Aleksandr Bogdanov’s Sociology of the Arts

Writing on the relationship between thinking and economic activity, Friedrich Engels, in a letter to Joseph Bloch of 1890, pointed out that Marx’s understanding of this relationship was not to be understood as a form of uni-directional determinism. “The economic situation”, he wrote, “is the basis, but the various elements of the superstructure … political, juristic, philosophical theories, religious views, and their further development into systems of dogmas – also exercise their influence upon the course of the historical struggles and in many cases preponderate in determining their form.”

Engels to Joseph Bloch, London, 21–22 September 1890. The letter was first published in Der sozialistische Akademiker, 19 (Berlin, 1895). See Marx, Karl and Frederick Engels 2001: 33–37. I am obliged to James D. White for indicating the source of the original publication.

By the eve of the First World War, Bogdanov had developed a sociology of ideas that was grounded in his ‘empiriomonist’ epistemology, in an evolutionist history of social formations, and in a general theory of the dynamics of organization, equilibrium and change in nature, thinking and society.

See Bogdanov 1901, 1904 and 1904–1906 [and translation 2020]. For a review of Bogdanov’s works on philosophy, see Steila 1996 and 2013 ; and White 2019a. and 2019b.

It was in 1906 that Bogdanov for the first time outlined his understanding of the progression of social formations – from “authoritarian”, through “individualistic”, to “collectivist”, in the 7^th edition of his Short Course on Economic Science (Bogdanov 1906). This overview was also provided in The Philosophy of Living Experience (1913) and The Science of Social Consciousness (1914). Inverting what would have been the usual explanatory structure for a Marxist historian, Bogdanov characterized each period in terms of its predominant “world view” (mirovozzrenie) or “ideology” and only then went on to describe the technical, economic and social conditions that corresponded to each of these ideologies. The earliest period was that of “primeval ideologies” (pervobytnye ideologii). This was the period of hunter-gatherer societies when humans first acquired speech, and which were characterized by a primitive, inchoate and conservative collectivism, which Bogdanov hesitated even to qualify as a “world-view”. Next came the period of “authoritarian ideologies”, which was divided into successive sub-periods of “patriarchal ideology”, corresponding to the early development of agriculture and nomadic livestock husbandry; and “feudalism”, characterized by settled agriculture and livestock farming, the development of implements and the growth of trade. Then came “individualistic ideologies”, typical of societies of small producers practicing commodity exchange but also of such transitional forms as i) the slave-owning societies of the classical world, ii) serfdom, iii) craft-workshop economies and iv) commercial capitalism. The ultimate (and emergent) ideology, Bogdanov argued, would be “Collectivism”. As he put it very concisely, in 1918: “The spirit of authoritarianism, the spirit of individualism, the spirit of comradely solidarity (tovarishchestvo) – these are the three types of culture.”

“Chto takoe proletarskaya poeziya?” (1918), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 137.

For Bogdanov, the special function of the arts (viewed as one of a number of expressions of the ideology of any given social formation), was that of cognition in the realm of sensory experience. In ancient times people had acquired their understanding of the world in the form of myths. With the development of philosophy and science, cognition had acquired instruments suited to dealing with abstract thought, but art had retained the function of contributing to a world view through the organization of the feelings. As with other modes of cognition, the social function of the arts was not passive; on the contrary, they provided “social education”: whereas, in the past, this function had been performed by cave drawings, epic poetry or religious myths,

Among Bogdanov’s favourite examples were the Mahabharata; the works of Homer and Hesiod and the Hebrew Bible. In architecture, the Coliseum in Rome was a metaphor for the pride and cruelty of an imperial people; the Gothic cathedral a metaphor for the world view of the Middle Ages – the rejection of this earth and striving towards the after-life. See Bogdanov 1911, 14–18; and “Proletariat i iskusstvo” (Speech to the First All-Russian Conference of the Proletkult, 20 September 1918), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 117–118.

It was the advent of machine production that had provided the pre-conditions for the formation of a collectivist world view:

“The gathering of the proletariat in the cities and factories has a great and complicated influence upon the proletarian psyché. It gives rise to the realization that in labour, in the struggle with the elements for existence, the individual is only a link in a great chain … The individual ‘Ego’ is cut down to size and put in its place.” No less importantly, since machine work required the exercise of both hand and brain, the functions of ‘management’ and ‘implementation’, hitherto separate, and mediated through relations of authority and subordination, were now combined in “a fellowship of cooperation (sotrudnichestvo), which is the principle upon which the proletariat constructs its organization.”

“Chto takoe proletarskaya poeziya?” (1918) in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 136. See also the section “Tekhnicheskie i ekonomicheskie osnovy kollektivizma” in Nauka ob obshestvennom soznanii (1914) in Bogdanov 1999: 446–452.

However, whilst collectivism would be the world-view of all humanity in the future, it was not yet the outlook of a working class that, for all its political and economic progress in both Western Europe and Russia, still remained culturally backward. The idea that the working class was culturally backward was central to Bogdanov’s theory, and he only ever spoke of embryonic “elements” of proletarian culture being present in the art and literature of his day.

For Bogdanov, the capitulation of the working classes to the bourgeoisie during the World War had amply demonstrated the immaturity of its outlook. See “1918”, in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 101; and “O khudozhestvennom nasledstve” (1918), Bogdanov 1924/1924: 144–145. On this point, see Sochor 1988: 95 and White 2013: 52–70.

Given the backwardness of the working class, how would proletarian art evolve? It was incumbent upon both the artist and the critic to select and utilize from the art of the past and of the present, that which could be of benefit to the proletariat and to reject that which was potentially harmful.

“1918” (“Ot redaktsii”), Proletarskaya kul’tura, No.1 (July 1918), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 102. See also Bogdanov 1920: 14.

Bogdanov insisted that he was not merely applying Darwin’s theory of natural selection to the social sphere. He maintained that evolutionary biology was mistaken in distinguishing rigidly between natural selection (otbor) and artificial selection. This distinction, he tells us, disguised the existence of an overarching tektological selection mechanism (podbor) that was also at work in economic, social and intellectual activity.

For the explanation in Tektology of “selection” (podbor) as a “tektological” process, see Bogdanov 1996, Chapter 3: Basic Organizational Mechanisms. I have here also used Bogdanov, 1922. On this subject, see Poustilnik 2009, especially 125–129.

“As concerns the adjective ‘natural’, we shall discard it, for in tektology the difference between ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’ processes is not important. …All production, all social struggle, all the work of thinking, proceeds constantly and steadfastly by means of selection (podbor): by systematic support of the complexes corresponding to vital human goals, and the elimination of those that contradict them.”

Bogdanov 1996, Chapter 3: Basic Organizational Mechanisms, 175.

How then, during the transition period, would “the work of thinking” obtain “systematic support”? Bogdanov’s answer was that it would be provided by educational institutions that functioned alongside the state educational system, namely the Proletarian Workers’ Cultural-Educational Organization (Proletkul’t) and the Proletarian University. The function of these institutions would differ from that of traditional pedagogy in which “the entire meaning of the educator’s activities [was] to support and strengthen some elements of a child’s psyché and to destroy or inhibit others”.

Bogdanov 1996, Chapter 3: Basic Organizational Mechanisms, 181–182.

Bogdanov’s conception of the social function of the arts and of art criticism is analogous to his conception of the function of the new education. Art criticism, he tells us, should not be prescriptive, but this did not meant that the critic should be a mere reporter: the critic should “monitor (reguliruet) the development of art”, and give warning whenever “young art” succumbed to “alien influences”.

Bogdanov 1911: 87.

Bogdanov’s assessment of the value of a work of art was based upon the extent to which it succeeded in its cognitive and educational functions, which he described as its “organizational task”.

Cf. Chehonadskih 2018: 4 – “Art is one of the many forces within the ontology of organization.”

True to his biological-evolutionary world view, Bogdanov was disparaging of the forms and content of art produced at the end of the life-cycle of a social formation. In 1908, in Red Star he had written:

“[The art of ] intermediate, transitional, epochs is of quite a different character: there are impulses, passions, restless yearnings that are sometimes suppressed in the divagations of erotic or religious dreams, but which at other times erupt when tensions in the conflict between body and soul reach the point of disequilibrium.”

My translation from Krasnaya Zvezda, Bogdanov 1929: 94, with reference to the translation by Charles Rougle in Bogdanov 1984: 76.

Ten years later, he explained more fully:

“… When a social class has accomplished its progressive role in the historical process and begins to decline, the content of its art, inevitably, also becomes decadent, as do, accordingly, the forms of art that adapt to this content. The decay of a ruling class is usually evident in a descent into parasitism. There is an onset of satiety, a dulling of the sense of life. Life loses its main source for new, developing content – socially creative activity. In order to fill this void, the members of the dying class pursue ever new pleasures and sensations. Art organizes this quest: in an attempt to stimulate fading sensibilities it resorts to decadent perversions; in an attempt to elaborate and refine aesthetic images, it complicates and embellishes artistic forms through a mass of petty contrivances. All of this has been observed in history more than once, in the decline of various cultures – the Oriental, Classical and Feudal, and it can be observed during recent decades in the decay (razlozhenie) of bourgeois culture, in most of the new trends in ‘Modernism’ and ‘Futurism’. Russian bourgeois art has dragged itself along in the wake of European art, in the image of our anemic and flabby bourgeoisie which succeeded in withering without ever having bloomed.”

“Kritika proletarskogo iskusstva” (1918) in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 169–170.

Zinaida Gippius was considered by Bogdanov to be typical of those who “in periods of tranquil reaction contemplate their individual feelings, aesthetic, erotic, mystical … who become fiery patriots in wartime and who are seized by the ardor of struggle during revolution, only to lapse back into eroticism and all sorts of perversions, mysticism theosophy, etc., etc., when the forces of reaction become dominant.”

“Prostota ili utonchennost’?” (1920), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 178–179. See also 175–177.

There was a risk that the art of the proletariat would be contaminated by the Modernists’ experimentation with rhyme and rhythm:

“In its first steps our workers’ poetry manifested a tendency to regular rhythmic verse with simple rhymes. At present, it manifests a tendency to free rhythms (svobodnye ritmy) and complex, interweaving, novel and often unexpected rhymes. This is clearly the influence of the poetry of the new intelligentsia. It is hardly to be welcomed.”

“Kritika proletarskogo iskusstva” (1918), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 170–171.

By contrast, the science of “physiological psychology” had shown how actions and resistances in work had a formative influence upon the nervous system. It was therefore desirable that the rhythms of poetry should correspond to the “directing rhythms” experienced by a worker who was in harmony with the machine, and to the rhythms of nature.

“Powerful machines and their precise movements are aesthetically pleasing to us in and of themselves…”. Enno, in Bogdanov 1984, 74.

Conscious, perhaps, that his views on culture might be considered overly conservative, Bogdanov was, on occasion, prepared to concede that “of course, new content will inevitably give rise to new forms”; the main thing was “to take the best of the past as a starting point.”

“Kritika proletarskogo iskusstva” (1918), Bogdanov 1924/1925: 170.

Another framework that Bogdanov applied in evaluating a work of art, namely its ‘degree of organization’ or ‘organized-ness (stepen’ organizovannosti),

George Gorelik translated organizovannost’ as ‘system-ness’. See Gorelik 1984: 279. Bogdanov does use the term sistematizatsiya, so another possible translation might be ‘degree of systematization’.

“All of the usual human evaluations that take the form of such concepts as goodness, beauty and truth, that is, moral, aesthetic and cognitive evaluations, have one common basis: all of them are organizational evaluations. The fetishized forms of these evaluations, which conceal their true nature from individualistic consciousness, prevent the question of the degree to which they represent socially-experienced levels of organization (sotsial’no-zhiznennoi organizovannosti) from being addressed. This means that whatever raises the level of organization of collective life in the field of degressive norms of human behaviour is deemed to be morally superior;

“Degression”, for Bogdanov, is the process that enables a particular form to sustain its structure or viability in a relationship of dynamic equilibrium with its environment. See Bogdanov 1922: Part II, Chapter VI, Section 3 – ‘Origin and significance of degression’.

In the same year, addressing a conference of writers and artists of the Proletkult, Bogdanov made the same point, namely that appreciation of the formal side of a work of art consisted in evaluating the “degree to which that work was organized as a living whole”. Acknowledging that assessments made by different collectives would vary according to their specific accumulations of organizational experience, he argued that, nevertheless, “it is the degree of organization of a work that is the measure of its profundity and of the impact that it will have upon the collective, that is, of its potential for contributing to the organizational education of the collective.”

See Thesis Nr. 4 for his lecture “On proletarian literary criticism” delivered to an All-Russian Conference of Literary Departments and Departments of the Visual Arts of the Proletkult, 21 August 1921. RGALI, f.1230, op.1, d.457, l.8.

Disappointingly, there is only one instance (that I can think of ) in which Bogdanov applies in any detail the methodology of organizational science to the exegesis of a work of art or literature, and that is in his commentary on “the great artist and tektologist”, Shakespeare.

The expression is employed in Bogdanov 1922, Part II, Chapter 5 “Divergence and convergence of forms”, Section 6: “The division and restoration of unity of the personality”, p.292. Part II of Tektology was first published in Moscow in 1917 (Preface dated 22 September 1916). Bogdanov also provides a commentary on Hamlet in “O khudozhestvennom nasledstve” (1918), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 150–154.

Bogdanov was at pains to insist that no constraints should be placed upon the creative work of the proletarian artist: there should be “initiative, criticism, originality and the all-round development of individual talents.” There should be no “blind submission to authority”.

“Ideal vospitaniya” (Lecture delivered to a Teachers’ Conference in Moscow, May, 1918), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 236.

As early as the spring of 1919 Bogdanov had become aware that some proletarian writers found his approach patronizing:

“Some Proletkultists have argued that artistic creation must be free, and have questioned whether criticism, however scientific, and however much it claimed to be the most proletarian, can point the way … the journal Proletarskaya kul’tura has been depicted as a kind of baby-sitter (“Chto za nyan’ki!”), constantly fretting about what is and what isn’t proletarian culture”.

Bogdanov 1920: 87. On the resentment of some writers by 1920, see Steinberg 2002: 60–61.

In February 1920, exasperation with the paternalism of the Proletkult led a group of writers led by Gerasimov to withdraw from its Moscow branch and, under the auspices of the Commissariat for Education, to organize their own literary group – Kuznitsa, complaining that “the conditions of work in Proletkult … for a variety of reasons, restrict the creative potential of proletarian writers.”

See their letter to Pravda, 5 February 1920, reproduced in Gorbunov 1974: 122. On this episode, ssee also Mally 1990: 154–156.

One does not look to Bogdanov for an understanding of the mentalité of the ‘actually existing’ working class.

In general, it seems that the Russian Social Democrats, before 1917, produced fewer social and economic studies of working class life than the agrarian socialists did of the peasantry.

Bogdanov’s insistence that a ‘non-proletarian’ could make a contribution to the development of proletarian culture clearly belongs to the vexed controversy over the ambiguous relationship between socialist intellectuals and workers by social origin.

See Biggart 1990: 265–282. On how workers and intellectuals worked together in the Proletkult, see Mally 1990: 115–121.

Bogdanov’s aesthetic theories had the potential for development in a number of directions, but some led up blind alleys. His binary criterion of ‘simplicity/over- elaboration’ seems to have owed more to his solicitude for novices in the building of proletarian culture and to his dislike of Modernism than to his organization theory. It is difficult to imagine what contribution these categories could make to the appreciation of even some of the writers he approved of, for example, Gogol. By contrast, his criticism of Hamlet illustrates the analytical potential of a tektological approach. In mitigation we can say that Bogdanov was aware of the experimental nature of his aesthetics. He was aware that a scientific-organizational aesthetics would be perfected only in the future .”

See Bogdanov 2003: 392.

The deepest distinguishing aspect of Bogdanov’s ideas is his relentless pursuit of the implications of an uncompromising materialist interpretation of life and thought. By his standards, even as militant a materialist as Lenin was infected with remnants of idealism. Perhaps the most speculative and crucial issue in the materialist/idealist debate is the question of the relationship of matter and thought, the intersection of brain cells and consciousness. This issue, despite claims to the contrary, is far from being resolved. Art and culture are pre-eminent products of consciousness. How illuminating, or so it should be, to have a careful presentation of Bogdanov’s approach to Shakespeare’s Hamlet. What does it illuminate? In many respects it shows the limitations of Bogdanov’s ideas as much as their valuable pioneering elements. John Biggart expertly – and we have no more trustworthy guide than he on this – dissects Bogdanov’s interpretation. Broadly, as Biggart shows, Bogdanov saw the class content of a cultural/artistic product as its most important aspect from the proletarian perspective. Today, the notion of cultural output embodying social values surprises no one. As a pioneer, Bogdanov was fighting against a more sceptical audience but also using analytical tools that look reductive and oversimplified today. Hamlet, as provider of ‘a comprehensive lesson and comprehensive resolution of the organisational task’, is a very particular, idiosyncratic, and limited interpretation. At the same time, Bogdanov’s approach is stimulating and inspiring. His achievement may lie mainly in his identification of key issues of the formation and importance of proletarian class consciousness. His suggestions for institutions that aim to incubate that consciousness – not just Proletkult but the Proletarian Encyclopaedia and the Proletarian University, foreshadowed embryonically in the Capri Party Schools – are ingenious suggestions set aside by later socialists at their peril. Bogdanov was better at identifying questions and suggesting mechanisms to deal with them than he was at providing solutions.

This consideration applies to another aspect of Bogdanov’s achievement that looms large in Biggart’s unblinking presentation. Bogdanov insisted on no feature of proletarian cultural formation more than that it should be the unhindered activity of the workers themselves. However, like Lenin in this respect despite their bitter differences, Bogdanov was endlessly prodding the creators in the direction he believed they must go. For someone who so prizes not being prescriptive, Bogdanov is ever ready to propose (impose?) his own judgments. He knows that proletarian class consciousness must be based on collectivism, but this pre-empts the free process. His ruthless exclusion of ‘part-proletarians’ and writers of working-class origin who did not agree with him, and his strictures against (and sometimes, in favour) of ‘great’ artists and thinkers, seem more characteristic of a dogmatist than a liberator. The echo of his comments about Gippius lapsing ‘back into eroticism and all sorts of perversions’ and Severyanin as ‘an ideologue of gigolos and women of easy virtue’ makes one fear what he might have made of today’s sexual identity and LGBTQ+ issues. Did Bogdanov share the ‘stalinist’ assumption that the working class was not queer?