A. ALEKSANDR BOGDANOV On April 7, 1928 the career of one of the most extraordinary figures of Russian and early Soviet intellectual life came to an abrupt and premature end. In the process of an experiment on blood transfusion, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Malinovsky, better known as Bogdanov, had exchanged his blood with that of a critically ill malaria victim in hopes of saving both the patient and his blood. The outcome of this may be guessed: both doctor and patient died forthwith. ! Although an extraordinary venture on Bogdanov's part, for it was part of a search for the means to immortality,2 the transfusion experiment was only one of a host of startling things he had done in his thirty years in Russian politics and public life. In actuality, the activities and achievement of his two years as director of the Soviet Union's first institute for the study of blood transfusion seem virtually insignificant beside the events of earlier years. 3 It would be fair to say that Aleksandr Bogdanov stood in a singularly prominent position in the political and intellectual life of Russia from the turn of the century to 1930. Politically, he had been Lenin's only serious rival for leadership among the Bolsheviks before 1917. In the early years of the Soviet regime, Bogdanov stood head and shoulders above any other public figure operating outside the ranks of the Party. Only a handful of men, i. e.

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.

This sequel to "Man and the Biosphere" is an account of the origins and development of a cultural, social energetic and systems theoretical contribution to critical Marxism. It examines: the intellectual contributions of the Russian philosophers, A.A. Bogdanov and A.I. Bukharin; Bogdanov's and Bukharin's contributions as a search for a unity of scientific knowledge; and a paradigmatic change from a closed mechanical system to an open systems paradigm.

This four-part monograph traces the dialectical development of economic thought from the Physiocrats through Marx to the present. It is a broad treatment of the history of intellectual thought that bridges economic and the social sciences on the one hand, with natural science and biology in particular on the other. The author is concerned with systems theory and treats the economy from the perspective of the biophysical thermodynamic dimensions of the economic processes. He closes his analysis with a discussion of organizational theory that relates to the formation of institutions and the issues of freedom in a technically dominated society. The book comes full circle in examining the moral and ethical concerns that first influenced the Physiocrats and other founding fathers of economic science.

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 Russian revolution, Wark unearths the work of Alexander Bogdanov—Lenin’s rival—as well as the great Proletkult writer and engineer Andrey Platonov. The Soviet experiment emerges from the past as an allegory for the new organizational challenges of our time. From deep within the Californian military-entertainment complex, Wark retrieves Donna Haraway’s cyborg critique and science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson’s Martian utopia as powerful resources for rethinking and remaking the world that climate change has wrought. Molecular Red proposes an alternative realism, where hope is found in what remains and endures.

The project to publish the works of Marx and Engels continues, and this book, published in 1984, puts together a comprehensive bibliography of their works either written in or translated into English, including books, monographs, articles, chapters and doctoral dissertations, together with the works of their interpreters. The inclusion of the secondary literature makes this a particularly valuable bibliography, and contributes greatly to the understanding of the thought of Marx and Engels.

In this 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. He 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 into Soviet times. The book examines in some detail Bogdanov’s intellectual legacy, which, though deliberately obscured and distorted by his adversaries, was considerable and is of lasting significance. Bogdanov was an original and influential interpreter of Marx. He had a mastery of many spheres of knowledge, this expertise being employed in writing his chief theoretical work Tectology, which anticipates modern systems theory. See inside the book.

This set of 44 volumes, originally published between 1924 and 1995, amalgamates a wide breadth of research on the Labour Movement, including labour union history, the early stages and development of the Labour Party, and studies on the working classes. This collection of books from some of the leading scholars in the field provides a comprehensive overview of the subject how it has evolved over time, and will be of particular interest to students of political history.

Zenovia A. Sochor here assesses one of the most important debates within the Bolshevik leadership during the early years of Soviet power-that between A. A. Bogdanov and V. I. Lenin. Once comrades-in-arms, Bogdanov and Lenin became political rivals prior to the October Revolution. Their disagreements over political and cultural issues led to a split in the Bolshevik Party, with Bogdanov spearheading the party's left-wing faction and attracting a following of notable intellectuals. Before Lenin died in 1924, however, he had succeeded in shaping Soviet society according to his own vision, and today Bolshevism is commonly identified with Leninism while Bogdanovism is little known. Sochor provides the first full exposition in English of Bogdanov's views, which, she asserts, must be understood to appreciate the choices available and the paths not taken during the formative years of the Soviet regime.