in other cases only makes it possible. Thus, in economic science it provides support for objective proof of the law of labor value in capitalist exchange: this law turns out to be a condition for the vital equilibrium of an exchange society. The principle of a chain connection between industries makes it possible to substantiate and further develop Marx’s theory of crises, etc.

From the same point of view, it turned out to be possible to accurately clarify the objective vital role of ideology in the system of society. All ideological forms - speech, thinking in concepts, norms of custom, law, morality, images of art - are organizational tools for the social life of people, their collective work and struggle. That is why ideology is determined by production relations, i.e. technology and economics: being developed in order to organize these relations, they [ideological forms] must adapt to them . On the path of such research, new illumination of many issues of ideological development is obtained, and it is even possible to scientifically predict its direction.

Organizational analysis of various social formations led me to the conclusion that each class, put forward by history, necessarily develops its own special organizational methods according to which its life is built, and then, when it gains dominance, then the life of the entire society. These methods arise from the basic relations of production, ultimately from the form of cooperation that is characteristic of a given class; they are different among the feudal classes than among the bourgeoisie; even [more] different - among the proletariat. These organizational methods and the organizing ones created through them, i.e. ideological, forms form their own culture of a given class: feudal - authoritarian, bourgeois - individualistic, proletarian - collectivistic. This leads to the conclusion about the need to work towards proletarian culture: to collect, research, organize its existing elements, and develop them further. The program of proletarian culture was first formulated by the left-Bolshevik group “Forward” in 1909, in a platform of which I was the speaker.

The Plekhanov school declared the doctrine of the organizational role of ideology to be idealism, and the program of proletarian culture to be an attempt to distract the proletariat from its urgent tasks to something alien and beyond its strength.

Life, however, more and more clearly reveals that, remaining on the basis of the methods developed by the bourgeois classes, it is impossible to solve the problems of the planned construction of social life, that only by developing its organizational methods and organizing forms, the proletariat can realize its great task. And if the rudiments of proletarian culture are still weak, they are still an immutable fact of life; and their growth is beyond doubt.

The question of proletarian culture is a question of a deep radical transformation of life, science, and art. For the theorist, the closest task is to transform science. Here, the organizational point of view led to the requirement to generalize and systematize the organizational experience of mankind in a scientific form; and this means creating a universal organizational science .

To be continued...