Bogdanov, Marx, and the limits to growth debate

Abstract

Bogdanov is a major rival to the philosophical orthodoxy of Plekhanov and Lenin. We explicate the foundational notions of his philosophy—praxis and experience—and trace his revisionism to Kant, Fichte, Mach, and Spencer. We show that Bogdanov's approach represents a predominantly pragmatic reading of Marx, influenced by the empiricism of Mach and Spencer as well as by Kantian apriorism. Bogdanov's version of Unified Science—Tektology—is considered against his philosophical background. The concept of praxis is at the center of the controversy between Marxist orthodoxy and revisionism. We analyze the connection between Bogdanov's philosophy of praxis, and the constructivism of the young Marx. Consequently, we see how Bogdanov's quest for infinite creativity is conceptually connected with the Fichtean–Marxian quest for infinite growth. Furthermore, we consider the issue of technological growth in a framework of the contemporary limits to growth debate.

Notes

School of ISET, SUNY Institute of Technology, State University of New York, PO Box 3050, Utica, NY 13504‐3050, USA. Email: [email protected]

V. A. Zenkovsky, A History of Russian Philosophy (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1953), vol. 2, 281. Trained as a physician, Bogdanov founded in Moscow the Institute for the Transfusion of Blood; in 1928 he died performing an experiment on himself.

For an extensive discussion see: Y. Kats, Freedom and the Limits of Technology: Marx and Beyond, PhD dissertation (City University of New York, 1997), chs 1–4.

The “limits to growth” discussion expanded after the publication of the following books: J. W. Forrester, World Dynamics (Cambridge: Wright‐Allen Press, 1971) and, especially, D. H. Meadows, The Limits to Growth (New York: Universe Books, 1972).

For example: A. L. Takhtadjan, Tektologiya: Istoriya i Problemy (Tektology: History and Problems). Systemnye Issledovaniya (Systems Research) (Yearbook, 1971), (Moscow: Isdatel'stvo Nauka, 1972); R. Mattessich, Instrumental Reasoning and Systems Methodology (Boston: D. Reidel, 1978); G. Gorelik, “Bogdanov's Tektology: its Nature, Development, and Influence,” Studies in Soviet Thought 26 (July 1983): 39–58; R. E. Bello, “The Systems Approach,” Studies in Soviet Thought 30 (August 1985): 131–48. In our opinion, it is Herbert Spencer who should be considered a genuine precursor of Cybernetics as well as the General Systems Theory.

K. Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach,” in K. Marx, Selected Writings, ed. D. McLellan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978).

A. Bogdanov, Filosofia z'ivogo opyta (The Philosophy of Vital Experience) (St. Petersburg, 1913; 2nd ed. 1921; 3rd ed. 1923), 74.

Ibid., 73–4.

Ibid., 72.

Ibid., 58.

For an exposition of this view see: E. Mach, Die Analyse der Empfindungen (Jena, 1906). The title of Lenin's book—Materialism and Empiriocriticism—comes from the contra‐distinction of Mach's empiriocriticism and dialectical materialism.

Mach's concept of the “elements of experience” conspicuously influenced some of the members of Vienna Circle, as well as Russell, with their idea of “sense‐data.”

Bogdanov, The Philosophy of Vital Experience, 83.

Ibid., 81.

Ibid., 79.

Lenin, Materialism and Empirio‐Criticism (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1920), 269–70.

Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach.”

Bogdanov, The Philosphy of Vital Experience, 58; in Brzozowski's words nature is “coextensive with labor.” See L. Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism, vols 1–3 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), vol. 2, 226.

One of Bogdanov's last works is devoted to the interpretation of Einstein's relativity theory from the standpoint of “the general science of organization”; see: A. Bogdanov, “Printzip Otnositel'nosti i ego Filosofskoye Istolkovaniye” (“The Principle of Relativity and its Philosophical Interpretation”), Mir 4 (April 1923).

For example: M. Adler, A Critique of Othmar Spann's Sociology (Zur Kritik der Sociologie Othmar Spann) (1927), in Austro‐Marxism translated by T. Bottomore and P. Goode (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978).

G. V. Plekhanov, Kritika nashich Kritikov (Critique of Our Critics) (St. Petersburg: Obshchestvennaya Polza, 1906), 166. Lenin, Filosofskie Tetradi (Philosophical Notebooks), in V. I. Lenin, Polnoye Sobranie Sochineniy (Collected Works) (Moskva: Gos. Izd. Polit. Lit., 1963), vol. 29, 142.

Says Marx: “Nature too, taken abstractly, for itself and rigidly separated from man, is nothing, for man.” See E. Fromm, Marx's Concept of Man with a Translation from Marx's “Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts,” translated by T. Bottomore (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1961), 183.

The idea of the “complexes” constituting “experience” goes back at least to Buddhist metaphysics. Certainly, for the Buddhists the combinations of the elements (dharmas) into complexes do not depend on labor, because the goal is to reduce the “impure” complexes into the unity of “pure” experience.

A. Bogdanov, Tektologiya: Vseobschaya Organizatzionnaya Nauka (Tektology: The General Science of Organization), 2 vols (Moscow: Ekonomika, 1989), vol. 1, 70–1.

Ibid., 112.

From the Greek word tekto—organization.

Ibid., 112.

H. Spencer, “The Social Organism” (1860), in H. Spencer, The Man Versus the State (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1981), 390–1.

Ibid., 391–2.

H. Spencer, “Specialized Administration,” in Spencer, The Man Versus the State, 447.

Ibid., 456.

Ibid., 481–2.

For the assessment of Spencer's contribution to theoretical biology see: K. M. Zavadskiy and E. I. Kolchinskiy, Evolutziya Evolutzii (Evolution of Evolution) (Leningrad: Nauka, 1977), 167–71.

See Bogdanov, Tektologiya, vol. 2, 207.

Bogdanov, The Philosophy of Vital Experience, 274.

Descartes, Discourse on Method, Part VI, in The Philosophical Works of Descartes, translated by E. S. Haldane and T. R. G. Ross, vol. 1 (Cambridge: University Press, 1978), 119. See also: A. P. Schouls, “Descartes and the Idea of Progress,” in Rene Descartes: Critical Assessments, ed. J. D. Moyal, vol. 1 (London and New York: Routledge, 1991), 50–60.

J. G. Fichte, Einige Vorlesungen über die Bestimmung des Gelehrten (1794), in Johann Gottlieb Fichte's Sammtlihe Werke, ed. I. H. Fichte, 8 vols. VI, 342.

F. Engels, “Draft of the Communist Confession of Faith,” in K. Marx and F. Engels, Collected Works (New York: International Publishers, 1976), vol. 6, 96 (translation modified). F. Engels, “Principles of Communism,” in Ibid., vol. 6, 341.

See: K. Marx, Grundrisse, translated by M. Nicolaus (New York: Vintage Books, 1973), 704; Capital, vol. 3, ed. F. Engels (New York: International Publishers, 1967), 820.

Ibid., 56.

Fromm, Marx's Concept of Man, 183.

Bogdanov, Tektology, vol. 2, 204.

The idea of selection as a universal principle belongs to Spencer. Bogdanov's approach to the second law of thermodynamics from the standpoint of “selection” theory is comparable, in general, to some ideas of Ilya Prigogine and his school; see: I. Prigogine and C. George, “The Second Law as a Selection Principle: The Microscopic Theory of Dissipative Processes in Quantum Systems,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 80 (1983): 4590–4. An attempt to apply these ideas to biology and social sciences is presented in I. Prigogine and I. Stengers, Order out of Chaos (London: Heinemann, 1984).

The irreversible character of the thermodynamic processes has been repeatedly used to explain the nature of time. From this perspective, due to the irreversible transformation of chemical energy, a process of ontogenesis proceeds from past to future and eventually to the state of thermodynamic equilibrium—death. This example shows that irreversible change in time is not identical to the infinite development of a system. However, Bogdanov assumes such an identity in his “proof” of the “inexhaustible creativity” of mankind. For the thermodynamic approach to time see Prigogine, Order out of Chaos; and H. Reichenbach, The Direction of Time (New York, 1958).

Marx, Capital, vol. 3, 820.

The same holds for fundamental science. For example, the major contemporary advances in microphysics would have been hardly possible without the use of more and more powerful nuclear accelerators. But can we infinitely increase the power of such accelerators?—Maybe not. Some physicists consider the accumulation of such problems as a ground for thepotential “end of physics.” See R. Feynman, The Character of Physical Law (New York: Modern Library, 1994).

Meadows, The Limits to Growth.

H. S. Cole, ed., Models of Doom. A Critique of the Limits to Growth (New York: Universe Books, 1973).

Ridker, “To Grow or not to Grow,” Science 182 (1973).

The “primary” status of nature may or may not lead to the “open‐ended” technological growth; such a claim is not an assumption that is necessary from the epistemic point of view.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yefim Kats

School of ISET, SUNY Institute of Technology, State University of New York, PO Box 3050, Utica, NY 13504‐3050, USA. Email: [email protected]