SPHERICAL BOOK

CULTURE AS ORGANIZATION IN EARLY SOVIETBogdanov, Eisenstein, THOUGHT and the Proletkult Giulia Rispoli, Maja Soboleva John Biggart, Vesa Oittinen, Editorial Board: Pia Tikka General Editor:

Published in Tangential Points Publication Series (Crucible Studio, Aalto University, 2016) ISBN 103204787103ABC CULTURE AS ORGANIZATION IN EARLY SOVIET THOUGHT

Bogdanov, Eisenstein, and the Proletkult

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Spherical Book platform software and graphic design © Eduard Shagal EDITORIAL WORDS

This anthology “Culture as Organization in Early Soviet Thought” brings together a group of film researchers, historians, political scientists and systems scientists to discuss historical and contempo- rary tangential points between the sciences and the arts in Russia during the first decades of the twentieth century. All chapters pro- vide new insights into linkages between the arts, philosophy and other disciplines during this period. Tangential points between early Russian systems thinking and approaches to montage that were being developed within the film community are examined in detail. The contributing authors focus on two thinkers: the filmmaker, Sergei M. Eisenstein and the systems theorist, Aleksandr A. Bogdanov.

In the early years of his career as a theatre and film director, Eisen- stein worked within the Proletkult, a cross-disciplinary movement the objective of which was to create a new ‘proletarian culture’ by fostering the values of ‘collectivism’ through tuition on literature, theatre, the graphic arts and the sciences. Bogdanov, an economist, culturologist and physician was the principal founder of this move- ment. Bogdanov delivered regular lectures in the Proletkult and in other educational institutions in which he expounded his tektologi- cal ideas of organization as universal mechanisms in nature, society and thought. At one time the closest collaborator of Vladimir I. Lenin, Bogdanov soon became his most feared rival, and his systemic ideas were fated to vanish from Soviet history until their re-discovery in the 1980s.

Most of the papers in this anthology were delivered to an interna- tional art and science conference “Tangential Points” organized at the Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture in 2014. This scholarly meeting was convened to reflect upon apparent similarities between the systemic thinking of Eisenstein and Bogdanov, as hypothesized in the book Enactive Cinema: Simulato- rium Eisensteinense (Tikka 2008). This work, in turn, was grounded in publications that had introduced Bogdanov’s systemic thinking to the English speaking world in the 1980s and later. These works are listed in the references of many of the chapters.

The principal inspiration for the conference, however, came from the work of the author of The Origins and Development of Systems Thinking in the Soviet Union (1982), the Finnish scholar Ilmari Susiluoto (1947 – 2016), to whom this anthology is dedicated. By taking the work of Eisenstein and Bogdanov as case studies we were able to search for tangential points between early systems thinking and the creative arts at a level beyond mere generalization. Oksana Bulgakowa invites the reader to follow her on an expedition into Eisenstein’s systems thinking: Eisenstein rejected linear logic and seeked for forms of a hypertext that in his eyes were closer to the associative, spherical, and labyrinthine thought structures, ideas that to date have only found expression in modernist art experi- ments. In John Biggart’s “Sociology of Arts” one learns how Bogdanov integrated the arts into his general theory of the evolu- tion of social formations. Jutta Scherrer analyzes the historical genesis of Bogdanov’s conception of proletarian culture. The con- cern of Maja Soboleva is Bogdanov’s theoretical understanding of culture and its tektological foundations. The chapter by Vesa Oit- tinen opens a window upon the theoretical dispute between Bogdanov and Lenin, between the ‘Machian’ and the ‘orthodox Marxist’ and highlights the centrality of Kantian ‘things-in- themselves’ (Ding an sich) to this dispute.

Peter Dudley discusses the Proletkult as an adaptive systemic envi- ronment, created for supporting the self-organization of the prole- tariat for radical social change. Giulia Rispoli joins the cohort of systemic thinkers in the anthology: referring to biological, ecologi- cal and cognitive levels of cybernetic organization, she highlights the contemporary relevance of Bogdanov’s tektological polymor- phic idea of the environment and of knowledge creation. According to Simona Poustilnik, Bogdanov’s tektological conceptions of ‘personality-organization’ and ‘assembling’ provided Soviet Con- structivists with a scientific rationale for their ‘production art’. Fabian Tompsett describes the impact of Bogdanov and Otto Neur- ath upon the German Figurative Constructivists and points to the relevance of his tektological ideas to political-art movements in the age of digitized information.

Among the specific issues addressed is the extent to which Eisenstein’s theoretical work on montage systems was influenced by the systemic thinking of Bogdanov. Daniela Steila applies metaphors of photography and cinema to explain the difference between the views of human perception represented by Lenin and Bogdanov, enabling us to detect traces of Bogdanov’s systemic ideas in the thinking of Eisenstein. Lyubov Bugaeva identifies further potential linkages between the two main subjects of this anthology, in a chapter which investigates the rela- tions between Bogdanov’s notions of the affectional, Eisenstein’s theory of expressiveness, and the emotional script as conceived by Eisenstein and realized by Rzheshevskiy.

Some answers are offered to those who might ask what role the Proletkult movement played in the careers of the two. John Biggart and Oksana Bulgakowa examine aspects of how both Bogdanov and Eisenstein challenged traditional modes of thought, integrating modern thinking into their respective disciplines. In different ways this brought about the expulsion of both from the Proletkult move- ment.

As a feature of the anthology, we offer original translations of texts by Eisenstein and Bogdanov. Bogdanov’s “Science and the working class” (1918), translated by Fabian Tompsett comprises fourteen ‘Theses’ for a lecture delivered by Bogdanov to the First All-Russian Conference of the Proletkult in 1918. “An open letter to A. Bogdanov” by Franz Siewert (1921), translated by Fabian Tompsett, brings to life one critical response to Bogdanov’s concept of ‘Prole- tarian art’, as expressed by a contemporary.

Two texts by Eisenstein enable the reader to grasp Eisenstein’s original writing style, a style that resembles a line of thought cap- tured on the fly and passed down to us in textual form. Introduced by Oksana Bulgakowa and John Biggart, Eisenstein’s “Cinema of the masses” (1927), translated by Richard Abraham, offers a comprehen- sive and popular explanation of what Eisenstein understood to be his original contribution to the art of film. A few months before his death, Eisenstein recapitulated in “the Magic of Art” (1947) trans- lated by Julia Vassilieva, several of the key themes that recur throughout his theoretical output. Bogdanov, like Eisenstein, was aware of the power of art to influence the thinking of the prole- tariat. James D. White examines the philosophical dimension of Bogdanov’s utopian novel Red Star, drawing attention to themes that appear in his more avowedly theoretical works. Red Star was written in order to familiarize workers with Bogdanov’s under- standing of the ‘culture of the future’: it is made clear that this culture would entail an assimilation and mastery of Bogdanov’s ‘organization science’. Indeed, Bogdanov’s thinking in the field of organization science evolved and matured at the very time that he articulated his utopian vision in the form of a novel.

The reader might ask, how far are these early systemic ideas present in the media art theories of the present day? Clea von Chamier-Waite’s practice-based chapter leads the reader from the rhythmic montage pioneered by Eisenstein and the Soviet avant- garde cinema of the 1920s, to the present day and to her conception of somatic montage for immersive cinema, experienced through the navigation of a four-dimensional cinematic space - a Sphere.

The “Spherical Book” was a visionary invention by Eisenstein of a new book form that anticipated hypertext. Whereas in the tradi- tional book form articles were read sequentially, following a linear narrative, the content of the “Spherical Book”, as Eisenstein called it, was to be perceived as a whole, instantaneously, with essays arranged in clusters, each oriented in different direction but circling around a common theme. Our implementation of this idea enables the readers make their own book-montages by emphasizing the themes that are, for them, most important. In response, the Spherical Book algorithm will organize all chapters into a cluster around the chosen themes.

The interactive “Spherical Book” platform provides readers and authors with a platform for creating, sharing, and cultivating a multiplicity of perspectives around a variety of themes. By prioritiz- ing amongst a multitude of themes, readers may download and print a “Spherical Book” that is in accordance with their thematic prefer- ences. With open access online, the “Spherical Book” platform enables the reader to adopt a unique point-of-view, and to reorgan- ize the material of the Book whenever preferences change.

Pia Tikka (Editor-in-Chief) John Biggart, Vesa Oittinen, Giulia Rispoli, and Maja Soboleva (Editorial Board) THEMATICAL OUTLINE

BOGDANOV’S ‘SCIENCE AND THE WORKING CLASS’ Introduction: Fabian Tompsett______

This text consists of fourteen “Theses” published in advance of a presentation delivered by Aleksandr Bogdanov (1873–1928) on 17 September 1918 to the First All-Russian Conference of the Proletkults held in Moscow from 15–20 September 1918. The “Theses” were published in advance of the Conference in the journal Proletarskaya kul’tura, No.2 (July, 1918), pp. 21–23.1 In his footnote to the “Theses”, Bogdanov states that the theoretical foundations of his forthcoming presentation could be found in the brochure ‘Science and the Working Class’, which was based on an earlier presentation which he delivered to a Conference of the Moscow Proletkults in February 1918. He is probably referring to Nauka i rabochiy klass (Moscow, Soyuz rabochikh potrebitel’nykh obshchestv goroda Moskvy i ee okrestnostey), 16 pp. The text of the presentation of February 1918 can also be found in: Sotsializm nauki (Nauchnye zadachi proletariata) (Izdatel’stvo zhurnala “Proletarskaya kul’tura”, Moscow, 1918);

‘Nauka i rabochiy klass’, in O proletarskoy kul’ture 1904–1924 (Moscow & Leningrad, “Kniga”, 1925), pp.200–221; Voprosy sotsializma. Raboty raznykh let (Izdatel’stvo Politicheskoy Literatury, Moscow, 1990). The text of the presentation of 17 September 1918 was published in the protocols of the Conference: Protokoly Pervoy Vserossiyskoy konferentsii proletarskikh kul’turno-prosvetitel’nykh organizatsii, 15–20 sentyabrya 1918 g. (Edited by P.I.Lebedev-Polyanskiy (Moscow, Izdatel’stvo “Proletkarskaya kul’tura”, 1918), pp. 31–36; and under the title ‘Nauka i proletaria’, in: O proletarskoy kul’ture. Stat’i 1904–1924 (Leningrad and Moscow, 1925), pp.222–230 [in this anthology, owing to a misprint, the presentation is dated “1913”]. A French translation ‘La science et la classe ouvrière’, by Blanche Grinbaum of ‘Nauka i rabochiy klass’, appeared in La science, l’art et la classe ouvrière (Bogdanov 1977). However the accompanying bibliographical information was incorrect. We have added annotation to the present translation for ease of comprehension for a modern readership. Minor formatting changes have also been made.

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SCIENCE AND THE WORKING CLASS Translation: Fabian Tompsett______Aleksandr Bogdanov 1918

1. To say that the class character of science resides in the fact that it defends the interests of a given class betrays either a journalistic understanding of science or is a complete misrepresentation. An actually existing science may be bourgeois or proletarian by its very “nature”, that is to say in terms of its origin, its point of view, and the methods by which it is elaborated and explained. In this fundamental sense, all the sciences, not only the social sciences but all the other sciences, including mathematics and logic, may be said to have, and actually do have, a class character.2 2. The nature of science resides in the fact that it is the organized, collective experience of people and that it serves as the instrument of the organization of the life of society. The current dominant science, in its various branches, is bourgeois science: it has been developed, for the most part, by representatives of the bourgeois intelligentsia, who have concentrated in it the material experience that was available to the bourgeois classes; who have understood it and interpreted it from the point of view of these classes; and who have organized the processes and practices to which these classes were accustomed, which were characteristic of them. As a result, this science has served and continues to serve as an instrument of the bourgeois structuring of society, firstly as an instrument of the struggle with, and conquest of, the bourgeoisie over the classes that had had their day; and then as an instrument of their rule over the labouring classes. At all times this science has served as an instrument for the organization of production and for all of the progress in production that has been achieved under the leadership of the bourgeoisie. Such is the organizing strength of this science. But here also resides its historical limitation. 3. This limitation is manifest in the very material of science, that is to say in the content of experience that it organizes, and it is especially evident in the social sciences. For example, in studying the relations of production, bourgeois science could not grasp or discern a particular form of cooperative labour, the comradely or collectivist form, which is in fact the highest form, because this form was virtually unknown to the bourgeois classes. Even more significant is a fundamental limitation of point of view that affects all of the bourgeois sciences and which is determined by the

1 See Biggart, Gloveli, and Yassour 1998.

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position of the bourgeois classes in the social system, and consequently, by their very social being. This particular limitation derives from the separation of science from its real basis: social labour. 4. This separation has its origins in a differentiation between mental and physical labour. In itself, this differentiation does not preclude an awareness of the indissoluble link between practice and theory in the social process as an integral whole. But for the bourgeois classes the integral nature of this link is invisible; it lies outside their field of vision. They have been educated in terms of the individualistic economy, to think in terms of private property and of market competition; they have therefore acquired an individualistic consciousness, and the social nature of science is incomprehensible to them. For them, science is not the organized experience of collective labour and an instrument for the organization of collective work; for them, knowledge is something in itself, even something that is opposed to practice, something that is of an “ideal” or “logical” nature, which, even when it manages and guides practical activity, does so only by virtue of its higher nature, and not because it has arisen out of practical activity or because it is been acquired in order to be used in practical activity. This particular fetishism can be described as the “abstract fetishism of knowledge”. 5. The bourgeois world developed, in every sphere of its creative activity, the scientific sphere included, along lines of ever increasing specialization. Science became fragmented into branches that increased in number and diverged at the expense of vital interactions between these branches. The individualistic separation of people accentuated this process, because although specialists working in the same sphere still needed to share their experience and ideas, specialists working in different spheres were less bound by this necessity. The consequence was a huge loss of coordination in science just as there was a loss of coordination in capitalist society. The development of both science and society followed the same anarchic path. What all of this means is that bourgeois science, whilst it accumulated in all its branches an enormous wealth of knowledge and of methods for exploiting that knowledge, has been unable to assemble this material into a planned, organized and integrated whole. Each specialism has created a language of its own that has become incomprehensible not only to the broad masses but even to scientists of another specialism. The same correlations, the same links in experience, the same processes of cognition are studied in different branches as if they are quite different things. The methods of one branch only penetrate into other branches

2 For an alternative English translation of this first paragraph, see Lecourt 1977.

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with much delay and difficulty. This is the origin of the narrow, professional outlook that develops amongst people working in science, weakening and acting as a brake on their creative activity. 6. The development of machine production, which brought about a unity of technical methods, stimulated a trend in science for the unification of methods and an overcoming of the harmful aspects of specialization. Much has been achieved along these lines, but as long as the fundamental divide between the individual branches of science remains, this trend will be effective only in some sectors, and will not result in the integrated organization of science as a whole. 7. Bourgeois science, with its laborious, obscure and complicated professional language is scarcely accessible to the working class. Furthermore, in so far as it has become a commodity in capitalist society, it sells at a high price. If individual representatives of the proletariat, at a cost of enormous expenditure of energy, become masters of one or another branch of science, the class character of science comes into play: the gulf between science and the principle of collective work, make for an estrangement in their lives from the interests and mentality of the working community from which they emerged. Here, professional narrowness and a tendency towards intellectual aristocratism converge. In a word, bourgeois science, given that it is a bourgeois ideology in origin3, organizes the soul of the proletariat according to the bourgeois model. 8. What this means is that the working class has specific tasks to carry out in relation to contemporary science: science must be reinterpreted from a proletarian point of view, both in its content and in the form in which it is taught; the creation of a new organization, both for the elaboration of science and for the dissemination of scientific knowledge amongst the working masses. In most branches of science, accomplishing these tasks will entail a methodical assimilation of the legacy of the old world; but in some branches there will be a need for profound and far-reaching innovation. 9. A reinterpretation of the content of science must first of all abolish the divide that separates science from the collective-labour principle: the material of science must be understood and explained as being the practical experience of humanity; the schemas, conclusions, and formulae of science must be seen as tools for organizing the entire

3 “Our usual ideas about the social relations between people imply mutual understanding as their first precondition. (…) What is the essence of this mutual understanding? It is contained in a common language and the sum of concepts which are expressed by this language, in what is called common “culture” or, more exactly, ideology” Bogdanov’s Tektology Book I (Bogdanov 1996).

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social practice of people. At the moment, this work is being carried out almost exclusively in the social sciences, but the approach is insufficiently planned and organized; this work must be extended to all fields of knowledge. This transformation will bring science close to the life of the working class: astronomy as the science that explains the orientation of work processes in time and space; physics as the science of the resistances encountered in the course of the collective work of humanity; physiology as the science of labour power; logic as the theory of the social harmonization of ideas – given that ideas are also organizational instruments of labour – all of these sciences will enter into the consciousness of the proletariat more directly, more easily and more deeply than they do in their present form. 10. We must also strive to overcome the fragmentation of science that has come about in the course of specialization: our objective must be the unity of scientific language and a convergence and generalizing of the methods of the various branches of knowledge, not only within the sphere of knowledge but also in relation to the various spheres of practice, so that a total monistic system can be developed, comprising both domains. The realization of this goal will be expressed in a universal organizational science, a science that is needed by the proletariat as the future organizer of the whole life of humanity in all of its aspects. 11. With regard to the forms in which science is taught, here, what is needed is a degree of simplification, without prejudice to the essence of what is being taught. Recently, the work of a number of democratizers of science has shown how much can be achieved in this respect, by discarding useless scholastic ballast and by avoiding repetition of identical principles when they are encountered under different names in related branches of science. A significant degree of simplification will be achieved by the very reinterpretation of science from the point of view of collective labour, since this will liberate science from the abstract fetishism which, in the old mathematics, mechanics, logic, and other sciences, frequently resulted in so many pseudo-problems and unnecessary stratagems being presented as “evidence”. 12. A reinterpretation of the content and a transformation of the external form of science will mean that “socialism” will become its foundation, which is to say that science will become adapted to the tasks of the struggle for, and construction of, socialism. The dissemination of knowledge and of scientific work must be organized in parallel. The two processes are inextricably linked. The means for actually achieving these ends will be the Workers’ University and the Workers’ Encyclopaedia. 13. The Workers’ University must be a system of cultural- educational institutions that operate at various levels and culminate in a

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single centre for the training and organization of scientific forces. At each level of the system, general educational courses must be complemented by special, practical and scientific-technical courses that are of use to society. The unity of principle that underlies the programme, and links together the various levels and complementary courses must not inhibit initiatives to perfect particular programmes or particular teaching methods. The basic form of relationship between teachers and students should be comradely co-operation, in which the competence of the former is not taken to justify an unaccountable exercise of authority, and the trustfulness of the latter does not degenerate into passivity and an inability to criticize. The principal goal of teaching should be a mastery of methods. 14. The development of these educational courses, and the publishing activity of scientific workers of the Workers’ University which is part of this development, should be directed towards the creation of a Workers’ Encyclopaedia, which should not be a mere compilation of the findings of science, but a complete, harmoniously organized system of explanation of the methods of practice and cognition and of the vital links between them.

References

Biggart, John, Georgii Gloveli, and Avraham Yassour. 1998. Bogdanov and His Work: A Guide to the Published and Unpublished Works of Aleksandr A. Bogdanov (Malinovsky) 1873–1928. Aldershot: Ashgate. Bogdanov, Aleksandr. 1977. “La science et la classe ouvrière” translated by Blanche Grinbaum, in La science, l’art et la classe ouvrière, edited by Dominique Lecourt and Henri Deluy, 95–102. Paris: Maspero. ------1996. Bogdanov’s Tektology: Book 1. Foreword by Vadim N. Sadovsky & Vladimir V. Kelle Edited and with an introduction by Peter Dudley. Hull: Hull University Centre of Systems Studies. Lecourt, Dominique. 1977. Proletarian Science? The Case of Lysenko. London: NLB.

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SHARING IN ACTION: BOGDANOV, THE LIVING EXPERIENCE AND THE SYSTEMIC CONCEPT OF THE ENVIRONMENT Giulia Rispoli______

This paper discusses the novelty of Aleksandr Bogdanov’s approach, which combines the systemic and cybernetic perspectives employed in his Tektology, the general science of organization (1913–1922). In this work Bogdanov places particular emphasis on the concept of the environment and situates the process of ‘organization’ in a shared social context. The interaction among social agents, and between them and their contextual surroundings, implies a cybernetic relationship. The environment is, in fact, regarded both in terms of its influence in shaping human living conditions and in its plasticity in being transformed by human labour for specific purposes. Likewise, in Tektology,

Bogdanov considers not only the social context but also biological and ecological systems that foster an emergent relationship between organisms and their environments. On the one hand, the environment favours biological organisms most well adapted to its conditions; on the other hand, the environment is seen as a portion

of space (ecosystem) in which populations live and continuously modify the biogeochemical conditions of that system. By referring

to biological, ecological and cognitive levels of cybernetic organization, I argue that Bogdanov’s tektological polymorphic idea of the environment embraces different dimensions of the systemic discourse, and can also be useful to understand the process of knowledge creation underlying the idea of a proletarian culture.

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One or more ways to represent the world

Contemporary interpretations of Bogdanov as a pioneer of cybernetics and systems theory see his contributions only as precursors to later perspectives. As James White and Vadim Sadovskiy pointed out, Bogdanov’s early thinking, and in particular his epistemology, deeply influenced the rise of the General science of organization and his Empiriomonism should be considered the philosophical foundation of Tektology (White 1998; Sadovskiy 1992). By reversing the perspective that sees Bogdanov’s empiriomonistic ideas as the theoretical ground for Tektology, I will use, instead, the biological and ecological concepts described in his later work on the universal science of organization to illuminate his earlier discourse about the production of knowledge in a social context. During the constitution of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1898, new cultural ferments from Europe reached Saint Petersburg to influence the political ideas and activities of a rich group of intellectuals. These intellectuals were fascinated by the epistemological revolution that the physicist Ernst Mach and the philosopher Richard Avenarius carried out in Europe and decided to introduce these ‘ambiguous’ philosophical notions to the Bolsheviks. The followers of Avenarius and Mach thus ignited an ideological debate between revolutionaries. The split was much more than a simple political controversy – it had the power to shake the columns of the entire theoretical apparatus on which Russian Marxism had been founded (Tagliagambe & Rispoli 2016; Plaggenborg & Soboleva 2009; Strada 1994). One of the most important interrogatives on which the Russian ‘Machists’ and the dialectical materialists diverged regarded the way we produce knowledge and the means by which we know and represent the external world1. In Empiriomonism, Bogdanov illustrated that his philosophical theory was opposed to Lenin’s dialectical materialism and was inspired instead by Richard Avenarius’ empiriocriticism and Ernst Mach’s psychophysiology. Both theories were largely responsible for the rapid growth of empiricism that took place in the twentieth century. Avenarius and Mach claimed that knowledge should be limited to sensations and that the only accurate description of the natural world is that which is experienced by one or more of the five senses (Hirschheim 1992: 19). Sensation is seen by Mach as a biological adaptation of the

1 See the article of Daniela Steila (2016) published in this volume.

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organism to the environment2. Man’s sensations are in fact absolute and certain. But what can man know through his sensations? What does he primarily assume during the process of knowing? Can he assume the real existence of the external world? Following Avenarius’s argument, when a person has an experience, three things are immediately assumed by that person: the environment as a portion of space where other individuals live; other human beings expressing their verbal assumptions about the environment, and he finally assumes that what a person experiences somehow depends on the connection between these two kingdoms. Thus, during the process of knowledge creation, man assumes the existence of different individuals who communicate with each other, the environment constituted and organized by those individuals, and the dialectic process established among them (Avenarius 1972). As in Jan C. Smuts’s analysis, Life, Mind and Matter are elements that utterly co-exist and compound with each other (Smuts 1972; f.e. 1926), for Avenarius, the above conditions represent the original nucleus around which all the experiences, thoughts and speculations, regardless of their sophistication, gather. These three elements represent the alphabet of knowledge.

Experiencing the environment in Avenarius’s empiriocriticism

In the book Critique of Pure Experience (Kritik der Reinen Erfahrung) (1888), Avenarius asks whether a so-called ‘pure experience’, which is an experience not characterized by any specific determination, can exist (Verdino 1972). Experience depends on what the individual concretely experiences — the external environment — and that knowledge is not independent of what is supposed to be grasped, which is again the environment and its components. Avenarius states that pure experience does not exist because it would be completely outside human capability and independent of human agency. Two issues are very important in Avenarius’s empiriocriticism: the first is the interconnection between individuals and the environment, and the second is that knowledge exists only in the continuous communication of experiences among individuals in a shared environment (Avenarius 1972). As a result, the process of knowing is open and never fully accomplished; nobody can pretend to know the absolute truth. Knowledge fluctuates in the middle

2 Mach wrote this in his Analysis of Sensations, published in 1886, which laid the foundation of Empirism. Science, he said, can only attain certainty if it is built on sensations. See Hirschheim 1992: 19.

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of a process that involves the person having the experience, the individuals and the environment. Only what is being communicated could be considered an experience. In other words, experience and communication of that experience overlap and the possibility of knowing implies a continuous process of interaction and exchange of assertions that are never held once and for all. On the contrary, they are constantly reinvested into new experiences and new verbal communications. In this view, the environment is not simply a physical space but is embodied in a process of information sharing among individuals. Therefore, according to Avenarius, all mental processes should be investigated using a reverse viewpoint: instead of primarily approaching mental functional relations from an internal, cognitive perspective, we need to focus on the inputs coming from the environment where the exchange among individuals occurs. The process of knowledge creation is not a passive recording of external phenomena but an active behaviour aimed at understanding and grasping ‘facts’ of nature that belong to the group and are collectively learned. However, Avenarius seems to regard the process of communication prior to the process of ‘adaptation’ to the environment. In his view, the possibility of knowing implies a process of assimilation of the spatial and social environment through inter-communication of individual experiences. Likely, Avenarius contemplates mostly human knowledge in his theory because it was directly linked to his main interest in human psychology. Mach, on the other side, takes into account elementary biological organisms as well, showing how sensations do not belong only to humankind. A sensation, which is a product of biological evolution, is not just about individual sentient beings and their psycho-cognitive structures; rather, it is a global process that affects the whole body. It also occurs in less complex elementary organisms in which cognitive structures are almost absent. In such cases, Mach speaks about whole perceptual behaviours arrangements. A sensation, in Mach’s view, is a relational mechanism and propagates itself along multiple sensory connections (Mach 1915). In the next section, we shall investigate Bogdanov’s interpretation of the relationship between organisms and the environment in the framework of modern evolutionary theories. Then, we shall consider the process of knowledge in Bogdanov’s view and conclude with his idea of culture as living experience.

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Organisms and the environment as a cybernetic system

In Bogdanov’s view organisms, regardless of their biological complexity — whether ants or human beings — build their social and natural environments by modifying them, step by step, in ways that are beneficial to themselves. However, the environment, far from being passive, is constituted by individual works as a set of circumstances that put a pressure on a community, and this reduces the spectrum of activities that a community can possibly undertake. The interdependency between organisms in nature and the constraints that nature imposes on economic life is important in Tektology. The relationship established between organisms and environments, or following Bogdanov, “among different organized complexes” (Gare 1994), is mutual and correlative instead of unidirectional and deterministic. About twenty years after Bogdanov wrote Tektology, the idea of a holistic and anti-reductionist view of the relationship between organisms and the environment in Western evolutionary biology still represented a challenge. During the period of Neo-Darwinism, as the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis developed, the properties of the environment were drastically oversimplified for example in the understanding of natural selection, which was at times conceived as a mere mechanical factor (Rashevskiy 1960). This paradigm, which tried to reconcile Mendelian genetics with gradual biological evolution by means of natural selection acting on mutations, has been a dominant one within evolutionary biology since 1950. However, the definition of ‘modern synthesis’, a term that had already been coined by Julian Huxley as early as 1942, explained natural selection as a powerful causal agent of evolution and over time this became seen as its exclusive force (Gould 1984). The paradigm shift did not take place until the 1970s when several biologists, Richard Lewontin among them, started to criticize the idea that the environment can be understood as being independent of the organisms themselves. According to Lewontin, in discussing the interaction between organisms and the environment, Neo-Darwinists had started from two definite and independent entities: the genome and the physical environment, describing the development of the organism as a result of both of them. But in doing so, they never considered that during this process, the environment is continually being redefined and reshaped by the developing organism (Lewontin, Rose, and Kamin 1984: 277). For example, Robert Brandon, who is largely known for his contribution to eco-evolutionary theories, shows that all organisms in a

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particular region of space and time share the ‘external environment’, but to understand the particular selective forces acting on one lineage of organisms, it is necessary to pick out a specific ‘ecological environment’, so that the ecological environment of a fly will be quite different from that of a tree, even if they occupy the same external environment (Griffiths 2014). Thus, we can investigate the environment at different layers according to the functional and physiological relations that occur between different organisms and environments in a specific niche. Even if we study one single organism in the course of its development instead of many organisms, we should think in terms of multiple environments. As Bogdanov wrote in Tektology:

“Here is a germ of plant. As its cells reproduce, they turn to be in increasingly dissimilar environments: some go down into the soil, others rise into air; originally similar, they inevitably modify in terms of the increasing divergence. The principal point is that the dominant materials for assimilation are dissimilar: in soil, these are mainly water and salt; in air carbon dioxide, oxygen, and radiant solar energy. All the above materials, however, are part of the structures of all cells, i.e. assimilated and dissimilated by all parts of the system. In what direction then must the selection regulate the development? What correlations of the diverging parts will be most stable? Its parts complement one another, and this is quite possible precisely thanks to the preservation of their connection which is kept intact by the common internal medium, the motion and the exchange of the plant’s sap” (Bogdanov 1988: 157– 158).

Thus, the development of a plant proceeds in accordance with the environmental circumstances of that plant’s components during its development. In Tektology Bogdanov emphasizes the role of the environment within the evolution of biological systems also from the point of view of developmental and embryological explanations. As Milan Zeleny pointed out, Bogdanov’s system cannot be separated from its environment because it does not simply exist or interact within its environment: “it is structurally coupled with it and thus evolves in its own environment while co-evolving with it” (Zeleny 1988: 333). This also explains why Bogdanov coined the use of ‘complex’ instead of ‘system’ that emphasizes a final state of natural things (Zeleny 1988: 333). Bogdanov did not relegate the environment to the status of an element of disturbance to be kept under control. Similarly, this conception would frequently be reconsidered in further studies in

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cybernetics and systems theory: according to Wiener and Bertalanffy the environment is often mistakenly regarded as a perturbation that leads the system to a state far from equilibrium, whereas equilibrium is supposed to be the purpose to which a self-organized system should aim. Signals coming from the environment are put aside because they might create a deficiency in the organization of the system. The idea of the environment as an element of disturbance marks the General System Theory as inferior when compared to Tektology (Zeleny 1988). According to Pushkin and Ursul (1994) there are two distinct levels by which we can interpret the attitude of systems, such as organisms, toward their environment: self-regulation and the self- organization. Self-regulation is inherent to systems that maintain the status quo, which means a static state of equilibrium that can be formalized through a mathematical explanation. A self-organizing system, however, which Bogdanov describes as one that shifts from the static to the processual aspect of the objects, maintains a more complex relationship with the environment because it assimilates material that then creates the conditions for that material to emerge and evolve to a different stage, in a new configuration, which in turn modifies the surrounding environment through the release of different outputs. Thus, the latter it is a more dynamic process that involves the notion of feedback, which exists in those cases in which each part of the system affects the other, and each part acts in a different way according to the stimulus it receives3. The interconnectedness of all the elements of nature depends upon a continuous process of aggregation and disaggregation or conjugation and separation of systems. Not only does the environment control the system, the system also controls the environment; they establish a cybernetic interaction (Rispoli 2015). Bogdanov insists emphatically upon the role of evolutionary relations in the dialectic between the inside and the outside, a distinction that sometimes is hard to state, especially when we take microorganisms, organisms like worms or even bio-geo-chemical processes such as photosynthesis as examples. “Only a very small fraction of the environment of an organism is inorganic. The largest part of that environment is formed by other organisms [...]” (Rashevskiy 1960: 246)4. Almost every organism depends for its existence on the

3 Regarding Bogdanov’s feedback as a “bi-regulative” process, see Peter Dudley (2016) in this volume. 4 As Bogdanov stated: “Living organism is characterized as a machine which not only regulates itself but also repairs itself. As the elements of tissues of organism wear off it replaces them with material taken from the environment and ‘assimilated’ […]. The dead matter taken from (outside) is transformed by the protoplasm into its living matter, chemically identical” (Bogdanov, Chapter V, sections 7: 95–99). This

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presence of other organisms. A good example, and one which challenges the conventional Neo-Darwinian comprehension of the relationship between organisms and environments, is the phenomenon of symbiosis, a mutualistic association between two or more organisms. Bogdanov uses this example to elucidate the features of the process of complementary correlation. He shows that some cellular algae live in symbiosis with unicellular animals, and that they cyclically exchange chemical components and nutrients. The animal consumes oxygen and excretes carbon dioxide, while the plant decomposes carbon dioxide releasing oxygen which is immediately absorbed by the animal. Here, the closest environment of an organism is substantially the other organism, and, at the external environment only at a different scale. In symbiosis, the relationship between organisms and the environment is akin to interpenetration because the boundaries are basically permeable, and the organisms are so closely associated that they form a new integrity5. According to Bogdanov, organized systems require a changing environment and a system under development involves an environment under development. The environment plays a constitutive and constructive role in the process of the structural evolution of those (Pushkin and Ursul 1994). Plasticity is therefore an important feature of tektological complexes, which can be analysed as evolving unities thanks to the continuous exchange of matter and energy with the environment. Many years after Bogdanov’s work, this idea is still found challenging. In the science of ecology, the interaction between the biological community and the environment tended to be viewed as unidirectional. It was assumed that the species evolved in the environment and “the reciprocal phenomenon, the reaction and evolution of the environment in response to species, was put aside” (Lewontin & Levins 1980: 49). A static complex, be it the system, or be it the environment, does not exist in nature so the development of the system and of the environment co-evolve. They are part of a single complex that is differentiated in its functions and organizations. The existence of this complex depends upon its organization in relation to all other external systems; it is therefore not fruitful to study them in isolation since in isolation they do not even exist. As Sadovskiy pointed out, “the complex is a bogdanovian version of the modern concept of the system, which, in addition, is not interpreted as a set of interrelated quotation has been taken from a collection of unpublished materials of Bogdanov’s Tektology made available thanks to Peter Dudley. 5 Not surprisingly, symbiogenesis, the evolutionary origin of new morphologies and physiologies by symbiosis, has been in the forefront of Russian concept of evolution since the last century. See Margulis and Fester 1991.

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elements but as a process of their organization’s change, dependent on the structural linkage of the complex and its environment” (Sadovskiy 1992: 7). According to Bogdanov, the fluctuation of a system attributable to the intrusion of variables from outside should not be interpreted exclusively as disruptions to harmonies but as factors that can bring new possibilities of existence by stimulating the emergence of new properties and, in this way, the establishment of new organized entities. Having in mind Bogdanov’s powerful contribution in the framework of contemporary systems theories as applied to the correlative and co-evolving relation between organisms and environment, we shall now come back to his monistic interpretation of knowledge.

Bogdanov’s monistic shift: culture as active experience

In proposing his empiriomonistic theory on the genesis of knowledge, Bogdanov starts from similar epistemological premises as Avenarius – namely asserting the existence of a dialectical relation among three elements: the environment, the individuals comprising the spatial environment and the inter-dependence between their verbal expressions and the external environment. However, Bogdanov distinguishes his theory from those formulated by empiriocritics in one aspect in particular. He argues that the process of knowledge production has to be seen in terms of shared activities in the context of collective work driven by common purposes, rather than as inter-verbal communication in a shared environment. A person’s experience of the external environment primarily refers to another individual’s action rather than to his verbal message. Before individuals communicate what they are experiencing, they must already have had the experience that would later be summarized and communicated. First of all, knowledge presupposes a concrete action in the world that can be seen as a practice of mastering the environment. Therefore, what is firstly exchanged, prior to any enunciation, is knowledge in the form of a technical skill (White 1998; Tagliagambe 2004). Moreover, according to Bogdanov, empiriocriticism is too passive and focused on individual sensations. Experiencing implies an active, socially structured, interaction with the environment. The active nature of experience is stressed over passive perception (Rowley 2016). Regarding knowledge as a sociological rather than epistemological phenomenon, Bogdanov argued that an analysis of cooperation within individual groups provides the basis for the study of

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the development of knowledge (Gare 1994). Different activities in concert mean for Bogdanov nothing other than ‘general organization’, and this is a key issue in his Tektology. Bogdanov shows that knowledge is the result of the organization of nature by labour; in turn, the organization is the tool by which individuals interact to transform the environment to better fit their needs. Knowledge is the organization of experience that is transmitted from generations to generations. Thus, in Bogdanov’s view, organization can be seen as a collective process of construction of the surrounding environment that is considered both a biological and a cultural medium. These two dimensions are not separable and communicate with each other. As Maja Soboleva pointed out, there is no contradiction between the terms ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ for Bogdanov (Soboleva 2016: 3). In this respect, organization, described in Tektology as the universal mechanism of nature, also underpins the evolution of human culture conceived as an all- embracing, living and evolving experience. Every kind of knowledge, from science, to philosophy to art and literature, is the result of man’s organization over the environment that has taken place during his whole history and stem from the very basic element of experience – action. Bogdanov had inherited the idea of action as a primary source for the origin of language and cognition by the German/French philosopher Ludwig Noiré (1829–1889) who argued that “action” is the first rudimentary form of people’s interaction in the social context of labour. The principles that Bogdanov derived from Noiré are described in White’s article (1998). For Bogdanov, there was neither contradiction between nature and culture, nor between knowledge and practice. The experience of learning is, in fact, embodied in the process of sharing technical skills, tools and practices in a social, material context. Bogdanov replaced “individual sensation with collective experience” and regarded knowledge as a collective task (Rowley 2016: 10). Bogdanov tried to apply his empiriomonistic ideas within the proletarian, cultural and educational institution (Proletkult) that he contributed to establish in 1917 with the aim of forging a real proletarian culture destined to and produced by workers6. In that context, Bogdanov could experiment his vision of knowledge production in the form of collective experience and collaborative, experimental practice. As McKenzie Wark pointed out, for Bogdanov scientists, artists and philosophers were ‘organizers of experience’ and the proletariat was called to organize its own culture instead of relying on knowledge and labour produced by other classes (Wark 2015).

6 On the history of the Proletkult see Mally (1990).

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The Proletkult offered a way for workers to self-organize and self-govern their agenda both in sciences and humanities and became the center of a major intellectual activity that was rooted in a strong tektological approach. It made the development of a new creativity possible by building up a space for active cooperation toward the creation of a new culture. Ultimately, it was predicated on a new way of living and knowing that reveals its leader’s theoretical ambitions to put the action before the Machian elements of experience and the organization of labor at the base of knowledge evolution.

Conclusion

I have argued that the complex and systemic idea of the environment that Bogdanov deploys in his works provides a framework for his scientific ideas and undertakings. It is a framework that eventually enables him to bring into focus organization as a universal process of nature. Bogdanov’s polymorphic concept of the environment, which he considered neither empty physical space waiting to be shaped by evolving living organisms nor a collection of structural conditions that rigorously and uni-directionally determine the life of the community from all points of view, offers a compelling narrative to understand also his ideas of culture as organization. What is interesting is that Bogdanov provides us with an ample array of possible interpretations of the role of the environment across different disciplines and levels of analysis. These analyses include biological and ecological as well as cognitive and social dimensions. As Nikolay Krementsov has pointed out, an examination of Bogdanov’s work provides a unique window into the interplay of the revolution in life sciences in its institutional, intellectual and cultural dimensions (Krementsov 2011). I have showed that his work exposes the shortcomings of a reductionist approach towards the relationship between individuals and the environment that had been the predominant model for the understanding of evolutionary biology during the first half of the twentieth century. Emphasizing the co-determinant dynamics of systems and environments, Bogdanov brings into focus the construction of niches by biological communities, the interaction of cells and microbial communities within organisms. Importantly, he introduced the notion of the internal environment (the milieu intérieur), which is currently defined as ‘microbiome’ in scientific literature on epigenetic studies of the interaction between the genome and collections of

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microorganisms that constitute its environment. The concept of the environment featuring in Tektology can also be used when it comes to explore the social context and the way man produce knowledge. In this respect, we have seen that knowledge and the construction of cognition starts from the exchange of information in a learning, material context. In this case, the environment is seen as a space of knowledge — the space of collectively organized experience. In effect, the interpretation of the environment as a space where knowledge is made and shared is pervasive both in Bogdanov’s earliest works, such as Empiriomonism or The Philosophy of Living Experience7, and in his latest ones such as Tektology (at least the II and the III volume) and O proletarskoy Kul’ture. It is applied in cases when Bogdanov examines ecological systems and argues that the determinant dynamics of systems and the environment call for an understanding of a single living system of divergence in which organisms and environments, nature and culture, pertain to different levels of organization but are parts of the same material world.

References

Avenarius, Richard. 1972. Critica dell’esperienza pura. Bari: Laterza. ------1888. Kritik der Reinen Erfahrung. Leipzig: Fues’s Verlag (R. Reisland). Bogdanov, Aleksandr A. 1988. Saggi di scienza generale dell'organizzazione. Napoli: Theoria. ------2003. Vseobshchaya organizatsionnaya nauka. Tektologiya. Moskva: Finance. ------2010. Empiriomonizm. Stat’i po filosofii. Moskva: Respublika. ------2016. The Philosophy of Living Experience, edited by David G. Rowley. Leiden: Brill. ------1924. O proletarskoy kul’ture 1904–1924. Leningrad-Moscow: Kniga. Dudley, Peter. 2016. “Podbor and Proletkult: An Adaptive Systems Perspective.” In Culture as Organization in Early Soviet Thought, edited by Pia Tikka et al. Helsinki: Aalto University. Gare, Arran. 1994. “Aleksandr Bogdanov: Proletkult and Conservation.” CNS 5: 65– 94. Gould, Stephen J. 1988-89. “Challenges to Neo- Darwinism and Their Meaning for a Revised View of Human Consciousness.” The Tanner Lecture on Human Values, http://tannerlectures.utah.edu/lecture-library.php Griffiths, Paul. 2014. “Philosophy of Biology.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2014/entries/biology-philosophy/. Hirschheim, Rudolf A. 1992. 2 Information Systems Epistemology: a Historical Perspective. 9- 33., http://ifipwg82.org/sites/ifipwg82.org/files/Hirschheim_0.pdf Krementsov, Nikolai. 2011. A Martian Stranded on Earth: Alexander Bogdanov, Blood Transfusions, and Proletarian Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

7 This work, written by Bogdanov between the 1910 and the 1911, was probably based on lectures he gave at the proletarian schools in Capri and Bologna. See Rowley 2016.

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Lewontin, Richard, and Levins Robert. 1980. “Dialectics and Reductionism in Ecology.” Synthese 43 (1) Conceptual issues in Ecology, Part I: 47–78. Lewontin, Richard, Rose Steven, and Kamin Leon. 1984. Not in our genes: biology, ideology and human nature. New York: Pantheon. Mach, Ernst. 1914. The Analysis of Sensations. Chicago and London: The Open Court Publishing Company. (f.e. 1897), https://archive.org/details/analysisofsensat00mach ------1915. The Science of Mechanics, a Critical and Historical Account to its Development. Chicago and London: The Open Court Publishing Company (f.e. 1883), https://ia600209.us.archive.org/13/items/sciemechacritica00machrich/sciem echacritica00machrich.pdf. Mally, Lynn. 1990. The Culture of the Future. The Proletkult Movement in Revolutionary Russia. Berkley, Los Angeles, Oxford: The University of California Press. Margulis, Lynn, and Fester René. 1991. Symbiosis as a source of evolutionary innovations. Cambridge Massachussets: the MIT Press. Plaggenborg, Stefan, and Soboleva Maja. 2009. Alexander Bogdanov. Theoretiker für das 20. Jahrhundert. München: Verlag Otto Sagner. Pushkin, Vladimir G., and Ursul Arkadij D. 1994. Sistemnoe myshlenie i upravlenie. Tektologiya A. Bogdanova i kibernetika N. Vinera. Moskva: Noosferno-ecologicheskiy Institut. Akademiya Noosfery. Rashevskiy, Nicolas. 1960. Mathematical Biophysics. New York: Dover Publication. Rispoli, Giulia. 2015. “Teorija Sistem i evoljucionnych transakcii v kontekstie uchenija A. A. Bogdanova.” Filosofskie Nauki 12/2014: 50–65. Rowley, David G. 2016. “Editor’s Introduction.” In Aleksandr Bogdanov, The Philosophy of Living Experience. Leiden: Brill. Sadovskiy, Vadim. 1992. “Systems Thinking on the threshold of a 3rd Millenium.” Systemist 14(1): 6–14. Soboleva, Maja. 2016. “The Culture as System, the System of Culture.” In Culture as Organization in Early Soviet Thought, edited by Pia Tikka et al. Helsinki: Aalto University. Steila, Daniela. 2016. “Knowledge as Film vs Knowledge as Photo. Alternative Models in Early Soviet Thought.” In Culture as Organization in Early Soviet Thought, edited by Pia Tikka et al. Helsinki: Aalto University. Strada, Vittorio. 1994. L'altra Rivoluzione. Capri: La Conchiglia. Smuts, Jan C. 1972. Holism and Evolution. London: Macmillan and Co. Tagliagambe, Silvano, and Rispoli Giulia. 2016. La divergenza nella Rivoluzione. Scienza, filosofia e teologia in Russia (1920–1940). Brescia: La Scuola. Tagliagambe, Silvano. 2004. “Bogdanov tra costruttivismo e scienza dell’ organizzazione”. In Aleksandr Bogdanov, Quattro dialoghi su scienza e filosofia. Roma: Odradek, 95–137. Verdino, Antonio. 1972. “Fortune e sfortune della scuola empiriocritica.” In Richard Avenarius, Critica dell’esperienza pura. Bari: Laterza. Wark, McKenzie. 2015. Molecular Red: Theory for the Anthropocene. London, New York: Verso. White, James. 1998. “Sources and Precursor of Bogdanov’s Tektology.” In Alexander Bogdanov and the Origin of Systems Thinking in Russia, edited by John Biggart, Peter Dudley, and Francis King. Aldershot UK: Ashgate, 25–42. Zeleny, Milan. 1988. “Tektology.” General Systems. 14: 331–343.

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BOGDANOV’S SOCIOLOGY OF THE ARTS John Biggart______

Whereas in his general theory of social consciousness Bogdanov acknowledged his indebtedness to Marx, in his theory of the social function of the arts, which he considered to be part of the social consciousness, he differed from Marx, who, in his opinion, had regarded the arts as a mere ‘embellishment of life’. Bogdanov emphasized their organizing function and integrated the arts into his general theory of the evolution of social formations. Bogdanov saw proletarian culture as being a transitional culture that corresponded to the backwardness of both the Russian and the European working classes. It would be followed by socialist, collectivist, or ‘all-human’ culture, the values of which he enunciated in his article “New ethical norms” (Zakony novoi sovesti) (Bogdanov 1924/1925). Bogdanov also drafted a new collectivist aesthetics, the latent didacticism of which antagonized a number of ‘proletarian writers’ in the Proletkult.

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Bogdanov, Marx, and the social function of the arts1

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.”2 We do not know whether Bogdanov had read this letter, but Engels’s clarification was in any case consistent with Bogdanov’s own understanding of Marx, as he made clear in a number of his philosophical writings. For example in The Philosophy of Living Experience (Bogdanov 1923, Chapters 1 and 5) Bogdanov cited Marx’s third ‘Thesis on Feuerbach’ (1845) (Feuer 1959) where Marx had asserted that “it is human beings who change circumstances, and …the educator also needs educating”. Society was not divided into two parts: “The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionizing practice.”3 Bogdanov, who insisted that he was an “historical materialist” (Bogdanov 1923a),4 at the same time considered Marx to have been “a great forerunner” of his own organization science (Bogdanov 1996: 104). However, when it came to the social function of the arts he disagreed with Marx, who, he alleged, had viewed art as a mere “embellishment of life”.5

1 In this paper, individual terms used by Bogdanov, as well as quotations from his works, are indicated by double inverted commas. 2 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 this reference. 3 Georgii Gloveli has pointed out that M. Filippov, the editor of Nauchnoe Obozrenie, had noted the ‘sociological’ as distinct from ‘economistic’ determinism of Marx as early as 1897. See Gloveli 2009: 54–57. 4 Thesis No. XI of Bogdanov 1923a, in Bogdanov 2003: 461–462. 5 Bogdanov summarized what he considered to be the shortcomings of Marxist theory, and his own innovations, in Part I of Tektology. He explicitly rejected Marx”s understanding of art as a mere “embellishment of life” (“iskusstvo schital prostym ukrasheniem zhizni”). See Bogdanov 2003: 80–81. Whether his understanding of Marx on this point was correct is a question that need not concern us here. See, on this question, Rose 1994. Bogdanov had been General Editor of a new translation by V.A. Bazarov and I.I. Skvortsov-Stepanov of Marx’s Capital, published in 1907 and 1909. However, many of Marx’s works did not become available until after Bogdanov’s death; for example the Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Ökonomie was not published in the Soviet Union until 1939.

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By the eve of the First World War, Bogdanov had developed a sociology of ideas that was grounded in his ‘empiriomonist’ epistemology6, 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. In works written before 1917, when he came to deal with the function of ideology in society, he would frequently draw examples from the history of the arts. He considered that the slogan of ‘proletarian culture’ had first been introduced into socialist theory at the Social-Democratic Party School organized by the Vpered group on the island of Capri in 1909, and in 1914 he had written in an article intended for the journal Nasha zarya that “art was one of the ideologies of a class – an element of its class consciousness”.7 However, this article was not published and it was not until the founding of the Proletkult in September 1917 that Bogdanov began to produce a body of work that focused specifically upon the social function of the arts.8 The present paper will draw upon two of Bogdanov’s works on ideology that that were published before the First World War, The Philosophy of Living Experience. A Popular Outline (Bogdanov 1923b);9 and The Science of Social Consciousness. A Short Course in Ideological Science in Questions and Answers (Bogdanov 1914).10 It will also make use of the articles that Bogdanov gathered for the anthology On Proletarian Culture 1904-1924 ( Bogdanov 1924/1925) most of which were written during the Proletkult period. Bogdanov’s utopian novel Red Star (Bogdanov 1908) and his Tektology. A General Organizational Science, the first part of which was published in 1913, also provide insight into his understanding of the arts.11

History as the evolution of ideologies

6 See “Poznanie s istoricheskoy tochki zreniya” (1900) in Bogdanov 1904 and Bogdanov 1904–1906. For a review of works on Bogdanov’s philosophy, see Steila 1996 and 2013 7 See “Vozmozhno li proletarskoe iskusstvo?” (1914), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 204– 216. Bogdanov here does not mention that he disagrees with Marx. The article formed part of a polemic with A.N.Potresov and G.A.Aleksinskiy. Potresov had argued in Nasha zarya (1913) that art was an indulgence of the leisure class. 8 On the Proletkult, see Sochor 1988, Chapter 6, “School of Socialism: Proletkult”; and Mally 1990. 9 The first edition was published in 1913. The third edition included the Appendix “From religious to scientific monism”, a concise version of a lecture Bogdanov had delivered to the Institute of Scientific Philosophy in February 1923. 10 The author’s preface is dated 16 November 1913. I have used the edition republished in Bogdanov 1999: 261-470. 11 See Bogdanov 1913. The author’s preface to this first part is dated 15/28 December 1912.

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In The Philosophy of Living Experience and in The Science of Social Consciousness, Bogdanov provided a concise outline of the evolutionary progression of social formations and world views, from “authoritarian ideologies”, through “individualistic ideologies”, to “collectivism”. In the latter work, inverting what would have been the usual explanatory structure for a Marxist social or economic historian, he 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 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” (Bogdanov 1914, passim). 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.”12 This linear-evolutionist interpretation of history was fundamental to Bogdanov’s understanding of proletarian culture in general and of the arts in particular. 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

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

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been performed by cave drawings, epic poetry or religious myths,13 in more recent times, belles lettres (the novel, drama, poetry) and the visual and plastic arts all served as a “schooling in life”.14

Art in the age of Collectivism15

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.”16 However, whilst collectivism would be the world-view of all humanity in the future, it was not yet the outlook of a working class which, for all its political and economic progress in both Western Europe and Russia, still remained culturally backward. This conception of the cultural backwardness of the working class was central to Bogdanov’s theory, and he only ever spoke of embryonic “elements” of proletarian culture in the art and literature of his day.17 In 1914 he cited the poem of Aleksey Mashirov-Samobytnik, “To a new comrade” (Novomu tovarishchu), and in 1918 his “To my fellow brethren” (Moim

13 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. 14 See “Sotsial’no-organizatsionnoe znachenie iskusstva” - Theses for a lecture delivered by Alexander Bogdanov to the Russian Academy of Artistic Sciences, 29 October 1921”, RGALI, f.941, op.1., ed. khr.3, in Bogdanov 2004: 5–9. 15 On ‘Collectivism’, see Sochor 1988: 136–138. 16 “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. 17 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.

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sobrat’yam), as examples of “emerging” collectivism.18 By contrast, he found only “elements” of proletarian culture in the work of Aleksey Gastev, “Factory sirens” (Gudi’) and Vladimir Kirillov, “To the times that lie ahead” (Gryadushchemu).19 Most disparagingly, he considered Maksim Gorkiy, from whom he had been estranged since 1910, to be merely “close to us in spirit and artistically stable (ustoychivyy)”.20

Criticism as selection and feed-back

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 day that which could be of benefit to the proletariat and to reject that which was potentially harmful.21 In July of 1918 Bogdanov seemed to suggest that this evolution would be a natural, self-regulating, organic process, akin to natural selection: “the artist can give the most harmonious arrangement to his living images when he does so freely, without compulsion or direction ... The content of art is life without restrictions or prohibitions.”22 However, this did not mean that the artist functioned as an individual in opposition to society. In August 1918, he described the incorporation of art into ideology as a feed-back mechanism (vzaimnaya svyaz’, literally, ‘reciprocal link’):23 the artist’s selection of images was regulated in the first instance by self-criticism, as the artist strove to eliminate from a work everything that was not in harmony with its central idea; there followed a process of spontaneous selection or regulation (regulirovanie) by society, through the explicit, conscious

18 See “Vozmozhno li proletarskoe iskusstvo?” (1914) and “Proletariat i iskusstvo” (1918) in Bogdanov1924/1925: 111–112 & 119. 19 The poems of Gastev and Kirillov are cited in “Chto takoe proletarskaya poeziya?” (1918), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 139–140. 20 “Kritika proletarskogo iskusstva” (1918) in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 170. Gorky never participated in the Proletkult. 21 “1918” (“Ot redaktsii”), Proletarskaya kul’tura, No.1 (July 1918), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 102. See also Bogdanov 1920: 14. 22 “Chto takoe Proletarskaya poeziya?”, Proletarskaya kul’tura, No.1 (July, 1918), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 129. 23 See also Bogdanov’s explanation of how a critique of religion would reveal the feedback mechanism that linked ideology and social development, in “O khudozhestvennom nasledstve”, Proletarskaya kul’tura, No.2 (July, 1918), and Bogdanov 1924/1925: 149. See also “Puti proletarskogo tvorchestva. Tezisy” (1920), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 199. These theses, prepared for the First All-Russian Congress of the Proletkults, were originally published in Proletarskaya kul’tura, Nr.13/14 (January-March) and Nr.15/16 (April–July) 1920. Further theses on artistic technique, from a lecture that had been delivered in May 1920 to a Conference of Proletarian Writers, were included in the anthology Bogdanov 1924/1925.

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criticism of the work of art from a class point of view.24 He made this point concisely in his speech to the First All-Russian Conference of the Proletkult on 20 September 1918: “The artistic talent is individual, but creation is a social phenomenon: it emerges out of the collective and returns to the collective, serving its vital purposes.”25

The paradox of “tektological selection”

It would be a mistake, however, to infer that Bogdanov’s theory of the evolution of ideologies was a mere application of Darwin’s theory of natural selection to the social sphere. Bogdanov was not an ‘evolutionary’ socialist, in the sense of assuming that the development of the forces of production, or the process of class struggle, would lead, without some assistance, to the political, economic and cultural ascendancy of the proletariat. As we know, Bogdanov considered 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) which was also at work in economic, social and intellectual activity.26 “Natural selection” (Bogdanov places the term in inverted commas), did not always operate in isolation: for many thousands of years before “natural selection” had been discovered, it had been assisted in human societies by the practice of artificial selection.27 “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 which contradict them.” 28 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.

24 “Kritika proletarskogo iskusstva”, Proletarskaya kul’tura, Nr.3 (August, 1918), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 158. 25 “Proletariat i iskusstvo” (Speech to the First All-Russian Conference of the Proletkult, 20 September 1918), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 123. 26 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. 27 Bogdanov 1996, Chapter 3: Basic Organizational Mechanisms, 179. 28 Bogdanov 1996, Chapter 3: Basic Organizational Mechanisms, 175.

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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”.29 A “collectivist education” would develop in the psyché of the individual a “discipline of comradely relations” and a “conscious acceptance of common interests and aims.”30 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 was relegated to the role of mere reporter: the critic should “monitor (reguliruet) the development of art”, and give warning whenever “young art” succumbed to “alien influences”.31 Clearly, this kind of mentoring is fraught with the ambiguities inherent in all forms of education. Let us ask what criteria Bogdanov wished to be applied in the course of “tektological selection”; and whether he thought that “regulation” would be carried out by proletarians themselves or by others on their behalf.

Culture as mentalité? i) The social origins of the artist In 1910 Bogdanov had written: “The proletariat needs its own, socialist art, permeated by its own feelings and aspirations and ideals.”32 In 1918 he wrote that, ideally, what the proletariat needed was a “pure- class, proletarian poetry”.33 In 1920, he dismissed the Belgian, Emile Verhaeren, and the Latvian, Jānis Rainis,34 as “poets of the toiling democracy or socialist intellectuals”, who were “bound to the working class by a common ideal, but they cannot directly express or organize the proletarian artistic consciousness because they were reared in another world.” 35 Such statements seem to imply an understanding of working class culture as mentalité, as a function of social origins and social milieu. However, as we shall see, for Bogdanov working class origins or experience were necessary, but not sufficient conditions for

29 Bogdanov 1996, Chapter 3: Basic Organizational Mechanisms, 181–182. 30 “Ideal vospitaniya” (Lecture delivered to a Teachers’ Conference in Moscow, May, 1918), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 236. 31 Bogdanov 1911: 87. 32 “Sotsializm v nastoyashchem” (1910), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 98. 33 “Chto takoe proletarskaya poeziya?” (1918), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 131. 34 Rainis had been published in 1916 an anthology Sbornik Latyshkoy literatury, edited by Valeriy Bryusov and Maksim Gorkiy. 35 “Prostota ili utonchennost’?” (1920), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 178–179.

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the production of proletarian culture. Proletarian culture was also a matter of values, of “world view”. ii) The world view of the critic The importance that Bogdanov attached to “world view” enabled him to introduce the critic, pedagogue, or ideologue, into the feed-back loop of cultural evolution. In 1923, he explained how someone who had not been born into, or did not belong to, a working class milieu could contribute to the development of proletarian culture: “…The position of a class in the system of social life is an objective fact, and it creates the possibility for an ideologue, even one who does not belong to that class, to adopt its position theoretically and from that position to obtain a new point of view. This is what Marx succeeded in doing.”36 It was this notion of an historically appropriate world view as a kind of accreditation that qualified an individual to participate in the construction of proletarian culture that enabled Bogdanov to rationalize his own role as a critic of culture; and, following in the footsteps of Marx, to offer his General Organizational Science as a contribution to the emerging ideology of collectivism. By the same logic he would recommend that the first tutors of the Proletarian University should be drawn from “the most able theorists of revolutionary socialism” and, subsequently, from amongst graduates of the Socialist Academy.37

Building collectivist values

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”. This task was, “firstly, to organize a particular sum of the elements of life, of “experience” (opyt); and, secondly, to ensure that what is created serves as an instrument for a particular collective.”38 It was with this dual conception of the role of the artist and critic in mind that Bogdanov devised what one might describe as a ‘utilitarian aesthetics’, the purpose of which was to foster the development of collectivism within the proletariat. His aesthetics addressed the issues of both content and form. His declared criteria of judgment were, how far and in what respects was the ‘material’ of a work of art of value to the proletariat and to the

36 “Ot monizma religioznogo k nauchnomu”, in Bogdanov 1923: 342. 37 “Proletarskiy Universitet” (1918), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 252. See also Steinberg 2002: 60. 38 “O khudozhestvennom nasledstve” (1918), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 150.

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all-human (obshchechelovecheskiy collective in the future; how far were the ‘methods’ applied useful and appropriate (prigodny); and of what general significance for the higher collective was the resolution of the organizational task?39 In the building of collectivist norms or values, these criteria were to be applied in selecting from the cultures of the past and in evaluating works of the present day. i) Content: selecting from the culture of the past In an editorial to the first issue of Proletarskaya kul’tura Bogdanov argued against any radical break with the culture of the past: “The proletariat is the legitimate heir of all the valuable achievements of the past, spiritual as much as material; it cannot and must not repudiate this legacy.”40 In the third issue of the journal he deplored the “Hindenburgian” tone adopted by Vladimir Kirillov, who had proclaimed that “In the name of our tomorrow we shall burn Raphael, destroy the museums, trample upon the flowers of art”.41 Of course, this did not mean that the culture of the past should be embraced uncritically: in evaluating the art of the past, the objective should be to seek out the “hidden elements of collectivism”.42 ii) Content: selecting from the culture of the present The construction of collectivism also required an ability to identify values that were not progressive. This, in turn, required attention to the fact that all art organized the social class to which the artist belonged and articulated the point of view of that class. “Behind the individual author is hidden the collective author, the author’s class; and poetry is part of the self-awareness of this class.” In the nineteenth century, the poetry of Afanasiy Fet had expressed the world-view of the Russian nobility;43 Nikolay Nekrasov, who had spoken up for the exploited peasantry, had at the same time articulated the aspirations,

39 See especially Thesis No.4 of “Tezisy doklada A.A.Bogdanov. ‘O proletarskoy kritike’. na Vserossyiskom soveshchanii literaturnykh otdelov i otdelov izobrazitel’nykh iskusstv proletarskikh kul’turno-prospevetitel’nykh organizatsii, 21 August 1921. RGALI, f.1230, op.1, d.457, l.8. I am obliged to Petr Plyutto for making this document available. 40 “1918” in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 102. This had formerly been published as “Ot redaktsii”, Proletarskaya kul’tura, Nr.1 (July 1918). 41 “Kritika proletarskogo iskusstva” (1918), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 173. 42 See “O khudozhestvennom nasledstve” (1918), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: especially, 142–145; and Thesis Nr. 16 of “Puti proletarskogo tvorchestva” (1920) in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 199. 43 Afanasiy Afanas’evich Fet (1820–1892). See “Chto takoe proletarskaya poeziya?” (1918) in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 130. See also the section “Tekhnicheskie i ekonomicheskie osnovy kollektivizma” of Nauka ob obshestvennom soznanii (1914) in Bogdanov 1999: 452.

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ideas and sentiments of the urban intelligentsia to which he belonged by occupation, and aspects of the psychology of the landlord estate to which he belonged by birth.44 Indeed, the greater part of what, more recently, purported to be “democratic” poetry in fact gave expression to a “peasant-intellectual”, “worker-peasant” or “worker-peasant- intellectual” view of the world.45

Progressive forms i) “Simplicity” (prostota) How, Bogdanov asked, was one to identify those writers of the past who could serve as models for the kinds of technique to be adopted by the creators of proletarian culture? In answering this question he drew upon his evolutionary interpretation of history and upon his organization theory. Every social formation and every ideology, he argued, went through a life-cycle of birth, maturation, degeneration (vyrozhdenie) and death. This could be observed not only in the content but also in the forms of art.46 It was during the phase of growth and maturity that the art of a civilization attained its most consummate expression. Proletarian writers should therefore “learn the techniques of art … from the great masters who came at the period of the rise and flowering of those classes that are now withering away - the revolutionary romantics and the classics of different times.”47 The hallmark of art at its apogée was its ‘simplicity’.48 In 1918, Bogdanov lauded the “simplicity, clarity and purity of forms” of Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Nekrasov and Tolstoy.49 In 1920 (when he added Byron to this list), he wrote: “What we find in the work of the great masters is a simplicity that is associated with content that is grandiose, developing or highly developed, but which has not yet begun to decay. Goethe and Schiller, and, in Russia, Pushkin and Lermontov, reflected the birth and growth of new conditions and new forces of life, the rise of a bourgeois culture

44 Nikolay Alekseevich Nekrasov (1821–1878). See “Chto takoe proletarskaya poeziya?” (1918), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 131. 45 As an example, Bogdanov cites a poem by Alexei Gmyrev, Alaya. See “Chto takoe proletarskaya poeziya?” (1918), in Bogdanov, 1924/1925: 132–133. See also the references to Emile Verhaeren and Jānis Rainis, above. 46 “Kritika proletarskogo iskusstva” (1918), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 169. 47 “Kritika proletarskogo iskusstva” (1918) in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 170. 48 Cf. “Like most ancient Martian works of art, the most modern ones were characterized by extreme simplicity and thematic unity”. Bogdanov 1984: 76. 49 “Kritika proletarskogo iskusstva” (1918), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 170.

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that was beginning to oust and supplant the old, feudal-aristocratic culture.”50

ii) Rhyme and Rhythm In his understanding of rhyme and rhythm, Bogdanov updated romanticism for the machine age: these two devices served to integrate the human community in its relationship with the rest of nature, and also in work and thought: Asked by Leonid, in Red Star, whether “the poetry of the socialist epoch should abandon and forget these inhibiting rules”, Enno replies: “Regular rhythm (pravil’noe-ritmicheskoe) seems beautiful to us not at all because of any attachment to convention, but because it is in profound harmony with the rhythmic regularity of the processes of our life and consciousness. As for rhyme (rifma), whereby a series of variations end in a single accord, does it not have a profound kinship with that vital bond between people which enables them to overcome their inherent diversity and achieve unity in the pleasure of love, achieve unity from a rational objective in work, and a unity of feelings through art? There can be no artistic form without rhythm (bez ritma). If there is no rhythm of sounds it is all the more essential that there should be a rhythm of images or ideas. And if rhyme (rifma) is really of feudal origin, then so were many other good and beautiful things.”51

Degenerate form and content: “over-elaboration” (utonchennost’)

True to his biological-evolutionary world view, Bogdanov was disparaging of the forms and content of the kind of art that was 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.” 52

Ten years later, he explained more fully:

50 “Prostota ili utonchennost’?” (1920), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 176–177. 51 My translation from Krasnaya Zvezda, Bogdanov 1929: 97, with reference to the translation by Charles Rougle in Bogdanov 1984: 78. 52 My translation from Krasnaya Zvezda, Bogdanov 1929: 94, with reference to the translation by Charles Rougle in Bogdanov 1984: 76.

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“…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 which 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 decomposition (razlozhenie) of bourgeois culture, in most of the new trends in decadent ‘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.”53 Zinaida Gippius was considered by Bogdanov to be typical of those who “in periods of tranquil reaction contemplate their individual feelings, aesthetic, erotic, mystical ... become fiery patriots in wartime and are seized by the ardour of struggle during revolution, only to lapse back into eroticism and all sorts of perversion and theosophy, etc., when reaction returns.”54 Andreev, Bal’mont and Blok were “on our side one moment and detached the next”.55 The work of Bryusov and Belyy was “devoid of living content and devoted entirely to form”;56 Mayakovskiy was “a posturing, self-advertising intellectual” (krivlyayushegosya intelligenta- reklamista); Igor Severyanin was “the ideologue of gigolos and courtesans (kokotok) and the talented embodiment of painted vulgarity.”57

53 “Kritika proletarskogo iskusstva” (1918) in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 169–170. 54 “Prostota ili utonchennost’?” (1920), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 178–179. See also 175–177. 55 “Kritika proletarskogo iskusstva” (1918), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 170. 56 “Prostota ili utonchennost’?” (1920), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 180. Here Bogdanov is criticizing Gerasimov’s poem Mona Lisa. 57 “Kritika proletarskogo iskusstva” (1918), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 170. Bogdanov did not deny the talent of either Severyanin or Mayakovskiy. See his footnote on Mayakovskiy, dated 1924, in this same article: 170. Ironically, Bogdanov’s principal adversary, Lenin, shared his antipathy for the Futurists: on 6 May 1921 Lenin rebuked Lunacharskiy for printing 5,000 copies of Mayakovskiy’s 150,000,000 and implored M.N. Pokrovskiy to help him “fight Futurism”. See Lenin to A.V. Lunacharskiy, 6 May 1921 and Lenin to M.N. Pokrovskiy, 6 May 1921, in Lenin 1970, 179–180.

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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, new and often unexpected rhymes. This is clearly the influence of the poetry of the new intelligentsia. It is hardly to be welcomed….” 58 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.59 Above all, there should be no striving for effect.60 Conscious, perhaps, that his views on culture might be considered overly conservative, Bogdanov was, on occasion, prepared to concede that “of course, new contents will inevitably work out new forms”; it was merely “necessary to take the best of the past as a starting point.”61 However, he was profoundly out of sympathy with Modernism. In 1920 he felt entitled to remonstrate with Mikhail Gerasimov (who, unlike Bogdanov, possessed genuine proletarian credentials),62 for having succumbed, in his poem, Mona Lisa, to the influence of the modern poets.63 He admonished as “naïve” the Smithy (Kuznitsa) group of writers (Gerasimov and Vladimir Kirillov were founder-members), who, in the first issue of their journal had declared that, even if they were unable to write “proletarian poetry” (a barb directed at the Proletkult), they would dedicate themselves to developing a mastery of literary techniques.64 These writers, Bogdanov chided,

58 “Kritika proletarskogo iskusstva” (1918), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 170–171. 59 “Powerful machines and their precise movements are aesthetically pleasing to us in and of themselves…”. Enno, in Bogdanov 1984, 74. 60 “Prostota ili utonchennost’?” (1920), Bogdanov 1924/1925: 188–9. 61 “Kritika proletarskogo iskusstva” (1918), Bogdanov 1924/1925: 170. 62 Mikhail Prokof’evich Gerasimov (1889–1939), the son of a railwayman, had worked in the railway, metal working and mining industries. Between 1910 and 1914 he was a member, alongside Lunacharskiy, A.K. Gastev and F.I. Kalinin of the Paris-based Liga proletarskoy kul’tury. His works were published in Gorkiy’s Prosveshchenie in 1913 and 1914; in an anthology edited by Il’ya Erenburg – Vechera (Paris, 1914); in Sbornik proletarskikh pisateley (1914) which had a foreword by Gorkiy; and in Sbornik proletarskikh poetov (1917). In 1917 a volume of his poetry, due to be published by Gorkiy’s publishing house Parus, was banned by the censor. In March 1917 he was elected chair of the Samara Soviet of Soldiers’ Deputies and from 1918 he was chair of the Samara Proletkult. See Russkie pisateli 1989: 540–541. 63 “Prostota ili utonchennost’?” (1920), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 180. 64 Mikhail Gerasimov and Vladimir Kirillov were prominent in the Kuznitsa group who held their founding meeting in February 1920. See Brown 1971: 10–12.

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should not “deck themselves out in the finery of the bourgeoisie”, but seek the content of their poetry in comradely relations, in the experience of workers’ organizations, and in the works of Marx. They should trust in the collective and in its evolutionary ideology, and amongst past writers seek out those who had “shown the way”.65

Organizational aesthetics

Another framework that Bogdanov applied in evaluating a work of art, namely ‘degree of organization’ or ‘organized-ness (stepen’ organizovannosti),66 derived explicitly from his Tektology and seems to supplement, if not replace, his binary opposition of ‘simplicity/over- elaboration’. In Part III of the full version of Tektology (first published in 1922), in the chapter ‘Organizational Dialectics’, he wrote: “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 of living-social organization (sotsial’no- zhiznennoi organizovannosti) from being addressed. This means that whatever raises the level of organization of collective life in the field of degressive67 norms of human behaviour is deemed to be morally superior; whatever has this effect in perceptions of the world (mirovospriyatyia) is deemed to be beautiful; and whatever has this effect when it comes to the systematization of experience is deemed to be ‘true’. Essentially, all such evaluations amount to a more or less crude, approximate, and vaguely defined quantitative measure of the degree of organization, in other words, to a “measurement” according to some imprecise scale or template. For this reason, these evaluations must all be subjected to scientific-organizational research and, in the course of development, be replaced by scientific-organizational evaluations.”68

65 “Prostota ili utonchennost’?”, (1920), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 190–191. This article was published in Proletarskaya kul’tura (1920), Nr.13–14. See also Bogdanov’s review of the first issue (May, 1920) of the journal Kuznitsa, in Proletarskaya kul’tura (1920), Nr.15–16: 91–92. 66 George Gorelik translated organizovannost’ as ‘system-ness’. See Gorelik 1984: 279. Since Bogdanov does use the term sistematizatsiya, another possible translation might be ‘degree of systematization’. 67 “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’. 68 My translation from Bogdanov 1922: 516.

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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 of organization of that work as a living whole”. Acknowledging that assessments made by different collectives would vary according to their particular accumulation 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.”69 The extent to which a work of art achieved a degree of organization also determined its aesthetic effect, for “truth is the presence of organization in the sphere of experience; the good is the presence of organization in the sphere of action; and beauty is the presence of organization in the sphere of the emotions.”70

A tektological criticism of Hamlet

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 intrinsic criticism of a work of art or literature, and that is in his commentary on “the great artist and tektologist”, Shakespeare.71 The divided self of Hamlet, he tells us (divided, on the one hand by his warrior upbringing and, on the other, by his passive-aesthetic temperament), formed a “complex”, the components of which were in a relationship of “disingression”, or paralysis. The processes of selection set in motion by a hostile environment could only result in the destruction of this complex (as in the “insanity”, then death, of Hamlet), or in a recombination of the elements of his psyché into a new “active-aesthetic” whole (the restoration of order, or “system equilibrium”, in the character of

69 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. 70 Bogdanov, Unpublished notebooks, RGASPI, f.259, cited by: Iu.P. Sharapov, “‘Kul’turnye lyudi soznatel’no uchityvayut proshloe’”. Iz zapisnykh knizhek A.A. Bogdanova”, Istoricheskiy arkhiv (1999), Nr. 3: 174. 71 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.

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Fortinbras).72 Hamlet, was an example of how a work of art could serve not only the dominant ideology of its time, but also the purposes of collectivism, in that Shakespeare’s depiction of the struggle for harmony in a hostile environment, “provides the working class with a comprehensive lesson and a comprehensive resolution of the organizational task – and this is what is needed if the world- organizational ideal is to be achieved.”73

Between learning and didacticism

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”.74 He did not think that his own exercises in literary and artistic criticism were prescriptive, but it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that, sometimes, they were. In 1918, it is true, he rejected the civic (grazhdanskoe) notion according to which art should promote progressive tendencies in the struggles of life: there was “no need to attach any aims to art – they are an unnecessary and harmful constraint”.75 At the same time, he was himself of the opinion that proletarian art should express an “aspiration towards the ideal” and pointed to the example of the Venus de Milo which, he maintained, represented the harmonious unity of spiritual and physical love;76 and to Goethe’s Faust which depicted the human soul in its search for harmony, eventually attained in a life devoted to working for the good of society.77 Conscious, perhaps, that these judgments could, indeed, be considered “civic”, he dissociated himself from the theory “recently brought forward”, according to which art must be “unflaggingly uplifting” (zhizneradostnoe) and “exultant” (vostorzhennoe). “We are sorry to

72 Bogdanov 1922, Part II, Chapter 5 “Divergence and convergence of forms”, Section 6: “The division and restoration of unity of the personality”: 290–292. 73 “O khudozhestvennom nasledstve” (1918), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 154. 74 “Ideal vospitaniya” (Lecture delivered to a Teachers” Conference in Moscow, May, 1918), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 236. 75 “Chto takoe proletarskaya poeziya” (1918), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 128–129. See also Thesis Nr. 11: “The socio-organizational role of art is its objective meaning, and this interpretation has nothing in common with the theory of civic art, whereby art is harnessed to certain specific tasks of an ethical, political or other nature”, in “Sotsial’no-organizatsionnoe znachenie iskusstva” (1921) in Bogdanov 2004: 5–9. 76 “Proletariat i iskusstvo” (Speech to the First All-Russian Conference of the Proletkult, 20 September 1918), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 122–23. 77 “Proletariat i iskusstvo”, (Speech to the First All-Russian Conference of the Proletkult, 20 September 1918), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 120–121; and “Prostota ili utonchennost’?” (1920), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 178.

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say that this theory is quite a favourite, especially with the younger and less experienced proletarian poets, although it can only be called childish.”78 Even so, in some of his writings, Bogdanov’s didactic attitude is reminiscent of the philosopher of an earlier Enlightenment, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in his Émile, ou De l’éducation (1762). By 1920 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, could 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”.79 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.”80 It was the Kuznitsa group that in October 1920 organized the First All Russian Congress of Proletarian Writers during which the All-Russian Association of Proletarian Writers (VAPP) was founded.81 In December 1920, the replacement of Pavel Lebedev-Polyanskiy by Valerian Pletnëv as Chair of the Central Committee of the Proletkult marked the beginning of the end of Bogdanov’s influence inside the Proletkult. In November 1921 he resigned from all positions in the Proletkult in order to devote himself entirely to research in blood transfusion. However, the matter did not end there: the critics of Bogdanov, in some cases acting under the instructions of Lenin, now faced the task of producing an alternative to his theory. During the later 1920s, Pletnëv, for one, ostentatiously dissociated himself from Bogdanov and played his own ignoble part in the creation of an new orthodoxy.82 On 9 May 1924 the Press Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party convened a conference on “The policy of the Party in artistic literature”

78 “Kritika proletarskogo iskusstva” (1918), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 167. 79 Bogdanov 1920: 87. On the resentment of some writers by 1920, see Steinberg 2002: 60–61. 80 See their letter to Pravda, 5 February 1920, reproduced in Gorbunov 1974: 122. 81 It was also in October 1920 that Lenin took steps to have the Proletkult subordinated to the Commissariat for Education. These institutional changes in the history of the movement for proletarian culture have been well documented by Sheshukov 1970, Brown 1971 and Eimermacher 1972. 82 On the role of Pletnëv in the debate over cultural policy, see Biggart and Bulgakowa 2016.

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and in 1925 published materials of this conference and other contributions to the debate.83 In the same year Bogdanov defiantly published an anthology of his own writings on the subject.84 He could legitimately take the view that his ‘heresies’ had set the agenda for the debate.

Conclusion

One does not look to Bogdanov for an understanding of the mentalité of the ‘actually existing’ working class.85 His concern was not with working class communities but with the ‘integral proletarian’, the ideal-typical worker (Nikifor Vilonov, Fëdor Kalinin) of the future.86 In this respect he was a utopian socialist (I do not use the term pejoratively). 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.87 His conviction that his status as a Collectivist qualified him as a builder of socialist culture is questionable. Perhaps he should be understood as a member of the ‘organizational intelligentsia’, whose ascendancy he had himself described. 88 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 paternalistic solicitude for novices in the building of proletarian culture and to his dislike of Modernism than to his organization theory. It is difficult to see of what value these categories could be to anyone in the appreciation, even, of some of the writers he approved of, for example, Gogol. By contrast, his criticism of Hamlet illustrates the

83 See Voprosy kul’tury pri diktature proletariata 1925. Moscow & Leningrad: Gosizdat, On this debate, see also Biggart 1992. 84 See O proletarskoy kul’ture 1904–1924. This inside title page of this anthology is dated 1924 and the cover is dated 1925. 85 In general, it appears 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. 86 On Kalinin, see “Novy tip rabotnika” in Bogdanov 1920. Bogdanov quotes from an unpublished work by Vilonov in his Introduction and in Chapter 6 of Filosofiya zhivogo opyta 1913 and 1923. See also Scherrer 1980: 165–187; and, on Vilonov and Kalinin, Gloveli 2004, 25–48. 87 See Biggart 1990: 265–282. On how workers and intellectuals worked together in the Proletkult, see Mally 1990: 115–121. 88 See “Linii kul’tury XIX i XX veka” in Bogdanov 1995; in Vestnik Mezhdunarodnogo Instituta Bogdanova 2000 (4): 28–53; and Gloveli 2009, 47–79.

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analytical potential of a tektological approach. However, Bogdanov was aware of the experimental nature of his aesthetics, and he acknowledged that all such “evaluations must be subjected to scientific- organizational research and, in the course of development, be replaced by scientific-organizational evaluations.”89 The Russian ‘language barrier’ has, until recently, denied Bogdanov’s pioneering work in cultural theory the attention that it merits outside of Russia. The translation of his works into other languages will help to make good this deficiency.

References

Biggart, John 1990. “Alexander Bogdanov and the theory of a “New Class”. Russian Review (49, July): 265-282. ------1992. “Bukharin’s theory of cultural revolution” in The ideas of Nikolai Bukharin, edited by Anthony Kemp-Welch, 131-158. Oxford: The Clarendon Press. Biggart, John and Oksana Bulgakowa 2016. “Eisenstein in the Proletkult. Helsinki: Spherical Book. Culture as Organization in Early Soviet Thought. Bogdanov, A. 1904. Iz psikhologii obshchestva. St. Petersburg: Izdanie S.Dorovatovskogo i A.Charushnikova. ------1904-1906. Empiriomonizm. Stat’i po filosofii, I-III. Moscow & St.Petersburg: Izdanie S.Dorovatovskogo i A.Charushnikova. ------. 1908. Krasnaya zvezda (Utopiya). Saint-Petersburg: Tovarishchestvo khudozhnikov pechati ------1911. Kul’turnye zadachi nashego vremeni. Moscow: Izdanie S.Dorovatovskogo i A.Charushnikova. ------1913. Vseobshchaya organizatsionnaya nauka: Tektologiya I. St.Petersburg: Izdanie M.I.Semenova. ------1914. Nauka ob obshestvennom soznanii. Kratkii kurs ideologicheskoy nauki v voprosakh i otvetakh. Moscow: Knigoizdatel’stvo pisateley v Moskve. ------1920 “Novyy tip rabotnika”, in Sbornik pamyati F.I.Kalinina. Rostov on Don: Gosizdat. ------1920. Elementy proletarskoy kul’tury v razvitii rabochego klassa. Lektsii prochitannye v Moskovskom Proletkul’te vesnoyu 1919 goda. Moscow: Gosizdat. ------1921 “Sotsial’no-organizatsionnoe znachenie iskusstva” - Theses for a lecture delivered to the Russian Academy of Artistic Sciences, 29 October 1921, with an introduction by Charlotte Douglas, Vestnik Mezhdunarodnogo Instituta A. Bogdanova. 2004 (1): 17, 5-9. ------1922. Tektologiya. Vseobshchaya organizatsionnaya nauka. Petersburg, Moscow, Berlin: Grzhebin. ------1923a. “Obshchestvenno-nauchnoe znachenie noveishikh tendentsii estestvoznaniya” (Theses for lecture delivered in the Socialist Academy of

89 My translation from Bogdanov 2003: 392.

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Social Sciences, 24 May 1923). Arkhiv RAN, f.350 op.2, d.4, ll.13-78, in Bogdanov 2003. ------1923b. Filosofiya zhivogo opyta. Populyarnye ocherki. Materializm, Empiriokrititsizm, Dialekticheskiy Materializm, Empiriomonizm, Nauka Budushchego. 3rd ed., Petrograd- Moscow: Kniga. ------1924/1925. O proletarskoy kul’ture 1904-1924. Leningrad-Moscow: Kniga [This anthology carries the date “1924” on the inside title page and “1925” on the cover.] ------1929. Krasnaya Zvezda. Leningrad: Krasnaya gazeta [Reprinted in Krasnaya zvezda: roman-utopiya; Inzhener Menni: fantasticheskiy roman. 1979. Bibliotheca russica. Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag]. ------1984. Essays in Tektology. The General Science of Organization. 2nd ed. Edited and translated by George Gorelik. Seaside California: Intersystems Publications Limited. ------1984. Red Star. The First Bolshevik Utopia. Edited by Loren R.Graham and Richard Stites, translated by Charles Rougle. Bloomington, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. ------1995. Stat’i, doklady, pis’ma i vospominaniya 1901-1928, in Neizvestnyy Bogdanov, Kniga 1, edited by N.S.Antonova & N.V.Drozdova. Moscow: ITs AIRO - XX ------1996. Bogdanov’s Tektology, Book 1. Edited and translated by Peter Dudley, Vadim N. Sadovsky and Vladimir V. Kelle. University of Hull: Centre for Systems Studies. ------1999. Poznanie s istoricheskoy tochki zreniya. Izbrannye psikhologicheskie trudy. Moscow: Moskovskiy psikhologo-sotsial’nyy institut. ------2003, Tektologiya. Vseobshchaya organizatsionnaya nauka. Moscow: Finansy. ------2004. “Sotsial’no-organizatsionnoe znachenie iskusstva” - Theses for a lecture delivered by Alexander Bogdanov to the Russian Academy of Artistic Sciences, 29 October 1921”, with an introduction by Charlotte Douglas in Vestnik Mezhdunarodnogo Instituta A. Bogdanova (1): 17, 5-9. Brown, Edward J. 1971. The proletarian episode in Russian literature, 1928-1932. New York: Octagon Books. Eimermacher, Karl. 1972. Dokumente zur sowjetischen Literaturpolitik 1917-1932. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer. Feuer, Lewis S. [Editor] 1959. Marx and Engels. Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy. New York: Doubleday Anchor. Gloveli, G.D. 2004. “‘Raduga dum i chuvstv’ i ‘krasochnaya shkola””, Vestnik Mezhdunarodnogo Instituta A.Bogdanova Moscow, 18, 25-48. ------2009. “The sociology of Alexander Bogdanov and the theories of progress in the 19th and early 20th centuries” in Oittinen, Vesa (Ed.), Aleksandr Bogdanov Revisited Helsinki: Aleksanteri Series, 1, 47-79. Gorbunov, V.V. 1974. Lenin i Proletkul’t. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo politicheskoy literatury. Lenin, V.I. 1970. Polnoe sobranie sochineniy, 52. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo politicheskoy literatury. Mally, Lynn 1990. Culture of the Future. The Proletkult Movement in Revolutionary Russia. Berkeley, Los Angeles, Oxford: University of California Press. Marx, Karl and Frederick Engels 2001. Collected Works, 49. London: Lawrence and Wishart. Poustilnik, Simona 2009. “Tectology in the context of intellectual thought in Russia”, in Vesa Oittinen, Editor, Aleksandr Bogdanov Revisited. Helsinki: Aleksanteri Series, 1. Rose, Margaret. A. 1994. Marx’s lost aesthetic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Russkie pisateli 1800-1917. Biograficheskiy slovar’, I 1989. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo “Moskovskaya Entsiklopediya”. Sbornik Latyshkoi literatury 1916. Pod redaktsiey Valeriya Bryusova i Maksima Gor’kogo, s predisloviem Yanson Brauna. Publisher unknown. Sbornik proletarskikh pisateley 1914. Petrograd: Priboy. Scherrer, Jutta 1980. “Un philosophe-ouvrier russe. N.E.Vilonov”. Le Mouvement Social (111): 165-187. Sharapov, Iu.P. 1999. “‘Kul’turnye lyudi soznatel’no uchityvayut proshloe’. Iz zapisnykh knizhek A.A.Bogdanova”. Istoricheskiy arkhiv (3). Sochor, Zenovia A. 1988. Revolution and Culture. The Bogdanov-Lenin Controversy. Ithica and London: Cornell University Press. Steila, Daniela 1996. Scienza e rivoluzione. La recezione dell”empiriocriticismo nella cultura russa 1877-1910 Storia della filosofia e del pensiero scientifico. Torino: Universita degli studi di Torino, Fondo di studi Parini-Chirio. ------2013. Nauka i revolyutsyia. Retseptsyia empiriokrititsizma v Russkoy kul’ture 1877- 1910 gg. Moscow: Akademicheskiy Proekt. Steinberg, Mark D. 2002. Proletarian Imagination. Self, Modernity, and the Sacred in Russia, 1910-1925. Ithica and London: Cornell University Press. White, James D. 2013. “Alexander Bogdanov’s Conception of Proletarian Culture”. Revolutionary Russia (26): 52-70.

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BOGDANOV'S CONCEPT OF CULTURE: FROM WORKERS’ CIRCLES TO THE PROLETKULT MOVEMENT Jutta Scherrer______

This paper analyses of the historical genesis of Bogdanov’s conception of proletarian culture. In particular, the author deals with Bogdanov’s activity during his exile in Vologda, the organization of the Vpered group, and the debates over cultural politics amongst Russian Marxism. The systematic focus of the paper is on the concept of culture as based on the material and non-material capacities of the comprehension and the working and living conditions of the worker. The role of art in a system of culture is another important systematic focus of these studies.

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In the middle of the 1890s when Aleksandr Bogdanov (Malinovskiy), still a student of medicine, was organizing workers’ study circles in Tula, the notion of workers’ culture was rarely debated by Russian revolutionaries and Marxists. The situation in Russia was very different from that in Germany where social-democracy constituted already a mass party with a highly structured network of organizations devoted to the educational and cultural tasks of the workers. Here, the term Arbeiterkultur was widespread and leading social-democrats considered the party not only as a carrier of the economic and political emancipation of the proletariat, but also as a broad working class cultural movement.1 In general, their understanding of Arbeiterkultur was oriented towards bourgeois culture and did not differentiate substantially between culture and way of life. Literature conceived by workers themselves was mostly rejected, and this not because of its socialist tendencies, but because of its low aesthetic level. In Russia, where the founding members of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party were immediately arrested after its illegal foundation (1898), the party had to struggle for its organizational survival. In 1897 Bogdanov published the lectures that he had delivered at the workers’ schools in Tula as A Short Course in Economic Science. This became the most popular textbook on Marxist political economy and it was reedited and enlarged ten times until the 1920s. In teaching workers the basics of Marxist political economy, Bogdanov had structured his course into questions and answers, a method which he employed also in later courses designed for a working class public. His first teaching experience had made him aware of the particular effort of his worker-pupils to “connect technical and economic phenomena with the forms of spiritual culture arising out of them, like links in a single complex chain of development” (Bogdanov 1924: 240).2 It is exactly this observation of the specific spiritual needs of the Russian worker in comprehending the content, the presentation and the reflection of a given material as a totality, that constituted the starting point of what Bogdanov conceptualized more than a decade later as ‘proletarian culture’: a culture based on the material and non-material (spiritual) capacities and on the comprehension of the working and living conditions of the workers themselves. In other words: not a culture derived from the hegemonial

1 The large network of cultural organizations of the working class was considered as 2 Quoted by Gloveli 1998: 42.

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bourgeoisie and adapted to the needs of the worker - an understanding implied by the German notion of Arbeiterkultur. In what follows, I shall briefly show the most important steps in Bogdanov’s general understanding of culture, which led to his particular conceptualization of proletarian culture. I shall not discuss here Bogdanov’s political biography, his role in the consolidation of the Bolshevik organization and his rivalry with Lenin. There is, however, no doubt, that Lenin’s, and even more so, Plekhanov’s rigid conception of Marxism and, in particular, of historical materialism greatly influenced Bogdanov’s conceptualization of an independent, hegemonial, proletarian culture. During his periods of residence or exile in Tula, Kaluga and Vologda (1895–1904), Bogdanov discussed with his comrades Bazarov, Skvortsov-Stepanov and Lunacharskiy what they called the philosophical aspect of Marx’s system. As Bogdanov wrote in his preface to the third volume of Empiriomonizm: since Marxism was not yet philosophically founded, they wanted to establish its philosophical foundation. In Lunacharskiy’s words: they wanted to reinforce Marxism’s gnoseological and ethical aspects independently of Plekhanov’s reduction of Marxism to the materialism of the French encyclopaedists (Lunacharskiy 1919: 22).3 They denied from the outset that Marxism was a system of explanation of social reality, valid for all the time. Marxism, in their opinion, ought to evolve, progress, and be modernized with the most recent developments in science and philosophy by new, contemporary ideas. “The tradition of Marx and Engels must remain dear to us, not in the letter, but in its spirit” (Bogdanov 1908: 66). Bogdanov’s proposition became the epistemological postulate of their group, which considered the empiriocriticism of Avenarius and Mach to be one of the most important openings of Marxism to modern science. It became the foundation of Bogdanov’s system of empiriomonism. In Vologda, which was the meeting place of a whole colony of political exiles (among them N.A. Berdyaev, B.V. Savinkov, A.M. Remizov, B.A. Kistyakovskiy, P.P. Rumyantsev), the group around Bogdanov clarified its conception of materialism (‘realism’) in theoretical confrontations with the ‘idealists’, among them, first of all, Berdyaev. The result was their collective volume Ocherki realisticheskogo mirovozzreniya [Essays on realistic philosophy] which appeared in 1904 as an answer to the collective volume Problemy idealizma [Problems of idealism] which contained major articles by the former so called Legal Marxists Berdyaev, Bulgakov, Frank and others

3 Lunacharskiy’s essay was written as early as 1918.

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and had appeared at the end of 1902 (Scherrer 1981: 113–152; Steila 1996:156–166). By a realistic worldview the group around Bogdanov understood the rejection of any metaphysical absolute and of any pretension of absolute truth (istina) in favor of the monistic ideal of cognition. In their collective volume they pleaded for the unity of theory and praxis, and the question of how one should understand ‘superstructure’ which later became fundamental for Bogdanov’s conception of culture, was addressed. In a collection of essays published in 1905 under the title Novyy mir (New World) Bogdanov developed his concept of collectivism. What he called sobiranie cheloveka (integration of man) implied the creative potential of each individual person in the collective. The education of the proletariat appeared already in this context as the highest goal. Twenty years later, in 1924, in the preface to a collection of his articles on proletarian culture Bogdanov referred to his early articles “as having already outlined the highest cultural type of life - the socialist type, which has its source in proletarian class culture” (Bogdanov 1924: 10). In other words, proletarian culture contains only elements of socialist culture: proletarian culture is socialist or collectivist culture in the process of evolution. Bogdanov’s analysis of the failure of the revolution 1905 and his confrontation with Lenin over Bolshevik strategy after 1905 made it evident for him (and his comrades in ideas), that for organizational purposes the workers needed their own intelligentsia, a rabochaya intelligentsiya (workers’ intelligentsia), and for ideological reasons they needed to become aware of their own class-consciousness which not only included the workers’ behaviour, thinking, and ideology, but also philosophy, science, and the arts. In articles and pamphlets written after 1907, Bogdanov advocated the development of the cultural hegemony of the proletariat prior to its seizure of power. In a pamphlet directed straight at Lenin Ne nado zatemnyat’ (‘Do not obscure matters’) Bogdanov asserted that “Bolshevism is not simply a political phenomenon, it is as much socio-cultural” (Maksimov 1909: 5). This kind of reasoning had led Bogdanov, Gorkiy, Lunacharskiy and other left bolsheviks to the founding of two social-democratic party schools for Russian workers which took place in Capri (August–December 1909) and Bologna (November 1910–March 1911). In the Capri school, as Bogdanov remembered 1918 in his article “Proletarian University“ the term proletarian culture was first openly formulated (Bogdanov 1924: 10). All the teaching, comprising courses on political economy, socialism, trade unionism, history, philosophy, literature and art sought to interpret the entire history of the activity and thought of humanity not only from the

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point of view of the working being – what the worker could conceive – but even more as a complete product of the experience of the working human being. The goal of the party schools for workers was the development and organization of the class-consciousness of the proletariat, which for Bogdanov was identical with the proletariat’s creative potential, namely proletarian culture. One of the results of the Capri-school was the creation of the Vpered group, an independent socio-cultural political faction of the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party, founded by the lecturers and the majority of the worker-pupils of the Capri school in defence of a ‘pure’, ‘authentic’ and ‘true’ Bolshevism, in opposition to the authoritarian individualism of Lenin’s style of leadership. In the platform of the Vpered group, essentially drafted by Bogdanov, the notion of proletarian culture appears for the first time as a political watchword. Let me quote a longer passage from the platform of the Vpered group, which, significantly enough, was taken up by Bogdanov in 1918 when pleading for a proletarian university: “The bourgeois world, with its developed culture which has left its imprint upon modern science, art, and philosophy, rears us imperceptibly in its fold, while the class struggle and our social ideal draws us in the opposite direction. We should not break entirely with this culture, which is of the fabric of history, for we can and should discover in it a powerful weapon in the struggle against this same old world. To receive it as it is would mean conserving in ourselves this past against which the struggle is waged. There is but one solution: to use the previous bourgeois culture to create, in order to combat bourgeois culture, and to diffuse among the masses, a new proletarian culture: to develop a proletarian science, reinforce authentically fraternal relations in the proletarian milieu, elaborate a proletarian philosophy, and direct art towards the aspirations of the proletariat and its experience. This is the only route to attaining a universal socialist education, which would avoid the innumerable contradictions of our life and work, and which would augment considerably our forces in the struggle, and approximate at the same time to our ideal of socialism, while elaborating more and more of its elements in the present” (Sovremennoe polozhenie 1909/1910: 16–17). In opposition to what Bogdanov considered to be the theoretical conservatism of Lenin and Plekhanov (Bogdanov 1911: 29–30), the platform of Vpered group called for the attainment of the cultural hegemony of the proletariat alongside its political hegemony because politics formed an

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organic whole with the other aspects of ideological life of society. For Bogdanov, the socialist ideal included both political and cultural liberation. Socialism would be possible only when the proletariat developed its own intellectual and moral awareness, which could be counter-posed to the old cultural world (Bogdanov 1911; Sochor 1988: 185). In an article written at the beginning of 1911 for the Vpered group, Sotsializm v nastoyashchem (Socialism in the present day) Bogdanov developed his theory of comradely collaboration, or fraternal union at work (tovarishcheskoe sotrudnichestvo), which bound the proletariat together at work, stimulated its sense of psychological unity, of the organic consciousness of unity – in short, collectivism. What Bogdanov termed collectivism was the psychology of the working class, its consciousness of itself as a class. In fact, it was in the process of collective work that the fundamental type of organization of a whole class was constituted, which made the proletariat capable of elaborating new forms of life and thought, in brief, its culture. These fraternal and collectivist relations inside the working collective should become the organizational base of the party as much as of the proletarian family structure; they should serve for the elaboration of a new science, a new philosophy and a new art – that of proletarian culture. In 1911 Bogdanov left the Vpered group because of émigré infighting and politicking. Some of his former comrades did not find it realistic “to create as of now on in the midst of existing society a great proletarian culture, stronger and more structured than the decaying culture of the bourgeois classes and immeasurably more free and creative” (Maksimov 1909: 5). In fact, a group around Aleksinskiy wished to revert to traditional political-economic as opposed to cultural priorities. From this moment on Bogdanov concentrated on his theoretical work. The first result was the 92- page long treaty Kult’urnye zadachi nashego vremeni (Cultural tasks of our time), which appeared that same year. Drawing on his experiences in the party schools, Bogdanov elaborated here for the first time, systematically, the concept of proletarian culture which contained essentially all the aspects of proletarian culture that he had conceptualized until then and which he was to develop later (Bogdanov 1911). Here, as in other writings, Bogdanov distinguished three successive types of culture, each of which depended on a type of organization of labour, that is, of a technological level of society in different states of development: authoritarian culture, individualist culture, and collectivist culture.

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It was the collective experience acquired during the work process that had given rise not only to the first acquisition of technological and scientific knowledge, but also to myths, religious legends, songs, poetry and to the classics of literature. The experiences of active man in the process of labour were at the source of all these creations. Scholars and artists, as individuals, often of non-proletarian origin, do no more than transcend the experience of the working collective. They are, in fact, the conveyor belt of the collectivity. Each discovery in astronomy or physics, each literary creation like an Othello, Hamlet, Faust, or William Tell, thus leads back to an experience of collective work. The true creator of spiritual culture (dukhovnaya kul’tura) is not, therefore, the solitary individual with his arbitrary act (proizvol) but the working being in the collectivity of work. The author, the creator, or the genius is quite simply the point (tochka prilozheniya) where the creative forces of society are concentrated in order to produce new forces through its consciousness. The author thus may be the creator, subjectively speaking, but objectively it is society (Bogdanov 1911: 41). Bogdanov demarcated three essential areas in which the proletariat should create for itself a cultural system free of fetishism and individualist bourgeois norms (which were totally alienated from the social praxis of man), morality, arts and science. As the foundation of new social norms, Bogdanov fixed on the proletarian moral principle of fraternal solidarity (tovarishcheskaya solidarnost’), mentioned above. The new social norms would correspond to the technical norms of work; they would be stripped of their abstract character and would be reduced to the organizational principles of human relations. All would depend on the needs of the collectivity, and all would be done according to its interests. The norms of morality, law and custom, as developed by proletarian class life, would correspond only to their utility for the collectivity and to its social needs. It would be necessary to devise a new terminology, for words like ‘law’, ‘morality’ or ‘religion’, which, as attributes of absolute authority no longer had any meaning. At the same time, expressions like ‘proletarian morality’ or ‘proletarian right’ were inadequate: new cultural forms necessitated new concepts. Truth was defined here by the experience of work and by the praxis of the collective. In like manner, the new proletarian art had to integrate experiences of the collectivity of work. The proletariat lived its own life distinct from that of any other class; hence it needed its own art imbued with its own feelings, aspirations and ideals. Bogdanov here energetically refuted the objections of those who held that the difficult conditions of working class existence and the still more arduous circumstances of the social struggle could hinder its

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assuming responsibility for its own art, at least as long as it was not in power. On the contrary, art organizes social experience through living images, not only in the domain of knowledge, but even more in the domains of feelings and wants. Since it discharges in this way an organizational function in the life of the collectivity, and by the fact that it harmonizes the feelings and ideals of the masses, it becomes the most powerful motor of the development and finally of the victory of the collectivity. The cohesion of the class would become the greater by the fact of art embracing a field larger than that of economy and polity. In Kul’turnye zadachi nashego vremeni Bogdanov was not explicit on the forms of the new proletarian art. “I leave this to others who are more competent than I on such questions” (Bogdanov 1911: 77). But, from the point of view of content, he deemed it especially false and naïve to think that proletarian art ought to describe the life of workers, their byt (forms and mode of everyday life) and their struggle. The universe of the experiences of class, which is the object of the art of the class, is not for that reason in the least limited; it embraces all the being and all the byt of society just as much as all of nature. The proletariat lives alongside other classes, whether foreign or hostile, to which it is bound by numerous threads, spiritual, economic, and social. Many of these elements had been, consciously or otherwise, assimilated by the proletariat. And even if it combats them, they are after all a heritage of the classes of which the proletariat is the issue: the petite bourgeoisie (meshchanstvo) and the peasantry. Now, the more it knows these classes, their psychology, organization, and interests, the less the danger of submitting to their cultural influences; and it will be that much easier for the proletariat to imbibe from their culture what is useful and progressive. From the fact of the organizational function of art, “putting into form and consolidating a definite social organization” (Bogdanov 1911: 51), proletarian art would be able to show to workers at work, in their social struggle, and in their daily life, much of what escapes from their consciousness in the first instance. Thus art is a constitutive element of the consciousness of self (samosoznanie) of the proletarian class. Since art organizes the human experience of labour, not in abstract concepts but in concrete, live images (zhivye obrazy), it is more democratic than science, more accessible to the masses. Yet, Bogdanov saw in the “democratization of scientific knowledge” the most urgent cultural task of the proletariat of his time. According to him it was not a question of literacy or of the assimilation of the specialized knowledge of distinct disciplines or of its popularization through pamphlets and public lectures, in the manner

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typical of bourgeois culture, but of wide knowledge. It was a question of realizing the “sum” of knowledge, hitherto split up in partial domains, of returning from specialization to general experience, and, by that, to the general system of human labour. The workers needed a global and unifying scientific explanation, which would furnish them with a general awareness of the existing relation between the different technical methods, which they would apply with their own hands in production, and of the different methods, social, economic, and ideological, that were important for the organization of the class and for the fate of workers. The workers, therefore, should have access to the systematization of the different domains of scientific experience and to transcend specialist discourse. Hence the idea of creating a Proletarian University (of which the schools of Capri and Bologna were the precursors) that would embrace all the fundamental sectors of science in its teaching. It was with the same concern to systematize all the scientific experience of his time and to make it accessible to the working class that Bogdanov returned to the project of a workers’ encyclopaedia that had been launched during the Capri school. Just as the Great Encyclopaedia of the eighteenth century had co-ordinated the fragmented knowledge and experience of the era of the bourgeoisie, the new encyclopaedia would now explain the science and philosophy of labouring mankind as the means towards the organization of the collective activity of man. The proletarian democratization of knowledge, that is, the creation of a proletarian science and of a proletarian philosophy was undertaken by Bogdanov in the following years in his Tektology or Universal science of organization (Vseobshchaya organizatsionnaya nauka), the first volume of which appeared in 1912, and in which he proposed to lay the foundation of a science which aimed to unify the entire organizational experience of all of humanity, and to synthesize all the knowledge accumulated by specialized disciplines. In general it can be said that proletarian culture as conceived by Bogdanov before 1917 was not ‘popular culture’ or the culture of the popular masses. It was not defined by popular arts and traditions or by folklore. It had nothing to do with making the masses literate, educating them or simply appropriating or assimilating bourgeois culture any more than with rejecting the cultural heritage. It did not propose, either, a true aesthetics: one would search in vain for a precise aesthetic approach in Bogdanov’s dilettantish analyses, in which the concrete content of proletarian culture remained rather abstract. For him it was above all matter

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of making the proletariat conscious of what was inherent in its “byt”, to deliver its internal culture. This was an internal comprehension of themselves: their life, labour, feelings, emotions, ideals, attitudes, and mentality, in short, that they should acquire a consciousness of self (samosoznanie) by appealing tirelessly to the collective will, which was for Bogdanov the same as combative creativity. Only the elaboration of this independent culture could guarantee to the proletariat its entire independence and autonomy. These conditions were not fulfilled in 1917. Bogdanov did not contest the achievements of the October revolution but he did question its socialist character, given the lack of cultural maturity of the proletariat as a whole. During 1917 he worked in the Cultural and Educational Department of the Moscow Soviet and between 1918 and 1921 he devoted himself to the Russian Proletarian Cultural Educational Association or Proletkul’t which was founded in Petrograd in October 1917 and of whose Central Committee he was a member. Here he worked together with his former comrades from the Vpered group who had created in 1913 in Paris and Geneva under the direction of Lunacharskiy a Circle of Proletarian Culture with P. Bessalko, M. Gerasimov, A. Gastev, F. Kalinin, P. Kerzhentsev, P. Lebedev- Polyanskiy and a number of proletarian poets and writers who now played a major role in the Proletkult organization. Lunacharskiy, Commissar of Education, was at least in the beginning helpful in protecting the Proletkult’s autonomy. Bogdanov’s commitment to the Proletkult organization, which I cannot describe here in detail, was based on his conviction that the key to socialism lay in the sphere of culture: unless socialism meant cultural liberation, it meant very little. In the pages of Proletarskaya kul’tura, Proletkult’s main journal to whose editorial board Bolgdanov belonged, he argued that the Proletkult organization should be open only to the most highly qualified workers of the leading industrial sectors as well as to the most mature and active workers. Only they could organize the cultural and ideological leadership, the hegemony of the political bloc over the petty bourgeois and peasant culture produced by the broad masses. Just as the party could not accept that its political line would be determined by the least conscious workers, Bogdanov argued, so also the Proletkult could not admit that its cultural line should be determined by the least conscious workers. The Proletkult should become, by analogy with the party, an organization for the cultural vanguard of the working class and also represent in Bogdanov’s terms, a sort of “laboratory of the pure proletarian ideology”

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(Bogdanov 1919: 26–29). Bogdanov’s particular understanding of culture brought him again into opposition to Lenin who argued, as is generally known, that in the particular conditions of Russia’s backwardness a true bourgeois culture should suffice as the basis of a workers’ education. As before 1917, Bogdanov was less interested in concrete, applied aesthetics and forms of proletarian art, but much more in theoretical and organizational questions of the Proletkult. As before, proletarian culture meant for him, in the first instance, the independent creativity of the proletariat to acquire its own consciousness. For the socialization of science, the core issue of proletarian culture, a Proletarian University, a proletarian encyclopaedia and a proletarian library for scientific-philosophical works were founded, inspired by the experiences acquired in the Capri and Bologna party schools. Among Bogdanov’s numerous writings on behalf of the Proletkult, none was written in support of the maximalist tendency of some of the Proletkult representatives such as V. T. Kirillov who wished to abandon the entire cultural heritage of former generations – a reproach made of Bogdanov by Lenin and subsequent Soviet historiography until its very end, with the intention to discredit him. It was certainly the merit of Proletkult and of Bogdanov to have posed the question of culture as central for the revolution. But Bogdanov and the Proletkult were unable to mobilize for their goal the proletarian vanguard and to develop an independent Proletkult aesthetics. In general, it can be said that Bogdanov, “like the early anthropologists understood culture in the broadest sense, as encompassing tools, means of cooperation, speech, knowledge, art, customs, laws, ethics and so on – in other words, all the products, material and nonmaterial, of human labour” (Sochor 1988: 68). Mostly, however, he referred to culture in the narrower sense, what he called ‘spiritual culture’, which included worldviews, artistic creativity, aesthetics, and political relations. He used culture in this sense synonymously with ideology or science of ideas which he defined as the social consciousness of people (Bogdanov 1911: 3; Sochor 1988: 68). Bogdanov’s principal idea was that culture in its many forms, whether speech, knowledge, customs, or art had an internal structure, an implicit organizational function. Culture plays a real, practical role in society, an organizational role. Rather than treat culture as an epiphenomenon, as implied in Marx’s use of the term superstructure, Bogdanov defined culture as a type of infrastructure in society with its own specific role (Sochor 1988: 70).

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There is no doubt that independently from his more praxis oriented conceptualization of proletarian culture Bogdanov developed also a more anthropological understanding of culture in works such as Filosofiya zhivogo opyta, Nauka ob obshchestvennom soznanii and Tektologiya. But this would be another topic.

References

Bogdanov, A.A. 1908. Priklyuchenie odnoj filosofskoj shkoly. St. Petersburg. ------1911. Kul’turnye zadachi nashego vremeni. Moskva: S. Dorovatovskiy and A. Charushnikov. ------1919. “Plan organizatsii Proletkul’ta”. Proletarkaya kul’tura. No. 6 (February). ------1924. O proletarskoy kul’ture. Moskva-Leningrad: Kniga. Gloveli, Georgii. 1998. Bogdanov as Scientist and Utopian. In Bogdanov and His Work. A guide to the published and unpublished works of Alexander A. Bogdanov (Malinovsky) 1873–1928, edited by John Biggart, Georgii Gloveli, Avraham Yassour. Ashgate: Aldershot 1998. Lunacharskiy, A. V. 1919. Moe partiynoe proshloe. In Lunacharskiy, A. V. Velikiy perevorot (Oktyabrskaya revolyutsiya). Part 1. Peterburg: Izd. Z.I. Grzhebina. Maksimov, N. 1909. “Ne nado zatemnyat’” , in Ko vsem tovarishcham! Paris: RSDRP (before 28 November /11 December). Ritter, Gerhard A. 1979. Arbeiterkultur. Taunus: Königstein. Scherrer, Jutta. 1981. “L’intelligentsia russe: sa quête de la ‘vérité religieuse du socialisme“, in Le temps de la réflexion II. Paris: Gallimard. Sovremennoe polozhenie i zadachi partii. No date (end 1909/ beginning 1910). Paris: Izdanie gruppy Vpered. Sochor, Zenovia A. 1988. Revolution and Culture. The Bogdanov-Lenin controversy. Ithaca and London: Cornell Press University. Steila, Daniela. 1996. Scienza e rivoluzione: La recezione dell'empiriocriticismo nella cultura russa (1877–1910). Firence: Le Lettere.

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SEIWERT’S ‘OPEN LETTER’ TO BOGDANOV Introduction: Fabian Tompsett______

This text, by Franz Seiwert (1894–1933) was published as ‘Offener Brief an den Genossen A. Bogdanow’ in the journal Die Aktion in July 1921 (Seiwert 1921). At the time Seiwert was aligned with this literary and political journal which was edited by Franz Pfemfert and published in Berlin between 1911 and 1932. From 1920 Die Aktion was supportive of the Kommunistische Arbeiter-Partei Deutschlands (KAPD) and was becoming increasingly critical not only of the Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (KPD), but also of the very concept of a political party. Earlier in 1921, in May and June respectively, Die Aktion had published two translations of Bogdanov: ‘Über proletarische Dichtung’ (Bogdanov 1921a) and ‘Beispiel proletarischer Dichtung’ (1921b).1 The interest of Seiwert and of Die Aktion in the work of Bogdanov enables us to add these titles, and several others, to the list of German translations of his work that appears in Bogdanov and His Work: A Guide to the Published and Unpublished Works of Alexander A. Bogdanov (Malinovsky)

1873-1928 (Biggart, Gloveli & Yassour 1998). Here there is reference only to the translation of ‘Chto takoe proletarskaya poeziya?’ that was published in 1920 under the title ‘Was ist proletarische Dichtung?’, as part of the series Kleine Bibliothek der russischen Korrespondenz, by A. Seehof & Co. This series was closely aligned with the Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (KPD). However, even before 1920, Bogdanov’s work had

been promoted in Die Aktion. In June and July 1919 Die Aktion repeatedly advertised a text by Bogdanov: Die Wissenschaft und die Arbeiter (‘Science and the Worker’) (Bogdanov 1919a) which they announced would be available in August 1919. Efforts to locate a copy of this have proved fruitless. A few weeks later the journal published a short text of Bogdanov under the title Die Wissenschaft und die Arbeiterklasse (Bogdanov 1919b). This preceded the publication of a 29 page pamphlet with the same title by the Verlag der Wochenschrift Die Aktion in 1920 with a preface by Pfemfert2 (Bogdanov

1 A comparison of the articles published in these two issues suggests that the first contains the text of Bogdanov’s Chto takoe proletarskaya poeziya? (1918) and the second translations of the poems contained in the original. It is not inconceivable that this material was published in Die Aktion at the suggestion of Bogdanov, given that Otto Rühle had been in Moscow in June 1920 to attend the Second Congress of the Comintern, as reported in Die Aktion in October 1920 (Rühle n.d.).

2 See Thomas Moebius, Russische Sozialutopien von Peter I. bis Stalin (2015, 252) who quotes Pfemfert as follows: “Bogdanov’s work is very valuable. It not only shows the

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1920). We can date publication of the book more precisely by reference to a notice that appeared in Die Aktion No. 13/14 for 3 April 1920, according to which the title had been despatched but that many bulk orders had been “lost”. Was there any relationship between the German translations of What is proletarian poetry? and those that appeared in English three years later in Labour Monthly (Bogdanov 1923)? On the face of it, the English translations do not seem to have been based on the translations that had already been published in Die Aktion. Seiwert was certainly in contact with the Workers’ Socialist Federation who published some of his illustrations in their magazine Workers’ Dreadnought. Indeed his comrade Ret Marut had left Düsseldorf for London in 1923 and was aided by Sylvia Pankhurst, editor of Workers’ Dreadnought (Goldwasser 1993). But like the KAPD, the Workers’ Socialist Federation was forced out of the Communist International for failing to accept Lenin’s dictum on accepting parliamentarianism. As in Germany, relations between the expelled Left Communists and the official Leninist Communist Party were often less than cordial. The English translation of Seiwert’s article that follows is based on the version published in Der Schritt, der einmal getan wurde, wird nicht züruckgenommen, an anthology of Franz Seiwert’s writing edited by Uli Bohnen and Dirke Backes (Bohnen and Backes 1978). For a full list of contributions to Die Aktion see Wikisource (Wikisource 2016). The title is reminiscent of Herman Gorter’s Open Letter to Comrade Lenin (Gorter 1920) which also castigates the Central Communists (KPD Zentral) in relation to what both Gorter and Seiwert viewed as the betrayal of the Ruhr Uprising. Seiwert’s use of term of address “Comrade” (Genossen) shows a level of political proximity which is quite different from that of Lenin: in his opening speech at the First All-Russia Congress on Adult Education (May 6, 1917) Lenin attacked Bogdanov as one of a “plethora of bourgeois intellectuals” whom he accused of testing their absurd ideas under the pretence of promoting a purely proletarian art and proletarian culture (Lenin 1972). This can be compared with the polemic of George Plekhanov (1856–1918) with Bogdanov, in the course of which Plekhanov said “you are no comrade of mine because you and I represent two directly opposed world-outlooks” (Plekhanov 1937).

way and goal, [...] there is more: the security and certainty that the proletarian worldview is a brilliant idea for humanity.”

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OPEN LETTER TO COMRADE A. BOGDANOV Translation: Fabian Tompsett ______Franz Seiwert 1921

Your work “On Proletarian Poetry” does not address a substantial part of poetry and the arts. I essentially agree with you, because you, in as much as you are able, reveal the truest ethos of the artworks, as well as showing how the symptoms of disorder of the capitalist system best reveal the order of this system, against which the ruling class are powerless. “The more a social activity, a series of social processes, becomes too powerful for men’s conscious control and grows above their heads, and the more it appears a matter of pure chance, then all the more surely within this chance the laws peculiar to it and inherent in it assert themselves as if by natural necessity” wrote Friedrich Engels.3 Art is a social activity, a social process and that part of the art that you, Comrade Bogdanov, disregard, is that which is too powerful for the conscious control of man, which is most truly revealed as the coincidence of the singular and inherent laws of the artwork, the tendency of the artwork. Contemporary art is divided into the content which is displayed and the form in which the content is displayed. The content has to reshape the form, content and form must be the struggle, solidarity, class consciousness of the proletariat. And the work, in which this occurs will be created from the collective consciousness where the ego that creates the work, is no longer an isolated bourgeois-individualist, but rather an expressive instrument of the collective. Marx taught us to recognise the equality of all co-existing things with every other thing, to see the common law inherent in them. This knowledge is not only applied with hindsight (social-democratic opportunist Marxism), but also concerns art in that as regards proletarian art, it only arises when content and form are proletarian. It seems to me that the context in which proletarian finds itself, when the proletarian content is articulated through a bourgeois Artform, is quite social democratic, with the term social democratic including the Central Communists.4 The same attitude is asserted when it is claimed

3 From The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State Chapter IX, Barbarism and Civilisation (Engels 1942). 4 By “Central Communists” Seiwert is referring to the leaders of the Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (KPD) who had expelled the more radical Kommunistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands (KAPD) in October 1919. Paul Levi (1883–1930) was their leader. See also Worum handelt sich? (Seiwert 1920) where Seiwert is particularly bitter about their role in the Peace of Münster (31st October 1920) where two KPD leaders consented

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that the continuation of the production process in the capitalist- centralised sense, from top to bottom, can be used as the production system of communist society, the same attitude which claims that through so-called Unity schools, bourgeois science can escape the bourgeois scientific methods, in the belief that science created in the service of the bourgeoisie could be proclaimed free, independent and objectively true in relation to this class viewpoint simply by being taken out of hands of the bourgeoisie, to become the science for the proletariat. Yes, for the proletariat because it remains a proletarian mass, however, not of the proletariat, whereby it frees itself through overcoming itself as the proletariat. Only then is it necessary and sufficient for the proletariat to assert its entitlement in the face of the history of humanity, to expropriate from the hands of the bourgeoisie, production, the insights of the technical sciences, which I also expect to include medicine, to make use of the bourgeois artform as a means for propaganda, and if so desired, to create the proletarian organisation of production, the proletarian science and proletarian art. Communist society and proletarian culture are not created through seizing capitalist society and bourgeois culture. Rather, we have to create them. Thus to the extent that proletarian culture displays in its form an expression of organisation and the sense of solidarity of the masses, these are displayed in the artworks, as visible forces, movement, equilibrium, in short the “nature”, the world, both jointly and severally, to compellingly appear to the individuals as necessary for the development of their self-consciousness, their creativity and their participation in the totality. Thus there can be no longer be a duality of content and form more, because content and form are one. So, Comrade Bogdanov, it is not as easy as you think to determine whether a work is created from the collective consciousness or not. It is not a matter of whether the label says “I” or “we”. There is always the question of whether “We” has been achieved, whether the “We” has been realised in the artwork, and the “I” has become indifferent. Explored in this context, who is the “most distinguished in Germany, or even Europe”, George Grosz sitting in the dock or the chairman of the KPD in the same place5. It’s the same picture and a mutual confirmation.

to the disarmament of the Red Army of the Ruhr. By the 8th April 1920, the Freikorps had killed over 1,000 militants of the Red Army. 5 George Grosz (1893–1959) was a German Dadaist and Communist activist. In 1921 he was put on trial for Gott mit Uns (Grosz 1920) a portfolio of 9 drawings attacking the German military for their brutal repression of the Workers’Councils. He and his publisher were found guilty and fined.

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Consider alongside Max Hölz one of the many nameless proletarian whose “mouthpeice” he was.6 This is also a confirmation! Comrade Bogdanov! For me, it is increasingly clear that the proletarian society generally will not know these parts into which bourgeois culture is disintegrating: science, art, and again their parts: poetry, music, painting and so on. Form and content will not be known but only work created from the true collective consciousness in which everyone becomes a creator, in which everyone is a creator. The only past that exists is that which enters the collective consciousness, where its is again recreated. Only the bourgeoisie gain from this. Everything comes together, united in the desire for socialism for communism. Communist society nowhere tolerates leaders and gods, everyone must and will be their own leader, their own creator. That is the council structure build as opposed to the future state7 of Social Democracy.

References

Bebel, August. 1879. Die Frau und der Sozialismus Hottingen-Zürich: Verlag der Volksbuchhandlung. Biggart, John. 1989. Alexander Bogdanov, Left Bolshevism and the Proletkult 1904–1932. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.328854 accessed 1st January 2014 Biggart, John, Georgii Gloveli, and Avraham Yassour. 1998. Bogdanov and His Work: A Guide to the Published and Unpublished Works of Alexander A. Bogdanov (Malinovsky) 1873–1928. Aldershot: Ashgate. Bogdanov Alexander. 1919a. ‘Die Wissenschaft und die Arbeiter’. Advertised for publication in Die Aktion. ------1919b. ‘Die Wissenschaft und die Arbeiterklasse’. Die Aktion No. 35/36 Year 9, 6 September 1919: 596–601. ------1920. Die Wissenschaft und die Arbeiterklasse” Berlin: Verlag der Wochenschrift Die Aktion. ------1921a. ‘Über proletarische Dichtung’. Die Aktion. Nos. 21/22 Year 11, 28 May 1921: 303–309. ------1921b. ‘Beispiel proletarischer Dichtung’. Die Aktion. Nos. 23/24 Year 11, 11 June 1921; 337–340.

6 Max Hölz (1889–1933) was a German Communist activist who organised a Red Army in Vogtland, near the border with Czechoslovakia at the time of the Ruhr Uprising in 1920. In 1921 he once again took part in military activity in the March Action of 1921. He was aligned with the KAPD which supported an attempt to overthrow the Weimar Republic. He was eventually captured and his trial began in May 1921 (Kuhn 2012). However, many of the AAUE grouped around Die Aktion were critical: Otto Rühle had published an article critical of Hölz who responded in his memoirs (Hölz 2012). 7 Zukunftsstaat: August Bebel (1840–1913) devoted over 100 pages to this concept in his Die Frau und der Sozialismus (1879) which advocated the application of science and rational planning to resolving the problems of implementing socialism. See Kenneth Calkins (1982)

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------1923. “Proletarian Poetry”, translated in Labour Monthly Vol. IV, 5 (May, 1923): 276–285, and Vol. IV, 6 (June 1923): 357–362. Bohnen, Uli. 1978. Franz W. Seiwert 1894–1933. Leben und Werk. Köln: Kölnischer Kunstverein. Bohnen, Uli and Backes, Dirk. 1978. Der Schritt, der einmal getan wurde, wird nicht züruckgenommen: Franz w. Shriften. Berlin: Jarin Krammer Verlag. Calkins, Kenneth. 1982. ‘The Uses of Utopianism: The Millenarian Dream in Central European Social Democracy before 1914’. Central European History. 15: 124–148 Die Aktion. 1921. ‘Bericht von der Einheitskonferenz der AAU (Einheitsorganisation)’. Die Aktion No. 41/42, 15 October 1921. Engels Freidrich. 1942. The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, translated by Alick West as revised by the Marx/Engels Internet Archive. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/ accessed 31 October 2015 Goldwasser, James. 1993. ‘Ret Marut: The Early B. Traven’. The Germanic Review: Literature, Culture, Theory 68, 3: 133–142. Gorter, Herman. 1920/1921. ‘Open letter to comrade Lenin, A reply to “left-wing” communism, an infantile disorder’. Workers’ Dreadnought. London. 12 March–11 June 1921; https://www.marxists.org/archive/gorter/1920/open-letter/ accessed 31 October 2015 Grosz, George. 1920. Gott mit Uns. Berlin: Der Malik-Verlag. Hölz, Max. 2012. From the “White Cross” to the Red Flag, translated by Gabriel Kuhn in All Power to the Councils! A Documentary History of the German Revolution of 1918– 1919, edited by Gabriel Kuhn. Oakland: PM Press. Kuhn, Gabriel. 2012. All Power to the Councils!: A Documentary History of the German Revolution. Oakland, Ca.: PM Press. Lenin, Vladimir. 1972. Two Speeches at the First All-Russia Congress on Adult Education, translated by George Hanna. In Lenin’s Collected Works. 4th English Edition. Moscow: Progress Publishers. Volume 29, 333–376. https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/may/06.htm#bk01 accessed 31 October 2015 Moebius, Thomas. 2015 Russische Sozialutopien von Peter I. bis Stalin. Münster: Lit Verlag. Plekhanov, Georgi. 1976. ‘Materialismus Militans: Reply to Mr Bogdanov’. In Georgi Plekhanov’, Selected Philosophical Works. Moscow: Progress Publishers. Volume 3, 188–283. https://www.marxists.org/archive/plekhanov/1907/materialismus- militans.htm#n2 accessed 31 October 2015 Rühle, Otto. 1921. ‘Das Ende der mitteldeutschen Kämpfe’. Die Aktion Nos. 15/16 Year 11, 6 April 1921: 215–223. ------n.d. ‘Moscow and Ourselves’, translated by Mike Jones marxists.org accessed 5 November 2015. https://www.marxists.org/archive/ruhle/1920/moscow-and- ourselves.htm. Seiwert, Franz. 1920. ‘Worum handelt sich?’. Die Aktion Nos. 37/38 Year 10, 18 September 1920: 514. ------1921. ‘Offener Brief an den Genossen Bogdanow’. Die Aktion Nos. 15/16 Year 11, Nos. 27/28; 373–374. Wikisource 2016 . ‘Die Aktion’ https://de.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Die_Aktion&oldid=2540295 accessed 27 Jan 2016.

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KNOWLEDGE AS FILM vs. KNOWLEDGE AS PHOTO ALTERNATIVE MODELS IN EARLY SOVIET THOUGHT Daniela Steila______

While Lenin considers human knowledge similar to a mirror-like reflection of the object, Bogdanov emphasizes the creative role of the subject in organizing the world. On the basis of some textual evidences, it seems possible to illustrate the epistemologies of the two fields into which Russian Marxism divides at the beginning of the twentieth century, in terms of the two metaphors of photography on the one hand, and cinema on the other. In particular, while discussing Einstein's relativity, Bogdanov considers sense organs, memory, and all the apparatus of human knowledge “as a certain kind of cinematographic device”; Eisenstein deems that cinema is “an excellent instrument of perception … for the sensation of movement”. Although it is difficult to find compelling proofs of exchanges and influences, this

is an actual ‘tangential point’ between Bogdanov and Eisenstein's ideas on human knowledge.

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In intellectual history, influences of ideas are a major topic, and also a very difficult one: in order to prove contacts or impacts of ideas one has to demonstrate connections, readings, discussions, comments, notes... This is the intriguing and fascinating detective side of the intellectual historian's work, looking for the ‘smoking guns’ which definitely prove relationships, exchanges, influences. In the case of Bogdanov and Eisenstein, both extremely compelling figures in early Soviet thought, we shall consider that, though belonging to different generations, they shared a common milieu, the Proletkult movement of the 1920s, where Bogdanov was a leading figure, and the young Eisenstein took part in discussions and writings within the Proletkult organization (Tikka 2009; Biggart 2016). Eisenstein, however, did not explicitly refer to Bogdanov in his works, nor did he openly discuss the latter’s ideas. Their relationships need to be examined by a variety of interdisciplinary methods, which only a wide collective effort will probably be able to achieve. To such a picture I should like to add some curious details. Bogdanov was interested in cinema long before the revolution, and maintained that cinema could be used to educate the new proletarian class. This is not surprising: Bogdanov had a serious scientific education, and he was very interested in technology in general. In his first utopian novel, Red Star, Bogdanov imagines innovative uses for both photography and cinema. In 1907 he noted the already existing application of photography in photo-telescopes: on Mars there were telescopes which take pictures so precise and detailed that they could be enlarged in order to show details invisible to the naked eye. Menni, a technician, explains to the author's alter ego, Leonid, that the “direct-vision magnification” of a certain telescope “is about 600, (…) but when that is insufficient we take a photograph and examine it under a microscope, which raises the power to 60,000 or more” (Bogdanov 1984: 40). On Mars, photos are also used to hold attention alive during presentations. Another Martian character, Enno, gives “a fascinating account” of a distant planet, “its deep, storm-tossed oceans and towering mountains, its scorching sun and thick white clouds, terrible hurricanes and thunderstorms, grotesque monsters and majestic giant plants. He illustrated his lecture with moving pictures on a screen which took up an entire wall of the auditorium”. Leonid notices that “Enno's voice was the only sound to be heard in the darkness; the audience was plunged into deep concentration” (Bogdanov 1984: 72–73). A person so deeply interested in the development of a new sort of ‘pedagogy’ in

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order to develop proletarian culture, as Bogdanov was through his whole life, was obviously thinking of pedagogical applications of those new powerful means of representation and communication. On Mars, cinema turns out to be very powerful. In respect of its technical potential, Bogdanov's imagination extended beyond development of sound cinema, which was already being experimented with on Earth, and envisages 3D movies. He writes: “the theater in our little town had one feature that held particular fascination for me, namely the fact that no actors performed there at all. The plays were either transmitted from distant large cities by means of audiovisual devices, or – more usually – they were cinematic reproductions of plays performed long ago, sometimes so long ago that the actors themselves were already dead. The Martians have mastered the technique of instantaneous color photography and use it to capture life in motion, much as in our cinema theaters. But not only do they combine the camera with the phonograph, as we are thus far rather unsuccessfully beginning to do on Earth, they also employ the principle of the stereoscope to give the moving pictures natural depth. Two images, the two halves of the stereogram, are projected simultaneously onto the screen, and in front of each seat in the auditorium is fastened a set of binoculars, which combines the two flat pictures into three-dimensional ones. It was eerie to watch people moving, acting, and expressing their thoughts and feelings as vividly and distinctly as in real life and yet know that there was actually nothing there but a plate of frosted glass in front of a phonograph and an electric light operated by a clockwork mechanism. It was a weird, almost mystical phenomenon that filled me with a vague sense of unreality” (Bogdanov 1984: 87–88). The last sentence of this amazing description of the 3D Martian movie theater is especially significant. According to Bogdanov, cinema turns out to be the best technical means of ‘reproducing’ reality in such a faithful, precise way that reproduction could be completely confused with reality, in a sort of ‘mystical’ experience. In fact, the problem of the relationship between perception and reality was a central topic of discussion among Russian Marxists at the beginning of the twentieth century, just as it became – again – in the 1920s. Within a common materialistic framework, which necessarily considers human beings as a part of the material world, and sense perception as the first, basic connection between knowing subject and known object, one can illustrate the epistemologies of the two fields into which Russian Marxism divides at the beginning of the twentieth

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century, in terms of the two metaphors of photography on the one hand, and cinema on the other. It is well known that Lenin proposed his own epistemology as the only one that was consistent with ‘orthodox’ Marxism, which relied on the whole history of materialism as opposed to idealism. As Friedrich Engels stated in his Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, in the whole history of thought philosophers split into two great fields: “Those who asserted the primacy of the mind over nature (...) comprised the camp of idealism. The others, who regarded nature as primary, belong to the various schools of materialism” (Engels 1886: 366). As far as epistemology is concerned, consequently, materialists explain human knowledge starting from the impressions that the external objects provide on the sense organs of the human body. Such a fundamental empiricism was considered as a sound point for Russian ‘orthodox’ Marxism. However, G. V. Plekhanov, the well-known ‘father of Russian Marxism’, whom Lenin openly declared to be his own ‘master’ in philosophy (Lenin 1924: 343; 1921: 94), had developed a peculiar ‘theory of hieroglyphics’ relying both on the philosophical tradition of French eighteenth century materialism, and modern physiology (Steila 1991). According to him, our impressions are undeniably subjective and cannot be identified with the material movements, which are their objective bases and which excite our sensations. However, there is an exact correspondence between the objective conditions of the thing and the sensation we feel when it stimulates our sense organs. Plekhanov concluded: “Our sensations are some kind of hieroglyphics that make us aware of what is happening in reality. Hieroglyphics do not resemble the events they communicate, but they are capable of communicating with absolute accuracy the events themselves and – what is of prime importance – the relations which exist between them (Plekhanov 1892: 501). So, according to Plekhanov, the ‘truth’ of our sensations did not consist in their being a ‘mirror image’ of things, but in their providing us with undistorted representations of the real relations between things or events. Lenin, however, deemed this to be the weakest point in Plekhanov’s thought: “Plekhanov was guilty of an obvious mistake in his exposition of materialism” (Lenin 1909: 238). Lenin compared Plekhanov’s theory of hieroglyphs with Hermann von Helmholtz’s views on perception and experience, and endorsed Albrecht Rau’s criticism of the latter, in order to criticize Plekhanov. Lenin wrote: “an image can never wholly compare with the model, but an image is one thing, a symbol, a conventional sign, another. The image inevitably and of necessity implies the objective reality of that which it ‘images’. ‘Conventional sign,’

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symbol, hieroglyph are concepts that introduce an entirely unnecessary element of agnosticism” (Lenin 1909: 235). Instead of Plekhanov’s unnecessary emphasis on conventional signs, Lenin proposed his own theory of knowledge as ‘reflection’, which he considered much more consistent with the whole tradition of philosophical materialism. According to his views, the camera is a good way of explaining how we know reality. In Materialism and Empirio- Criticism one reads that “objective reality (…) is given to man by his sensations, and (…) is copied, photographed and reflected by our sensations, while existing independently of them” (Lenin 1909: 130). Any photographer would object that the camera is by no means a ‘neutral’ instrument for the reproduction of reality: owing to its technical characteristics it provides us with a two-dimensional account of three-dimensional reality. Besides, at the beginning of the century, colour reproduction was far from being precise. Finally, as we know very well, in any picture it is always the author's ‘cut’ that defines what is actually photographed. Nevertheless, the camera is often considered even now, in popular understanding, as a reliable means of reproducing reality, as a sort of reflecting mirror. The image we see in the mirror is also not at all identical with the real object, and the same is true for our perceptions, as has been well known since ancient times, and as the huge philosophical literature on the topic of ‘sense-deception’ testifies. What the example of the camera as a faithful reproducing device really means to say, is that in spite of the technical specificities of the camera, and the peculiarities of our sense organs, the object remains that object, within the photo as well as within our sensations. The object exists as such independently of our perception or photography, which merely reproduces it. In Lenin's works the example of photography as faithful reproduction of reality is actually used very rarely. Lenin used the word ‘photography’ in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, as we have shown, but also once again in 1909, referring to a polemical article he was writing: Ideological Decay and Disunity Among Russian Social-Democrats. He wrote that this essay was “an instantaneous photograph of one of the rivulets of that broad torrent of ideological confusion” (Lenin 1933: 109), which gave rise to different ideological movements dividing Russian Social- Democracy. Again, photograph means a representation of reality, in this case a quite complex reality, corresponding to the picture itself. This meaning of the word ʽphotographʾ was already wide-spread in Russian scientific literature at the end of the nineteenth century. For instance the well-known physiologist I. M. Sechenov wrote in 1892:

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“The eye refers to forms and movements, like a photographic record, capable of clearly perceiving not only motionless, but also moving forms; therefore the similarity between what is sensed and the real is here as tangible as the similarity between a human being's face and his or her photo” (Sechenov 1952; 1892: 472). Sechenov was one of the authorities Plekhanov relied on while developing his theory of hieroglyphs, but Lenin did not take this into account when criticizing Plekhanov1. He preferred to maintain that Sechenov was a leading figure of Russian science2. Photography was in general considered as a good representative of realistic mirror-like knowledge within materialism, and not only by Lenin. Cinema, on the contrary, is never used by Lenin as a metaphor for knowledge. In his works one can find only a few passing references to the topic, mainly relating to propaganda documentaries and their possible impact (for instance in 1913 in order to criticize its ideological use by German Catholics or Taylorist capitalists; or after the revolution to support its ideological use for the benefit of the victorious revolution) (Lenin 1913a: 594; 1913b: 245; 1930: 112; 1920: 161; 1928: 406; 1925). Amongst those Marxists who were critical of Lenin and Plekhanov's ‘orthodoxy’, photos were not considered at all as a good example of how knowledge works. One of the first to reject the analogy was Joseph Dietzgen, who was very popular in Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century amongst the so-called Machian Marxists, i. e., the opponents of Lenin (Steila 2013: 237–251). Marx himself had described Dietzgen as a representative of “autodidactic philosophy – pursued by workers themselves” (Marx 1867: 497), Engels had written that this German worker could understand dialectics by himself, independently of Hegel (Engels 1886: 383–384). At the same time, Ernst Mach, in the Preface to the Russian translation of his Analysis of Sensations, wrote that “J. Dietzgen … has reached conclusions very similar to those presented in this book” (Mach 1908: 4). Similarities between Dietzgen's positions and Machian thought (the ideas of Mach himself, and those of his Russian followers) were often emphasized at that moment (Kautsky 1909; Yushkevich 1907: 80, 86–88; Valentinov 1908: 161–168; Dauge 1907: VIII), and also later. In 1925, for instance, while discussing Bogdanov's Tectology, I. Vaynshteyn pointed out some parallels between Bogdanov's theory of organization and the thinking of Dietzgen (Vaynshteyn 1925). Indeed, Dietzgen had criticized the

1 When criticizing Plekhanov's theory of knowledge, Lenin rather considered it to have derived from Helmholtz's positions. On the connections of Plekhanov, Sechenov and Helmholtz. See Steila 1991. 2 Lenin asked his mother to send to him in Geneve a copy of Sechenov's recent book Elementy mysli in 1904. See Lenin 1904.

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epistemology of ‘reflection’ exactly by maintaining that camera does not take pictures conforming to reality. He wrote: “Nothing more insipid has been said of truth and knowledge than ... that truth is the conformity of our knowledge with its object. How can a picture ‘conform’ to its model? Approximately it can … But to be altogether alike, quite the same as the original, what an abnormal idea!” (Dietzgen 1870–1875: 140). These topics, widely discussed within Russian Marxism at the beginning of the twentieth century, became again very important during the 1920s. Since, by this time, Bogdanov had become a prominent figure within the powerful Proletkult movement, and since he maintained, as it were, un-orthodox theoretical positions in relation to the basic principles of official Marxism, Lenin's Materialism and Empirio-Criticism was republished in a second edition, which became much more influential than the first. When the book came out for the first time in 1909, most readers took it to be mainly as a polemical work, as part of the ideological struggle within the Bolshevik fraction at that time (Steila 2013: 328–339), but in 1920, in its second edition, it was put forward as being an authoritative statement of Marxist orthodox epistemology. The post-face by V. I. Nevskiy, Dialectical Materialism and the Philosophy of Dead Reaction, made it clear that Lenin's work represented Orthodoxy in Marxist thought, and that Bogdanov was to be condemned as a dangerous heretic. The main charge was that “Bogdanov … obstinately maintains, now as before, that the physical world is ‘socially organized experience’” (Nevskiy 1920: 331). Furthermore, in his later works (Nevskiy quoted Philosophy of Living Experience, Proletarian Culture, Outlines of the Science of Organization, Tectology...) Bogdanov had repeated the same mistakes that he was accused of by Lenin in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. In order to show which kind of mistakes these were, Nevskiy mentioned Bogdanov's conception of the ‘physical’ as depending on collective experience. Bogdanov had written: “Physical experience is the experience of someone, – of all humanity in its development, to be precise. This is a world of strict, established, worked-out regularity and the world of specific, exact correlations. It is that well-ordered world in which all theorems of geometry, all formulas of mechanics, astronomy, physics, etc. operate. Is it possible to accept this world, this system of experience as being independent of humanity? Is it possible to say that it existed before humans did?” (Bogdanov 2016: 218). Bogdanov had answered: “ if it is said that the law of gravity operated before there were human beings, then this is not the same as

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saying that it is independent of human beings” (Bogdanov 2016: 219). This was the breaking point between orthodox Marxist on the one hand and Bogdanov's science of organization on the other. Nevskiy's post-face inflamed the discussion over Bogdanov's system of thought. A few years later in 1923 Bogdanov contributed to an interesting book on Einstein's theory of relativity. This volume included the translation of an extensive essay by Moritz Schlick, and some articles by Russians: one by Bogdanov's close friend, Vladimir Bazarov, on space and time in the light of the new theory; Bogdanov's essay on the theory of relativity from the organizational point of view; and a work by Pavel Yushkevich on the philosophical meaning of relativity. Bogdanov maintained that Einstein's theory was of great importance for his own general science of organization. From such a standpoint, “the question of the correlations between a complex (any kind of – physical, biological, psychical, social) and its environment” turns out to be a key problem (Bogdanov 1923: 101)3. Einstein's theory considers the movement of physical bodies as a specific case of such a general problem. In Bogdanov's words: “Transfer represents a particular case of interaction of a body with its environment, a special case: the body loses and gains not energy, but the link with its environment, loses a link (spatial contact) with some elements, gains a link with others. Conventional thinking sees there two facts: 1) the environment itself is not moving; 2) the body moves. The theory of relativity works on the premise that here there is one fact, not two. It is the correlation of two sides that changes; depending on the position of the knowing subject, this might be expressed in one way, or another” (Bogdanov 1923: 102). In order to understand movement from the standpoint of the theory of relativity, more than one observer is needed. Classic physics assumed one observer, the new physics requires a sort of collective, social engagement: “Since a single observer cannot occupy two positions at the same time, even mentally, the question of coordination appears to be essentially a specific organizational-social task: to unify, to connect the knowledge of two observers, one of whom is really or mentally attached to the moving body, the other to its environment, whilst each of them operates with his own instruments of orientation, his own system of space-time coordinates” (Bogdanov 1923: 104–105). Bogdanov was therefore able to accept Einstein's theory as a confirmation of his own thinking, since Einstein's theory moved toward

3 Bogdanov wrote on this topic another article (Bogdanov 1924), which was mainly a discussion of Timiryazev's ideas on relativity.

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a sort of “not-subjective” relativism, thereby developing farther the point of view of Mach (Bogdanov 1923: 121). The contents of this book focused on the idea that the theory of relativity should be considered as a confirmation of, and perhaps a development and regeneration of, the old Machism. Yushkevich, who examined the philosophical significance of Einstein's theory, wrote that the theory of relativity was “wholly filled with the spirit of those influences, which its author acknowledged, when referring to Hume and Mach as the thinkers who gave him conceptual inspiration for his work” (Yushkevich 1923: 155). Yushkevich concluded: “the theory of relativity is the rebirth of modern positivism, which receives here new confirmation and support” (Yushkevich 1923: 155)4. In his discussion of Einstein's relativity, Bogdanov made a very curious statement: “Our sense organs, memory, and all the scientific auxiliary means for perceiving and recording facts, can be considered as a certain kind of cinematographic device” (Bogdanov 1923: 107). Let us examine the context in which this statement appears. Bogdanov is explaining that “the theory of relativity formulates the corrections, through which one can move from the projections and forms of the events of the system A within system B to the ‘reality’ of those events in the same system A, where they take place, and vice versa” (Bogdanov 1923: 107). This possibility can be explained through the image of ‘instantaneous photographs’ of one system, taken from the other. But at this point Bogdanov makes the statement quoted above, and emphasizes that it will be more correct and effective to compare our perceptive devices to cinema instead of photography. He explains: “If two such devices, within the systems A and B, simultaneously film the other system, each ‘film’ will be unfaithful, ‘distorted’ when compared with a film taken within the same system: the representations of bodies will be foreshortened in the line of the movement, the very course of the events is slowed down (‘the clock lags behind’), for each in the same way and from their respective vantage points. A person, for instance, in these ‘films’ has a certain height when standing up, and another when lying down. It is clear that formulae permitting one to move from the coordinates of one system to another should be understood as being formulae of correction for the passage from more or less distorted representations to the internal reality of each system:

4 Einstein himself acknowledged certain influence of Mach's ideas on his own positions as a young scientist. See Einstein 1951: 20–21 and Blackmore 1972: 247–285.

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formulae of substitution (podstanovka) of things and events, to be applied to their perceptible forms” (Bogdanov 1923: 107)5. This passage is particularly interesting. Here Bogdanov puts the theory of relativity into his own perspective of knowledge as the ‘construction’ of reality by collective subjects. The formulae which allow to move from one system to the other are called ‘formulae of substitution’ (podstanovka). The term ‘substitution’ (podstanovka) had been used by Bogdanov since Empiriomonizm to mean a methodological approach aimed at explaining phenomena and events within life as well as within science (Bogdanov 1995: 53). According to Bogdanov: “substitution consists in the fact that one object or phenomenon is replaced for the purpose of cognition by another one, real or mental. For instance, under a work of art ‘are put’ certain images, sentiments, moods, which it stimulates in the person who reads it, looks at it, or listens to it, ‘under’ a white sun ray is put the sum of all those colored rays, into which it is decomposed through the prism, etc.” (Bogdanov 1995: 52). The main point for Bogdanov is that substitution is not an individual, but a collective method of constructing reality: “The principle of substitution lies in the communication among people, in their mutual understanding” (Bogdanov 1995: 52). Substitution is the method by which a human group in a certain epoch responds to the practical and theoretical need for a harmonious and unified worldview. Within such a worldview human beings can understand each other and interact with reality6. As is well known, in Bogdanov's view, experience is essentially social. In 1906 Bogdanov wrote: “The world of experience crystallized and continues to crystallize out of chaos. The force that determines the forms of such crystallization is the human relationship. Beyond these forms there is no experience, since an unorganized mass of feelings does not constitute an experience. Thus, experience is social in its basis, and its progress is the socio-psychological process of its organization, to which the

5 “Если два таких аппарата, находясь в системах А и В, делают взаимно съемку этих систем, то их “фильмы” будут изменены, “искажены” по сравнению со съемкою из своей системы: изображения тел окажутся укорочены по линии движения, самый ход событий замедлен (“отставание часов”), то и другое одинаково с обеих сторон. Человек, напр., на этих “фильмах” имеет один рост, когда он стоит, и другой, - когда лежит. Ясно, что формулы перехода от координат одной системы следует понимать как формулы поправок для перехода от более или менее искаженных изображений к внутренней действительности каждой системы, формулы подстановки вещей и событий под их воспринимаемые образы.” 6 More on the concept of ‘substitution’, see Steila 2009: 153–157.

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organizing individual-psychic process completely adapts itself” (Bogdanov 1906: XXXIII–XXXIV). To understand how substitution works does not mean just to become aware of a sort of spontaneous process within one's own consciousness, but to appreciate the deep social nature of such a process. In one of Bogdanov's unpublished letters to Bazarov, one reads: “Substitution is a complicated product of social development, and it is particularly wrong to confuse it with the passage from perception to apperception. Substitution is a problem of cognitive methodology, i.e., a problem of the social – not just the psychological – order, and it emerges on the basis of social symbolism” 7. From the standpoint of Bogdanov's thought, the theory of relativity could be seen as a new perspective, capable of producing a better form of substitution. Bogdanov considered this to be an instance of the ‘unifying tendency’ that was at work within natural science (Bogdanov 1996: XVI). In the first book of Tektology he writes of the theory of relativity: “Its formulation and analysis are entirely based upon the relationships between observers accepting these or other events, and upon the conditions of signaling which let them co-ordinate their observations. The notion of the physical environment is evidently expanded here in the organizational sense; it is complemented by elements never before taken into account, namely, enquiring beings and their relationships” (Bogdanov 1996: 100). Such a view overcomes the classic physics of the ‘single observer’ and creates new opportunities for epistemology to overcome the subjectivity of a point of view within one system and to take into account other systems. Communication allows people to develop a wider worldview. It was not fortuitous that the example Bogdanov used to illustrate how we can employ the formulae of substitution to move from one set of representations to another was a classical epistemological problem. Bogdanov wrote: “Let us imagine a person living in a cave; its entrance is blocked by a optical-deforming pane; he can observe and study the external world only through this pane. It is evident that all the measures and relations in this world for that person are distorted in a certain way. In order to predict the positions of moving external objects, that person must use formulae, similar to the formulae of the general theory of relativity, in particular, Gaussian coordinates. But in exactly the same way all

7 Archive Fondazione Basso. Bogdanov's Letter to Bazarov, June 21, 1911 (see Steila 2009: 168).

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measures and relationships of everything that happens within the cave are distorted for an observer on the outside. If both sides succeed in identifying the properties of the medium separating them, by introducing corrections in their observations, they will be able to establish a precise picture of the things and the events” (Bogdanov 1923: 107–108). In other words, a new, better, substitution is achieved. In one endnote in the first book of Tektology, Bogdanov maintains that “current formulations of the ‘principle of relativity’ elaborated by Einstein and others do not seem to me ... to be definitive from an organizational point of view”, since “they always assume only two observers and the light signaling between them” (Bogdanov 1989: 137). Bogdanov continued: “For example, since direct light signaling would be impossible if observers were moving away from each other faster than the speed of light – a ray of light from one could not reach the other – then it is assumed that the relative speed of bodies is always less than the speed of light; and that the speed of light is the fastest possible speed. However, if we introduce into the system of coordination a third observer as an intermediary between the two, we obtain a different result” (Bogdanov 1989: 137). Furthermore, if two electrons fly out from a radioactive nuclei at a speed close to the speed of light, “it would seem perfectly clear that they are objectively moving apart from each other … faster than the speed of light. If one could imagine individual observers located on each of these particles, then, through the intermediary of the observer placed between them, they will be able to establish this, though observations without an intermediary would give them a different result” (Bogdanov 1989: 137–138). Bogdanov concludes that: “application of the organizational point of view leads to a far more simple conception of the relativity principle than the usual one” (Bogdanov 1989: 138). From the standpoint of the general theory of organization, it is perfectly understandable that human beings can change their frameworks, their pattern of interpretation of reality, since those frameworks have nothing to do with Kant's forms of cognition. Bogdanov emphasizes: “Truly, there are certain forms of thinking that people use to consolidate their experience; but they are by no means the eternal ‘constitution of cognitive capacities’. They are means for the organization of experience, which are developed and altered with the growth of experience and the alteration of its contents” (Bogdanov 1996: 47). In Bogdanov's views the knowing subject is by no means a sort of a passive recorder of perceptive data, a ‘camera’ as in Lenin's epistemology. Instead, one could claim, the human collective is engaged

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in the production of reality and its organization, one could say in its ‘montage’. We cannot find a ‘smoking gun’ that would prove evidentially that the young Eisenstein had read Bogdanov's epistemological essays. But, curiously enough, according to Eisenstein as well as Bogdanov, cinema could provide us with an orientation in the four-dimensional space-time continuum, which is implicit in Einstein's theory of relativity. In Eisenstein's essay The Filmic Fourth Dimension we read: “The fourth dimension? Einstein? Or mysticism? Or a joke? It is time to stop being frightened of this new knowledge of a fourth dimension…. Possessing such an excellent instrument of perception as the cinema – even on its primitive level – for the sensation of movement, we should soon learn a concrete orientation in this four- dimensional space-time continuum, and feel as much at home in it as in our own house-slippers” (Eisenstein 1949: 69–70). Cinema is “an excellent instrument of perception … for the sensation of movement”, according to Eisenstein (Eisenstein 1949: 70). In turn, according to Bogdanov, “our sense organs, memory, and all the scientific auxiliary means to perceiving and recording facts, can be considered as a certain kind of cinematographic device” (Bogdanov 1923: 107). This may not provide evidence for a direct or mutually acknowledged exchange of ideas between Eisenstein and Bogdanov, but it can certainly be regarded as a tangential point of encounter.

References

Biggart, John. 2016. “Bogdanov's Sociology of the Arts.” In Culture as Organization in Early Soviet Thought, edited by Pia Tikka et al. Helsinki: Aalto University. Blackmore, John T. 1972. Ernst Mach, Berkeley: University of California Press. Bogdanov, Aleksandr A. 1906. Empiriomonizm. Stat’i po filosofii, III. St.Petersburg: Izdanie S.Dorovatovskogo i A.Charushnikova. ------1923. “Princip otnositel'nosti s organizatsionnoy tochki zreniya.” In Teoriya otnositel'nosti Eynshteyna i ee filosofskoe istolkovanie, 101–122. Moscow: Mir. ------1924. “Ob”ektivnoe ponimanie principa otnositel'nosti (Metodologicheskie tezisy).” Vestnik Kommunisticheskoy Akademii, 8: 332–347. ------1984. Red Star. The First Bolshevik Utopia, edited by Loren R. Graham and Richard Stites, translated by Charles Rougle. Bloomington, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. ------1989. Tektologiya. Vseobshchaya organizatsionnaya nauka. 1. Moscow: Ekonomika. ------1995. Neizvestnyy Bogdanov. Kniga 3, edited by N. S. Antonova and N. V. Drozdova. Moscow: AIRO – XX.

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------1996. Bogdanov’s Tektology, Book 1, edited and translated by Peter Dudley, Vadim N. Sadovsky and Vladimir V. Kelle. University of Hull: Centre for Systems Studies. ------2016. The Philosophy of Living Experience. Popular Outlines, translated, edited and introduced by David G. Rowley. Leiden-Boston: Brill. Dauge Petr G. 1907. “K russkomu izdaniyu.” In Antonio Labriola i Iosif Ditsgen, edited by Ernest Untermann. St.Petersburg: P.G. Dauge. Dietzgen, Joseph. 1870–1875. “The Religion of Social-Democracy. Six Sermons.” In Some of the Philosophical Essays on Socialism and Science, Religion, Ehics, Critique-of- Reason and the World-at-large, 90-154. Chicago: Kerr. Einstein, Albert. 1951. “Autobiographisches / Autobiographical Note.” In Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist, edited by Paul A. Schilpp, 1–35. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer Verlag. Eisenstein, Sergey. 1949. Film Form. Essays in Film Theory, edited by J. Leyda. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. Engels, Frederick 1886. “Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy.” In Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, 1990. Collected Works 26, 353–398. London: Lawrence and Wishart. Kautsky, Karl 1909. “Über Marx und Mach.” Der Kampf, 10: 451–452; Kautsky Karl. 1990. “O Markse i Mache.” Vozrozhdenie, 9–12: 77–80. Lenin, Vladimir I. 1904. “To His Mother. January 8, 1904.” In Vladimir Lenin. 1967. Collected Works 37, 359. Moscow: Progress Publishers. ------1909. Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. In Vladimir Lenin. 1962. Collected Works 14, 17–388. Moscow: Progress Publishers. ------1913a. “A ʽScientificʾ System of Sweating”. In Vladimir Lenin. 1963. Collected Works 18, 594-595. Moscow: Progress Publishers. ------1913b. “Organisation of the Masses by the German Catholics”. In Vladimir Lenin. 1966. Collected Works 36, 244–246. Moscow: Progress Publishers. ------1920. “Directions Concerning the Work of the Propaganda-Instructor Trains and Steamers”. In Vladimir Lenin. 1969. Collected Works 42, 160–161. Moscow: Progress Publishers. ------1921.“Once Again on the Trade Unions, the Current Situation and the Mistakes of Trotsky and Bukharin”. In Vladimir Lenin 1965. Collected Works 32, 70–107. Moscow: Progress Publishers. ------1924. “How the ʽSparkʾ was Nearly Extinguished”. In Vladimir Lenin. 1960. Collected Works 4, 333–349. Moscow: Progress Publishers. ------1925. “Directives on the Film Business”. In Vladimir Lenin 1969. Collected Works 42, 388–389. Moscow: Progress Publishers. ------1928. “Theses on Production Propaganda”. In Vladimir Lenin. 1966. Collected Works 31, 404–406. Moscow: Progress Publishers. ------1930. “Draft Programme of the R.C.P.(B.)”. In Vladimir Lenin. 1965. Collected Works 29, 97–140. Moscow: Progress Publishers. ------1933. “Ideological Decay and Disunity Among Russian Social- Democrats”. In Vladimir Lenin 1963. Collected Works 16, 107–109. Moscow: Progress Publishers. Mach, Ernst. 1908. Analiz oshchushcheniy i otnoshenie fizicheskogo k psikhicheskomu, 2-oe izd., Moskva: Skirmunt. Marx, Karl. 1867. “Marx to Ludwig Kugelmann. 7 December”. In Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. 1987. Collected Works 42, 496–497. London: Lawrence and Wishart.

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Nevskiy, Vladimir. 1920. “Dialectical Materialism and the Philosophy of Dead Reaction”. In Vladimir Lenin. 1927. Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, 329–336. New York: International Publishers. Plekhanov, Georgiy V. 1892. “Predislovie k pervomu izdaniyu ('Ot perevodchika') i primechaniya Plekhanova k knige F. Engel’sa: Lyudwig Feyerbach i konec klassicheskoy nemetskoy filosofii. In Georgiy Plekhanov. Izbrannye filosofskie proizvedeniya 1, 451–503. Moscow: Gospolitizdat. Sechenov, Ivan M. 1892. “Predmetnaya mysl' i deystvitel'nost'”. In Ivan Sechenov. 1952. Izbrannye proizvedeniya 1, 465–485. Moscow: izd.vo AN SSSR. Steila, Daniela 1991. Genesis and Development of Plekhanov’s Theory of Knowledge. A Marxist Between Anthropological Materialism and Physiology, Dordrecht: Kluwer. ------2009. “From Experience to Organization: Bogdanov's Unpublished Letters to Bazarov”. In Aleksandr Bogdanov Revisited, edited by Vesa Oittinen, 151–172. Helsinki: Aleksanteri Series, 1. ------2013. Nauka i revolyuciya. Recepciya empiriokriticizma v russkoy kul'ture (1877– 1910 gg.). Moscow: Akademicheskiy Proekt. Tikka, Pia. 2009. “Tracing Tectology in Sergei Eisenstein's Holistic Thinking.” In Aleksandr Bogdanov Revisited, edited by Vesa Oittinen, 211–234. Helsinki: Aleksanteri Series, 1. Vaynshteyn I. 1925. “Iskusstvo i organizatsionnaya teoriya”, Vestnik Kommunisticheskoy Akademii, 11: 204–222. Valentinov, Nikolay. 1908. Filosofskie postroeniya marksizma. Moscow: Sotrudnik provincii. Yushkevich, Pavel S. 1907. “Iosif Ditsgen. Ocherk ego filosofii.” Obrazovanie 9: 69–89. ------1923. “Teoriya otnositel'nosti i ee znachenie dlya filosofii”. In Teoriya otnositel'nosti Eynshteyna i ee filosofskoe istolkovanie, 123–155. Moscow: Mir.

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BOGDANOV’S PODBOR AND PROLETKULT: AN ADAPTIVE SYSTEMS PERSPECTIVE Peter Dudley______

If one accepts (following Poustilnik 1995 and 1998) that Bogdanov's intention in using the term podbor over otbor aimed at defining the process by which the ‘system in its environment’ comes into and continues in existence, one is also constrained to accept that such systems are active agents in the definition of self. Systems that create and maintain themselves in this way, actively ‘assemble’ or construct themselves in reference to the nature of their relationship with their environments, rather than passively survive in relation to environmental conditions. By extending this interpretation (of the choice of podbor over otbor) to the proletariat, as individually and collectively adaptive system, it becomes possible to visualize the Proletkult as a conscious project to create an environment where it (the proletariat) could construct and adapt itself as a politically active, relevant and dominant class. Thereby, placing creative and cultural workers in the forefront of radical social change.

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Introduction

Adaptive systems do not exist in isolation, they are always, and of necessity, embedded in an environment with which they interact. Understood in this way adaptive systems are identifiable as those that are capable of changing their behaviour and their structure in response to environmental conditions. Such changes can be taken to be indicative of some internal stress caused by the interaction of the system with its environment; and that the purpose of such systems (to the extent that any given system under consideration can be said to be purposeful) will be to act such as to bring about the reduction or removal of that stress. It is suggested that the Proletkult (Proletarian Cultural- Educational Organization) as part of a wider social change movement can usefully be conceived of as integral part of an adaptive system. And that Aleksandr Bogdanov, whilst he may or may not have conceived it in this way, had the intellectual models available from Tektology 1913 – 1922 to be able to recognize its utility when viewed as a theoretical and historical necessity to the ongoing viability of the revolutionary movement. Bogdanov was certainly aware of the importance of the impact of culturally defined habits and diversions on the ability of Labour to revitalize itself, for example, where the “cultural needs of workers acquire [a] pressing character” (Bogdanov 1996: 287) cultural considerations such as “living connexion with nature … theatres, museums, books … must come into the calculation” (Bogdanov 1996: 295). From this it can be argued that three particular insights from Tektology, i.e., ‘bi-regulator’, podbor and ‘crisis’, provide a basis for analyzing the conception of the function of the Proletkult. The Proletkult can be viewed less as a crude anti- bourgeois reaction and more as one which allows the conception of culture (regardless of its detailed content), specifically a consciously designed cultural movement, as a structural and political tool for the delivery and continuation of socio-political change. Antonio Gramsci’s notion of cultural hegemony on the part of the dominant group, class, or ideology suggests that any cultural form that seeks to engender socio-political change will of necessity sit on the margins of what is considered to be cultural. A contemporary Marxist consideration of the political aspects of theatrical form taken from

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Augusto Boal’s analysis in Theatre of the Oppressed (Boal 1979)1 of the development of theatrical forms is examined here as proxy for cultural form. Boal’s work provides an insight into how this particular [cultural] form has been used to serve political ends from Aristotle’s conception of ‘coercive tragedy’ to his own ‘poetics of the oppressed’ - and are rightly to be regarded as indicators of the cultural dominance inherent in cultural forms.

The paper proceeds in four parts: 1. Political aspects of culture: a consideration of the ways, and the extent to, which cultural products (in this case theatre) influence society; 2. Elements of tektology: a consideration of those elements of tektology that may have allowed Bogdanov to regard the Proletkult as part of a wider adaptive system; 3. Adaptive systems: a consideration of the principles of adaptive theory and their relevance to social change; and 4. Reflections: a consideration of the challenges the adaptive approach poses to the idea of culture as socio-political change agent.

1. Man making Society …

“… all theatre is necessarily political … a weapon. A very efficient weapon” (Boal1979. In these lines from the first pages of Boal’s book on political theatre, a clear reflection of the comparison that Stalin drew between ideas and weaponry can be seen.2 In the wrong hands (or heads) all ideas, most especially those that speak of change or that run counter to the established order, are more dangerous than guns. Whether these beliefs are viewed from the standpoint of ideas in general, or, in Boal’s case, the more specific notion of the theatre as a particular mode of the expression of ideas, they share a common recognition that any danger inherent in ideas is in the extent to which they inspire or inform action. To paraphrase Marx: Not just to interpret the world, but to change it. Thus, danger to the dominant faction or class arises both on the part of those that originate ideas, and, on the part of

1 A Brazilian theatre director, Augusto Boal coined the notion of the ‘theatre of the oppressed’ in the 1950s, and later published a series of analyses based on his practical work. 2 Reflection in more ways than one, as Boal’s intention is exactly the reverse of Stalin’s. Nevertheless the recognition of the power of ideas is the same.

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those that are exposed to and may act on them. And, by extension, if ideas are to be rendered safe, they must be controlled - either by controlling the means of the production of ideas, e.g., directed advancement or inhibition of idea producing individuals, or by manipulating or distorting language such that ideas cannot be formed, e.g., Orwell’s Newspeak; or by controlling the means by which ideas are promulgated, i.e., censorship in any of its many forms. These mechanisms of control are apparent in Boal’s analysis of theatrical forms. Beginning in ancient Greece, where, in order to take control of the Dionysian feast, which traditional followed the completion of the harvest, Boal (quoting Hauser 1957) has the tragedians in the pay of the state, retained to create a restraining structure around the workers’ potentially dangerous revelry. “The tragedians are in fact state bursars and state purveyors – the state pays them for the plays that are performed, but naturally does not allow pieces to be performed that would run counter to its policies or the interests of the governing classes” (Boal 1979: Introduction). According to Boal, the Aristotelian theory of tragedy casts it as a form of social control designed to ensure that the workers were brought to a point where they understood their social failings in relation to the state and landowners, and were encouraged, by way of the didactic elements of plays, to self-impose limits on their behaviour. For Boal, “Aristotle constructs the first, extremely powerful poetic- political system for the intimidation of the spectator” (Boal 1979: Introduction). In the Aristotelian form of tragedy the hero, or main protagonist, has a single, fatal, tragic flaw which eventually brings about his or her downfall - According to Boal, it is by recognizing this flaw in themselves and witnessing the hero’s downfall that the audience is brought to a point of catharsis – partly due to terror at the sight of the hero’s destruction and partly due to the release of tension caused as order is restored. In this coercive form of theatre the spectators “delegate power to the characters to act and think in their place [and] in so doing … purge themselves of their tragic flaw … of something capable of changing society” (Boal 1979: 155). Here, Boal is defining a particular cultural product as a method by which to enforce social change. And, although he is defining that power as conservative, as serving the interest of the status quo, it is behavioural change nevertheless. It forces a change in the

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internal or authentic standards by which behaviour is judged – from standards that may be in the best interest of the self to those that are in the best interests of the dominant group. From here Boal moves forward through mediaeval theatre on which he comments that, in so far as the point of Aristotelian tragedy “was its cathartic function, its function as a purifier of the citizen [and] in this sense, the medieval theatre was Aristotelian” (Boal 1979: 56). And onto bourgeois theatre which “While its principal opposition was to the feudal nobility… directed its energies towards the exaltation of individual man - that same man who was later submitted to severe reduction, by that same bourgeoisie, when its principal opponent came to be the proletariat” (Boal 1979: 65). Until this point in his analysis Boal seems to be asserting that theatre has been controlled by and served the purposes of the dominant group in any given society. Whether this group be the aristocracy of ancient Greece, the Church, the feudal aristocracy, or the bourgeoisie, the role of theatre seems to have been two-fold: it served the purpose of both the lens, through which the individual viewed society, and the mirror, through which he or she saw themselves reflected as members of that society. It functioned as a mechanism by which individuals could self-correct any failings on their part, and thus become more appropriate members of that society. Thus, following Boal, conventional theatre situated both temporally and societaly, will always function as a lens whereby the audience can be in no doubt as to both the acceptable and unacceptable values of that society, and as a mirror whereby the audience can see themselves and their behaviours reflected in relation to the values of that society, and, furthermore, a mechanism by which they can (vicariously through their empathy with the protagonists) purge themselves of any failings in relation to the values of that society. In this way theatre can be viewed as conservative enculturation device. Yet Brechtian theatre is where Boal begins his consideration of what radical theatre may look like: “Brecht’s poetics is that of the enlightened vanguard: the world is revealed as subject to change … the spectator does not delegate power to the characters to think in his place, although he continues to delegate power … to act …” (Boal, 1979: 155). Here Boal describes an inversion of previous forms of theatre and the ideas of society to which they were appropriate. Where conventional, or conservative, theatre was deemed to assume the audience or the individual members of society were malleable, Boal's

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analysis of Brecht moves this malleability to society. No longer is the corrective direction from the dominant group in society to its disempowered members, society itself has become the object of change. But however much it is possible for a disempowered group to imagine a different future, they are not empowered to create it for themselves. Brechtian theatre retains to itself the right to action; it is “a preparation for action” (Boal 1979: 155), but it does not provide the disempowered with the means to act themselves. Boal completes his review of theatrical forms with his own ‘theatre of the oppressed’, which he describes as [T]he poetics of liberation: the spectator no longer delegates power to the characters either to think or to act in his place. The spectator frees himself; he thinks and acts for himself! Theatre is action! (Boal 1979:155). In the ‘theatre of the oppressed’, the spectators become the actors. They become an integral part of the production able to both question the motivations of the characters presented and to change the course of the action, and, in this way are empowered to define the production in such a manner that it reflects their experience and their desires. As Boal says: “the theatre is not revolutionary in itself; but have no doubts, it is a rehearsal of revolution!” (Boal 1979: 155). Boal, in presenting his analysis of theatrical forms in relation to the social structures they support, also, by definition, provides an analysis of social forms that can be represented as set out in the diagram below. And, by considering mechanisms by which this can be achieved, that is, that coercive theatre is suited to a monothetic acquisitive society and that what he describes as liberating theatre is suited to a more distributive society and, what is more, the extent to which this liberating theatre can be used to instigate the change from one form to the other, demonstrates that cultural forms and cultural products can be used to bring about, or, at least, prepare for social change.

Locus Monothetic Antithetic Polythetic

Divine Right or Intellectualist Didactic External Natural Order Socialism Utopianism

Internal Acquisition Labour Synthesis

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From this demonstration it seems reasonable to assert that culture or cultural products mediate the interaction of the individual with society, whether this be coercive tragedy in the Aristotelian sense which presumes the malleability of the mass citizenry and uses intimidatory drama in order to force them to align their desires with those of the dominant faction; or Boal’s liberational drama which assumes the malleability of society and uses dramatic technique in order to politicize the citizenry in order that they are able change it. The existence of both cases alongside each other suggests that both individual and society be considered malleable and that the form each takes is the result of a dynamic interplay each with the other with this interplay mediated by whichever cultural form is dominant.

2. Elements of tektology

It is clear that Bogdanov recognised the role of culture and cultural products as, at the very least, a form of the replenishment of labour power (see above). The argument that will be proposed in this section is that, whether or not Bogdanov understood the role of culture as part of an interactive system - comprised of the individual and society - and, therefore, as a tool for the advancement and maintenance of the revolution, he certainly had conceptual models available (from Tektology) that would allow him to construct it as part of an adaptive system and, therefore, conceptualize the necessity of the Proletkult as an overtly political tool. Podbor is generally translated in Tektology (even my edition of 1996 of Book I) as ‘selection’ in the Darwinian sense. However Poustilnik has asserted that this rendering de-natures the term which is more akin to ‘assemblage’ or, perhaps, (self) construction when used by Bogdanov (Poustilnik 1995). This interpretation suggests a reading of his ‘complexes’, especially complexes that are subject to what Bogdanov calls “progressive podbor” (Bogdanov 1996: 190 ff.) as dynamic, and subject to change in relation to their interactions with their environments. What is more, this change is cumulative – such that, although each change in isolation could be considered equilibrating, i.e., tending towards a more (local and immediate) equilibrial state, over time the accumulation of such changes could lead to fundamental changes in the nature of the complex. For Bogdanov, under the conditions of progressive podbor, “the structure of a complex … [is] what is changing …[pointing to] the growing

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complexity and in-homogeneity of the inner correlations” (Bogdanov 1996: 196-197) or, in conditions of adversity, its reverse. For Bogdanov, podbor was to be understood as more than simply passive growth in the size of a complex, it was the potential for structural change. And that this structural change was not a direct function of changes in its environment but a function of changes in the environment as mediated by the relationships between the internal components of the complex and between the complex as a whole and its environment. That is, under conditions of progressive podbor – whether positive or negative – the cumulative complexification (or simplification) caused by the interaction of the complexes with their environment eventually drives them to a point where their current structure is no longer able to maintain integrity and they are forced to adopt a new and more appropriate structural form. They reach a point of crisis, where “they cease to be what they were … and form some new system” (Bogdanov 1996:157). The last element of tektology relevant to this section is the “bi- regulator” which Bogdanov describes as a “combination in which two complexes mutually regulate each other” (Bogdanov 1989, Book 2: 97). That is, in the context of the above, each stands as the (sufficiently dominant element of the) environment of the other.

The bi-regulator When two complexes, each subject to the processes of progressive podbor, and therefore the potential for structural crises consequent thereon, are brought into a relationship of bi-regulation, the nature of the relationship will be such that, however else and however much they are impacted by their wider environments, each will act to modify or constrain the behaviour of the other to the extent that their relationship is maintained. A traditional interpretation of this would be that, in effect, internal crises (in either of the participants) are prevented, or that such crises as occur leave the participant in which they occur better adapted to the needs of the other. That is, either the complex as a whole achieves a state of ongoing stability, or, following an internal crisis, the participant subject to structural change takes on a form in which it can (perhaps minimally) survive whilst reducing the internal stress this places on its counterpart. Where neither of these outcomes is the case there is either a complete disruption of the bi-regulative arrangement (the pair separate) or, where the arrangement continues, a radical redefinition of the relationship between them.

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It is relatively straightforward to see from this that, in the second case, where the two participants of the bi-regulator cannot completely separate, the radical redefinition of their relationship can be seen to be (an outcome of) revolution. And that, following revolution, in circumstances where new trajectories have become possible, the former case is relevant. That is, that, it is possible for the two participants to co-determine each other's future by acting in such a way as to maintain some form of dynamic internal balance between them. And to the extent that the Proletkult was intended to provide a “distinctly proletarian culture which must arise and replace the doomed culture of the bourgeoisie … [and the extent that it was held that] Art organizes social experience by means of living images, not only in the sphere of cognition, but also in that of feeling and desires. As a consequence it is a most powerful weapon for the organization of collective forces, and in a class society, of class forces” (SovLit). It can reasonably be asserted that the original founders of the Proletkult movement considered it to function in much the same way as Boal considered his theatre, if not as revolution in itself, then, at the very least as a permanent preparation for, or perpetuation of, revolution. To the extent to which “the Proletkult organized literary studios to provide working-class readers with an elementary literary education” (SovLit), it can be argued that its aim was to provide the ability for the proletariat to devise and develop the mechanisms through which it represented both society and itself and, therefore, created the conditions whereby the proletariat was able to create an art form which was able to perpetuate the proletarian revolution. However, it is also interesting to reflect on the extent to which the desire of the Proletkult for autonomy from the formal state apparatus, and the resistance this met from the People’s Commissariat for Enlightenment, eventually defined the extent to which the goals of any new proletarian culture, as enacted, came to be internally or externally generated. This is to ask whether the state changed to suit the proletariat or the proletariat was changed to suit the state.

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3. Adaptive Systems

The purpose of a system is what it does …And what the viable system does is to survive (Beer). 3 Writing earlier, in the cybernetics literature, the psychiatrist W. Ross Ashby, quoting E. H. Starling, has this to say: “Organism and environment form a whole and must be viewed as such” (Ashby 1960: 8).4 It is clear from this that Ashby is thinking of much the same structure as Bogdanov. The notion of organism in the environment that Ashby introduces - one where “the organism affects the environment, and the environment affects the organism …” (Ashby 1960: 37) - is again a reflection of Bogdanov’s bi-regulator. The theme of ‘system-in-environment’ is fundamental to adaptive theory and it is one that is consistent with both Bogdanov’s bi-regulator and the Marxian notion that man and society co-create each other.

Ashby’s Ultrastable System Many of the adaptive models are informed by a general area of study called cybernetics, some form or other of which always lies at the core of adaptive theory. The word itself is a development of the Greek word kybernetes meaning, roughly, steersmanship, and was used by Plato in the Republic5 around 370 BC to compare the activities of social governance or statesmanship with those of a person steering a boat across open water, needing to make small corrective adjustments to take account of the ebb and flow of the tides and currents in order to achieve the goal of arriving safely into port. The Latin equivalent of kybernetes is gubernator – the root of the English word ‘governor’ which reveals its mixed origins by referring to both ‘a ruler’ and that part of a self-regulating device that does the regulating, e.g., the thermostat on a central heating or air-conditioning device. Ashby’s work in cybernetics led to the to the definition of the ‘Law of Requisite Variety’ (Ashby 1964) and the ‘Ultrastable system’ (Ashby 1960). Ashby’s research into the construction of learning

3 The term ‘viable system’, which is implicit in the works by Beer cited in the references, was often used by him in public addresses but is not found in his published works. 4 Note that Ashby, who includes Starling in the index to Design for a Brain, does not give a bibliographic reference. 5 See the translation of Waterfield 1994.

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machines using cybernetic principles led to the insight that the basic model needed to be extended to include a second feedback loop – one that assessed not the success or failure of a particular activity but the impact of that activity, or, more correctly, the impact of the environmental response to that activity, on the acting system or organization. With the introduction of the ultrastable system Ashby makes it explicit that action cannot exist in a vacuum; rather, in a sentient or perceiving system, it exists in the context of the benefit of the system as a whole. Where Ashby’s model identifies the need for a systemic or organizational context to be present in order for learning to occur, Beer’s Viable System Model (VSM) extends the notion of the ‘reacting system’ (Beer 1985). His extension takes it from being a simple or single homogeneous activity and defines the conditions necessary to manage a complex of potentially heterogeneous activities which, collectively and individually, contribute to the creation of the systemic whole. Beer also extends the ability for organizational learning and/or adaptation by introducing the concept of “’recursion’ (structural similarity between levels of organizational complexity) which allows for some degree of autonomy in the making of local adaptive change so long as it does not compromise the integrity of the whole.

Beer’s Viable System Model What is clear when comparing the models is that they share two common threads. The first is structural, i.e., that Ashby’s ‘essential variables’, ‘second feedback loop’ and ‘reacting system’ parallel Beer’s ‘systems 5, 4, and 3’;6 the second is the function of their proxies for organizational identity (i.e., the ‘essential variables’ and ‘system 5’). In both cases these function as external (and therefore unchangeable) arbiters of rightness. Identity (and, therefore rightness) is fixed for the lifetime of the system or organization. Whilst this may hold in mechanical or individual biological systems it is clearly not the case at the level of (biological) population evolution or those of psychological, social or cultural change where ‘what-good-looks-like’ is dynamic, the result of learning, experience and changing desire.

6 This is figuratively, rather than strictly, correct because of the additional complexity introduced in the VSM which requires the formal separation of “System 3” as a unifying management function. Because it utilizes only a single “reacting system” this is not necessary in Ashby’s model.

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The trialogue The trialogue, developed by Dudley (Dudley 2000; 2007) as an extension of the models of Ashby and Beer, overcomes this problem by rendering organizational identity ‘plastic’ – an emergent and dynamic entity existing at the intersection of environmental and structural possibility. There is an obvious (if latent) problem with this: in the absence of an established moral or strategic compass, there is the possibility that the organization becomes capricious, wantonly opportunistic, or possibly catatonic. However when it is accepted that the trialogue operates as the management element of a viable system and is therefore subject to the embededness implied by Beer’s notion of recursion, it becomes apparent that there will be both ethico-moral and performativity imperatives (as an accepted function of membership) which will tend to hold local behaviours away from (accepted as) dysfunctional extremes. Understood in this way, the trialogue can be said to provide a basis for understanding the changes that take place (in systemic identity) along a psycho-social continuum running from self-directed or experiential learning through formal education and/or socialization on to the more directive forms of psychotherapy. All of which can be seen as responses to, or manipulation of, environmental and/or internal factors in such a manner as to render currently held notions of identity problematic; thereby instigating, and then supporting, adaptive or desirable change.

Embedding the trialogue in the Viable System Model It is possible to place Bogdanov’s notions within this trialogue structure: Any adaptive system conceived in the trialogue way is necessarily in a bi-regulative relationship with its environment. At the lower level of the model the individual activities that the system or complex undertakes are activities that impact on the environment and respond to environmental reactions - by which local performance is assessed; and, the impact of wider environmental response on the system as a whole affects the (systemic internal) construction of the context in which those activities are undertaken at the higher (or meta- systemic) level of the model. Podbor can be viewed as the process of the operational level of the system or complex within the context of the values established at the meta-level; and, crisis can be viewed as the name Bogdanov gives to a change of identity, i.e., a radical re- definition of the system or complex by virtue of a radical re-definition

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of the context in which the system or complex has meaning as a system or complex. And which, in parallel with the mechanisms of bi- regulation and podbor, therefore initiates a new trajectory of systemic development.

Reflections (I)

“The proletariat must have its own class art to organize its own forces in social labor, struggle, and construction” (Roberts 1998: 16). That the Proletkult was conceived as a movement for consolidating revolutionary momentum following the revolution proper (in counter-position to Boal’s rehearsal for revolution’) seems beyond doubt, as is the general conclusion that culture in general, and cultural products in particular, can be used as political ‘weapons’. In the light of the discussion above, it is also clear that it would have been possible for Bogdanov to have conceptualized the revolution as a societal level crisis – as the radical re-definition of the relationship between the ruling class and the masses and the re- establishment of a new relationship between the proletariat and the Bolshevik leadership; and, as a result of this, the establishment of a new developmental trajectory for society as a movement of progressive podbor, controlled by virtue of tektological understanding. Proletarian culture then becomes a method for ensuring that, as this societal podbor progresses, it continues along a path that cements the social gains made possible by the revolution. Here again, as with Boal, culture is acting to mediate between those who make up society and the society which they create. Indeed, the extent to which “the Proletkult organized literary studios to provide working-class readers with an elementary literary education” (SovLit), suggests a commitment (of the kind outlined by Boal) to providing the ability to create cultural products to those who are directly affected by the society such products will help to create. When an analysis is undertaken using adaptive systems theory, however, a number of points arise. At the most obvious level it is possible to envisage a (politico- economic model of) society as a high-level system with the systems of production and the system of labour as two interacting (i.e., bi- regulating) sub-systems operating according to the rules that set the context for performance, or interaction being determined by the higher level. Culture, according to both Bogdanov and Boal, functions in order to refresh, or recreate society in a manner that ensures that

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the dominant class remains dominant (e.g., Aristotle’s conception of ‘coercive tragedy’). Revolution, as the radical re-definition of the identity of the higher-level system changes the context of the interaction of the sub- systems and, thereby, redefines the basis of their bi-regulation. This, in turn creates the potential for a new developmental trajectory of progressive podbor. At this point, culture, as a political weapon, becomes key. Adaptive systems have a somewhat counter-intuitive capability – because, as per Ashby’s ‘second feedback loop’, the relationship between the system and its environment is, actually, between their identity and the environment, they can change in order to stay the same – that is that, when an adaptive system is presented with a challenge from the environment, it will alter itself and/or its behaviour in such way as to maintain the relationship between its identity and the currently prevalent environmental conditions. Culture, and individual cultural products viewed as adaptive systems, can either reinforce the conservative tendency, create the conditions for the ongoing problematization of it, or create the conditions for the creation of a new orthodoxy.

Reflections (II)

I have already stated that culture was the lens, through which the individual viewed society, and the mirror, through which individuals saw themselves reflected as members of that society, but that culture does not exist in a vacuum; it is always historically, ideologically, and theoretically determined. That is, any form of didactic cultural product is motivated by the beliefs of its producer. This tends to suggest that, following the revolution – and the radical redefinition of the identity of the politico-economic system – the bi-regulating elements of means of production and labour were not miraculously made free (from bourgeois domination) and equal (in terms of perceived productive value) to defining their own new world, but were immediately re-constrained in a different (if opposite) wider system, one that too externally determined the nature of the legitimacy of their bi-regulating interactions; and therefore also determined what would be acceptable as legitimate cultural forms or products. When it comes to cultural critique, or the attempt to use cultural products to bring about directed social change, it seems that emancipatory culture, including its cultural products and forms, is

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legitimately able only to provide the means for forming the questions that problematize the current status quo, and therefore create the conditions that might lead to or perpetuate – but not create – social change. There is a very fine line between didactic liberation and propaganda. It could be argued that Bogdanov, in attempting to hand control of the production of cultural forms directly to the proletariat, was attempting to avoid this re-taking of control; and that the resistance to the attempts of the Proletkult to maintain autonomy from the central apparatus was symptomatic of the existence and operation of such a wider system.

References

Ashby, W. R. 1960. Design for a Brain. London: Chapman and Hall. Ashby, W. R. 1964. An Introduction to Cybernetics. London: Methuen. Beer, S. 1979. The Heart of Enterprise. Chichester: Wiley. ------1981. The Brain of the Firm. Chichester: Wiley. ------1985. Diagnosing the System for Organizations. Chichester: Wiley. Boal, A. 1979 (2nd ed. 2000). Theatre of the Oppressed. London: Pluto Press. Bogdanov, A. A. 1989. Tektologiya: Vseobshaya Organizatsionaya Nauka Books 1 –3 Moscow: Ekonomika. ------1996. Bogdanov’s Tektology Book 1 (Editor: P. Dudley). Hull: Centre for Systems Studies Press. Dudley, P. 2000. Management Quality or Quality Management? Doctoral Dissertation. University of Hull. Dudley, P. and Young, M. 2007. Leadership and Cybernetics. Oxford: Oxford Saïd Business School. Hauser, A. 1957. The Social History of Art (Translation: F.P.B. Godman). New York: Vintage Books. Maturana, H. and Varela, F. 1980. Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living. Dordrecht: D. Reidel. Neumann, J. von. 1966. Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata. Urbana; London: University of Illinois Press. Poustilnik, S. N. 1995. “Assemblage as the Basis of Bogdanov’s Tektology”, Voprosy filosofii. 8 (in Russian). ------1998. “Biological Ideas in Tektology.” In Alexander Bogdanov and the Origins of Systems Thinking in Russia. Edited by J.Biggart, P.Dudley, and F.King. Aldershot: Ashgate. Roberts, J. 1998. The Art of Interruption. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Waterfield, R. (Translator) 1994. Plato. Republic. Oxford: Oxford University Press. SovLit: http://www.sovlit.net/bios/proletkult.html. accessed 07/05/2014.

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BOGDANOV AND LENIN ON ‘THINGS-IN-THEMSELVES’ Vesa Oittinen______

Questions of the theory of cognition formed one of the focal points in the dispute between orthodox Russian Marxists and Aleksandr Bogdanov and his followers. Bogdanov was an adherent of Mach’s theory, which abandoned Kant’s concept of ‘things-in-themselves’ (Ding an sich) outside the cognizing subject. According to Mach and Bogdanov, there is no need to duplicate human experience in appearances given in the senses and things behind these appearances. The orthodox Marxists, Lenin as well as Plekhanov, insisted that Kant’s concept of things-in-themselves should be retained, but in a modified form: the things-in-themselves do not form a limit for our knowledge as Kant (allegedly) thought, but turn

into ‘things-for-us’ in the everyday process of material and scientific production. Both solutions, the Machian as well as the orthodox Marxist, have their problems. In the Soviet era, Lenin was depicted as the winner of the dispute. But a closer examination of Bogdanov’s arguments shows that he actually hit upon some weak

points in Lenin’s conception. This does not, however, mean that Lenin’s critique of Bogdanov as a subjectivist in his theory of

cognition was groundless.

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Пусть ни Аксельрод, ни Дан В нашем опыте дан. Дан же в нем один Богданов – Существует ли «в себе» Плеханов?

Безусловно, нет, он не существует «в себе». а вне себя, Ибо само существование Богданова выводит его из себя!

(Anonymous Russian epigram, 1908)1

Many researchers have wondered why the Russian Marxists in the beginning of the twentieth century were so enthused by philosophical matters in general and Kant’s theory of cognition in particular. Even such nowadays quite forgotten late eighteenth-century German philosophers as Aenesidemus-Schulze were cited and discussed feverishly. One is reminded of Marx’s old dictum, according to which the Frenchmen did a political revolution and the Germans a philosophical one – with the addition that the Russians appeared to want to do both revolutions at once. But the seemingly abstract interest had quite understandable practical motives. At the end of the day, it was the role of the so-called ‘subjective factor’ in history, which was at stake. This was a problem with which already some generations of Russian revolutionaries had struggled since the mid-nineteenth century. Just before the breakthrough of Marxism in the last decade of the 19th century, the ‘subjective sociology’ of Pëtr Lavrov and Nikolai Mikhailovskiy had been much en vogue in the radical wing of the Russian intelligentsia. Mikhailovskiy and his supporters insisted upon the decisive role of personal initiative in the historical process, and from this point of view they fought against what they interpreted as the ‘determinism’ and ‘fatalism’ of Marxism. The dispute between Lenin (the orthodox Marxists) and Bogdanov (the Machian Marxist) must be viewed against this background, otherwise its intensity and high-pitch emotionality will remain enigmatic. The Russian empirio-criticism would, seen from the viewpoint of history of ideas, best be characterized as a variant of the so called ‘second’ positivism (after the ‘first’ one by Comte), but this does

1 From: Yagodinskiy 2006: 45. The author of the epigram is not mentioned by name.

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not yet explain the essence of the phenomenon. In her excellent analysis of the Russian empirio-criticism, Daniela Steila stressed the specific traits of how European philosophical currents were recopied in Russia: this reception has never been purely academic; instead, the Russians have always sought solutions for the actual problems of their society. It is, moreover, quite possible to interpret the empirio-critical revision of Marxism (dubbed by Bogdanov himself as Empiriomonism), which became very influential in the left current of Russian Social Democracy – so influential that many contemporaries were ready to take it as the philosophy proper of Bolshevism – as a continuation of the subjectivism of the Narodniki. What Mikhailovskiy had claimed in the 1870’s, namely that the subjective factor decides the outcome of the historical process, seemed now to resurge in the philosophy of Bogdanov which denounced the determinism of many Marxists. This explains, why the leaders of Menshevism as well as Bolshevism, Plekhanov and Lenin, were to a large extent unanimous in their critique of Bogdanov. It even seemed that the Russian Machists brought the Narodnik subjectivism to a head, to the extent that they – as Lenin wrote – approached the subjective-idealist and solipsist positions of Bishop Berkeley.

The thing-in-itself

For Bogdanov, the Kantian concept of a ‘thing-in-itself’ is but an “obsolete philosophical idea”, which his own theory has been able to overcome, as he declared in the second part of Empiriomonizm (1905) (Bogdanov 2003: 131). This volume of Bogdanov’s chef-d’oeuvre has as an introduction a detailed overview of the problematics of the thing-in- itself. Already the first lines of the text make clear that the German researcher Dieter Grille was quite right, when he, in his seminal monography on Bogdanov, wrote that the Russian empiriomonist was ‘biologizing’ the history of mind by turning philosophical problems into psychological ones (Grille 1966: 143). In other words, Bogdanov simply refuses to treat philosophical questions as ‘philosophical’: instead, he converts them into questions of the psychology of the senses, of social psychology, or of social anthropology. The philosophical dualism of appearances and things-in- themselves, put forth by Kant, is for Bogdanov nothing but a “pale, vanishing reflection of another, clear and vigorous dualism […] – the dualism of the animists”. In the same manner as the primitive animist imagined that behind his everyday milieu there exists yet another world, the realm of spirits, so the philosopher, too, imagined things-in- themselves which should exist behind the appearances. “When the dualism which evolved from the animistic ideas, was extended to the

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whole world, the result was the ‘thing-in-itself’…” (Bogdanov 2003: 111). Kant took only the last step in this process, as he stripped the thing-in-itself from all anthropomorphism. In Kant, “the thing-in-itself lost all of its empirical content and became incognizable” (Bogdanov 2003: 111). Despite the fact that the Russian intelligentsia in general was not so much interested in Neo-Kantianism, it was, however, compelled to comment on many Kantian themes. Already in the 1890s Plekhanov had criticised in Die Neue Zeit, the theoretical organ of the German Social Democrats, the Neo-Kantian views of Bernstein and Conrad Schmidt. A little later, in the first years of the new century, he could pick up on the empiriocritical interpretation of Marxism by Bogdanov with essentially the same arguments. A recurrent theme in the critiques of Plekhanov was the question of the cognizability of the world and thus even the status of the famous Kantian ‘thing-in-itself’. Daniela Steila has pointed to the seemingly disproportionate role of this central concept of the Critical philosophy in the discussions between the orthodox Marxists and Machists (see Steila 1996: 191sqq.). In the article Conrad Schmidt versus Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, published in Neue Zeit in October 1898, Plekhanov rebuffs the ‘Kantian’ agnosticism (although it would have been better to speak of a Neo- Kantian interpretations) of Bernstein’s pupil Schmidt. Plekhanov referred to Engels’s comment, according to which the daily practical activity of men and especially the progress of industry are the best ways to disprove the (allegedly) Kantian doctrine of an unknowable thing-in- itself. Being somewhat cheeky, Engels quoted the old English saying “The proof of the pudding is in the eating” and thought the same applies to the process of cognition in general. Plekhanov continues: “I shall try to explain the matter to him [Schmidt – V.O.] in the simplest of terms. What is a phenomenon? It is a condition of our consciousness evoked by the effect on us of things-in-themselves. That is what Kant says. From this definition it follows that anticipating a given phenomenon means anticipating the effect that a thing-in-itself will have on our consciousness” (Plekhanov 1976, II:381). According to Plekhanov, man’s everyday scientific and technological practice, its very success, is a proof that “we can anticipate certain phenomena”. He concludes: “So if we are aware of some properties of things-in-themselves, we have no right to call those things unknowable. This ‘sophistry’ of Kant falls to the ground, shattered by

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the logic of his own doctrine. That is what Engels meant by his ‘pudding’” (Plekhanov 1976, II:381).2 The quotation shows us the blueprint of Plekhanov’s argumentation, which he applied again, after a decade, in Materialismus militans (1908) against another opponent, Bogdanov. In his book Empiriomonizm (vol. III, 1906) Bogdanov had reproached Plekhanov for defining the matter as things-in-themselves which affect our organs of sense. In his ‘second letter’ to his adversary, Plekhanov first quotes Bogdanov’s reproach: “Thus [you write smilingly], ‘matter’ (or ‘nature’ in its antithesis to ‘spirit’) is defined through ‘things-in-themselves’ and through their capacity to ‘arouse sensations by acting on our sense-organs’. But what are these ‘things-in-themselves’? ‘That which acts on our sense-organs and arouses in us various sensations.’ That is all. You will find that Comrade Beltov has no other definition, if you leave out of account the probably implied negative characteristics: non-‘sensation’, non- ‘phenomenon’, non-‘experience’ “.3 Then Plekhanov answers – seemingly irritated: “I don’t define matter ‘through’ things-in-themselves at all. I assert only that all things-in-themselves are material. By the materiality of things, I understand – and here you are right – their ability one way or another, directly or indirectly, to act on our senses and thus arouse in us sensations of one kind or another.” Plekhanov continued by explaining, that Kant himself had been inconsequent in defining the things-in-themselves. On the first page of his Critique of Pure Reason Kant had acknowledged things-in-themselves to be the source of our sensations. However, “at the same time he was by no means averse to recognizing these things as something immaterial, that is to say, inaccessible to our senses” (Plekhanov 1976, III: 212). A bit farther in his exposition Plekhanov concedes that “the expression ‘things-in-themselves exist outside our experience’ is not a very happy one. It could mean that things in general are inaccessible to our experience. This is how Kant understood it… “ (Plekhanov 1976, III: 219). Be it as it may, Plekhanov insists that it is necessary to relinquish the Kantian agnosticism. This implies that the Marxists should “employ the term ‘thing-in-itself’ in a quite different sense from the Kantians and Machists” (Plekhanov 1976, III: 212—213).

2 Actually, in Plekhanov’s discussion of Kant (as already in Engels’s ‘pudding thesis’) there is a circulus in demonstrando, which is easily discerned. From the fact of a successful anticipation of phenomena, Plekhanov concludes unjustifiably that there exists a causal relation between things-in-themselves and the cognizing subject. 3 The references Plekhanov gives here are to the first edition of Empiriomonizm, Book III, St.Peterburg 1906: xiii

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As one sees, Plekhanov thinks that the concept of a thing-in-itself is useful – only it should be used in another sense than Kant and other agnostics use it. In fact, this concept seems to be for Plekhanov indispensable for a materialist theory of cognition. A materialist must, however, abandon the false and agnostic, allegedly Kantian idea of the impossibility to have any knowledge about the thing-in-itself. Plekhanov thus seeks an unequivocal definition of the relations of the cognizing subject to the things-in-themselves – not a dialectical one, which would have taken into account the contradictory nature of the human cognitive process. Cognizing the world, the subject aims to get knowledge of something which is objective, that is, independent of the subject. It was precisely this “dialectics” which produced ambiguities in Kant’s original discussion of things-in-themselves.

Lenin and Bogdanov

In his critique of Bogdanov, presented in the the notorious philosophical pamphlet Materialism and Empirio-Criticism (1909), Lenin relies to a great part on Plekhanov’s arguments against the subjectivist interpretations of Marxism by the Neo-Kantians and Bogdanov. Lenin, too, feels that he has to defend the concept of a thing-in-itself, although interpreted according to the doctrine of materialism: “The ‘thing-in-itself’ is a veritable bête noire with Bogdanov and Valentinov, Bazarov and Chernov, Berman and Yushkevich. There is no abuse they have not hurled at it, there is no ridicule they have not showered on it. And against whom are they breaking lances because of this luckless ‘thing-in-itself’? Here a division of the philosophers of Russian Machism according to political parties begins. All the would-be Marxists among the Machians are combating Plekhanov’s ‘thing-in- itself’; they accuse Plekhanov of having become entangled and straying into Kantianism, and of having forsaken Engels” (Lenin 1977:98). Lenin denied that Engels had refuted the thing-in-itself in general. According to him, Engels had refuted only the Kantian interpretation of it: “[I]t is not true that Engels ‘is producing a refutation of the thing-in-itself.’ Engels said explicitly and clearly that he was refuting the Kantian ungraspable (or unknowable) thing-in-itself“ (Lenin 1977:102). Kant’s error was, according to Lenin, that he separated in a principal manner the appearances from the things-in- themselves, like the sceptic David Hume before him, and created thus between the (subjective) appearances and (objective) things-in- themselves a chasm that could not be bridged. After having analyzed the arguments of the Machists, in first instance as they were presented by Bogdanov, Lenin makes his three

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important conclusions as regards to the theory of knowledge (Lenin 1977:103 sqq.): “1) Things exist independently of our consciousness, independently of our perceptions, outside of us […] 2) There is definitely no difference in principle between the phenomenon and the thing-in-itself, and there can be no such difference. The only difference is between what is known and what is not yet known. […] 3) In the theory of knowledge […] we must think dialectically, that is, we must not regard our knowledge as ready-made and unalterable, but must determine […] how incomplete, inexact knowledge becomes more complete and more exact.” A further aspect of Lenin’s interpretation of things-in-themselves as put forth in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism is the thesis – which he develops with a reference to Feuerbach – that in the process of cognition the things-in-themselves (Dinge an sich) constantly turn into things-for-us (Dinge für uns): “The an sich (of itself, or ‘in itself’) of Feuerbach is the direct opposite of the an sich of Kant […] The objects of our ideas are distinct from our ideas, the thing-in-itself is distinct from the thing-for-us, for the latter is only a part, or only one aspect, of the former […] All the mysterious, sage and subtle distinctions between the phenomenon and the thing-in-itself are sheer philosophical balderdash” (Lenin 1977: 120). In his book Empiriomonizm Bogdanov had written that the point of view of such a materialistically re-interpreted thing-in-itself is nothing but a repetition of “the standpoint of the French materialists of the eighteenth century and among the modern philosophers – Engels and his Russian follower, Beltov [i.e. Plekhanov – V.O.]” (quoted here according to Lenin 1977: 121). Lenin’s reply to this assertion is interesting: “The reason for Bogdanov’s distortion of materialism lies in his failure to understand the relation of absolute truth to relative truth” (Lenin 1977: 122). In other words: in order to defend the independence of the things-in-themselves, an independence which Bogdanov doubts, it is necessary to recur to the idea of an absolute truth. Otherwise the scepticism of Hume and Berkeley cannot be resisted. In this way, the dispute about the things-in- themselves transforms into another dispute: does there exist an absolute truth or not? Bogdanov is here very explicit: “As I understand it, Marxism contains a denial of the unconditional objectivity of any truth whatsoever, the denial of all eternal truths.” (Bogdanov, Empiriomonizm, Book III, pp. IV–V. quoted here according to Lenin 1977:122). The positions of Lenin and Bogdanov on questions of the theory of cognition stood thus in opposition to each other in a clear-cut

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manner. Whilst Bogdanov denied wholly the concept of a thing-in-itself, seeing in it only an anthropological and psychological problem, which will become obsolete as the sciences progress, both Plekhanov and Lenin wanted to retain it, albeit not in the ‘agnostic’ form it had received in the Critical philosophy of Kant and his followers. One could thus claim that when Lenin attacked Bogdanov in his Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, the sparring partners entered the fight with quite different premises. For Lenin, the dispute was eminently philosophical, for Bogdanov it was, rather, about matters of empirical science. The outcome of the dispute was thus, in a way, predetermined. Lenin got a philosophical victory over Bogdanov. This was mainly due to the fact that Bogdanov did not want a philosophical dispute at all, but was more interested in what he conceived as a new scientific world outlook which should replace the old philosophy and metaphysics with deeper, more contemporary insights. In the Soviet period, the results of Lenin’s examination in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism were declared as official truth. The ‘Bogdanov case’ was put ad acta and it was, for ideological reasons, not possible to take it into reconsideration. Even the best study on the Lenin-Bogdanov dispute published in the Soviet era, A.I. Volodin’s Boy absolyutno neizbezhen, accepts the official version and restricts itself to the presentation of how Lenin’s philosophical work was written and prepared for print. It was ignored that Bogdanov wrote yet a further answer to Lenin and its arguments were not analyzed (cf. Volodin 1982).

Bogdanov’s muzzled answer to Lenin

Indeed, Bogdanov wrote a reply to Lenin’s critique as early as the following year. In 1910 he published a volume containing two extensive works, Padenie velikogo fetishizma and Vera i nauka. The latter- mentioned had as its subtitle ’O knige V. Il’ina “Materializm i empiriokrititsizm”’. A further answer to Lenin’s book was contained in Bogdanov’s later work Desyatiletie otlucheniya ot marksizma (1904—1914), which has the character of memoirs, but as it was published only posthumously in 1995, I do not analyze here.4 In Vera i nauka Bogdanov, still regarding himself as a ‘historical materialist’ (cf. Bogdanov 1910: 146), begins his answer to Lenin with a definition of religious thought: it is, according to him, nothing else but an authoritarian way of thinking, and is brought about simply by labour

4 See Bordyugov (General Editor) 1995. The volume was edited by N.S. Antonova and has a foreword written by Daniela Steila.

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processes led in an authoritarian way. Faith (vera)5 is nothing but “Man’s relation to an authority approved by him” (Bogdanov 1910: 147). But this kind of authoritarianism is characteristic even for Lenin, who had claimed that there exists an absolute truth. Bogdanov seizes the example of an absolute truth given by Lenin, the sentence ‘Napoleon died in St. Helena in 5th of May 1821’, and attempts to show that even this sentence, which according to Lenin should be absolutely valid, will after a more close scrutiny come across as a relative assertion. So for example already the date ‘5th of May’ would presuppose the Gregorian calendar – and even the concept of ‘death’ is not so easy to define medicinally. (Bogdanov 1910: 154 sqq.) These arguments, as unconvincing as they might appear, were nevertheless intended only as an illustration to Bogdanov’s main idea: human thinking and consequently even the concept of truth are dependent upon the historically changeable social organization of labour. He drives home his point: “I dare to assure the esteemed author [V. Il’in, i.e. Lenin – V.O.] that such complex, generalizing concepts as ‘Autumn’, ‘Winter’, ‘Spring’ etc. actually are not given to us in experience, but shaped by history [vyrabotany istoricheski]. For example, experience has given us a great many elements of ‘cold’, in combination [soedinenie] with elements which formed the complexes of ‘snow’, ‘ice’ […]. The recurrence of these or other sums of experiences, with tiny variations, has served as material for the organizing ‘idea’ or ‘law’: After the Winter, there will be Spring. There is nothing absolute in these conceptions, or in the law which connects them” (Bogdanov 1910: 182). Lenin had objected, that if the truth would be – as Bogdanov claimed – nothing but ‘an organizing form of human experience’, so from this would follow, for example, that the doctrine of Catholicism, with all its dogmas such as transubstantiation, would be true in the most literal sense. To this ironical remark, Bogdanov now answers defiantly: “Catholicism would be a truth, if it were capable of organizing the present-day social experience of humanity in a harmonious and well- structured [stroyno] way, without contradictions […] Catholicism would be a truth for the epoch, the experience of which it could organize successfully and completely; this fact no Il’in, with his muttering, can overcome” (Bogdanov 1910: 184). Bogdanov expresses his position in a concise way, asserting once again his quite subjectivist theory of cognition: “the ‘objectivity’ [of physical experience] is nothing but its general meaning [obshcheznachimost’]

5 In the Russian language, ‘faith’ (in the religious sense) and ‘belief’ are not clearly distinguished; the noun vera covers both meanings.

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for humanity” (Bogdanov 1910: 185). It is thus obvious, that, as regards the general positions of his philosophy, Bogdanov restricts himself to a repetition of his earlier views expressed already, e. g., in the three volumes of Empiriomonizm. In this respect, his answer to Lenin’s Materialism and Empirio-Criticism is indeed not of much interest. However, in Bogdanov’s Vera i nauka there is one very intriguing observation concerning Lenin’s doctrine of things-in-themselves. According to Bogdanov, Lenin is operating in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism at once with three different concepts of the thing-in- itself. These three concepts “correspond to the three philosophical schools, whose ideas have been spread among the Russian Marxists” (Bogdanov 1910: 163). The first of these comes from Feuerbach and Dietzgen, two materialist philosophers whom Lenin has cited copiously in order to prove the idea that “the world is a Being given to the senses and that in this regard there is no essential difference between the ‘thing-in-itself’ and the ‘thing for us’, between ‘matter’ and ‘appearance’” (Bogdanov 1910: 163). Bogdanov refers here to how Lenin had in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism quoted old Feuerbach’s work Über Spiritualismus und Materialismus from 1866. In this work, the German philosopher reproached the idealists who believed that they had been able to crush materialism by accusing it of dogmatism: the materialists assume the sensuous world as an undisputed objective truth. In other words, they assume “that it is a world in itself (an sich), i.e., as existing without us, while in reality the world is only a product of spirit” (Lenin 1977:118). After quoting the passage, Lenin comments triumphantly, identifying himself with Feuerbach’s position: “This materialism of Feuerbach’s, like the materialism of the seventeenth century contested by Bishop Berkeley, consisted in the recognition that ‘objects in themselves’ exist outside our mind. The an sich (of itself, or ‘in itself’) of Feuerbach is the direct opposite of the an sich of Kant […] Feuerbach very ingeniously and clearly explains how ridiculous it is to postulate a ‘transcendence’ from the world of phenomena to the world in itself, a sort of impassable gulf created by the priests and taken over from them by the professors of philosophy” (Lenin 1977:118). Bogdanov remarks: “It seems I do not need to quote further. Only the existence for the senses is recognized, and as a part of it, the appearance, or human experience. This view is put forth against the ‘Machists’, who recognize only ‘experience’, only ‘the world of the elements’, which according to V. Il’in is but idealism, metaphysics et cetera” (Bogdanov 1910: 164).

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Bogdanov continues by noting that Lenin in fact slips into the positions of his adversary, as he defends, following Feuerbach, the idea that the “world in itself” is accessible by the “world of phenomena”. Because there is no impassable gulf between them, so this must mean, that we cognize through our sensuous experience the world as is it in itself. How then, asks Bogdanov, can Lenin at the same time reject the Machian thesis that the existence of the external world consists of nothing else but of our sense-impressions? “[W]hat really are these ‘elements of experience’ which V. Il’in rejects in favour of ‘sensuous experience’? They are colours, tunes, the hard, the soft, the warm […] and so on. […] Colours, tones, hardness, forms – all right, but are not these sensuous elements or elements of the existence for the senses? Obviously, yes! Is there thus any difference between V. Il’in and the ‘Machists’? Obviously, not!” (Bogdanov 1910: 164–165). Bogdanov has here indeed hit on a locus minoris resistentiae in Lenin’s idea of a thing-in-itself. Lenin had, relying upon Feuerbach and upon a yet older materialist tradition, insisted that there is no essential difference between things-in-themselves and appearances. According to his interpretation, in the process of cognition things-in-themselves turn into appearances (i.e. things-for-us) so that there remains nothing one could call a ‘transcensus’. Lenin makes this assertion in order to avoid the alleged ‘agnosticism’ of Kant, i.e., the thesis that things are, when regarded in themselves, impossible to be cognized. What Lenin here does not pay attention to, is that if the principal boundary between in- itself and for-us is diluted in this manner, then even the boundary between subjective and objective gets likewise diluted. If the things-in- themselves really change so effortlessly into things-for-us, as Lenin asserts, so must likewise objectivity easily change into something subjective. So Bogdanov is able to exclaim: “Thus here V. Il’in is taking the same position as the ‘Machists’ he hates so much. When he is speaking about ‘things for us’, which are ‘a part or an aspect of the thing-in-itself’, and both have a quite ‘sensuous’ character, then he is only repeating with other words the same ideas that the Machists, too, adhere to” (Bogdanov 1910: 165). It is true that Bogdanov has here found an inconsequence expressly in Lenin’s Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, the later canonical book of Soviet Diamat. But one has immediately to add to this the fact that Bogdanov’s own position does not by this discovery become in any way more consistent. A couple of pages later he writes: “Mach and the Empirio-Criticists have a realist understanding of experience: experience consists of things and images [obrazy], of physical and psychical complexes. In both cases the elements are the same. In the first-mentioned complexes the elements are elements of things,

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in the latter ones they are elements of images, or sensations. The elements of things (or of the ‘environment’) are colours, forms, hardness, softness and so on, are taken as being independent of the individual [subject – V. O.], in a connection that is objective: in the complex ‘petal of a rose’, the colour red is united with the softness, the oval form, pleasant smell etc. in an objective way, as an ‘object’, quite independently of whether ‘I’ am looking at this petal or not.” (Bogdanov 1910: 167) The big problem in this argument consists of the following: if one chooses to understand experience in a ‘realistic’ (materialistic) way, one cannot cope with the task without the concept of a thing-in-itself, which is independent of the cognizing and experiencing ‘I’. But for Bogdanov, this possibility does not exist, since for him there are no things-in-themselves – everything is but “organized experience”. In other words, his ‘experience’ does not have a well-defined, independent ‘opposite’: in the quotation above he says outright that the “elements” of the subjective experience are “the same” as the objective elements. In other words, although Bogdanov quite rightly finds inconsequences in Lenin’s use of the concept of a thing-in-itself, this does not mean that the concept as such would become obsolete. As to the two other versions of things-in-themselves that Bogdanov finds in Lenin, the second is derived from Plekhanov. In general, one can find in Plekhanov more sympathy towards Kantian argumentation than in Lenin. Plekhanov did not treat the thing-in-itself and thing-for-us as concepts of the same level as Lenin did in the above- cited passages. According to Plekhanov, things-in-themselves should be conceived as a kind on ‘species’ (vid), which lies outside of the experience but nevertheless affects our senses. This is a reading rather close to Kant (who, however, never called his things-in-themselves a ‘species’). In some parts of Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, Lenin adheres to Plekhanov’s interpretation, but is not, according to Bogdanov, able to distinguish his position from that of Plekhanov, and therefore remains, even here, inconsistent (Bogdanov 1910: 172). The third version of Lenin’s concept of thing-in-itself is not very clearly formulated in Bogdanov’s critique, but even here he is able to make an interesting and intriguing comment. He notes that despite the fact that Lenin at times seems to embrace Plekhanov’s interpretation of thing-in-itself, there however remains “a big difference between Plekhanov and Lenin, which one is not allowed to lose from sight. For Plekhanov, the things-in-themselves do not at all have a sensuous character. Only their ‘appearances’ have this character […] For Il’in, on the contrary, as he repeatedly asserts, there ‘does not exist any other existence than a sensuous existence’, and the things-in-themselves are principally of the same quality as the appearances” (Bogdanov 1910: 173).

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In other words, Plekhanov’s concept of the thing-in-itself is metaphysical, whereas Lenin’s concept is empiricist. This is a good remark. Nevertheless, when one tries to summarize the results of the Lenin— Bogdanov controversy, one has to conclude that despite the fact that Bogdanov succeeded in showing up some inconsequences in Lenin’s concept, he did not succeed in the main task – in his attempt to show that the idea of a thing-in-itself is generally obsolete. His own philosophy (if he at all wanted to call it a ‘philosophy’) was not conceptually commensurate with such a task.

References

Bordyugov, G.A. (General Editor) 1995. Neizvestnyy Bogdanov, kn. 3: A.A. Bogdanov, Desyatiletiye otluchenija ot marksizma, Moskva: AIRO—XX. Bogdanov, A.A. 1910. Padenie velikogo fetishizma. Vera i nauka. Moskva: V. Rikhter. ------. 2003. Empiriomonizm. Stat’i po filosofii. Moskva: Iz-vo “Respublika”. Grille, Dieter. 1966. Lenins Rivale. Bogdanov und seine Philosophie. Köln: Vlg. Wissenschaft und Politik (Abhandlungen des Bundesinstituts für ostwissenschaftliche und internationale Studien), Bd. XII. Lenin, V.I. 1977. Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. In: Lenin, V. I., Collected Works vol. 14, Moscow: Progress Publishers 1977 Plekhanov, G. V. 1976 ‟Conrad Schmidt versus Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.” In: G. V. Plekhanov, Selected Philosophical Works in Five Volumes. Vol. II. Moscow: Progress. ------. 1976. “Materialismus militans”. In: Selected Philosophical Works in Five Volumes, Vol. III, Moscow: Progress Publishers. Steila, Daniela. 1996. Scienza e rivoluzione. La recezione dell’empiriocriticismo nella cultura russa (1870—1910), Torino: Casa Editrice Le Lettere. Steyla, Daniela. 2013. Nauka i revolyutsiya. Retseptsiya empiriokrititsizma v russkoy kul’ture (1877–1910 gg.), Moskva: Akademicheskiy Proekt (This is a new, expanded edition, in Russian, of the edition of 1996). Volodin, A.I. 1982. “Boy absolyutno neizbezhen”. Istoriko-filosofskie ocherki o knige V.I. Lenina “Materializm i empiriokrititsizm”. Moskva: Politizdat. Yagodinskiy. V.N. 2006. Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Bogdanov (Malinovskiy) 1873– 1928. Moskva: Nauka.

An extended version of this paper has been previously published in German in Vesa Oittinen (ed.), Aleksandr Bogdanov revisited, Helsinki 2006.

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ALEKSANDR BOGDANOV'S TEKTOLOGY: A SCIENCE OF CONSTRUCTION Simona Poustilnik______

Russian Darwinism developed without Malthus – without the struggle for existence. There is a remarkable link connecting the understanding of the Russian Darwinists of “natural podbor” as ‘fine-tuning’ by nature and Bogdanov’s concept of tektological ‘podbor’ (‘assembling’) as the universal mechanism of the construction of any organization. Bogdanov’s conception of the universal phenomenon of ‘organization’ as an expedient combination of active elements, and his attempt to construct a collective tektological ‘personality-organization’ possessed a conceptual creative power and influenced the work of the Soviet Constructivists. Conceptions of ‘assembling’ similar to those expressed in Tektology provided Constructivists with a scientific rationale, projects and terminology for their experiments in a new ‘production art’. They constructed expedient and functional art

objects from a tektological point of view - as organizational art objects.

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…the symbols and formulas of the Glass Bead Game combined structurally, musically, and philosophically within the framework of a universal language, were nourished by all the sciences and arts, and strove in play to achieve perfection, pure being, the fullness of reality (Herman Hesse, The Glass Bead Game)

“Furor tectologicus”

Rephrasing René Descartes, Aleksandr Bogdanov once said of himself: “I am organized therefore I exist.” He viewed the phenomenon of “organization” as a focal and creative point of the universe and Tektology as a universal science of organization of a better world and humankind. He admitted: “I have some kind of disease – furor tectologicus – as soon as I see a task which is difficult to solve, or a combination I do not understand – so immediately appears the insurmountable aspiration if not to solve it, then to determine in principle its solution, and so for me nothing is sacrosanct.” (Bogdanov 1913: 211–212). Tektology: Universal Organizational science1 (1913–1922) signified the birth of a new science of organization (systems science in modern language) and a new cognitive model – a systems model.2 It would come fully into existence only several decades later, in the middle of the XX century, with the development of Ludwig von Bertalanffy’s General Systems Theory (GST) and Norbert Wiener’s cybernetics.3 But the true beginning of the systems paradigm was for a long time forgotten until Bogdanov’s Tektology was rediscovered.4 The starting

1 There is some disagreement regarding the date of the publication of the first part of Tektology (1912 or 1913). The original was not dated beyond the foreword (December, 1912) and Bogdanov himself occasionally referred to 1912. The definite date of publication (1913) is provided by the Knizhnaya letopis’ in Rossiiskaya knizhnaya palata - year 1913, No 32, page 4, entry number 19802. 2 The term “cognitive model” was introduced by the Russian philosopher, Alexander Ogurtsov, in 1980 and developed by the Russian historian of science, Yuriy Chaikovskiy. See Chaikovskiy 2008: 225–227. 3 Bertalanffy had arrived at his basic concept by the end of the 1930s, but published it only after end of the war, having earlier believed that the scientific community was not ready to accept it. 4 Tektology was a unique conception of the general science of organization which brought into focus the systems notions of all main macroparadigms which

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point of Tektology was the universally applicable idea of “organization” or “complex” as an expedient unity, a combination of elements - “activities-resistances” and a universal set of organizational laws for all complexes of the world. As Bogdanov stated: “My starting point … consists in that structural relations can be generalized to the same degree of formal schematic clarity as the relations of quantities in mathematics and on such basis organizational tasks can be solved using methods analogous to the mathematical”. (Bogdanov 1989: Book 2, 310). This apparently purely scientific and innocent scientific doctrine gave rise to a great outburst of “proletarian” debates and influenced the development, shaping and interpretation of proletarian ideology and culture in early Soviet Russia. This is not surprising since Tektology was designed as a monistic organizational proletarian science and such a project was possible only in Russia and only at this time. Bogdanov was deeply influenced by classical science and by the monistic tradition in philosophy. The idea of the unity of nature and of its simplicity was one of the first scientific and philosophical notions. It held that the diversity of nature was full of amazing and numerous analogies and repetitions – therefore there should be simple and universal laws of nature to explain all phenomena. The epoch of classical science was an era of aspiration for creation of “global formulae” – universal and simple monistic models and concepts of the world. For pre-twentieth science, the unity of knowledge was equal to monism of knowledge – by ascending to more and more abstract levels of existence it would be possible eventually to arrive at unified all- embracing laws of existence (as in the Mathesis universalis of Leibniz or the Divine Calculator of Laplace).5 This old monistic tradition was still very powerful during Bogdanov’s lifetime.6 As the influential German biologist Ernest

appeared at different stages in the development of the systems movement of the XX century. See Poustilnik 1998. 5 This idea was expressed in many ways in relation both to the simplicity of nature and the simplicity of its explanation (Ockham’s Razor, Fermat’s principle of the reflection and refraction of light, Maupertuis’ general principle of least action, Goethe’s protophenomena, etc.). 6 At this time scientists were still preoccupied with analogies between the simple and the complex, and with the construction of numerous simple models of nature. For example, the analogy of the cell with the crystal was highly popular. See a Russian translation by Przhibram, G. 1913. “Obzor mnenii avtorov o znachenii analogii mezdu kristallom i organizmom”, in What Is Life. New in Biology.

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Haeckel7 put it, monism was an evident characteristic of the sciences and philosophical thought of the end of the nineteenth century. He believed that the approaching twentieth century would construct “a system of pure monism” and achieve the “long-desired unity of world- conception” (Haeckel 1900: XV&390). Bogdanov designed his new science of organization in accordance with the monistic assumptions of his era – Tektology’s subtitle; Universal Organizational Science implied a monistic universal science. Tektology was to be a monistic science of world-organization, viewing and summing up the entire universe in terms of and through organization.8 Bogdanov’s ingenious scientific discovery –“everything is organization” led him to the conclusion that everything was only organization – being a “monist” he believed he had created a new monistic organizational science.9 As a Russian Marxist, Aleksandr Bogdanov was committed to the scientific reconstruction of society, which appeared to him to be the highest form of organization. Implementing Marxist-positivistic practical aspirations, Tektology was to be not merely a monistic organizational science but a science of monistic organizational experience. Tektology was meant to be a practical science, its formulae - “practical global formulae” were intended for the “practical mastery” of nature, and to be “a powerful instrument of the real organization of humankind into a single collective.” (Bogdanov 1989: Book 1, 110).

Tektological ‘podbor’ - the creative power

St.Peterburg: Collection 1, 19–47. We find this analogy in the first pages of Tektology. See Bogdanov 1989: Book 1, 72. For Bogdanov it was very important since it demonstrated the possibility of his general organizational approach. 7 Bogdanov took the term Tektology from Ernst Haeckel’s Generalle Tektologie oder Allgemeine Structurlehre der Organismen (1866) expanding this term. In Greek, “tekton” means “theory of construction” and for Bogdanov” “construction” was “the most general and suitable synonym for the modern notion of organization.” See Bogdanov 1989: Book 1, 112. 8 The German chemist Wilhelm Ostwald, Haeckel’s most important successor as a monist, attempted to develop the concept of “energetic monism”, based on the universal principle of energy. This gave to Bogdanov the idea of applying the notion of “organization” in a similar way. 9 Bogdanov identified three types of monistic word view in the history of society: religious, philosophical-abstract and scientific and considered Tektology to be the ultimate “scientific-monistic” worldview.

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Russian Marxism had seen the revolution and class struggle as the way towards achieving a new social order. Bogdanov had an opposite vision; the idea of struggle did not fit in with Bogdanov’s organizational and harmonic vision of the world. Tektology was an “all- human science” for the gathering together of man and of the world, to produce a scientifically organized collective by stage of self- organization without class struggle. The collectivistic organizational logic of Tektology was based on Bogdanov’s biological worldview, fused with a Russian philosophical Weltanschauung, which had always been penetrated by ideas of the harmony of the world and did not accept the principle of struggle as the moving force of evolution. Bogdanov introduced the term “complex” as “expedient unity” (tselesoobrasnost’)10 to denote a combination of elements or “activities- resistances” and interpreted this in terms of the biological concept of constant interaction with the environment and adaptation to it (Bogdanov 1989 Book 1: 112–125). Following Darwin, Bogdanov conceived of development as the adaptation of a complex to its environment. The universal regulating mechanism of tektological development and its adaptation was ‘podbor’. Bogdanov believed his tektological ‘podbor’ to be merely a logical extension of Darwin’s principle of “natural selection” discarding the epithet “natural” (Bogdanov 1989, Book 1: 189–190). But this was not the case. How far did Bogdanov really follow Darwin? Is his conception of selection really an extension of that of Darwin? Darwin’s theory of evolution “by means of natural selection” was greatly influenced by the English economist Thomas Malthus and his theory of population growth exceeding resources. Malthus’s metaphor of the “struggle for existence” was the matrix for Darwin’s theory of evolution based on competition. Darwin wrote: “Nothing is easier than to admit in words the truth of the universal struggle for life” (Darwin 1902: 77). Russian naturalists perceived nature very differently from Western naturalists, seeing in nature not over-population but under- population. Russian philosophy with its humanistic and collectivistic

10 Bogdanov identified three types of “complex” - “organized”, “disorganized” and “neutral” since an increase in the degree of organization (“organized” complex) was just one possible outcome of organizational processes; however, he was mostly interested in the “organized” complex.

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tendencies believed in the best sides of both human nature and society. The same attitude was applied to nature. As the Russian writer and publicist Aleksandr Herzen put it, everybody has to have a place at nature’s feast. For Russian intellectuals, the constructions of Malthus were offensive and even repugnant, and contrary to the Russian humanistic tradition, which believed in high human moral ideals and strove for the improvement of human society11. These intellectuals transferred the same negative assessment to Darwin and Darwinism. Russian intellectuals perceived Darwin’s theory as being the concept of a ruling élite, for the benefit of the ruling élite. For example, the leading Russian biologist of that time, Nikolay Danilevskiy, described Darwinism as a “purely English doctrine”, in which is included not just the features of the English mind but all the features of the English spirit (Danilevskiy 1885: 178). In the first Russian translation of Darwin’s Origin of Species (Rachinskiy 1864) Darwin’s term “natural selection” was translated as “estestvenniy podbor” (‘podbor’ - “assembling” in re-translation). This fundamentally changed the meaning of Darwin’s concept of evolution and removed its emphasis on competition and struggle for existence. As a result, Russian Darwinism developed without Malthus – without the struggle for existence. Russian Darwinists and intellectuals discussed Darwin’s theory of evolution in terms of “assembling” or “choice” – as nature’s choice of individual traits to uphold its divine and marvelous order; adaptation represented a kind of reciprocal “fine-tuning” or creative construction by nature (Chaikovskiy 1989: 121–141). The correct translation of Darwin’s term “natural selection” – “estestvenniy otbor” appeared in Russia at the end of the nineteenth century,12 but the idea of competition as a moving force of evolution was not really adopted. Most Russian thinkers, philosophers and scientists of different backgrounds and political views of the generation of Bogdanov believed that Darwin’s concept of evolution reflected the negative influence of Malthus. Russian thinkers tried to create different theories of mutual aid in order to achieve “genuine

11 As Todes has noted, Malthus was seen in Russia as a “hack writer”(Lev Tolstoi), whose doctrine was a “morally repugnant” (Beketov) expression of the secret desires of the wealth-producing classes (Kropotkin). See Todes 1989: 169. 12 In the translation of The Origin of Species by the famous Russian botanist Kliment Timiryazev (1896).

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Darwinism”. In 1902 the famous Russian anarchist and biologist, Prince Petr Kropotkin, devised an alternative concept of evolution: Mutual Aid as Factor of Evolution.13 In this work, Kropotkin wrote: “I failed to find – although I was eagerly looking for it – that bitter struggle for the means of existence, among animals belonging to the same species, which was considered by most Darwinists… as the dominant characteristic of the struggle for life, and the main factor of evolution”. (Kropotkin 1914: 7). Instead he found “a great deal of mutual aid where Darwin and Wallace see only struggle.” (1914: 9). Kropotkin did not deny the existence of competition within the same species or Darwin’s concept of the “survival of the fittest”. But he believed that the “fittest” are animals that cooperate with each other. Kropotkin viewed human morality as a product of the solidarity and self-sacrifice that originated from the cooperative instincts of the animal world. 14 It was in conformity with this Russian anti-Malthusian assessment and tradition, that Bogdanov wrote in Tektology that the principle of Darwin is a “scientific truth” and that the views of Malthus should be disregarded “as being fundamentally mistaken” (Bogdanov 1989: Book 2, 190) and he deliberately adopted the archaic, by that time, translation ‘podbor’15 since, for him, the term ‘podbor’ corresponded to genuine Darwinism. He believed he was merely expanding the relevance of the term in Tektology; but in a fact, tektological ‘podbor’ (“assembling”) – is not an extension of Darwin’s “natural selection”. Darwin’s evolution works only through heredity in succession of generations. Darwin’s “natural selection” meant selective biological reproduction; each generation continues its evolutionary direction by taking the next evolutionary step. In Bogdanov’s tektological

13 Petr Kropotkin 1914. Kropotkin wrote his book as a response to Social Darwinism, particularly that of Thomas Henry Huxley (known as “Darwin’s Bulldog)” and his book The Struggle for Existence in Human Society (1988). 14 Another great example of Russian collectivistic thinking is the Russian religious philosopher Nikolay Fyodorov, the father of Russian cosmism. In The Philosophy of the Common Task he proposed bringing all people together in the global task of resurrection of all “fathers” by the “sons” through the application of science, in order to achieve immortality and the brotherhood of all generations in future cosmic humankind. 15 Bogdanov was familiar with the correct translation of Darwin’s term “natural selection” as ‘otbor’ since he was a student of Timiryazev and he applied the term ‘otbor’ in Tektology on several occasions.

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organizational scheme the mechanism of ‘podbor’ was applied to the development of any kind of organization, regardless of biological heredity. The further and the most important difference resides in the systems character of tektological ‘podbor’, which, in this respect, is the direct opposite of Darwin’s “natural selection”. Darwin’s “natural selection” meant the selecting-survival of individuals through the adaptation of one particular feature or another in the course of the struggle for existence. Bogdanov’s ‘podbor’ meant the assembling- creation of the organization through the concordance of its parts and expediency (Bogdanov 1989: Book 1, 113) without reference to the idea of competition. Tektological ‘podbor’ creates the mutual correspondence of all complexes as parts of a single world-organism – in line with the understanding of the Russian Darwinists of “natural podbor” as “fine-tuning” in nature. 16 Tektological ‘podbor’ appears as the universal mechanism of the construction of any organization and its expediency. In 2008 Chaikovskiy in his fundamental research on the theory of evolution devoted a special chapter to ‘Podbor’ according to Bogdanov, where he discussed the importance of Bogdanov’s ‘podbor’ as the foundation the idea of the universal phenomenon of self-organization in nature (Chaikovskiy 2008: 363–370). Tektological ‘podbor’ as the universal organizing principle assembling the complex through the concordance of its parts was taken up later in the work of the Soviet Constructivists, as we shall see.

“Tektological Socialism” according to Bogdanov

It was not so much the functioning of organizations, which interested Bogdanov, as the principles by which an organization as “expedient integrity” (‘tselesoobrasnost’) was constructed. Organization figures in Tektology more as a process than as a state - the new “constructive” science was to be a science of the organizational laws that determine the construction of elements into an integral unity. Bogdanov choose the category of “organization” not by chance. The philosophical term “organization” had acquired in Marxism a special meaning as “social organization”. For Russian

16 The modern understanding of “selection” in the context of global evolutionism corresponds to Bogdanov’s ‘podbor’. See Poustilnik 2008: 134.

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Marxists the idea of the construction of a new rational social organization based on science was central – and science played a primary role in Bogdanov’s conception of scientifically organized humankind. But he viewed the science of the old world as full of contradictions, too complicated and fragmented, and therefore not suitable for the purpose of managing the “grandiose task…the triple organization - of things, people and ideas” the objective of which was to achieve a new social organization (Bogdanov 1989: Book 1, 106). Bogdanov considered Marx to be the “great forerunner of organizational science”. As White has put it, Bogdanov’s concept of socialism as the “gathering of man” was close to the original idea of Karl Marx. Marx believed that socialism would create an integral human community, which would end the fragmentation of the human psyché brought about by the division of labour and specialization. Bogdanov conceived of the future collective in a similar fashion – all of its members would be able to transfer from specialty to specialty. Science would be available to everyone and the human collective would be able to control it. But for Marx, the future socialist society was to result from the inherent social nature of Mankind, whereas for Bogdanov it would result from the active self-organization of society (White 1998: 37–38). Bogdanov’s answer was Tektology as the “socialism of science”. In his early work, The Gathering of Man (Sobiraniye cheloveka, 1904) Bogdanov formulated the task of changing “a fractured man” into “integral man” when knowledge would be the property not of an élite, but of all members of the collective. It was the hope of replacing the existing necessity of collective belief by the collective possession of knowledge that motivated Bogdanov in his path towards Tektology. 17 The class struggle did not fit into Bogdanov’s organizational vision of a harmonious world. As he explained in Problems of socialism

17 In Engineer Menni (1912), Bogdanov’s second science fiction novel about “tektological society” on the “Red Planet”, Mars, he gives expression to his innermost aspirations; one of the protagonists asks “What must we do so that we ourselves can know and see, and not just constantly believe?” adding that “Modern “science is just like the society that has created it: powerful, but splintered…Because of this fragmentation the individual branches of science have developed separately and lost all vital connection with each other… Each branch has its special language which is the privilege of the initiated and serves to exclude everyone else.” See Bogdanov 1984: 186–187. On Bogdanov novels, see Shushpanov 2009: 259–281.

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(Voprosy sotsializma, 1918) “the class struggle… ignores the organization stability of the social mechanism.” (Bogdanov 1918: 42). He goes on: “According to the old notions, socialism first conquers and then comes into being.... We see things differently – socialistic development will be completed by a socialistic revolution.” (1918: 101–102). The creative implementation of a socialist, class-based order will bring the proletariat to a victory that will transform that order into an all-human order (‘obshchechelovecheskiy stroi’). Bogdanov completely discarded the notion of class struggle – now the construction of a new social organization could be achieved only through a long stage of cultural self-organization of the proletariat.18 Bogdanov designed a programme for this transition – the Programme of Proletarian Culture (Proletkult).19 At the core of the project of the Proletkult there was Tektology, the organizational proletarian science. To master culture meant to master Tektology, which contained all the organizational experience and knowledge of humankind. For Bogdanov, Tektology was the ultimate tool for the construction of new kinds of relationships between members of the social organization in the advance towards socialism.20 When Bogdanov says Tektology, he means proletarian science, and vice versa. Tektology was a proletarian science that had simplified all sciences from an organizational point of view and so became available to every member of the collective, and not only to the educated élite. This science of organization was a proletarian science and a real instrument for the peaceful transition towards the unified human collective of the future. In Bogdanov’s own words, Tektology was an “all-human science” – an instrument for the organization of humankind into “single intelligent human organism”21 and the purpose of the Proletkult was to open the path towards socialism by serving as an enabling

18 This explains why he left active political life in 1911 and became Lenin’s most serious intellectual antagonist and rival. 19 On the Proletkult, see Sochor 1988. 20 Bogdanov was obsessed with this idea. In 1918, at the First All-Russian Conference of the Proletkult, in his speech Science and the Proletariat (Nauka i proletariat) Bogdanov spoke of the need to master tektology as a means towards socialism (the Proletkult catered not for everyone, but primarily for the proletarian vanguard or proletarian élite). 21 Bogdanov tried to achieve “physiological collectivism” in practice, through exchange blood transfusions, seeing this as a way of eliminating the “weak link” of each organism and, most interestingly, of achieving an “outcome beyond the limits of individuality” (Bogdanov 1989: Book 2, p. 86). At that time many scientists believed in heredity via blood. See Krementsov 2011.

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institution for cultural self-organization and the mastering of Tektology.22 The Proletkult represented a fusion of Bogdanov’s utopian aspirations – the scientific utopia of a universal monistic discipline that was capable of mastering any combination of elements and the social utopia of the construction of “tektological socialism”.

Project of Man and Project of Art

How did Bogdanov’s view of the world via the prism of organization influence Russian intellectuals in the first decades of the 20th century? Vesa Oittinen in his preface to Alexandr Bogdanov Revisited has discussed the long history of Bogdanov’s “rivalry” with Lenin and the powerful influence of this rivalry on the formation of Leninism and of early Soviet state ideology, cultural politics and art (Oittinen 2009: 7–20). The post-revolutionary era in Russia witnessed the advent of a project to create a “new Soviet man”. This ideological construct, was no longer an individual but a collective proletarian. Many strands of this project were rooted in Tektology, which during the early years of the Soviet regime was used by Russian Marxists as a creative intellectual tool. Political leaders and the “proletarian” élite, both before the revolution and after, in their searching for a new men and a new society model, closely studied Red Star (Bogdanov 1908). Bogdanov’s first science fiction novel about “tektological communism” on Mars. During the first years after the revolution Bogdanov was very popular; Tektology was a mandatory subject of study in the courses of Narkompros (the People’s Commissariat of Enlightenment).23 During the relative freedom of the 1920s Bogdanov was still able to publish and express his views and ideas.24 The First All-Russian Initiative Conference on the Scientific Organization of Labour and Production (NOT), 1921 opened with a presentation by Bogdanov: “Organization Science and

22 In the 1920s official Soviet Marxists distorted Bogdanov’s notion of organizational proletarian science and used it to divide science into “proletarian” and “bourgeois”. 23 See Udal’tsov 1922: 82–83. The program of the Proletkult abandoned traditional authoritarian teaching and relationships and encouraged students to work as a collective. 24 Particularly, in the journals “Gryadushchee” (The Future) and “Proletarskaya Kul’tura” (Proletarian Culture). Bogdanov was the editor in chief of “Proletarskaya Kul’tura”.

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the planning of the economy” in which he advocated the development of Soviet economy according to tektological principles (the law of the least, the principle of equilibrium, etc.).25 In 1924, in the journal Under Banner of Marxism (‘Pod znamenem marksizma’) it was noted that one of the immediate tasks was – a close examination and criticism of Tektology from the standpoint of dialectical materialism (Veinstein 1924: 90) – indeed, critical reviews of Tektology appeared in this journal on a regular basis.26 In 1930 in the journal Revolution and Culture (‘Revolyutsiya i kultura’) it was emphasised once again that “the influence of Bogdanov’s doctrine…necessitates its serious and deep criticism”.27 In the same year there appeared a critical review of the economist Bazarov, one of Bogdanov’s followers in economics, in which it was sarcastically noted: “What can we say about a naturalist who, on the grounds that a table has four “legs”, like a cow, would declare that a table is the model of a cow?” (Sobol’ 1930: 60). Slava Gerovitch, in discussing the evolution of the Soviet notion of self, has pointed out: “The “totalitarian model” of Soviet society traditionally considered “the cog in a wheel” as a central metaphor for the new Soviet man. This metaphor embodied the notion of the passive individual subsumed under the collective…” (Gerovitch 2007: 137). Recently, however, scholars have begun to challenge the passive nature of the Soviet “totalitarian self”. They argue that the “new Soviet man” was not just a passive recipient of official ideology. He made active attempts to construct a new identity for himself, aspiring after the alluring ideal of the new Soviet man (Gerovitch 2007). Proletarian collectivism was an essential feature of this identity and all aspects of a new “proletarian” life - and a necessary

25 It is interesting that Bogdanov introduced the term ‘Soviet exhaustion’ (‘Sovetskaya iznoshennost’), which he considered to be a consequence of the “enthusiasm of socialistic construction.” See Bogdanov 1928: 22. 26 For example, tektology was evaluated as reactionary concept because it “interfered with the revolutionary tactics of the proletariat”(Veinstein Ibid.); the tektological principle of ‘weak link’ (‘printsip slabogo zvena’) provoked the “Marxist” response that “our Party successfully leads the peasantry towards socialism, which is, “ from Bogdanov’s point of view is an impossible case” since for Bogdanov it is the “weak link” that determines development (Karev 1926: 43); Tektology “results in almost mystical concepts because of the mechanical transfer of models from one area to another”( Ibid., 27). 27 “Ob itogach i novych zadachakh na filosofskom fronte” 1930: 109.

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precondition of the construction of a new proletarian art. Bogdanov’s slogan of “organization” and organizational laws, and his attempt to construct a collective integral personality-organization possessed a conceptual creative power. As Susiluoto has pointed out, in Russia, systems thinking arose as a comprehensive challenge without proof, through philosophy and theoretical concepts and possessed a “utopian creative power to influence and change the entire world, now and at once.” (Susiluoto 2009: 86). Tektology as a science of the organization of rational combinations was a powerful and creative instrument, and its ideas were promoted and available to Soviet intellectuals, artists, and the mass membership of the Proletkult. Many links were forged between groups of the Proletkult and Constructivists after the founding of Constructivism in March 1921.28 The Art Deco style of the early twentieth century was a celebration of the rise of commerce and machine art, and the human being was included in the universe of the machine and viewed as a technical system. During the early Soviet period, life was synonymous with art, and art became life. New “proletarian” art and “proletarian” art objects were to be imbued with the idea of a purpose that was understandable for the proletariat and clearly connected with everyday life and work experience.29 The Constructivists were dedicated to creating art objects that would organize the new Soviet man in a collective direction towards socialism. They were seeking to create the projects and objects of proletarian constructivist art as a fusion of human being, technique, science and everyday life based on the principle of concordance of the parts, forms and materials.30 Tektology provided Constructivists with a scientific rationale, and with terminology and models for their experiments in a new “production art”. Bogdanov viewed expediency as being the universal principle of every form of organization, and that it derived from the inherent activity of all complexes:

28 For example, Boris Arvatov taught at the Central Proletkult in Moscow. 29 Aleksandr Rodchenko in writing about the new essence of proletarian items of daily life, referred to “the capitalistic world’s “opium of things”. 30 Alekseiy Gan designated the three principal elements of Constructivism as “construction”, “faktura” and the “tectonic”.

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“Any practical or theoretical task comes up against a tektological question: how to organize most expediently a collection of elements, whether real or ideal.” (Bogdanov 1989: Book 1, 142). For the Constructivists the conception of “organization” as an expedient combination of active elements was a powerful idea and stimulus. Tektological models demonstrated the practical ways for artists to construct an expedient complex of “production art” in order to fulfill the political command which required proletarian artists to deliver practical and functional proletarian art objects. In 1922 Alekseiy Gan published the groundbreaking work Constructivism (Gan 1922), in which he pronounced the slogan “labour, technique and organization!” and “expediency” was proclaimed as a formal artistic dogma and goal. As Tikka has pointed out: “In line with the tectological thinking…the constructivist theorist Alekseiy Gan…elaborated his “Tectonics” on the idea of “fluidity” (tekuchest’) as a formulation of the workers’ “active social force” (Tikka 2008: 222).31 Bogdanov spoke of the “worker-organizer”, the Constructivists – of the “artist- organizer” – both models implied collective work. Bogdanov conceived of Tektology as the ultimate tool that would contribute to the attainment of socialism. The Constructivists saw collective artistic labour as a path towards socialism. Bogdanov did not make a distinction between creation and labour – and the Constructivists focused on practical objects inspired by labour, technique and everyday life. The Constructivist artist was an “artist-organizer”, an “artist- worker” – a member of the proletarian collective, organizing and creating an object of organized art in collective production.32 The product of constructivist work-art figured as an organized complex in Bogdanov’s sense of the term created by the proletarian collective and representing the proletarian collective as “workers-organizers”. Tektological ‘podbor’-“assembling” as a universal mechanism for construction, provided the Constructivists with a real method for constructing an expedient art-object by way of a “cinematic assembly”

31 The term “tectonic” (‘tektonika’) was also used by Constructivists Varvara Stepanova and Alexandr Rodchenko. Varvara Stepanova in her lecture on Constructivism in 1921 discussed “tectonic construction” and the role of the artist as an organizer. 32 For example, Rodchenko asked his students to create the objects, which would organize the collective.

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of the elements – in the manner of assembling by tektological ‘podbor’. In 1922 the Constructivist Dziga Vertov proclaimed: “Cinema is the art of the fictional motion of things in space that meet the requirements of science”; ‘kinochestvo’ is “the art of organizing the necessary movements of things in space and time in a rhythmical artistic whole.”33

In 1923 The Council of Three (‘Sovet troich’), led by Vertov, proposed assembling “visual events” into “a tectonic whole” “in a great craft of montage.” In this conception, the constructivist filmmaker would apply methods resembling tektological ‘podbor’ and tektological models as a means of creating organized film- construction.34 As regards tektological ‘podbor’ – assembling – Tikka has drawn attention to the ideas of Sergei Eisenstein on the cinematic ‘assembly line’ and to his “notion of montage as a tectological method for organizing human experience” (Tikka 2009 op.cit: 229).

Conclusion

I have argued that there is a remarkable link connecting the understanding of the Russian Darwinists of “natural podbor” as “fine- tuning” by nature, Bogdanov’s concept of tektological ‘podbor’ as a universal principle of “assembling” in organization and, through what seems to have been the dissemination of his ideas, the concept of the “cinematic assembly “of the Soviet Constructivists. In my view this continuity can be attributed to the immanent collectivism of the Russian and Soviet Weltanschauung. The conception of a new class of organizers of socialism as a “proletarian” collectivity – Bogdanov’s Tektology as organizer and Constructivist production art as organizer – were not acceptable to the Soviet political leadership since they did not integrate the leadership’s conception of Marxism into their organizational constructions and models. The fraught relationship between these two great Utopian projects of the XX century has yet fully to be investigated.

33 See Vertov, 1922. Variant Manifesta “My”: http://vertov.ru/Dziga_Vertov/ 34 Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera (1929) is a great example of Tektology-inspired constructivist cinematic technique in which organized film is placed at the service of the organized collective. Vertov included in his films moments of editing of the film, making explicit the process of construction.

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References

Bogdanov, Aleksandr. 1908. Krasnaya zvezda (Roman-utopiya). Saint-Petersburg: Tovarishchestvo khudozhnikov pechati. ------1913. “Pis’mo V.V.Veresaevu”, 3 November 1913. In Trudy Komissii po nauchnomu naslediyu A.A.Bogdanova, 211–212 Moscow: Institut Ekonomiki. 1992. ------1918. Voprosy sotsialisma. Moscow: Knigoisdatel'stvo Pisatelei v Moskve. ------1928. “Perviy god raboty Instituta perelivaniya krovi.” In Na novom pole. Moscow: Gos.Nauchnij Institut perelivaniya krovi, 1: 1–45. ------1984. Red Star. The First Bolshevik Utopia, edited by Loren Graham, and Richard Stites. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ------1989. Tektologiya:Vseobshchaya organizatsionnaya nauka. Moscow: Economika, 1–2. Chaikovskii, Yuriy. V. 1989. “Pervye shagi darvinisma v Rossii.” Istoriko-biologicheskie issledovaniya, Moscow 10: 121–141. ------2008. Aktivnyy svyaznyy mir. Moscow: Tovarishchestvo nauchnuch izdanii KMK. Danilevskii, Nikolay Ya. 1885. Darvinism. Kriticheskoe Issledovanie. SPb: Izdanie Merkuriya Eleazarovicha-Komarova, Vol.1, Part. 2. Darwin, Charles. 1902. The Origin of Species by means of natural selection or The preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. London: John Murray. Gan, Alexeiy. 1922. Konstruktivizm,Tver': Tverskoe izdatel'stvo. Gerovitch, Slava. 2007. “New Soviet Man” Inside Machine: Human Engineering, Spacecraft Design, and the Construction of Communism.” In The Self as Project: Politics and the Human Sciences in the Twentieth Century, edited by Greg Eghigian, Andreas Killen, and Christine Leuenberger, Osiris 22(1): 135–157. University of Chicago Press. Haeckel, Ernst. 1900. The Riddle of the Universe. London: Rationalist Press. Karev, Nikolay. 1926. “Tektologiya ili dialektika.” Pod znamenem marskizma, Moscow, 4. Krementsov, Nikolai. 2011. A Martian Stranded on Earth: Alexander Bogdanov, Blood Transfusions, and Proletarian Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kropotkin, Petr. 1914. Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution. London: William Heinemann. Deborin, Abram. 1930. “Ob itogach i novych zadachakh na filosofskom fronte.” Revolutsiya i kul’tura, Moscow, 9–10: 107–112. Oittinen, Vesa. 2009. “Preface.” In Aleksandr Bogdanov Revisited, edited by Vesa Oittinen, 7-20.Helsinki: Aleksanteri Series. Poustilnik, Simona. 1998. “Biological Ideas in Tektology.” In Alexander Bogdanov and the Origins of Systems Thinking in Russia, edited by John Biggart, Peter Dudley, and Francis King, 63–73. Aldershot: Ashgate. ------2008. “Bogdanov’s Tektology and the Genesis of Systems Theory.” In Alexander Bogdanov. Theoretiker für das 20. Jahrhundert, edited by Stefan Plaggenborg, and Maja Soboleva, 116–140 Jahrhundert. München: Sagner.

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Shushpanov, Aleksandr N. 2009. “Alternative Social Ideas in Russian Utopian Novels and Science Fiction at the Beginning of the 20th Century.” In Aleksandr Bogdanov Revisited, edited by Vesa Oittinen, 259–281. Helsinki: Aleksanteri Series, 1. Sobol’, Valerian.1930. “Teoriya planirovaniya vreditelya Bazarova.” Revolutsiya i kultura, Moscow, 21–22: 59–66. Sochor, Zenovia. 1988. Revolution and Culture. The Bogdanov-Lenin Controversy. Ithica and London: Cornell University Press. Susiluoto, Ilmari. 2009. “The Unfulfilled Promise: Tectology and “Socialist Cybernetics.” In Aleksandr Bogdanov Revisited, edited by Vesa Oittinen, 81–104. Helsinki: Aleksanteri Series, 1. Tikka, Pia. 2009. “Tracing Tectology in Sergei Eisenstein’s Holistic Thinking.” In Aleksandr Bogdanov Revisited, edited by Vesa Oittinen, 211–234. Helsinki: Aleksanteri Series, 1. Todes, Daniel. 1989. Darwin Without Malthus: The Struggle for Existence in Russian Evolutionary Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Udal’tsov, Aleksandr. 1922. “K kritike teorii klassov u A.Bogdanova.” Pod znamenem marksizma, Moscow, 7–8: 82–100. Veinstein, Israel. 1924. “Tektologiya i taktika.” Pod znamenem marksizma, Moscow 1924, 6–7: 90–96. Vertov, Dziga. 2008. “My. Variant Manifesta.” In Dziga Vertov. Iz naslediya. Moscow: Eisenstein-tsentr, 2. White, James. 1998. “Sources and precursors of Bogdanov’s Tektology.” In Alexander Bogdanov and the Origins of Systems Thinking in Russia, edited by John Biggart, Peter Dudley, and Francis King, 25–42. Aldershot: Ashgate.

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THE CULTURE AS SYSTEM, THE SYSTEM OF CULTURE Maja Soboleva______

In my paper, I shall, first, focus on Bogdanov’s systems theoretical understanding of culture and highlight the tektological foundations of culture. In this part, I shall analyze his tektological account for culture. Tektology will be interpreted as a study of social dimensions of culture and a study of cultural dimensions of society. Second, I shall discuss the term of proletarian culture, its definition and its role in Bogdanov’s theory of socialism. I argue that Bogdanov’s vision of a future socialist society is connected with establishing a socialist culture. He considers the proletariat as a bearer of socialist ideology and deduces this unique political role of the proletariat from its unique position in the system of social knowledge. With his idea of proletarian culture, Bogdanov drafts a program of the proletarian evolution which challenges Lenin’s program of the proletarian revolution. My last step concerns Bogdanov’s account for proletarian art. I argue that in order to understand Bogdanov’s concept of art properly, we should differentiate between the terms ‘culture’ and ‘art’. The category of culture appears to be a form of life of a social group, and the category of art is a form of aesthetic self-understanding and self-expression of a social group. My analysis focuses on the proletarian art as a form of ideology of the working class.

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Tektological Foundations of Culture

Amongst Bogdanov’s numerous scientific and philosophical texts, Tektology, the universal organizational science, is undoubtedly his most significant contribution to world culture. This work is usually considered as the first fundamental variant of general systems theory and as a precursor of cybernetics.1 In my book on Bogdanov’s philosophy, I argue that it is also the first project of total socialist modernization of society on a scientific basis with its own tactics and strategies (Soboleva 2007: 146–172). Now I like to stress one more aspect of this work, namely, its relevance for the theory of culture. The key word of my approach can be formulated as ‘culture as a system’. The tektological account for culture has some distinct features which must be articulated. First of all, there is no contradiction between the terms ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ here. Bogdanov argues: “Nature is the first and the greatest organizer; and a human being is only one of its organized creations. The simplest living cell, observable only when magnified a thousand times by a microscope, far exceeds everything that man is able to organize in terms of the complexity and perfection of its organization. Man is just the student of nature, and so far a poor one” (Bogdanov 1996: 7). So, nature in general and human being in particular are organized phenomena. Therefore the means of spontaneous organization in nature and the methods of conscious organizational work of human beings can be subject to the same scientific generalizations. Tektology, which Bogdanov conceived as the ‘science of sciences’, is primarily concerned with discovering a formal unity of the world – that is, a unity of the laws of organization. Accordingly, the whole universe is supposed to consist of complexes which in turn consist of elements inter-related and organized in specific ways. The term ‘complex’ is Bogdanov’s synonym for the modern term ‘system’. It means the way things exist, whereupon existence is a process and, at the same time, a result of organization. The term ‘complex’ refers to an unspecific generalization which can be applied to the description of all possible material and ideal objects with inner structure. Bogdanov introduces a dynamic model of the world that describes it as an eternal, continual organizational process, as an infinitely unfolding canvas of forms of different types and levels of organization – from the simplest elements of inorganic nature to human collectives and cosmic systems. One important aspect of this tektological ontology is that a complex cannot be separated from its

1 Sadovskiy 1995; Biggart 1998; Pustil’nik 1995; Dudley & Poustilnik 1996.

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environment; moreover, it can be differentiated and defined only against the background of its environment. A complex is not a constant substance but rather a changeable structure which can belong to different systems depending on the researcher’s point of view. Thus, Bogdanov’s ontology can be characterized as a structural ontology that deals not with individual objects but with the underlying structures of these objects, including their inner and outer formations. Bogdanov’s holistic, monistic and formal understanding of the universe is the reason why Tektology is aimed at the discovery of the general laws of organization. It does not describe and explain the details of isolated phenomena but rather studies the complex structures taken in their totality and their dynamic interactions with each other. That is why Bogdanov’s new science aspires to work out a universal methodology, and it does not make any sharp divisions into branches and disciplines. Tektology is interdisciplinary and embraces not only chemistry, physics, biology and mathematics, but also economics, cultural theory, education, psychology, medicine, linguistics, sociology and political sciences. Every phenomenon can be analyzed from the organizational point of view – that is, as a system of organizational and de-organizational processes. In my reconstruction of Bogdanov’s conception of culture, I like to stress that his account of culture is founded on functionalist presumptions and implies that culture is a special organizational complex that can be understood by means of general scientific methods. The theory of organization can, hence, contribute to the cognition of cultural phenomena as a special case of the organizational activity of humanity. The tektological definition of culture can be based on the premise that culture as a system possesses its own standards of logical consistency and semantic congruence, and it is essentially connected with the social and economic organization of society. According to the proposed definition, culture finds its objective reality in the interactively established and coordinated collective representations and depends upon the social orientations and social structures that influence these representations. Bogdanov’s understanding of social organization is sometimes regarded as a scientist’s or even naturalist’s version of cultural reductionism that tries to explain different phenomena in virtue of homogeneous structural-functional methods. From this perspective, he was criticized, for example, by Johann Plenge (1874–1963). In his book review of the German translation of Tektology published in 1925, Plenge excoriates Bogdanov for the universalism of his theory which gives “an inorganic picture of the mechanical-materialist reality of

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universal organization” (das “unorganische Bild einer mechanistisch- materialistischen Gesamtwirklichkeit universaler Organisation”) (Plenge 1927: 24). Its shortage is the “unlimited generalization” and the “simplified view of reality” (Plenge 1927: 20). In contrast to Bogdanov, Plenge develops his own theory of organization not as “a general structural theory of all being”, but as a social science. He claims: “The real theory of organisation needs a foundation in a living spirit” (“Die wirkliche Organisationslehre braucht das Fundament des lebendigen Geistes”) (Plenge 1927: 24). According to him, the task of this theory is “to centralize human will and to activate it as a whole” (“menschlichen Willen zur Einheit zusammenzufassen und als Einheit zu betätigen”) (Plenge 1965: 28– 29). In defence of Bogdanov against this criticism one could say that the tektological approach does not rule out the dialectic of the general and particular. In conformity with this dialectic, every system – natural or social – operates according to its own particular structural laws. When applied to culture, Tektology changes its focus: it becomes a study of social dimensions of culture and a study of cultural dimensions of society. It assumes that the cultural system is determined by socio-structural organization, and it is aimed at exploring the complex connections between culture and other social systems such as a type of organization of labour. The same is true of the assumption that cultural traditions and cultural entities are objective only insofar as they represent developing social structures. By accenting the importance of culture for the organization of society, Tektology made a significant contribution to Marxian philosophy. Bogdanov stresses that the sphere of culture has a logic of its own and describes this logic in terms of “social causality”. The category “social causality” must demonstrate the dependence of cultural phenomena (conceptions, norms, traditions, worldview) upon social and labour practices, methods and relations. In his short historical excursion into social epistemology, Bogdanov highlights the correlation between organization of thinking and organization of labour. In the sphere of labour, he differentiates mental and manual labour as well as organizational and executive forms of actions. For him, labour specialization connected with the separation of organizers from those who carry out orders determined some historical models of social cognition, which was based upon epistemological individualism, authoritarianism, conservatism, traditionalism and pragmatism. Correspondently, knowledge had a fragmentied character and could not satisfy the developing society; therefore, such a cognitive situation should be overcome. In his

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analysis, Bogdanov stresses that cognition and cultural praxis, knowledge and culture reflect social experience, whereupon organization of labour impacts the structure of knowledge and the cultural landscape of historical society. He uses the term “sociomorphism” to describe this correlation between representations and underlying labour activity.2 Bogdanov’s universal mechanism of organization of cultural experience is “substitution”. The substitution can be seen as a complex, stepwise, expanding process of constructing symbolic reality through the subordination of some mental complexes to other or, in other words, by means of a consistent building of a picture of the world, proceeding from a set of initial simple statements. In general, ‘psychic phenomena’ become ‘physical phenomena’ through the substitution, which means that the immediate sensitive perceptions of individuals become intersubjectively3 organized, meaningful things. A certain sum of elements is selectively combined, corresponding to the needs and interests of different social groups. Therefore, the social experience and knowledge are always conditional and relative.4 Identifying knowledge and culture with collective experience, Bogdanov moves to a social epistemology that is a radical departure from classical individualistic epistemology. He holds a constructivist view on cognition in general and on culture in particular. His epistemological constructivism means that socially structured human activity discovers, causes and sustains scientific facts and cultural norms, and justifies truth about the world. He argues: “The organized nature of human collectives is determined by all things that give them the unity of the practical direction of thoughts and attitudes. And this is done not only by the formal organizations. The organizing form is much wider and more general, and without it those organizations would not even be possible. This is the whole intellectual culture of the collective: the combination of its customs, morals, laws, its knowledge and its art, immersed in one

2 The term ‘sociomorphism’ can be traced back to the ‘basic metaphor’ of Max Müller that stresses the universal application of anthropological patterns in cognition of the world. According to Bogdanov, “the basic metaphor is the embryo and prototype of the unity of the organizational point of view of the Universe” (Bogdanov 1996: 16). 3 For example, in his work Empiriomonizm Bogdanov analysed the concept ‘objectivity’ and argued that ‘objective’ means “concordance of experience” (“soglasovannost’ opyta”) (Bogdanov 2003: 15) and “intercourse with other people” (“obshchenie s drugimi lyud’mi”) (Bogdanov 2003: 19). 4 A significant research into the term “substitution” is delivered by Daniela Steila in her paper “From Experience to Organisation: Bogdanov’s Unpublished Letters to Bazarov” in (Oittinen 2009: 151–172).

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and the same world-outlook specific to it – its outlook on life and its method of constructing life” (Bogdanov 1990: 136). The term ‘organization’ builds the quintessence of Bogdanov’s constructivist approach to cognition in particular and to culture in general. Everything – sensual data, everyday meanings and theoretical concepts – are products of the social organization of collective experience based on working conditions. Bogdanov is convinced of the social nature of knowledge. His approach to cultural studies combines structural functionalism and historical methods.5 He posits society as an organising institution and defines culture as a developing system of normative beliefs, as “ideology” that is represented by historical social groups and institutions. The scope of ideology is very broad; it embraces theoretical and practical knowledge, religious and moral norms, aesthetical ideas and worldviews. The practical problem that Bogdanov confronts is the heterogeneity of cultural patterns within a class society depending on what groups are legitimate bearers of ideological states like knowledge or religious belief. According to him, the cultural split within society is an important limiting factor for its progressive development. Therefore Tektology is expected to pursue its practical agenda by transforming the culture of the modern society from capitalist to socialist.

Bogdanov’s Idea of Proletarian Culture

Assuming that culture is a form of systematization of social cognitive experience and that every social group desires to organize the world in accordance with its own purpose, Bogdanov concludes that culture plays an essential role in the organization of social life. For the modification of cultural systems, the organizational structure of society must be changed. However, this doesn’t exclude that, in turn, the system of culture can induce social transformations. Bogdanov’s vision of a future society is connected with establishing a socialist culture. He considers the proletariat as a bearer of socialist ideology and an executor of the socialist reorganization of society.6 He deduces this unique political role of the proletariat from its unique position in the system of social knowledge. He argues that, given its involvement in the highly

5 This claim can be proved by analysis of such works as Bogdanov 1904, 1918. 6 One has to differentiate between the real working class and the concept ‘proletariat’ in Bogdanov’s works. According to him, the real working class in Russia is not socialist because of its mixed social origin and technological backwardness. In his theoretical argumentations, Bogdanov uses the concept ‘proletariat’, i.e. he means the ideal proletariat.

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technological process of production, the proletariat is becoming the most educated part of modern society. Moreover, the concentration of industry caused the proletariat to acquire a collectivist mentality, solidarity and cooperative behaviour, making it the most integrated and educated part of society. Bogdanov tries to substantiate these qualities ontologically in the very nature of the working class which is defined by the methods of its work. He argues that the very logic of cultural and scientific-technical development determines that the proletariat cultivates both collectivist and rational thinking. And because of its scientifically founded rationality and solidarity, the proletariat can play a leading role in the political transformation of society. It spontaneously expands the norms of rationality on all spheres of social life, including politics. The ability of objective and collectivist thinking makes the proletariat a ‘universal class’ that can represent the interests of the whole society. It is quite obvious that the term ‘proletariat’ in Bogdanov’s theory is not just a social- economic and political term used to describe the class of wage- earners in a capitalist society whose only possession is their labour- power. Rather, it is a term of social epistemology that defines the proletariat as a bearer of the norms of scientific rationality and the collective consciousness which will influence the cognitive processes and practical activity. Bogdanov’s most famous contribution to the theory of culture is the concept of proletarian culture. I think that his program of proletarian culture is signified through three tasks which are working out a) a scientific ideology, b) a rationality based on the “norms of expediency” and c) a “conscious collectivism”. Proletarian culture should prepare the modern industrial, rationally regulated society for the peaceful conversion of capitalism into socialism. In this way, Bogdanov moves the revolutionary problems from the field of economy and politics into the field of ideological structure.7 These ideas can be evaluated as the modernization of Marxism. Instead of the proletarian revolution, Bogdanov drafts in his texts on proletarian culture a program of the proletarian evolution. According to this conception, the working class must create and adapt proletarian culture, whose essence is a collectivist and rationalist consciousness and comradely relationships, before the revolution. To Marx, ‘communist consciousness’ was a product of the social revolution, not its prerequisite (Marx & Engels 1974: 44). To Bogdanov, proletarian

7 This opinion is also represented by Rullkoetter (Rullkötter 1974: XIV).

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culture is not a consequence but a condition of socialist modernization of society.8 The debates over proletarian culture continued in the period between 1905 and 1932. Bogdanov’s most significant opponents were Trotsky and Lenin. In contrast to Bogdanov, Trotsky believes that “there is no proletarian culture, and that there never will be any and in fact there is no reason to regret this. The proletariat acquires power for the purpose of doing away forever with class culture and to make way for human culture” (Trotsky 1960: 185–186). According to him, the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat is temporary, and it is necessary only for the transition from one social system to another, from capitalism to socialism. There are many political and economic problems that must be solved during this transition period. Trotsky is convinced that “at any rate, the twenty, thirty, or fifty years of proletarian world revolution will go down in history as the most difficult climb from one system to another, but in no case as an independent epoch of proletarian culture” (Trotsky 1960: 190). According to him, what marks this transition period is the coexistence of different types of culture. In Trotsky’s opinion, “such terms as ‘proletarian literature’ and ‘proletarian culture’ are dangerous, because they erroneously compress the culture of the future into the narrow limits of the present day” (Trotsky 1960: 205). Instead of the term ‘proletarian culture’, he suggests to use the terms ‘revolutionary culture’ and ‘socialist culture’. The first is to be applied to the contemporary period of time; the latter describes an ideal future society. Trotsky’s rejection of the term ‘proletarian culture’ can be explained by his understanding of culture. He defines culture as “the organic sum of knowledge and capacity which characterizes the entire society, or at least its ruling class. It embraces and penetrates all fields of human work and unifies them into a system. Individual achievements rise above this level and elevate it gradually” (Trotsky 1960: 200). For all discrepancies between Bogdanov and Trotsky in understanding of the notion ‘proletarian culture’ – for the former proletarian culture is a necessary condition of socialism, and for the latter it is a consequence of socialism – there are some points which unite them. It is, first of all, an understanding of culture in general as ideology that influences a mass consciousness and underlies and penetrates all social structures and social praxis. The term ‘culture’ implies the way people relate to the world and to each other. In the sense of Bogdanov and Trotsky, the concept of culture refers to a

8 Marx uses the terms ‘proletariat’ and ‘working class’ as synonyms. For Bogdanov, working class has a goal to form itself as ‘proletariat’.

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consciousness, a dominant worldview and a lifestyle (praxis); it refers to the forms of knowledge, skills, values, dispositions and expectations. Using Pierre Bourdieu’s terminology, culture in Bogdanov and Trotsky’s theories can be characterized as a habitus of a dominant social group.9 The habitus of an individual appears to be a result of the objectification of a social structure at the level of individual subjectivity. Therefore, in order to renew a human being the whole social structure must be renewed. The creation of proletarian culture demands the creation of new elements of socialism in the proletariat itself, in its conditions of life and in its internal and external relations. As is well known, Lenin’s attitude to proletarian culture was very different. According to him, the task of the proletariat was not to create a new culture within capitalism, but rather to overthrow capitalism through a revolution for a new socialist culture. He admitted that the October Revolution had political character and saw the most important task of the Bolshevik party in the creation of supporters for the Soviet regime by means of forming a specific mentality and specific morality amongst the people. In his uncompleted draft “Concerning the mixing politics and pedagogics”, he writes: “In the political activity of the social-democratic party there is and will be a certain element of pedagogics: we must educate the working class toward its role as a fighter for freedom of humanity from exploitation … The social-democrat who would forget this, would not be a social-democrat” (Lenin 1967: 357). It is obvious that he promotes the idea of political pedagogics. Lenin’s attention to the proletarian culture movement after the October Revolution can be explained through his vision of establishing a new political- pedagogical space. In fact, the proletarian culture movement fulfilled the functions of social-political pedagogics aiming to transform Russian inhabitants into Soviet citizens (in terms of Andrey Zhdanov). The Proletcult movement did not just advocate a new popular art by opening studios, theatres, clubs, workshops and artistic classes, by creating a new language and new forms of aesthetic expressions. It dedicated itself to literacy, to adult education, to matters as elementary as proper hygiene, family relations, the struggle against alcoholism and the struggle for a civil everyday life. The movement for proletarian culture spread across Soviet Russia in the early years of the revolution and acquired a complex social and intellectual character. It was most directly inspired by the ideas of Bogdanov,

9 Trotsky expressed this idea as following: “Style is class, not alone in art, but above all in politics.” (Trotsky 1960: 206)

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who believed that the proletariat had to build a new cultural system – that is, to promote a new morality, a new politics and a new art in order to succeed in the building of socialism. But this new movement proved to be very far removed from Bogdanov’s original project of a social, cultural and moral renovation of the working class. Bogdanov’s reaction to the October Revolution was very critical. In his open letter to Bukharin in 1921 he admitted: “During the Bolshevik communist turn I split with the party on an important theoretical question: it considered the world revolution coming out of the war as socialist, but I came to the different conclusion.” (Bordyugov 1995, 1: 204–205) For him the social reality after the October 1917 was a “disgusting caricature arising out of the war and the old system” (Bogdanov 1990: 104). The essence of this caricature is a “state capitalism”. As a “political organization of the military democracy” and a “perverted form”, the new Soviet Republic (Bogdanov 1990, 1: 199) was an antipode of Bogdanov’s idea of socialism. He contrasted regress as a law of the present socialism with progress as a law of his ideal socialism (Bogdanov 1990: 79). The present socialism was “first of all, a special form of social consumption, the authoritarian organization of mass parasitism and destruction”; on the contrary, the ideal socialism “is, first of all, a new type of cooperation – the comradely organization of work” (Bogdanov 1990: 87). For the present socialism, an authoritarian and even religious way of thinking was inherent; for the ideal socialism, a free and scientific way of thinking is intrinsic (Bogdanov 1990: 76). There is a strong correlation between what Bogdanov thought the Bolsheviks’ socialism was and how he viewed the real proletarian culture in Russia. It seemed to him that the revolution’s failure stemmed from organic weaknesses in the working class itself, its ideological immaturity and a lack of ideological autonomy. He believed that the working class was inevitably unprepared for or even unworthy of its revolutionary role. This conviction in the cultural backwardness of the working class can explain Bogdanov’s attitude toward the real Proletcult. There were definite limits, produced by the objective historical conditions, to his engagement. Bogdanov’s participation at the Proletcult can be seen as a compromise. Nevertheless, he worked toward the cultural, political and moral education of the working class. In his article “The Program of Culture” (1917), Bogdanov recommends to the proletariat “to direct all its efforts toward mastering of the organizational means and their systematic working out according to the scale of the problems” (Bogdanov 1990: 332). He repeated constantly that the working class, because of its exploited and oppressed condition and because it was

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culturally deprived, would not come forward politically if it does not collect organizational experience and adopt organizational tools.

Proletarian Art

Bogdanov’s conception of proletarian art is mostly formulated in such articles as “Is Proletarian Art Possible?”, “Proletariat and Art”, “On Art Heritage”, “Critique on Proletarian Art” and “Simplicity or Subtlety”. It includes two important insights for the theory of culture: tektological foundations of art and its organizing role in society. In his article “Is proletarian Art Possible?”, Bogdanov argues that art is not just a “decoration of life”, but that it is “one of the ideologies of a class, an element of its class consciousness; therefore, it is an organizational form of a class life, a way of association and consolidation of the class forces” (Bogdanov 1990: 413). Thus, he stresses the social function of art. Assuming that art is a form of organization of collective experience, he reasons that every social group must have its own art. To understand Bogdanov’s concept of art properly, we should differentiate between the terms ‘culture’ and ‘art’. The category of culture appears to be a form of life of a social group, and the category of art is a form of aesthetic self-understanding and self- expression of a social group.10 According to Bogdanov, there must be a correlation between these categories. Culture and art are also a means of social self-identification of a social group and a sign of its political maturity and autonomy. Therefore, if we assert that the proletariat should be a dominant and politically self-sufficient social group, we should expect that it must have its own culture and its own art. Bogdanov demands that the post-revolutionary working class create its own proletarian art, which will be a part of a new proletarian culture directed to the building of a socialist society. He emphasizes that “the proletariat needs collectivist art which would bring up people in the spirit of deep solidarity, comradely cooperation, a close brotherhood of fighters and builders connected by the general ideal” (Bogdanov 1990: 422). The main issue of proletarian art is, hence, a specific ideal. This ideal must correspond with the ontological nature of the working class that consists in the ability to organize the world’s society on the new ideological and scientific fundament. For Bogdanov, the proletariat organizes an external matter in a product through its work, it organizes itself in a creative and fighting

10 For example, Bogdanov writes in the paper “O khudozhestvennom nasledstve” (1918a: 39) that poetry is a part of the self-awareness of this class.

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collective by means of cooperation and class fight and it organizes its own experience in a class consciousness in order to be able to organize the whole mankind for harmonic life. The ideal which proletarian art should promote must be, hence, “all-organizational”. Unlike Lenin and Trotsky, who accented the necessity of class struggle and encouraged a military spirit in the proletariat, Bogdanov believes that “the working class goes to his ideal through the fight, but this ideal is not destruction, but the new organization of life” (Bogdanov 1918a: 67). Thus, his ideal of proletarian art is constructive and positive. The socialist re-organization of society requires the ideal of the collectivist consciousness and “comradely relationships”. Some authors, like Lynn Mally, who are engaged with studies of Bogdanov’s works, thematize only one aspect of his theory of culture – namely, the aspect of struggle of exploited workers against the bourgeoisie (Mally 1990). But this approach contradicts the key idea of the tektological worldview which is consequently developed by Bogdanov in all his texts. He resists the reduction of art to communist propaganda. He criticizes the one-dimensional understanding of art as just a ‘civil art’ focusing on agitation and propaganda and representing and protecting class interests. He advocates the broad content of proletarian art: “The whole life and the whole world” should be the content of proletarian art because its main task is to organize the “soul of the proletariat” (Bogdanov 1990: 423). He writes: “In thousands of poems calling for a class struggle and glorifying victories in that struggle, in hundreds of stories denouncing capital and its servants, everything else is submerged. This must be changed. The part should not be taken as being the whole.” (Bogdanov 1918a: 67) He appeals for the “comprehensive deepening into life”, for the “comprehensive understanding of life, its concrete forces and its ways” (Bogdanov 1918a: 67). Everything can be the content of proletarian art; there are no restrictions for it. One more prejudice about Bogdanov’s account for proletarian art must be dispelled. It is connected with his attitude to the bourgeois culture. Bogdanov is often associated with radical intellectuals who define proletarian culture as unique and justify an absolute rejection of cultural heritage. This image is absolutely wrong. On the contrary, Bogdanov outlines the necessity of cultural conditions and traditions, created by prior social formations, for the development of proletarian art and negates claims that proletarian art can emerge without cultural grounds. Opposed to the view of rejecting tradition and the past and creating something new in one’s own mind, Bogdanov advocates studies of the culture of the past,

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making it one’s own by creating a new content. The bourgeois culture has to be adopted in such a creative way that it becomes enrichment for the proletariat. The proletariat should study from previous generations, but its study must be accompanied by reflection about its own social perspective.11 Adapting a traditional culture, the proletariat should not “obey”, but “rule”. “The new logic has to transform all these old things, to give old things other images … But one must have this new logic, that is one must develop it.” (Bogdanov 1990: 420) Against the left-radical orientated propagandists of an autonomous proletarian art, Bogdanov argued that “we live not only in the present-day collective, we live in a collaboration [sotrudnichestvo] between generations [Bogdanov’s emphasis]. This is not to be confused with collaboration between classes, which is a contrary idea.” (Bogdanov 1990: 425) Thus, the proletariat’s attitude toward non-proletarian art should be not contradictory but complementary. In this respect, Bogdanov, Trotsky and Lenin seem to share the same opinion. But there is a radical difference between them concerning the political attribution of art. For Lenin, art must become not just proletarian, it must become party art. He formulated this principle for literature (Lenin 1967: 48). However, he was not referring to literature in the narrow sense of the word, but in terms of a wide range of artistic activity in general. For Lenin, any idea of the absolute autonomy of literature, art for art’s sake, or the absolute freedom of writers, is simply an anarchistic bourgeois concept and reactionary rhetoric. In opposite to him, Bogdanov distinguished the terms ‘sociality’ and ‘party policy’. He recognizes the collective forms of aesthetic production as an integral element in the process of social change, which demonstrate the class character. In Bogdanov’s words: “The artistic talent is individual, but creation is a social phenomenon: it emerges out of the collective and returns to the collective, serving its vital purposes” (Bogdanov 1990: 425). Proletarian art should provide a scientific Marxist understanding of natural and social phenomena that would allow workers to play a leading role in a society. But, at the same time, Bogdanov stresses that “organization of our art as well as organization of our science has to be constructed on the basis of the comradely cooperation” (Bogdanov 1990: 425). The party model of organization of art, suggested by Lenin, is unacceptable to him because of its structure

11 James D. White has the same opinion. He writes: “In older cultures there were elements that were useful to the proletariat, but there were also others that were harmful. This being the case, the proletariat had to learn to distinguish what was beneficial from what was harmful and alien to it in the heritage of the past” (White 2013: 34).

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which is of an authoritarian type and is founded on the domination– submission hierarchy, which will inevitably give rise to authoritarian tendencies in the ordering of the whole society. According to Bogdanov, proletarian art must be free and objective. He points out: “As the organizer of life, art has to be, first of all, consequently sincere and truthful; whom and what can it organize if nobody trusts it?” (Bogdanov 1918a: 69) He stresses that, playing its organizational function, art should not forget that “the spirit of labour collectivism consists primarily in objectivity” (Bogdanov 1918a: 71). The perception of the world from the social perspective, that is from the perspective of the proletarian ideal, does not exclude that the human life has many aspects which are all- human. What Bogdanov suggests can be interpreted as a balance between human and social. From this point of view, the content as a matter of values should be the main concern of proletarian art. In Bogdanov’s opinion, art and literary criticism is a necessary organizational tool which helps to develop proletarian art.12 Thus, the proletarian literary criticism should teach the working-class writers how to maintain the class position and class interest in their works. Bogdanov expects from the proletarian literature that it should depict life not from a subjective and naive point of view, but against the background of a deep understanding of social context and collective goals. In works of art, the individual should represent the typical; this is a means for working out the proletarian class-consciousness through the mechanism of identification of an individual with an ideal. And last, but not least, is a question about the form of proletarian art. It is curious to see that even pure aesthetics are founded in Bogdanov’s theory on the tektological basis. In Tektology, he claims: “The principles of a work of art are agreement and harmony, and therefore organization” (Bogdanov 2003: 3). Later, he repeats that beauty is “organizedness” (Bogdanov 1990: 426). He propagates the correlation between form and content. He proposes to look for the forms, which correspond with genuine proletarian activity, with aesthetics of industrial working process and scientific technology.13 Such a form must be simple, direct, constructive and expressive. It must be economic and, at the same time, it must exhibit the content of an artwork clearly. Form must express the

12 This is the topic of the paper “O kchudozhestennom nasledstve”. We should differentiate between Bogdanov’s understanding the proletarian criticism as a means of improving a quality of proletarian art and Lenin’s idea of control about art in terms of party’s censorship. 13 In the works of his favorite painter and sculptor, Constantin Meunier, Bogdanov finds these features.

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rhythm of a new proletarian art which corresponds to proletarian labour activity. Bogdanov speaks not only about the “rhythm of sounds”, but also about the “rhythm of images and ideas”. Form and rhythm should build a unity to be able to bring out the content in a best way. Summing up his position, I can say that Bogdanov represents a constructivist view on art. After October 1917, this account of art met almost immediately a response and stimulated a wide variety of experiments in Russia.

References

Biggart, John, Dudley, Peter and King, Francis (eds.) 1998. A. Bogdanov and the origins of systems thinking in Russia. Aldershot, England and Brookfield, Vermont: Ashgate. Bogdanov, Aleksandr. 1904. Iz psichologii obshchestva. Stat’i 1901–1904. Sankt Peterburg: Dorovatovskiy and Charushnikov. Bogdanov, Aleksandr. 1916. “Mirovye krizisy, mirnye i voennye”. Petrograd: Letopis'. №3, 139—163; №4, 133—153; № 5, 113—124; № 7, 214—238. Bogdanov, Aleksandr. 1918. Nauka ob obshchestvennom soznanii. Kratkiy kurs ideologicheskoy nauki v voprosakh i otvetakh. Moskva: Knizhnoe izdatel'stvo pisateley v Moskve. Bogdanov, Aleksandr. 1918a. Iskusstvo i rabochiy klass. Moskva: Proletarskaya kul’tura. Bogdanov, Aleksandr, 1990. Voprosy socializma. Moskva: Izdatel'stvo politicheskoy literatury. Bogdanov, Aleksandr. 1995. Otkrytoe pis’mo Bukharinu. In Neizvestnyy Bogdanov. V trekh knigakh, edited by G.A. Bordyugov. Moskva: IC AIRO-XX. Bogdanov, Aleksandr. 1996. Tektology. Book 1 edited and translated by Vadim Sadovsky, Vladimir V. Keille and Peter Dudley, University of Hull: Centre for Systems Studies. Dudley, Peter and Poustilnik, Simona. 1996. “Reading the Tektology: Provisional Findings, Postulates and Research Directions”. In Center for Systems Studies. The University of Hull. Reseach und memorandum. No. 11. Lenin, Vladimir. 1967. Polnoe sobranie cochineniy. Izdanie 5-ое. Tom 10, 335–358. Моskva: Izdatel’stvo politicheskoy literatury. Mally, Lynn. 1990. Culture of the Future. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Marx, Karl and Engels, Freidrich. 1978. German Ideology, excepted in On the Socialist Revolution. Moskva: Izdatel’stvo politicheskoy literatury. Oittinen, Vesa (ed.) 2009. Aleksandr Bogdanov Revisited. Helsinki: Gummerus Printing. Plenge, Johann. 1927. ‟Um die allgemeine Organisationslehre”. Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv. 25. Band: 18–29.

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Plenge, Johann. 1965. ‟Deutsche Propaganda (1921)”. In Johann Plenges Organisations- und Propagandalehre, eingeleitet von Hanns Linhard. Berlin: Duncker & Humblo. Pustil’nik, Simona. 1995. ‟Printsip otbora kak osnova Tektologii A. Bogdanova”. Voprosy filosofii. № 8. Rullkötter, Bernd. 1974. Die wissenschaftliche Phantastik der Sowjetunion. Bern, Frankfurt am Main: Lang. Sadovskiy, Vadim. N. 1995. ‟Empiriomonizm A.A. Bogdanova: zabytaya glava filosofii nauki”. Voprosy filosofii. № 8. Soboleva, Maja. 2007. Aleksandr Bogdanov und der philosophische Diskurs in Russland zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts. Zur Geschichte des russischen Positivismus. Hildesheim: Olms Verlag. Trotsky, Leo. 1960. Literature and Revolution. The University of Michigan Press. White, James D. 2013. Alexander Bogdanov’s Conception of Proletarian Culture. Revolutionary Russia. 26, 1, 52–70.

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BOGDANOV AND EISENSTEIN ON EMOTIONS: THE AFFECTIONAL, THEORY OF EXPRESSIVENESS, AND EMOTIONAL SCRIPT Lyubov Bugaeva______

In Empiriomonism Aleksandr Bogdanov introduces the term ‘affectional’ that he borrowed from Avenarius but revised in the light of William James’ theory of emotions. The ‘affectional’ is an index of energy balance between suffering and pleasure. Employing Bogdanov’s revised notions of the affectional as an element of any organization or complex, Sergey Eisenstein develops the principles of expressivity. He sees emotions as an organism’s embodied reaction to its interaction with the environment. Eisenstein proposes a notion of an emotional script, which is a narrative of a prospective viewer telling what has impressed him. Aleksandr Rzheshevskiy, a scriptwriter of Eisenstein’s never completed Bezhin Meadow (1937), became an ‘emotional scriptwriter’ in practice. The paper investigates the relations between Bogdanov’s notions of the affectional, Eisenstein’s theory of expressiveness, and the emotional script as conceived by Eisenstein and realized by Rzheshevskiy.

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The Affectional and Emotional Experience: Aleksandr Bogdanov. In Empiriomonism: Articles on Philosophy (1904–1906) Aleksandr Bogdanov introduces the term ‘affectional’ that he borrows from Richard Avenarius. Delimiting the area of the affectional, he analyzes and revises the notion of experience. While falling back on Richard Avenarius’s Critique of Pure Experience (Kritik der reinen Erfahrung 1888–1890)1 and The Human Concept of the World (Der menschliche Weltbegriff 1891), Bogdanov yet points out that both Avenarius and Ernst Mach, when connecting experience with sense perception, missed the fact that in the process of cognition the senses, i.e., sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch, are not separate complexes but parallel lines of experience; being associated with each other they are united into a single entity. On a more practical level, such an approach means that one of these lines can serve as the indicator for the whole complex; seeing just a finger or hearing someone walking can lead to identifying the object of perception as a human being (Bogdanov 1904–1906/2003: 8–9). Besides, a line of experience can serve as an organizer for the complex, e.g. on the basis of visual or tactile perception as principle constituents of a complex it is possible to reconstruct the whole complex, for example, a human body. Developing the idea of organization Bogdanov, like Avenarius, distinguishes between two types of lines of experience – dependent, i.e., reliant on the state of the nervous system, and independent, free from such kind of reliance in the sense of not being reducible to sensations – and looks into emotional complexes that he categorizes as psychic processes. Although recognizing the distinctiveness of emotional complexes Bogdanov nevertheless objects to singling them out as something purely psychic within the system of experience, and he argues that emotional complexes and psychophysical entities are constituted by elements of an equivalent nature. Bogdanov does not endorse a mind- body division, and his conception of experience is much richer than understanding it simply in terms of sensation and perception. Rather than mind-body division, he is more in line with synergetics, a theory of self-organization in open systems, when he claims that the same innervational and tactile elements, which are in various combinations constituent of physical bodies, play a substantial role in emotions. He is also more in tune with the American pragmatist William James, who saw the universe we live in as chaotic, non-reducible to an uncomplicated choice between physical interaction and complete inertness, but with “room in it for the hybrid or ambiguous group of our affectional

1 Critique of Pure Experience was published in Russian translation in St.Petersburg, Russia, in 1898; in 1905 it was published as a popular transcript and with a commentary by Anatoliy Lunacharskiy.

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experiences, of our emotions and appreciative perception” (James 1905: 282). Building the monistic theory of the physical and the psychic Bogdanov seems highly concerned with placing emotions on a par with other psychic and physical combinations. The idea of organization presumes discriminating between dominant and non-dominant constitutive elements of a complex while the idea of parallel lines of experience supposes establishing systems of links among these elements. When applied to emotional complexes the idea of organization eliminates irreconcilable distinctions between elements in experience that are dependent on the state of the nervous system and those that are independent of it. Bogdanov divorces objectivity from the stability of a physical body in individual experience. For him objectivity is the experiential data that has communal significance; it is the correspondence of individual experiences (Bogdanov 1904–1906/2003: 15). The virtue of such an interpretation of objectivity is that it brings to the center of discussion the category of experience, which is in its turn divided into experience organized socially and experience organized individually. In a system of organization such as Bogdanov’s, there is no ontological distinction between the real and unreal, or, more precisely, between objects of external and internal perception. Bogdanov creates a framework for locating differences and commonalities in emotional and psychophysical complexes, arriving at the conclusion that special psychic complexes, i.e., emotions, do not differ from psychophysical complexes either by their elements or by their material. The crucial assumption for his theory is that emotions result from physiological changes in a human body – an idea that comes from American pragmatism and lies at the core of the Jamesian theory of emotions. In 1884 William James in his ‘What is an Emotion?’ claims that “the emotional brain-processes not only resemble the ordinary sensorial brain-processes”, but also “are nothing but such processes variously combined” (James 1884: 188). For James, emotions have a distinct bodily expression; the standard emotions he distinguishes, e.g. surprise, curiosity, rapture, fear, anger, lust, greed, and the like, are manifested through identifiable body language. James proposes a disputable thesis that “the bodily changes follow directly the PERCEPTION of the exciting fact, and that our feeling of the same changes as they occur IS the emotion” (James 1884: 189–190). James is opposed to the view that an emotion is mental perception and that bodily expression follows mental affection. James says that such a sequential order is incorrect; he argues that “we feel sorry because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble, and not that we cry, strike, or tremble, because we are sorry, angry, or fearful, as the case may be” (James 1884: 190). In the case of ignorance of the bodily component, a perception is purely

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cognitive in form and lacks emotional warmth. As he states, “We might then see the bear, and judge it best to run, receive the insult and deem it right to strike, but we could not actually feel afraid or angry” (James 1884: 190). Therefore, according to James’s theory, emotions emerge at the physiological level as the result of motor and sensory activity, and as such constitute individual experience. In 1885, and independently of James, Danish physician Carl Lange developed similar ideas that physiological reaction is followed by a corresponding emotional reaction. The James–Lange theory attracts Bogdanov’s attention as it fosters the idea that innervational and tactile elements play a pivotal role in emotional complexes and in shaping individual and collective experience. Moreover, the James–Lange theory has become the crucial point for Bogdanov’s departure from empiriocriticism as developed by Avenarius and his movement towards the conception of empiriomonism, which supports the ideas of Spinoza and brings Bogdanov close to American pragmatism with its conception of experience, which is based on active perception and interaction with the world. Delimiting the concept of experience in accordance with the James–Lange theory, Bogdanov borrows from Avenarius the notion of the ‘affectional’ that he revises and imbues with new meaning. For Avenarius the ‘affectional’ (from Latin affectus – ‘emotion, passion’) is emotional evaluation connected with an assessment of events. Avenarius emphasizes that in order to be able to speak of the affectional the subject of perception should consciously sense changes in a situation or in phenomena and be interested in those changes. In his understanding of biopotential and its balance, i.e., the ongoing relation of a biological individual and the environment, suffering follows changes in vital- divergence, and, on the contrary, pleasure accompanies restoration of the balance; thus, the affectional embraces emotions balancing between ecstasy and agony; it is perception of phenomena and events accompanied by feelings of satisfaction and dissatisfaction. Bogdanov labels balance as stagnation and argues that the “passion for the balance”, which he finds in Avenarius’ conception, is a mistake.2 He criticizes Anatoliy Lunacharskiy, who published an abridged edition of Critique of Pure Experience accompanied by his commentaries in 19053, for his failure to see a resemblance between the notion of balance and the notion of stagnation. Falling back on Spinoza’s treatment of emotions and Theodor Meynert’s work on mental processes, Bogdanov arrives at the idea that

2 Bogdanov favors dynamics and evolution; for him absence of vital-differences is not an ideal state but, on the contrary, a regression. 3 Anatoliy Lunacharskiy, Bogdanov’s collaborator and brother-in-law, attended the lectures of Avenarius on philosophy in Zurich University in 1895.

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the affectional is connected to the accumulation and dissimilation (expenditures) of energy; it is an emotional expression of increase and decrease in energy that concurs with what Bogdanov calls the algebraic sign of biopotential, a mathematical way of measuring relevant forms of energy (Bogdanov 1904–1906/2003: 135). In other words, emotional experience is not only positively or negatively affectional (feeling pleasure or feeling suffering), but it also possesses intensity and is connected with physiological processes. Similar to Spinoza’s distinction between active and passive emotions, Bogdanov distinguishes between positive and negative ‘affectionals’ in the dynamic process of psychic and social selection; therefore emotions serve as indicators of energy balance. Relations between the organism and the environment transfigure into immediate experience that has emotional character and is built with affectionals of different intensity. James in his famous quotation sees the world “as one great blooming, buzzing confusion” (James 1890/1950, I: 488). Jamesian ‘buzzing confusion’ resembles Bogdanov’s affectional experiencing of life.4 In Bogdanov’s empiriomonism life is an interconnected whole of feelings (Bogdanov 1904–1906/2003: 77), where emotional complexes of human beings ‘affectionally’ interact with each other. Bogdanov’s approach, rooted in Spinoza’s treatment of emotions, Theodor Meynert’s work on mental processes and the James–Lange theory, explains emotional responses in the organism-environment interaction through connecting psychic and physiological processes. This approach played a significant role in Eisenstein’s conception of expressiveness in cinema.

Theory of expressiveness: Sergey Eisenstein

Sergey Eisenstein started to develop the theory of expressiveness in the early 1920s and continued in the 1930s. In the ‘Programme of Theory and Practice of Film Directing’ that he crafted in the 1930s for students of the State Institute of Cinematography in Moscow, alongside the practical training of voice and body, attention was paid to the theoretical basis of expressing emotions. Eisenstein was familiar with Ausdruckbewegung und Gestaltungskraft (1913) by Ludwig Klages and with the system of Ausdrucksgymnastik (1922) of Rudolf Bode, and he learned by practice the principles of Vsevolod Meyerhold’s biomechanics (see Bochow 2005). In the ‘Programme’, the theory of expressiveness and its history became crucial for understanding the nature of ‘expressive movement’. One of the themes for critical analysis (just before the study of Klages and Bode) was the Jamesian theory of emotions. Eisenstein connects emotional impact that the film produces on the spectator with a

4 Vladimir Lenin sensed the link between Bogdanov and James and in his work Materialism and Empiriocriticism (1909) criticized them both.

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reflective mirroring of the actor’s movement that, according to Eisenstein, should be natural and programmed at the same time. From his point of view it is necessary to master the system of ‘expressive movements’ in order to achieve a desirable reaction of the audience (on Eisenstein and the theory of expressiveness see Bochow 2000: 57–68). In his article “The Method of Making Workers’ Films” (1925) Eisenstein defines film content as “the summary of all that is subjected to the series of shocks to which in a particular order the audience is to be exposed (Or more crudely: so much per cent of material to fix the attention, so much to rouse the bitterness, etc.)” and requires its organization “in accordance with a principle that leads to the desired affect” (Eisenstein 2014: 28). Discussing emotional effects, Eisenstein regularly refers to the Jamesian theory of emotions. In the article “Stanislavsky and Loyola” (1937) he cites James, paraphrasing the famous quote: “we cry not because we feel sorry but we feel sorry because we cry”. Eisenstein seems not so much interested in explaining the principles that govern the connection between bodily movements and emotions; he does not care much whether it is a chain of associations or a reflective action. More important for him is the pars pro toto rule that takes place in this case; pars (a certain angle or a position) is bound to trigger toto, which is an emotion (Eisenstein 2004b: 503–504). Eisenstein finds the phenomenon described by James, i.e., the connection between bodily changes and emotions, in G. E. Lessing’s Hamburgische Dramaturgie (1767–69). Lessing seeks a way to connect intentional movements with emotions that are experienced involuntarily. In Lessing’s description of two types of actors (an emotional actor who is incapable of expressing his feelings through expressive movements, and an emotionally indifferent actor who is nevertheless capable of expressing emotions he does not feel), Eisenstein finds an interchange with Jamesian ideas and identifies montage as the principle that unites both approaches, those of James and Lessing. Breaking down the expression of emotions by the actor into its constituent elements, he claims that emotion is the result of montage and therefore the difference between the Lessing–James mechanism of emotions, on the one hand, and the system of Stanislavsky, on the other, is a difference in elements within a similar construction (Eisenstein 2004b: 506–507). Eisenstein chooses to emphasize proto-structures rather than differences. In James one can find an initial stage of what would later become a technique of acting; it is the transition from event to arousal, then to interpretation, and finally to emotion. Reciting James’s famous example of a meeting with a bear (“we meet a bear, are frightened and run”), Eisenstein agrees with James’s statement of the importance of emotions in human interaction with the world: “without the bodily states following on the perception, the latter would be purely cognitive in form, pale, colorless, destitute of emotional warmth. We might then see the bear, and

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judge it best to run, receive the insult and deem it right to strike, but we should not actually feel afraid or angry” (James 1884: 190). However, in Eisenstein’s view, Jamesian theory is applicable not so much to the actor as to the spectator. The spectator empathically co-participates in whatever happens on stage or on screen. Through mirroring and imitating an actor’s bodily dynamics, the spectator is to achieve a desirable emotional state. His perception is active; he co-produces and, therefore, co-authors a film. Eisenstein states in his lecture on biomechanics in 1935, “James’s point of view has a correct expression in the theatre in the audience. It’s not that the actor makes a correct movement and experiences a proper emotion – the audience reproduces that movement in a concentrated form and through it enters into the emotional state the actor is demonstrating. The secret of form lies here” (see Law; Gordon 1996: 208). Eisenstein, who was expelled from Meyerhold’s theatre in 1922 and from his school in 1924, however, adopted some of Meyerhold’s ideas and tried to interpret them through the lenses of the Jamesian theory of emotions or Bogdanov’s empiriomonism, which he probably came to know during his Proletkult years (1920–1925). Mikhail Yampolskiy unveils the closeness of Eisenstein’s aesthetic views, particularly during his activity in Proletkult, to the ideas of Bogdanov, who was one of the Proletkult ideologists at that time (Yampolskiy 2009: 49–50; Tikka 2008: 64–68). In 1923, Eisenstein, as Yampolskiy points out, tried to combine Meyerhold’s biomechanics with Bogdanov’s monistic energy theory and interpreted Meyerhold’s acting as “a mysterious and invisible function of individuality, which is discharging of abundance of energy” (Yampolskiy 2009: 49). Yampolskiy points out that Bogdanov based his monistic conception of world organization on the interaction of active and reactive forces. In Bogdanov’s view, any activity, decomposing or combinatorial, inevitably meets resistance, weak or considerable. However, resistance is not a separate independent notion; it is an antagonist to another activity. When two people are fighting, the activity of the first one is the resistance for the second one and vice versa (Bogdanov 1990: 427–428). Bogdanov’s ideas of vital- divergence are concordant at large with the theory of expressiveness, if one does, as did Eisenstein, see expressiveness as conflict, impulse and struggle. Eisenstein was familiar with Bogdanov’s concept of conflict and, as was already discussed, he was also influenced by the James–Lange theory, which serves as a conceptual base for Bogdanov’s theory of the affectional. In an unnamed manuscript written in Almaty in 1943 Eisenstein reviews the fictitious and the factual in connection with the Jamesian theory of emotions. In the situation of watching movies, the spectator is an active perceiver; mirroring an actor’s expressive

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movements and experiencing situations on screen, he co-authors a film. In this case one can speak of a fictive emotion-action; the entirety of feelings (sensations) that the spectator experiences during the film or performance creates an illusion that he has done some work and, therefore, there is an illusion of an amount of abundant energy. Despite the fictitious character of interaction with the environment on screen, the spectator experiences a non-fictitious feeling of satisfaction with a film or performance. The illusion that substitutes for a spectator (a viewer) a normal organic activity can be explained in terms of vital-divergence with Eisenstein’s emphasis on energy (Eisenstein 2002: 52–53). Eisenstein understands emotions as embodied reactions to the interaction with the environment (situation), and in a close reading of his writings it seems that he applies Bogdanov’s notion of energy to those situations, though without mentioning Bogdanov’s name. In his Tenth Anniversary of Excommunication from Marxism, Bogdanov finalizes the conception of universal substitution that he initially develops in “Empiriomonism”. He explains the principle of universal empirical substitution, which is for him a method of organizing human experience, as “a replacement of an object (or an event) with another, real or imaginary. For example, works of art are replaced with images, together with feelings and moods that they cause in a reader, viewer or listener; instead of a ray of the sun is the sum of color rays produced through a prism. Such kind of replacement is to be intentional; it should be done rationally and help to increase knowledge, understanding and foreknowing of things. Then the substitution is objective, otherwise it is incorrect’ (Bogdanov 1914/1995: 52–53). Bogdanov sees the origin of the substitution in human communication, since we decipher the body language of other people through the substitution of their movements with feelings using the operation of mindreading. He claims the continuity of substitution in experience and establishes the interrelation between physiological and psychical processes (Bogdanov 1904– 1906/2003: 112–113; Bogdanov 1902: 251). Bogdanov singles out five types of substitution, however, and for the theory of expressiveness the most relevant ones are those that substitute the psychical with the physical, or the physical with the psychical (Bogdanov 1904–1906/2003: 128–129). Bogdanov’s types of substitution with the physical correspond with Eisenstein’s theory of expressive movements, including his attempt to use what he called the ‘emotional script”, created by the scriptwriter Aleksandr Rzheshevskiy. In his essay on the form of a film script (1929) Eisenstein proposes the notion of an ‘emotional script’, which is “an imaginary narrative of a prospective viewer telling the story of a film that impressed him” (Eisenstein 2004a: 465–466). The emotional script is not a step-by-step narration of a story, and it does not provide detailed descriptions of film

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frames; it gives an emotional impulse to the film director that he will employ in his work so as to evoke the projected emotions. The idea of an emotional script, though it failed, was in the spirit of the artistic experiments of the time that were aimed at the psychological involvement of a spectator, creating works of art in which a viewer could be engaged and whose emotional reactions could be guided. Nikolay Zhinkin in his 1920s essay “Psychology of Film Perception” develops the idea that the perception of artworks is not necessarily a one-way communication. Perception is the way to open a door for other people into an area otherwise inaccessible. The question that interests Zhinkin is whether a reversed communication is possible in the situation of watching movies. And if it is possible, then the next question is where to search for it – in the behavior of a spectator or in the intentions of a film director. It is obvious that in cinema the reaction of the audience will not change his way of acting on screen, and therefore the plot of a film is of importance; the plot determines the situation and the structure of perception. Zhinkin reveals the paradoxical situation that perception is not in the system of receiving devices but at the exit of the scheme. However, he finds it is possible to predetermine the process of film perception. Preceding the idea of inter-subjective synchronization Zhinkin sees the main goal of filmmakers in finding ways to focus the viewers’ attention and to increase their activity in the process of watching movies. A film creator, e.g. a film director or a scriptwriter, should see a film before it has been created as if through the eyes of a prospective viewer (Zhinkin 1971: 214–254). Eisenstein and Rzheshevskiy in Bezhin Meadow (1937) tried to accomplish (though they never completed)5 the conception of an emotional script that guides the creative process of a film director as well as the perception of a prospective viewer. Rzheshevskiy saw a future film as a unified whole (similar to Bogdanov’s organizational views), cemented by the programmed emotions of a future spectator. A film with an emotional script as its backbone requires a montage based on the principle of association in order to evoke built-in emotions. Rzheshevskiy could be seen as a fair example of a scriptwriter who seeks to influence a film director, forcing him to pay attention to the acts and mental states of characters. Episodes are connected not by chronological order but because of the author’s associations and thought flow. The scriptwriter was almost forcing a film director to see the future film through the spectators’ eyes, e.g. in the episode in Bezhin Meadow where a drunk father talks to his son Stepok:

5 One of the first emotional scripts and one of the first failures of Rzheshevskiy is A Simple Case, filmed by Vsevolod Pudovkin (1930). Pudovkin says that when he first read Rzheshevskiy’s emotional script he had a strange, unfamiliar feeling, as the script was disturbing like a literary work (Pudovkin 1982: 353).

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“Eat up, my little son… Who brought you into this world?”, he suddenly asked Stepok, very softly. The boy continued eating. “Who brought you into this world?? Me or somebody in the Political Department? he asked again, softly. “My mother”, answered Stepok, just as quietly, and calmly putting down his spoon, he got up from the table but his father’s drunken words followed after him. “When our God created the heavens, the water and the earth and people like you and me, my dear little son, he said…” “What did he say?”, asked Stepok, smiling and gathering up his things, not turning his head. “He said”, said the voice of his father, “Be fruitful and multiply, but if the son betrays his father, kill him like a dog, God says in the Holy Book, kill him immediately”. “Did he say that?”, said Stepok without turning his head, smiling and moving towards the door… Suddenly, his father, like a drunken bear, punched little Stepok in the chest with his paws and whispered, his face distorted with indescribable hatred: “I’ll light the stove… Do you hear me? Right now… I’ll chop you into pieces… I’ll put you in the pot… Do you hear me? I’ll cook you… And eat you… All by myself… With bread and pickles… (Rzheshevskiy 1982: 225).

The emotional line of the film narration and the emotional link between the spectator and what is shown on screen unites Eisenstein’s theory of expressiveness with Bogdanov’s theory of an ‘affectional’, which is in turn based on the James–Lange theory.

Bogdanov, Eisenstein, and Neurofilmology

In contemporary neuroscience emotions are central to cognition. Thus, Antonio Damasio, drawing on theories of James and Lange, argues for the importance of emotions for the evolution of consciousness. For Damasio emotions are bodily changes that trigger feelings, which he defines as mapping such changes in brain structures,6 therefore “feelings do not arise necessarily from the actual body states […] but rather from actual maps constructed at any given moment in the body-sensing regions” (Damasio 2003: 112). Asserting the importance of body representations of the brain, Damasio explicates Spinoza’s views on the affections of the body (corporis affections) as underlying the theory of James and Lange. Spinoza, contrary to the Cartesian notion of the passions, uses the term affect [affectum] that he understands as “affections

6 This understanding leads him to distinguish among three closely related phenomena: “an emotion, the feeling of that emotion, and knowing that we have a feeling of that emotion” (Damasio 1999: 8).

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[affectiones] of the body by which the body’s power [potentia] of acting is increased or diminished, aided or restrained, and, at the same time, the ideas of these perceptions” (Spinoza 1677/1996: E3d3). Bogdanov in Empiriomonism endorses such understanding but replaces the notion of power with the notion of energy. Damasio never refers to Bogdanov; however, his recent explanation of the mechanism of emotions helps retrospectively to understand Bogdanov’s conception of the affectional, as both approaches are rooted in the James–Lange theory and Spinoza’s corporis affections. Today, the theoretical considerations of Eisenstein and Bogdanov are relevant to 21st century scientists. They could be considered as working theories, for instance for studying viewers watching movies. In this case the perception of the ‘exciting fact’ on the screen comes first, then this perception is followed by the bodily changes and afterwards comes the feeling of these changes, which is, according to James, the emotion. The viewer is immersed in the film milieu and identifies himself with one or another character of the film. The interaction of the character with the environment on the screen and his movement in space due to the mirroring may cause bodily response in the viewer. Mirroring here refers to a situation where a viewer subconsciously mimics and lives through the bodily changes of the screen characters that he watches. He may instinctively respond by moving aside or may wiggle, vibrate, fidget, hum and flap in excitement or impatience. According to neuropsychologist Jeffrey Zacks, though, when speaking about mirroring in the situation of watching movies we miss an important point, namely that mirroring, for instance, a facial expression is not necessarily the same as feeling an emotion. Zacks further points out, “most surprising about the experience of emotion in the movies is not the grimacing and smiling, but the subjective experience of the emotion” (Zacks 2015: 67). To describe the connection between visual images and motor activity James uses the term ‘ideo-motor actions’: “Wherever movement follows unhesitatingly and immediately the notion of it in the mind, we have ideo-motor action” (James 1890/1950, II: 522). Zacks correlates the Jamesian understanding of the mechanism of emotions and the notion of ideo-motor actions with the way we associate an action with events in the world (Zacks 2015: 4). Following this, Zacks proposes to distinguish between two pathways that can produce an emotion from the action. The first is the appraisal path that is an emotional response to the actor’s mimics and motion and the situation. The second is the Jamesian path that activates the emotional program linked to facial expressions and ideo-motor actions. If one follows this line of thinking, namely that in everyday existence we may distinguish several levels of the self, we may also assume that these several levels are active also when watching movies. Thus, depending on the level of consciousness involved in a

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certain period of the process of movie watching, we may speak about emotional immersion (core consciousness) and back-to-reality surveillance (extended consciousness). Consciousness of bodily changes and emotional expressiveness emerges in the neocortical environment as an extension of the organism’s unconscious awareness of the environment. The immersion of the viewer in a cinematographic reality leads to the birth of emotions caused by the interaction of the subject with the environment in the virtual reality of the movie. At the basis of such an approach is the assumption that cinematographic emotions have a biological basis, a view to some extent recognized by contemporary cognitivist theories (Grodal 1999; Tikka 2008; Smith 2003). These views can be argued indirectly to be indebted to the James–Lange theory of emotions, but one may also point to a previously unrecognized link to Bogdanov’s conception of the affectional and biopotential as part of this intellectual inheritance. Bogdanov uses the metaphor of a phonograph in order to describe the psychic processes that take place in communication. When shared, experience is different from the original experience and at the same time is related to it – the same way indentations in the foil of a phonograph, on one hand, differ from the melody they reflect and, on the other, are dependent on its structure. Through the movement of a phonograph cylinder the indentations form a basis for reproducing the melody. Similarly, other peoples’ articulations become a basis for replicating their feelings and emotions, i.e., the second reflection of these emotions (Bogdanov 1904–1906/2003: 80). This is where Eisenstein’s theory of expressiveness comes into play. Films are forms of conveying and transferring experience, including the emotional. Initially aimed at expressing and causing certain emotions, Eisenstein’s films, using expressive movements and exploiting the connection of the psychical and the physiological, are creative and transformative of experience and aspire to change mentality.

References

Bochow, Jörg. 2000. “Eisenstein – patognomic? Fisiognomicheskie aspekty v teorii vyrazitel’nosti v filmakh Sergeya Eisensteina”. Kinovedcheskie zapiski 47: 57–68. ------. 2005. Das Theater Meyerholds und die Biomechanik. Berlin: Alexander Verlag. Bogdanov, A.A. 1902. Filosofiya zhivogo opyta. Populyarnye ocherki: Materializm, empiriocriticizm, dialekticheskiy materializm. Nauka budushchego. Peterburg: izdanie M. I. Semenova. ------. 1904–1906/2003. Empiriomonizm. Stat’i po filosofii. Moscow: Respublika. ------. 1914/1995. ‘Desyatiletie otlucheniya ot marksizma. Yubileyniy sbornik. 1904–1914’. in Neizvestniy Bogdanov. Kniga 3 (1995). Edited by N.A. Antonova. Moscow: AIRO – XX. ------. 1990. “Sistemnaya organizatsiya materii.” In Na perelome. Filosofiya i mirovozzrenie. Filosofskie diskussii 20-kh godov. Moscow: Politizdat.

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Damasio, Antonio. 1999. The Feeling of What Happens. Orlando, FL: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ------. 2003. Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain. Orlando, FL: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Eisenstein, Sergey. 2002. “S zaranee obdumannym namereniem (Montazh attraktsionov)”. In Eisenstein, Sergey, Metod, 1. Moscow: Muzey kino. ------. 2004a. “O forme stsenariya”, in Eisenstein, Sergey. Neravnodushnaya priroda, 1. Moscow: Muzey kino. ------. 2004b. “Stanislavskiy i Loyola.” In Eisenstein, Sergey. Neravnodushnaya priroda, 1. Moscow: Muzei kino. ------. 2014. “The Method of Making Workers’ Films.” In Film Manifestos and Global Cinema Cultures: A Critical Anthology, edited by Scott MacKenzie. University of California Press. Grodal, Torben. 1999. Moving Pictures: A New Theory of Film Genres, Feelings and Cognition. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. James, William. 1884. “What is an Emotion?” Mind 9, 34: 188–205. ------. 1890/1950. The Principles of Psychology. New York: Dover Publications, Vol. I–II. ------. 1905. “The Place of Affectional Facts in a World of Pure Experience”. The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods 2, 11: 281–287. Law, Alma, and Mel Gordon. 1996. Meyerhold, Eisenstein and Biomechanics: Actor Training in Revolutionary Russia. Jefferson: McFarland & Company, Inc. Pudovkin, Vsevolod. 1982. “Tvorchestvo literatora v kino. O kinematograficheskom stsenarii Rzheshevskogo”. In A. G. Rzheshevskiy. Zhizn’. Kino. Moskva: Iskusstvo: 353–358. Rzheshevskiy, A. G. 1982. “Stsenarii. Bezhin lug.” In A. G. Rzheshevskiy. Zhizn’. Kino. Moscow: Iskusstvo, 215–298. Smith, Greg M. 2003. The Film Structure and the Emotional System. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Spinoza, Benedict de. 1677/1996. Ethics. London: Penguin Classics. Tan, Ed S. 1995. Emotion and the Structure of Narrative Film: Film As An Emotion Machine. London: Routledge. Tikka, Pia. 2008. Enactive Cinema: Simulatorium Eisensteinense. Helsinki: Aalto University Press. Yampolskiy, Мikhail. 2009. “Ot Proletkul’ta k Platonu: Eisenstein i proekt smyslovoy samoorganizatsii zhizni”. Kinovedcheskie zapiski 89: 45–89. Zacks, Jeffrey M. 2015. Flicker: Your Brain On Movies. Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press. Zhinkin, N. I. 1971. “Psikhologiya kinovospriyatiya”. Kinematograf segodnya 2. Moscow: Iskusstvo: 214–254.

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TOWARDS A TEKTOLOGY OF TEKTOLOGY FabianTompsett______

A diffractive response to Ken Wark’s Molecular Red (Wark 2015). A ‘second slit’ is opened up as regards the synthesis of Marxism and Machism: This essay explores the diffractive relationship between Aleksandr Bogdanov and Otto Neurath. Using a diffractive methodology derived from Karen Barad, these two thinkers are brought into relationship through their impact upon the German Figurative Constructivists, a political-art movement which emerged from the Council Communist current grouped around the Berlin review Die Aktion. This yields a contextualization of both Bogdanov and Neurath within the political environment that arose within Social Democracy in the first third of the twentieth century. This interpretation provides a basis for how tektological approaches can be implemented in the age of digitized information.

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“For an international hypertext system to be worthwhile, of course, many people would have to post information. The physicist would not find much on quarks, nor the art student on Van Gogh, if many people and organizations did not make their information available in the first place.” (Berners-Lee 1999: 41)

Introduction

This is a conjugative-diffractive response to Ken Wark’s Molecular Red: Theory for the Anthropocene (Wark 2015), which I foresee playing a significant role in drawing attention to the work of Bogdanov. This book seeks to elaborate a revival of Marxism, through Bogdanov, as we enter a period when the impact of human activity is the dominant force in reshaping the very geology of planet earth. Wark places Bogdanov in the context of contemporary Californian feminist theorists Donna Haraway and Karen Barad. He mobilizes Barad’s scientific methodology – rooted in the philosophy-physics of Niels Bohr (Barad 2007) – and Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto (Haraway 1983). This all works very well, for reasons, which will emerge below. Unfortunately Wark has gone seriously astray when he is completely dismissive of the “logical positivists of the Vienna Circle” (Wark 2015: 126). Wark appears to be misled by what Thomas Uebel (1991: 4) has called the “received view” of logical positivism. However, this led me to the use of tektology as method, in exploring the relationship between Bogdanov and Otto Neurath both of whom endeavoured to synthesize Marxism and Machism. [For a discussion of Bogdanov in relation to Ernst Mach and positivist scientific methodology, see “From Empiriomonism to Tektology” (Sadovsky 1998)]. This response does not only open up a “second slit” by considering Neurath but also brings into focus Franz Seiwert, the leading figure amongst the Figurative Constructivists. We shall also look at the subsequent development of similar ideas by the Situationniste Internationale (Carstern Juhl 1973). An intrinsic part of this process is disrupting the separation of “art studies” and “science studies”. A full analysis of the relationship between the thought of Seiwert and Bogdanov lies outside the scope of this short essay. However this methodological approach will led to some suggestions as to how future research in this area might be conducted.

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Conjugation-Diffraction

“[T]wo conjugating complexes (…) are in the process of ‘interaction’, their elements- activities merge, ‘influence’ each other, in general, ‘combine’, pass from one complex to another” (Bogdanov 1996: 112–3)

Karen Barad developed her methodology from Bohr’s Philosophy- Physics. Her agential realism challenges the representationalist focus on the correspondence of description to reality, and then promotes a post- humanist performative approach which concentrates on practice, doings and action (Barad 2007). She adapts Donna Haraway’s notion of diffraction, which is in fact precisely the image that Bogdanov uses as an example of “conjugation” (Bogdanov 1996: 113-4). Haraway describes diffraction as a metaphor (Haraway 1997: 16), which is perhaps another way of saying that the writer appreciates language as a dynamic system. This was certainly how Bogdanov saw things. He theorized a basic metaphor whereby there is a transfer of meaning: “Natural actions were described using the same words as those for human ones” (Bogdanov 1996: 16). Indeed this was key to his understanding of poetry as originating in spontaneous utterances which helped organize the work process and were the embryos of words: “they were natural and intelligible indications of those actions during which they sprang up” (Bogdanov 1923: 277). Thus Bogdanov’s use of conjugation, a word he appropriates from biology, and Haraway’s and Barad’s use of the term diffraction, appropriated from optics, are metaphors and examples of themselves, in that in all three instances they are used to develop language as a living system by stretching meaning from one set of circumstances to another set of circumstances. In time, if widely adopted, these words acquire the secondary meaning, which loses its characteristic as metaphor and becomes stabilized as bearing this new meaning, particularly when the original meaning becomes obsolete. But let us take another pass on this. Barad is re-appropriating Haraway’s metaphorical use of diffraction as a particle physicist now engaged in Feminist Studies, Philosophy and the History of Consciousness. She embraces Niels Bohr’s rejection of classical physics, Cartesian dualism and atomistic metaphysics. Arguing that Bohr’s epistemology is not based on “independent objects with inherent boundaries and properties but rather phenomena” she develops agential realism according to which “phenomena are the ontological inseparability of agentially intra-acting ‘components’” (Barad 2003: 815). She argues that the boundaries and

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properties of these components are not predetermined but emergent through an “agential cut” occurring within the phenomenon. She eschews a simple understanding of apparatuses as laboratory setups, but rather as open ended material-discursive practices. They are not static structures but dynamic re-configurings of the world (Barad 2007: 146). We shall now open the second slit of conjugated “Machist-Marxism”, and discuss Otto Neurath’s collaborative role with Bohr in his development of complementarity.

Ingression

“If two things lacking common elements are being joined together, their structures must be altered so that common elements appear. (…) In such situations the method of ingression is commonly used, that is the method of ‘introduced’ or ‘intermediate’ complexes.” (Bogdanov 1996: 128–9)

Just as Bogdanov describes how philologists uncover the genetic relationships between words (Bogdanov 1996: 162), through following a chain of mutually related words, we shall now use a similar process to uncover a genetic link connecting Bogdanov to Bohr through a shared back story in the conjugation of Marx and Mach. For this first iteration, the key person is Otto Neurath (1882-1945) who grew up in Viennese academic circles. He was active in the Vienna Circle from the beginning: he joined Philipp Frank and Hans Hahn in the First Vienna Circle (1907– 1910). Prior to the First World War Neurath had started researching the economic impact of warfare and during the First World War he obtained a pivotal position spending half his time with the Austro-Hungarian War office and the other half collating statistics of the German Empire at a war economy museum in Leipzig. This experience fuelled his interest in an economy in kind, and when the revolutions spread across the Central Powers as mutinies and strikes brought the war to an end, he became a paid official running the economic administration of the short lived Bavarian Soviet Republic in 1919. For this he was put on trial for High Treason. Although his friends in the Austrian Social Democratic Party secured his early release, it meant that he was now barred from pursing the academic career for which he had seemed destined (Cartwright, Cat, Fleck, and Uebel 1996).

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He returned to Vienna and became active in the squatting movement, which arose as masses of Austrians took to the land to grow food in the face of widespread starvation. As the situation normalized he first created a museum for this squatting movement, and then, with the support of the Social Democratic Viennese municipal authorities, he started the Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum (GeWiMu) – a socio-economic museum which aimed to make social statistics intelligible to the whole population, regardless of their level of literacy. This led him to increasingly consider how information could be handled graphically (Vossoughian 2008). Another of his achievements was to be a key organizer of the Vienna Circle, which had as its goal the unification of science (Neurath 1973a), something also advocated by Bogdanov (Bogdanov 1918; 2016). He did this in the context of developing an approach to sociology that was, like that of Bogdanov, rooted in Marxism and Machism, and which he called Logical Empiricism. This is best illustrated in his major theoretical work on sociology, Empirical Sociology (Neurath 1973b). The Vienna Circle was active in organizing a series of International Congresses for the Unity of Science. The second of these was held in Copenhagen in Neils Bohr’s residence in June 1936. Indeed, it was here that Bohr delivered one of the key papers in which he develops his concept of complementarity: “Causality and Complementarity” (Bohr 1937). Bohr was an important advocate of the Unity of Science, serving on the ongoing advisory committee for the congresses and contributing to the first volume of the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science that Neurath was organizing (Bohr 1938). Edward McKinnon has argued that the Unity of Science was of central importance to Bohr, and that his innovation of complementarity is evidence of this: it allows for both particle and wave theory to co-exist in a unified way, rather than creating a contradiction which must be resolved in one way or another (McKinnon 1980). It is the apparatus which plays an active part in the conduct of the experiment. Jan Faye has further argued from an examination of the correspondence between Neurath and Bohr, that Neurath played a significant role in supporting Bohr in the creation of his philosophy-physics from a Logical Empiricist perspective (Faye 2008). Thus, this ingression has revealed the intermediate complex of Neurath, which allows the conjugation. However, further conjugation will not be possible until we have manoeuvred around a case of disingression.

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Disingression

“It is really quite opposite to ingression. During ingression activities which were not connected earlier join together forming a “linkage” of conjugating complexes. During disingression they mutually paralyze one another which results in the formation of a “boundary”, that is separateness.” (Bogdanov 1996: 201)

Neurath makes scant reference to Bogdanov. The one reference in Empirical Sociology (Neurath 1973b) is unsympathetic: “The scientific tool is not as unambiguous as one often assumes. If, without immediate necessity somebody introduces new formulations which can ease a coalition with former opponents, then an experienced and sharp-sighted politician may sense that with such philosophical change a political change is being prepared. Lenin’s fierce attack on the philosophy of Bogdanov (of 1906)1 may be explained from Lenin’s basic political attitude, which made him ward off any idealistic deviations” (Neurath 1973b: 386). It would appear from this that Neurath had not actually studied Bogdanov’s philosophy. He seems all too ready to accept Lenin’s critique in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism (Lenin 1909) and does not discuss exactly what “coalition with former opponents” he was suggesting. Neurath’s view may well have arisen consequent to the publication of the German translation of Materializm i Empiriokrititsizm (Lenin 1927), four years before Empirical Sociology. Despite exhibiting a certain resonance with Bogdanov’s Tektology in his approach, Neurath never seriously discussed Bogdanov’s work. This occurred despite several key works by Bogdanov being made available in German throughout the 1920s (Biggart, Gloveli, Yassour 1998). But Neurath did not engage with Bogdanov’s theses. Leaving this mystery aside we must recognize “the formation of a boundary, that is separateness” - i.e. Disingression. Before investigating this disjuncture we need to step back for a more tektological view of the situation.

1 This is the reference supplied by Neurath. This probably refers to Empiriomonizm the third volume of which appeared in 1906 (Biggart, Gloveli, Yassour 1998: 151). Tompsett______TOWARDS A TEKTOLOGY OF TEKTOLOGY______Page 6 of 17

Tektology as Form and Content

“[F]orm and content are one” (Franz Seiwert 2015)

The revival of interest in tektology needs to be more than nostalgic: it can offer a methodology. As Bogdanov wrote in 1912 “from its very beginning, tektology is able to go beyond the field of abstract cognition and assume an active role in life” (Bogdanov 1996: i). Thus a purely abstract representation of tektology is oxymoronic. Bogdanov argued that tektology was not something new but rather a “necessary continuation of what is and has been done by people in their theory and practice” (Bogdanov 1996: i). Writing nine years later in the Preface of 19 November 1921 to the Second Edition of Tektology (Bogdanov 1996: iii–iv) – before the consolidation of Bolshevik power and Lenin’s campaign against him had yet to put an end to the independence of Proletkult – Bogdanov’s tone was very positive, speaking of a growing number of scientists becoming engaged in tektology: no doubt he was referring to Proletkult and more specifically the Socialist Academy, as the Communist Academy was originally called. In “Proletarian University”, published in 1918, Bogdanov sketches out the structure of this institution (Bogdanov 1977). Here there are three stages: after a preparatory and foundational cycle, the final stage for students is a specialist’s cycle, which however includes a course on General Organizational Science (i.e., Tektology) common to all faculties. This scientific enterprise will be carried out in a collective and collaborative manner. This is necessitated by the disparate nature of bourgeois science.

From Science Studies to Art Studies

“Science is split into an ever larger number of branches, increasingly divergent, always weakening the living relationship that existed between them. (…) It is further necessary to do everything possible to eliminate the disparate nature of science that has led to the increase of specialization; the unity of scientific language must be the objective, matching and generalizing the methods of the various branches of knowledge, not only in relation to each other, but as regards the methods of all other areas of practice, developing of a complete monism of them all.” (Bogdanov 1918; 2016)

Our next application of Tektology as method involves jumping from ‘science studies’ to ‘art studies’. Geographically our area of focus will be Germany. Firstly, we need to consider that German science was above

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all bourgeois science – i.e. it was politically constructed as can be evinced by the problems Hans Reichenbach encountered when getting tenure as a Professor of Mathematics in Berlin. His political activism with his brother Bernard Reichenbach and their friend Alexander Schwab (Biographische Datenbanken 2008) led to opposition to his appointment, which was only overcome when Albert Einstein intervened on his behalf. Unlike in the Netherlands where the astronomer, Anton Pannekoek could combine an academic career with his political activism as a Left Communist, this was impossible in Germany. Hans Reichenbach had to give up his overt political activism, which then enabled him to establish the Berlin Circle as a parallel organization to Neurath’s Vienna Circle, the two organizations proceeding to play a dynamic role in the development of mathematics and also of the Unity of Science Movement. Meanwhile Bernard Reichenbach and Schwab became active in the Communist Workers’ Party of Germany (KAPD), a Left Communist organization which broke away from the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in 1920. Bernard Reichenbach even briefly serving on the Executive Committee of the Communist International (1920–21) before the KAPD was expelled from the Third International. Sabatier (1974) found no trace of Proletkult-type institutions in Germany, and Biggart disputes her suggestion that “the cultural policy of the KAPD was closer to that of the Proletkult than was that of the KPD”, on the grounds that, by her own account, the KAPD advocated only the assimilation of bourgeois culture” (Biggart 1989: Chapter 20, Note 6). However, we need to take account of the role of the political faction grouped around Franz Pfemfert which started as an underground organization, the Anti-national Socialist Party in 1915, which became public following the German Revolution of November 1918 and subsequently moved through the Spartakus League, the KPD and the KAPD, before re-constituting itself as the Allgemeine Arbeiter Union – Einheitsorganization (AAUE) i.e. General Workers Union – Unitary Organization. One important feature of this current is that it drew in a range of significant artists, it discussed education and questions of art, poetry and aesthetics, rejecting the need for a political party (one of Lenin’s critiques of Bogdanov) and published Bogdanov and Lunacharskiy amongst discussions of Proletkult and Proletarian culture more generally. We shall now focus on Franz Seiwert, a major figure in this current, a leading figure in the Figurative Constructivist movement and an active collaborator with Otto Neurath following 1928 until Seiwert’s death in 1933.

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Franz Seiwert and the ‘Aufbau der Proletarischen Kultur’

“The Spectacle becomes dance” (Seiwert 1920b)

Seiwert was simultaneously active as an artist and as a political militant. His first appearance in the radical art journal, Die Aktion, was a woodcut in September 1917. This was followed by four others in the period leading to the German Revolution of November 1918. Whether he was involved in the Antinational Socialist Party, which had been founded by Franz Pfemfert in 1915 prior to the revolution is unclear, but he became a prominent member in the days following the revolution and was involved in organizing an Artists’ Council in Cologne (Crockett 1999, 77). Here I shall focus on his more critical articles, which emerged in Die Aktion following their increasingly negative stance as regards the Bolsheviks, particularly after Otto Rühle’s trip to Moscow in 1920. On his return Rühle reported the situation he found in Russia as differing from what he expected a socialist society to be like (Rühle n.d.). Seiwert took an active part in the discussions as regards the relationship between culture and revolution. Seiwert had participated in the Ruhr Uprising (17 March – 8 April 1920). He had written a bitter polemic attacking the role of the political parties, particularly in relationship to the political divisions, which led to suppression of the Red Army of the Ruhr with over 1,000 dead (Seiwert 1920a). Here he had called on workers to remember the goal of social revolution. In the “Aufbau der Proletarischen Kultur” (Seiwert 1920b), he set out to spell out exactly what he saw that goal as meaning, what his comrades had fought and died for. Here we shall focus on the role he saw for Art through a few extracts: “The progressive realization of the communist idea is synonymous with the destruction of the modern concept of art. The true artistic creation and the realization of communism come from the same source.” (Seiwert 1920b: 723) “In communist society there are no professional artists. The word artist is an insult and a human debasement. When the Spirit moves you then you will create works of art.” (Seiwert 1920b:) “The spectacle becomes dance” (Seiwert 1920b: 723). “The Artworks will be on the street. The streets are so bleak. Here completely new possibilities arise. The houses can be painted, whole streets

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can be painted. Useless advertising hoardings can become pictographs and sculptures.” (Seiwert 1920b: 724) “The artwork, artistic creation is open. Everyone has the right to every work. There is no ownership of art works.” (Seiwert 1920b: 724) “Engineers are artists, artists will be engineers. All workers will be artists, because art is no longer what is nicely done, but everything that is truthful.” (Seiwert 1920b: 724) Seiwert wrote this in the heat of the failed Council (Räte) Revolution in Germany. In July 1921 his “Open Letter to Comrade Bogdanov” (Seiwert 2015) was published. (The use of the term ‘comrade’ was at odds with the abusive terms used by Lenin to characterize Bogdanov.) Here Seiwert says he agrees with Bogdanov ‘in essence’ but criticizes Bogdanov’s monism as not going far enough: form and content are one. “Comrade Bogdanov! For me, it is increasingly clear that the proletarian society generally will not know these parts into which bourgeois culture is disintegrating: science, art, and again, their constituent parts: poetry, music, painting and so on. Form and content will not be known, but only work created from the true collective consciousness in which everyone becomes a creator, in which everyone is a creator.” (Seiwert 2015)

From Figurative Constructivism to Triolectics

“Artistic research is identical to ‘human science’” (Asger Jorn 2011b)

Seiwert’s views continued to develop despite the failure of Communist World Revolution following the First World War. With his comrades in the AAUE, he shared the view that the Soviet Union was nothing but a development within capitalism. Indeed Rühle’s went so far as to draw a parallel between Bolshevism and General Ludendorff’s “war socialism” (Rühle n.d.), a position similar to that of Bogdanov (Tompsett 2014). By 1927, Seiwert no longer spoke of proletarian culture in a positive manner. The culture of the future socialist society would not exist in embryo under capitalism: he rejected all attempts to pretend so, as this would contaminate the revolutionary struggle. But in the future society art and culture would be close to the mechanics and technology of work: “Bogdanov called this the science of the organization of human labor. If we understand work correctly as the preservation of life of both the

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individual and of the totality, then art is nothing more than an emergent work-image (werk-, bildgewordene) organization of labour, of life.” (Seiwert 1978: 39) Notwithstanding his critique of constructivism (Seiwert 1978), Seiwert supported El Lisitskiy when he came to Cologne for the International Pressa exhibition in 1928. The Soviet pavilion here did much to establish Lisitskiy’s reputation in Western Europe. Augustin Tschinkel, a Czech contributor to Die Aktion also attended. It was here that the negotiations were concluded which gave both Tschinkel and Seiwert’s long-time friend and collaborator, Gerd Arntz, steady work with employment at the (GeWiMu) that Otto Neurath ran in Vienna. Another associate, Peter Alma was also employed. Arntz and Tschinkel were regular contributors to A bis Z, a journal Seiwert edited between October 1929 and February 1933. But there was a tension between their paid work and their politics: “The working of the [GeWiMu] fitted quite definitely into my political vision. It was above all the enlightenment on social relationships in which I could give shape to my ideas. Only I was a bit more revolutionary, more to the left than the socialists in Vienna” (Arntz quoted in Benus 2013: 234). There were also tensions between the theory of factography as developed by El Lisitskiy as a means to assemble facts through such means as photomontage (Anysley 1994), and the “sociological graphics” developed by Seiwert and his fellow Figurative Constructivists: their goal was to “present people as products of their relationships (…) show individual people as actual constituent parts of an operation which the employer can calculate numerically, like other inventory” (Tschinkel 2013). In its intentional way of overlooking any distinction between living and non-living things, this approach can be seen as pre-figurative of both cybernetics and the methodologies developed by Barad and Haraway (Tompsett 2015). However, before completing this circuit, we shall make a further ingression, this time introducing the triolectics of Asger Jorn and its impact on Situationism in the 1950s, twenty years after Seiwert’s death. Jorn gave a talk at the International Congress of Industrial Design, Milan 1954, where he advocated a new concept of truth based on Bohr’s complementarity and, as with Seiwert, goes beyond the distinction between art and science. He echoes Seiwert again: “the word art (Kunst) means that which we can do, our capacity (können) in any domain. Thus we are all artists, and all techniques are arts.” (Jorn 2011b: 273). In his “Notes

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on the Formation of an Imaginist Bauhaus” he declared “Artistic research is identical to ‘human science’” (ibid, 275). Further, Jorn developed the Triolectic from his critical examination of Bohr’s Copenhagen Interpretation. In his introduction to Naturens Orden Jorn explains that this work is as much equally a critique of Neils Bohr’s complementarity and Dialectical Materialism arguing that they both share an identification of the instrument and actuality (Jorn 2002: 18). He argues that this duality can only be resolved by the introduction of a third element and generates a triple viewpoint of instrument: the artistic, the technical and the scientific. He further developed this analysis in Signes Gravés producing a series of Triolectic Schemas: This manner of thinking persisted with Jorn through his period in the Situationniste Internationale (1957–1960) into his subsequent activity

Tektology, Figurative Constructivism and Situationism

“The slave of proletarian culture is the machine” (Seiwert 1920b).

“Facing the masters/slaves stand the men of refusal, the new proletariat, rich in revolutionary traditions. From these the masters without slaves will emerge, together with a superior type of society in which the lived project of childhood and the historical project of the great aristocrats will be realized” (Vaneigem 1979).

In the 1950s Jorn started collaborating with Guy Debord, who saw revolution not merely in terms of “politics” or “culture” but in terms of “a superior organization of the world” (Debord 1981). They were key figures in the foundation of the Situationniste Internationale (SI) although Jorn was to leave in 1960. The organization continued until 1972, and subsequently has been deemed to be very influential as regards avant-gardism in art and politics. Many elements of Seiwert’s thought can be seen resurfacing within the programme of the Situationists particularly in their manifesto (Situationniste Internationale 1994):

total participation against the spectacle the organization of the directly lived moment against preserved art global practice and collective production against particularized art an art of interaction against unilateral art

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Vaneigem’s The Revolution of Everyday Life (Vaneigem 1979) developed Situationist ideas as regards the possibilities of restoring the creative aspects of art into the interstices of daily life in the context of a critical attitude to cybernetics.

Conclusion

This has been an exercise in applied tektology. I have used formal categories developed by Bogdanov in his tektology to research tektology through an exercise in applied tektology. I have found a substantial range of correspondences, such as between Bogdanov’s conjugation and Barad’s diffraction – to which we could add Jorn’s “conjunction”, a term Jorn develops in relations to his theory of the “situation” but one which he does not really develop beyond that (Jorn 1963: 218). What has not been produced is a mechanical set of causal relations, whereby subsequent events or theories are determined by anterior activities. It is not that the tektological methodology does not require such an outcome, rather it is antithetical to such a result. Neurath was very keen to make clear that in his promotion of the unity of science, he was not seeking to centralize all science in a hierarchy, whether derived from physics or maths. Siewert and his comrades in Die Aktion fought the centralizing process even when run by those with whom they shared many ideas. Bogdanov, once one of the key leaders of the Bolsheviks, later dropped out of any party involvement. Debord was much more ambiguous about leadership, in terms of his actions in relation to his organizational pronouncements in the Situationniste Internationale. However, Jorn was much more consistent in rejecting any centralizing structure. I have constructed a more diffuse set of relationships, sometimes finding textual evidence for a relationship, at other times relying on a more tangential relationship where there is no indication that a subsequent thinker was aware of their predecessor. In applying my interpretation of the concepts of tektology I have uncovered some hard evidence – i.e., the textual references made by Seiwert, which had eluded previous Bogdanov scholars. However, in comparing the Situationists with Seiwert, whilst I have uncovered circumstantial evidence of similarity, I have found no unchallengeable links. Nevertheless I regard both cases as being successful: after all this is not a forensic investigation.

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If some phenomenon is real, is actually a constituent part of social relations amongst which we live, then when different groups of people stumble across such a phenomenon, then the fact that they do so independently should reassure us of the phenomenon’s generality. In contradistinction to a world where claims for priority are a feature of both scientific research and artistic practice, such claims are not relevant for the tektological approach. This has a political impact, which both Seiwert and the Situationists were at the forefront of proclaiming, long before the advent of open source programming and the development of the creative commons. Both saw that open collaboration was essential for a truly participatory approach to culture. In this they were much more explicit than Bogdanov, in whose thinking it is much more implicit, certainly as far as one can judge from the limited range of his works available in English. Likewise it is important to reject the centralized scholastic thinking that first appeared within “Leninism” and can perhaps be identified as appearing with Lenin’s attack on Bogdanov in 1909 in Materialism and Empiriocriticism (Lenin 1909; 1927). Bogdanov’s criticism of Lenin’s method as being authoritarian can be compared with Jorn’s interpretation of complementarity which states that we can never find a singular truth, but that as humans we must balance the different instrumental methods at our disposal (Jorn 2011a). With the innovation of the World Wide Web, as the initial quote from Tim Berners Lee shows, the aggregation of information is not constrained by the division between art and science. This technology has provided an extensive material base for realizing the proposals put forward by people like Bogdanov and Seiwert nearly 100 years ago. Likewise, the collaborative processes outlined by Seiwert and the SI can be seen in the contemporary practices known as commons-based peer production (Benkler 2002). Now, more than ever, the assertion of intellectual property rights, the maintenance and even the periodical extension of copyright and patents serve as a hindrance, cutting of vast numbers of people from adequate access to knowledge in order to protect the profits of various corporations. Capitalism has shown itself sufficiently adaptable that it would be foolish to imagine that simply liberating ourselves from intellectual property relations would be sufficient to bring capitalism to an end. It may, however, be impossible bring capitalism to an end without such a liberation.

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References

Anysley, Jeremy. 1994. “Pressa Cologne, 1928: Exhibitions and Publication Design in the Weimar Period.” Design Issues, 10 (3): 52–76. Barad, Karen. 2003. “Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society (3): 801–831. ------. 2007. Meeting the Universe Halfway. London: Duke University Press. Benkler, Yochai. 2002. “Coase’s Penguin, or, Linux and The Nature of the Firm.” Yale Law Journal 112: 369–446. Benus, Benjamin. 2013. “Figurative Constructivism and sociological graphics.” In Isotype: Design and Contexts 1925-71, edited by Christopher Burke, Eric Kindel, and Sue Walker, 216–248. London: Hyphen Press. Berners Lee, Timothy. 1999. Weaving the Web. London: Orion Books. Biggart, John. 1989. “Alexander Bogdanov, Left-Bolshevism and the Proletkult 1904— 1932.” PhD Diss., University of East Anglia. Biggart, John, Georgii Gloveli, and Avraham Yassour. 1998. Bogdanov and His Work: A Guide to the Published and Unpublished Works of Alexander A. Bogdanov (Malinovsky) 1873– 1928. Aldershot: Ashgate. Biographische Datenbanken. 2008. “Wittfogel, Karl August.” (20 June 2015), http://www.bundesstiftung-aufarbeitung.de/wer-war-wer-in-der-ddr-%2363%3b- 1424.html?ID=5442. Bogdanov, Alexandr. 1996. Bogdanov’s Tektology: Book 1. Translated by Vadim N. Sadovsky, and Vladimir V. Kelle. Hull: Hull Centre of Systems Studies. ------. 1977. “L’Université prolétarienne.” Translated by Blanche Grinbaum. In La science, l’art et la classe ouvrière, edited by Dominique Lecourt and Henri Deluy, 137–168. Paris: Maspero. ------. 2016. “Science and the Working Class” (1918). Translated by Fabian Tompsett. In Culture as Organization in Early Soviet Thought. Helsinki: Aalto University. ------. 1923. “Proletarian Poetry.” Translated in Labour Monthly 4 (5): 276-285, and 4 (6): 357-362. Bohnen, Uli. 1978. Franz W. Seiwert Schriften, edited by Bohnen, Uli, and Dirk Backes. Berlin: Karin Kramer Verlag. Bohr, Niels. 1937. “Causality and Complementarity.” Philosophy of Science, 4 (3): 289–298. ------. 1938. “Analysis and Synthesis in Science.” International Encyclopedia of Unified Science 1 (1): 28. Cartwright, Nancy, Jordi Cat, Lola Fleck, and Thomas Uebel. 1996. Otto Neurath Philosophy Between Science and Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Crockett, Denis. 1977. German Post-Expressionism: The Art of the Great Disorder 1918–24. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press. Debord, Guy. 1981. “Report on the Construction of Situations.” Translated by Ken Knabb. In Situationist International Anthology. Berkeley: Bureau of Public Secrets. Faye, Jan. 2008. “Niels Bohr and the Vienna Circle.” In The Vienna Circle in the Nordic Countries, edited by Juha Manninen, and Friedrich Stadler. Dordrecht: Springer Verlag.

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Gorter, Herman. 1921. “Open letter to comrade Lenin, A reply to ‘left-wing’ communism, an infantile disorder.” Workers’ Dreadnought, London, 12 March–11 June 1921. Accessed 31 October 2015. https://www.marxists.org/archive/gorter/1920/open-letter/ Haraway, Donna. 1983. “Cyborg Manifesto”. (22 September 2015), http://faculty.georgetown.edu/irvinem/theory/Haraway-CyborgManifesto-1.pdf. ------. 1997. Modest_Witness@Second_Millenium.FemaleMan©_Meets_ OncoMouseTM. New York/London: Routledge. Jorn, Asger. 1963. Signes gravés sur les églises de l’Eure at de Calvados. Copenhagen: Editions Borgen. ------. 2002. “The Natural Order.” Translated by Peter Shield in The Natural Order and Other Texts, edited by Peter Shield: 1–116. Aldershot: Ashgate. ------.2011a. “Image and Form: Against Eclectic Empiricism.” Translated by Ken Knabb. In Fraternité Avant Tout Asger Jorn’s writings on art and architecture, 1938–1958 edited by Ruth Baumeister: 254–269. Rotterdam: 010 Publishers. ------.2011b. “Against Functionalism.” Translated by Ken Knabb. In Fraternité Avant Tout Asger Jorn’s writings on art and architecture, 1938–1958, edited by Ruth Baumeister: 270–280. Rotterdam: 010 Publishers. Juhl, Carsten. 1973. “La révolution allemande et le spectre du proletariat.” (11 December 2015), http://revueinvariance.pagesperso-orange.fr/revolutionallemande.html Lenin, Vladimir I. 1909. Materializm i Empiriokrititsizm. In Vladimir Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochineniy, Vol.18 (1968). Moscow: Izdatel’stvo politicheskoy literatury. ------. 1927. “Materialism and Empiriocriticism: Critical Comments on a Reactionary Philosophy.” Translated by Abraham Fineberg. (17 August 2015), https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1908/mec/ McKinnon, Edward. 1980. “Niels Bohr on the Unity of Science.” PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association (2): 224–244. Neurath, Otto.1973a. “The Scientific Conception of the World: The Vienna Circle.” In Empiricism and Sociology, edited by Robert Cohen and Marie Neurath, 299–318. Dordrecht: Reidel. ------.1973b. “Empirical Sociology.” Translated by Robert Cohen and Marie Neurath. In Empiricism and Sociology, edited by Robert Cohen and Marie Neurath, 319–421. Dordrecht: Reidel. Rühle Otto. n.d. “Moscow and Ourselves.” Translated by Mike Jones. (5 November 2015), https://www.marxists.org/archive/ruhle/1920/moscow-and- ourselves.htm. Sabatier, Annie. 1974. “Le Proletkult international.” Action poetique 59: 295–300. Sadovsky, Vadim. 1998. “From Empiriomonism to Tektology.” In Alexander Bogdanov and the origins of Systems thinking in Russia, edited by John Biggart, Peter Dudley and Francis King, 43-54. Aldershot: Ashgate. Situationniste Internationale. 1994. “Manifesto.” Translated by Fabian Tompsett in Open Creation and Its Enemies, 44-47. London: Unpopular Books. Seiwert, Franz. 1920a. “Worum handelt sich?” Die Aktion 10 (37/8): 314. ------. 1920b. “Aufbau der Proletarischen Kultur”. Die Aktion 10 (51/52): 719–724. ------. 2015. “Open Letter to Comrade A. Bogdanov.” Translated by Fabian Tompsett. (5 November 2015), https://www.academia.edu/s/4d6bf555fb.

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------. 1978. “Die Kunst und das Proletariat.” In Franz W. Seiwert Schriften, edited by Uli Bohnen, and Dirk Backes, 39-40. Berlin: Karin Kramer Verlag. Tompsett Fabian. 2014. “Bogdanov’s Organizational Science, the Commons and Sustainability.” (5 November 2015), https://www.academia.edu/10149629/Bogdanov_s_Organizational_Science_the _Commons_and_Sustainability ------. 2015. “Encyclopedism for Development.” MSc Diss. University of East London. (5 November 2015), https://www.academia.edu/15806152/encyclopedism_for_development_from_th e_unity_of_science_movement_to_cybernetics Tschinkel, Augustin. 2013. “Tendenz und Form.” In Isotype: Design and contexts 1925-1971, edited by Christopher Burke, Eric Kindel, and Sue Walker, 245. London: Hyphen Press. Uebel, Thomas. 1991. “Otto Neurath and the Neurath Reception: Puzzle and Promise.” In Rediscovering the Forgotten Vienna Circle: Austrian Studies on Otto Neurath, edited by Thomas Uebel, 3–22. London: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Vaneigem, Raoul. 1979. Revolution of Everyday Life. Translated by John Fullerton and Paul Seiveking. London: Rising Free. Vossoughian, Nader. 2008. Otto Neurath: The Language of the Global Polis. The Hague: NAi. Wark, McKenzie. 2015. Molecular Red: Theory for the Anthropocene. London: Verso.

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EISENSTEIN IN THE PROLETKULT John Biggart and Oksana Bulgakowa______

In their respective fields, Aleksandr Bogdanov and Sergey Eisenstein made a radical break with traditional modes of thought. Both sought to bring the findings of modern science into their respective disciplines. We examine some of the theoretical issues that exercised Sergey Eisenstein during the years 1920- 1924 when he worked in the Russian Proletarian Cultural- Educational Organization, of which Bogdanov was one of the founders. We ask how far Eisenstein was influenced by Marxism and by the ideas of Bogdanov. We explain the departure of Eisenstein from the Proletkult in terms of the unacceptability of Eisenstein’s theory and practice in theatre and film and of his political orientation to the Chairman of the Proletkult, Valeriyan Pletnëv, at a time when the Agitprop Department of the Central

Committee of the Communist Party, at Lenin’s behest, was taking steps to reduce the scope of activities of the Proletkult,

discredit Bogdanov as a thinker, and exclude him from politics.

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“There are two specific trends that I physically cannot stand: first, art prolétaire quand-même and second, the ‘Stanislavskiy system’...”1

“A polemic. An unequal combat between an individual and an organization (it was yet to be dethroned for its claims to have a monopoly on proletarian culture). At any moment, the matter could turn into ‘persecution’… I was threatened with unpleasant things by the Proletkult.”2

Science in the service of ideology3

The years during which Eisenstein worked under the aegis of the Proletkult were years during which he formulated his first theory of theatre and film art - the theory of attractions.4 In “Montage of attractions” (1923) he described his understanding of the theatrical programme of the Proletkult as follows: “the moulding of the audience in a desired direction (or mood) is the task of every utilitarian theatre (agitation, advertising, health education, etc.” An “attraction” was: “.. an aggressive moment in theatre, i.e., any element of it that subjects the audience to emotional or psychological influence, verified by experience and mathematically calculated to produce specific emotional shocks in the spectator in their proper order within the whole. These shocks provide the only opportunity of perceiving the ideological aspect of what is being shown, the final ideological conclusion...” (Taylor 2010: 34).5 In “Montage of Film Attractions” (1924), Eisenstein argued that this theory was also applicable to film, which, he claimed, shared with the theatre the purpose of “influencing the audience in a desired direction through a series of calculated pressures on its psyché” (Taylor 2010: 39). Indeed, “... there is, or rather should be, no cinema other than agit- cinema. The method of agitation through spectacle consists in the creation of a new chain of conditioned reflexes by associating selected

1 Eisenstein, letter to his mother, 4 January 1921. Bulgakowa 2001a: 24. 2 Eisenstein 1997: 111–113; Taylor and Powell 1995: 147–148. 3 In this paper, individual terms used by Eisenstein or other writers, as well as quotations from their works, are indicated by double inverted commas. 4 On the evolution of Eisenstein’s theories, see Bulgakowa 2001c: 38–51; and Bulgakowa 2014: 423–448. 5 Yurenev, citing S.Yutkevich, notes that Eisenstein seized upon the term attraktion at a time when he had a special interest in pantomime. The term can also refer to a circus act or carnival amusement. In 1925 Eisenstein spoke of the “role of circus and sport in the renewal of acting skills”. See “The problem of the materialist approach to form” in Taylor 2010: 60, and, on the affinities between circus and theatre in the early 1920s. Yurenev 1985: 51, 58–59.

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phenomena with the unconditioned reflexes they produce (through the appropriate methods)” (Taylor 2010: 45). The sources that Eisenstein drew upon for his understanding of reflexology were Vladimir Bekhterev (1857-1927)6 and Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936).7 He had recourse to other science in seeking to ensure that the movements of his “model actor” (naturshchik) would achieve the necessary “affect”: the “whole process of the actor’s movement [should be] organized with the aim of facilitating the imitative capacities of the audience” (Taylor 2010: 50). Movements should be selected “from the versions that are most characteristic of real circumstances”. This selection was not to be made from the standard repertoire for associating gestures with emotions (as in mime); nor was the actor to ‘enter into’ the state of mind of a character (Taylor 2010: 50).8 Rather, movement should be broken down into its “pseudo- primitive primary component elements for the audience”. These “neutral elements” would then be assembled and coordinated into a temporal schema by the actor and the director. The objective should be to achieve not the superficial imitation of a real action but an “organic representation that emerges through the appropriate mechanical schema and a real achievement of the motor process of the phenomenon being depicted” (Taylor 2010: 50). Such a “montage (assembly) of movements that are purely organic in themselves... will involve the audience to the maximum degree in imitation and, through the emotional effect of this, in the corresponding ideological treatment...We see that the methods of processing the audience do not differ in the mechanics of their realization from other forms of work movement...” (Taylor 2010: 56.) In 1921, at a time when he was working within the Proletkult, Eisenstein was also attending the “theatrical technical school” of Vsevolod Meyerhold where lectures on biomechanics were delivered by Nikolay Bernstein, and it seems likely that his interest in the physiology and psychology of human movement originated or further developed at this time (Bulgakowa 2001a: 26; Bulgakowa 2014: 427;

6 For Eisenstein’s reference to Bekhterev, see “Montage of Film Attractions”, in Taylor 2010: 49 and for his use of the term ‘reflexology’, “The method of making a workers’ film” (August 1925), in Taylor 2010: 68. 7 Pavlov is mentioned in “Through the Revolution to Art: Through Art to the Revolution” (1933) in Taylor 2010,:243. Here, Eisenstein also mentions the influence of Freud. 8 In 1926 Eisenstein declared that “My artistic principle was, therefore, and still is, not intuitive creativity, but the rational constructive composition of effective elements; the most important thing is that the effect must be calculated and analysed in advance”. Battleship Potemkin “had nothing to do with Stanislavskiy and the [Moscow] Art Theatre”. See the translation of “Sergej Eisenstein uber Sergej Eisenstein – den Potemkin regisseur”, Berliner Tageblatt, 7 June 1926, in Taylor 2010: 75–76.

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Braun 1995: 172–177). In “Montage of film attractions” (1924) he claimed to be making his own contribution in this field: “The norms of organicism ...for motor processes have been established partly by French and German theoreticians of movements (investigating kinetics in order to establish motor primitives) and partly by me (kinetics in its application to complex expressive movements and the dynamics of both)...in my laboratory work in the Proletkult Theatre” (Taylor 2010: 51).9 He goes on to mention the work of specialists in pathology (Hermann Nothnagel, 1841–1905); neurology and physiology (Guillaume-Benjamin-Armand Duchenne de Boulogne, 1806–1875); eurythmics (Émile Jaques-Dalcroze, 1865–1950); rhythmic gymnastics (Rudolphe Bode, 1881–1970); hygiene and physical exercize (Ferdinand Hueppe, 1852–1938); and expressive movement (Hermann Krukenberg, 1863–1895; Ludwig Klages, 1872–1956) (Taylor 2010: 52–53).10 He also mentions Charles Darwin’s The expression of the emotions in man and animals (1872), and, in what was in all probability a reference to his studies of 1921, a “collection of essays by the Central Labour Institute in their application to work movement”.11 Eisenstein’s selective elaboration in the First Workers’ Theatre of the Proletkult of the methods and techniques he had learned in the school of Meyerhold has been well described by Robert Leach (Leach 1994). Here, we shall focus upon what Eisenstein described as being his main purpose in applying scientific and aesthetic techniques on the stage and in film, namely to achieve the desired propaganda effect, or, as one scholar has put it, to “organize the cognition of the spectators” (Tikka 2009: 229). Indeed, we learn from an interview of 1928 that one of the modules of his Teaching and Research Workshop was devoted to “Ideological Expressiveness” – “the problem of the transition of film language from cinema figurativeness to the cinematic materialization of ideas, i.e., with the problems of the direct translation of an ideological thesis into a chain of visual stimulants” (Taylor 2010: 127–129).12 The film Strike, completed in 1924, Eisenstein’s last year in

9 On the theoretical and practical work of the First Workers’ Theatre see Leach 1994: 151–161. 10 For a fuller account of Eisenstein’s adaptation of the ideas of these thinkers, see Bulgakowa 2001b: 175–178; and Bulgakowa 2014: 428–429. 11 The Central Labour Institute was headed by Aleksey Kapitonovich Gastev (1882–1939), a former ‘proletarian poet’ and a disciple of Frederick Winslow Taylor, the pioneer of the “scientific organization of labour. In 1921, Bernstein had founded a biomechanics laboratory in the Central Institute of Labour. See Bulgakowa 2001a: 26. According to Edward Braun, the programme of Meyerhold’s ‘theatrical-technical school’ drew upon the ideas of William James, Bekhterev, Pavlov, Taylor and Gastev (Braun 1995: 172–177). 12 The other two modules were devoted to “Human Expressiveness” and “Montage Expressiveness”. For the range of connotations acquired by ‘attraction’

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the Proletkult, provides an insight into the kind of ideological messages that he was seeking to convey at this time.

The ambivalent messages of Strike

There is no ‘programmatic’ Marxism in Strike. The film had originally been conceived as the fifth of a series that would outline the history of the Russian workers’ movement from the first underground printing press to the October Revolution, but the Communist Party had not yet come round to formulating an official version of the history of the revolution. Besides, as Mark D. Steinberg has pointed out, very few writers and artists working within proletarian cultural institutions during the 1920s considered themselves to be Marxists, and not only Marxist instructors taught within the Proletkult (Steinberg 2002: 52, 61). This doctrinal pluralism made possible a cross-fertilization of Marxist and non-Marxist ideas in the arts and this eclecticism is evident in Strike.13 A key message of Strike is that workers can prevail against adversity if they accept the need for ‘organization’ (the film opens with a lengthy quotation on this subject from Lenin, dated 1907). Surprisingly, however, in the end, such ‘organization’ as is achieved is not effective, and the strike ends in defeat. The concluding message is not the standard rallying call of Social Democratic and, later, Communist Parties: – “Workers of the world unite!”, but a more sombre exhortation to “remember these things”; not the inevitable triumph of proletarian revolution, but a kind of radical ouvrierisme. In Strike, rank and file Bolshevik leaders are shown mobilizing worker activists in ‘circles’, but there is no over-bearing emphasis upon the leading role of the Party. Throughout the film the workers, whether in the factory, in a family setting, or as a crowd or ‘collective’ are represented as a force capable of moving of its own volition.14 This representation was consistent with Eisenstein’s view of the importance of “mass material in establishing the ideological principle”, as opposed to “the individual plot material of bourgeois cinema”15 and also with the founding philosophy of the Proletkult, which had originally conceived of itself as the ‘third’ wing of the labour movement, on a par

and ‘montage’ in the later theoretical writings of Eisenstein, see Bulgakowa 2001c: 41 and passim. 13 The relatively open membership policy of the Proletkult and the eclecticism of its activity in the arts are well described in Fitzpatrick 1970 and Mally 1990. 14 Eisenstein described the ideas expressed by him in Strike as “themes of the social mass”. See “Beseda s rezh. S.M. Eyzenshteynom”. Kino-nedalya 1925 (4): 17. 15 See “The problem of the materialist approach to form” (1925) in Taylor 2010: 59–61; and Bulgakowa 2001a: 47–48.

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with the party-political and trade union wings.16 It is significant that Eisenstein himself never became a party member.

The intellectual and the proletarian

The completion of Strike marked the point where Eisenstein’s conception of revolutionary art could no longer co-exist with the traditionalist approach to theatre and film and the schematic Marxism of the Chairman of the Proletkult, Valeriyan Pletnëv. Differences in their social backgrounds may also have been a source of friction. Whereas Eisenstein was the son of a court councillor and engineer, Pletnëv (born in 1886, he was 12 years older than Eisenstein) had been born into a working class family and had earned his living for 19 years as a carpenter. A member of the RSDRP since 1904, Pletnëv had endured two periods of exile, in the Vologda Governorship and the Lena region of Siberia. He had begun writing in 1918 and by the early 1920s was considered to be a ‘proletarian writer’.17 A preoccupation of his dramatic works was that of popular uprisings and a Proletkult production The Avenger (Mstitel’), based on Revanche! Episode de la commune by Léon Cladel (Cladel 1878), had been enthusiastically reviewed by Bukharin in Pravda on 16 December 1919.18 The Paris Commune was also the theme of Flengo (Pletnëv 1922b), his stage adaptation of a story, Flingot (Paris, 1907) of Lucien Alexandre Descaves (1861– 1949).19 Pletnëv’s principal theatrical work was, however, Lena, a five- act play devoted to the massacre of gold mining workers in Siberia on 4 April 1912. In his introduction to the first edition of 1921, he had called upon “Poets, artists and actors” to take the struggles of the proletariat as their subject matter (Pletnëv 1921b). In 1923, he published a lengthy history of events leading up to the massacre, and included his play as an appendix.20 Pletnëv’s status as an authority, at

16 On the aspirations of the Proletkult to an independent role in workers’ education, inside Soviet Russia and internationally, see Biggart 2001. 17 His works included Na tikhom plëse (1919), a short story on the life of political exiles; his play Lena (1921); Andreykino Gore (1921) on the everyday life of the proletariat and the life of children before the revolution. In Bolotnye ogni (1921) he provides one of first post-revolutionary portraits of the kulak. See Literaturnaya Entsiklopediya 1934 and Kratkaya Literaturnaya Entsiklopediya 1968: 5. 18 Mstitel’ was published in Ekaterinburg in 1920 and, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Paris Commune, in Petersburg in 1921. In the edition of 1921 Pletnëv’s name is omitted from the title page and there is an introductory dedication to the Paris Commune by A. Piotrovskiy. On Bukharin’s review, see Fitzpatrick 1970: 147–149. 19 According to a “Repertoire of the Workers’ Theatre of the Proletkult” published in Pletnëv 1921b, it would appear that Flengo had first been published in 1921. 20 Pletnëv 1923. In 103 pages, Pletnëv outlines the history of the gold industry in Russia and of the company Lenskoe zolotopromyshlennoe tovarishchestvo (“Lenzoto”). He includes information on wages, working conditions, technology, the legal and

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least within the Proletkult, in matters relating to strikes, rested also upon his dramatization of a short story by Aleksey Gastev, entitled Strikes (Stachki), the text of which appeared under his own name in two editions in 1921 (Pletnëv 1921c, 1921d) and the following year under that of Gastev (Gastev 1922). In December 1920, Pletnëv had succeeded Pavel Lebedev- Polyanskiy as Chairman of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Proletkult,21 having acquiesced in the policy of the Communist Party that the Proletkult should concern itself with improving the productivity of labour.22 In November 1921 he was appointed Head of the Arts Section of the State Agency for Political Education, Glavpolitprosvet. (Fitzpatrick 1970: 238–242). By the time, therefore, that Eisenstein began working on Pletnëv’s plays as a set-designer, Pletnëv was already a senior official of the cultural superstructure. It boded ill for Eisenstein that, whereas Lebedev-Polyanskiy had denounced as “demagogy” the idea that intellectuals could not create proletarian culture,23 Pletnëv was of the opinion that only a proletarian could give adequate expression to the proletarian mentality.24

material situation of the workers and photographs of the site of the massacre. The following year, a shorter version was published as a supplement to Kurskaya Pravda (Pletnëv 1924a). 21 Lebedev-Polyanskiy had helped found the Proletarian University and had been Secretary of the International Bureau of the Proletkult. He claimed to have been a “dedicated defender of the idea of proletarian culture, proletarian science, proletarian art, proletarian literature.” See his autobiography in Deyateli... 1989: 489–491. 22 See the minutes of the Plenum of the Central Committee of 16–20 December 1920 and 15–20 May 1921 in Proletarskaya Kul’tura, 1921 (20/21). Pletnëv’s initial attempt to find a middle way between Bogdanovism and Lenin’s conception of socialism as “the Soviets plus electrification of the countryside” is well illustrated in his article, “Na ideologicheskom fronte”, Pravda, 27 September 1922. 23 Proceedings of the Second Conference of the Moscow Proletkult (March 1919), RGALI, f.1230, l. 140. A year earlier, Lebedev-Polyanskiy had expressed the more nuanced view that socialist intellectuals could be “temporary helpers”, but the cultural influence they brought to bear should be carefully scrutinized. In the final analysis, only the proletariat could “resolve” (razreshit’) the question of proletarian culture”. See his speech of 16 September 1918, in Protokoly Pervoy Vserossiyskoy Konferentsii Proletarskikh kul’turno-prosvetitel’nykh organizatsii 15–20 sentyabria 1918.g. Moscow: 1918. On the relationship between workers and intellectuals in the Proletkult, see Mally 1990: 115–121. 24 In 1922 he wrote that the class consciousness of the proletariat was “alien to the peasant, the bourgeois, the intellectual (intelligent) – the doctor, lawyer, engineer – who were reared in the spirit of capitalist competition ...” See Pletnëv, “Na ideologicheskom fronte” in V.I. Lenin o literature i iskusstve 1967: 460.

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The “reactionary tendency”

In March 1921, in the Second Central Studio of the Proletkult,25 Eisenstein and Leonid Nikitin had designed the sets and costumes for Valentin Smyshlyaev’s production of The Mexican, a play based on a story by Jack London.26 The two subsequently designed sets and costumes for a production by Smyshlyaev and Vasiliy Ignatov of Pletnëv’s Lena, which had its première in October 1921.27 However, the incompatibility of Eisenstein’s vision with that of his Proletkult seniors soon became apparent: his stage effects for a production by Smyshlyaev of Pletnëv’s On the Abyss (Nad obryvom) were rejected by Pletnëv (Yurenev 1985: 49).28 Eisenstein and Smyshlyaev “had a complete disagreement in principle that led to a split and subsequently to our working separately” (Taylor 2010: 33).29 Following the première in April 1923 in the First Workers’ Theatre of The Wise Man (Eisenstein’s debut as a director and the first implementation on stage of his ‘theory of attractions’),30 Eisenstein and Pletnëv planned a production of the latter’s detective play, Patatras, but preparations ground to a halt (Bulgakowa 2001a: 39).31 By this time, Eisenstein and the neo-Futurist playwright and critic, Sergey Tret’yakov, saw themselves as the principal source of theatrical innovation in the Proletkult. After The Wise Man, Eisenstein in November 1923 directed Tret’yakov’s Are You Listening Moscow? (Slyshish’, Moskva?) and then, in February 1924, Tret’yakov’s Gas Masks (Protovogazy). But “the group came under unrelenting attack from Bolshevik critics and less adventurous artists alike” (Leach 1994: 151).

25 On the network of Proletkult theatre studios, 1920–1923, see Leach 1994: 71. 26 According to both Yurenev and Leach, whilst Smyshlyaev was formally the director of The Mexican, Eisenstein was “the true begetter” and directed the play when it was revived in August 1923. The posters for the play in 1921 attributed it to “Smyshlyaev, Arvatov and Eisenstein”. For photographs of the stage and costume designs of Eisenstein and Nikitin, see Yurenev 1985: 44–45, 47; and Leach 1994: 72, 74–75. See also Bulgakowa 2001a: 21–23. 27 The production of Lena in 1921 was the work of both Ignatov and Smyshlyaev. Eisenstein assisted Leonid Nikitin with the set designs. See Nikitina 1996 which has an introduction and commentary by Andrei L. Nikitin, the son of Leonid Nikitin. For a photograph of one scene, see Leach 1994: 78–81. 28 Yurenev reproduces one of Eisenstein’s graphics for this play. See also Leach 1994: 162 & 199; and Bulgakowa 2001a: 31. 29 Smyshlyaev had been a pupil of Konstantin Stanislavskiy in the Moscow Arts Theatre. See Yurenev 1985: 42; and Bulgakowa 2001a: 31. 30 On this adaptation by Sergey Tret’yakov of Aleksandr Ostrovskiy’s Enough stupidity for every wise man (Na vsyakogo mudretsa dovol’no prostoty), see Yurenev 1985: 62–67; Leach 1994: 142–150, with a photograph of one scene on page 148; and Bulgakowa 2001a: 36–38. 31 According to a report in Gorn 1923 (9), Eisenstein and Pletnëv were at his time collaborating in the production of a three-act detective play and over a play entitled Naslednik Garlanda, but it is not known whether the latter was ever performed or even written. See Yurenev 1985: 68.

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In “Montage of attractions” (1923), Eisenstein attributed these difficulties to differing understandings of what constituted revolutionary theatre: there had been a reactionary tendency within the Proletkult – “The figurative-narrative theatre (static, domestic – the right wing: The Dawns of Proletkult,32 Lena, and a series of unfinished productions of a similar type. It was the line taken by the former Workers’ Theatre of the Proletkult Central Committee.” (Taylor 2010: 33). In 1926, he provided further detail: “In 1922 I became the sole director of the First Workers’ Theatre and I got involved in the most violent differences of opinion with the leaders of the Proletkult. The Proletkult people shared Lunacharskiy’s view: they favoured making use of the old traditions and were not afraid of compromise when it came to the question of the relevance of the pre-revolutionary arts.33 I was one of the most uncompromising champions of LEF, the left front, which wanted a new art that corresponded to the new social relationships. All the younger generation and all the innovators were on our side at that time, including Meyerhold and Mayakovskiy; ranged against us were Stanislavskiy, the traditionalist, and Tairov,34 the opportunist” (Taylor 2010: 74). In 1924, in his unpublished ‘Montage of film attractions’, without naming either Lunacharskiy or Pletnëv, Eisenstein made no effort to conceal his contempt for their conception of theatre and in particular for Pletnëv’s commitment to a linear-thematic script. It was the merit of ‘montage’ that it “liberated film from the plot-based script” (Taylor 2010: 40–41). A script, “whether plot-based or not”, should be “a prescription (or list) of montage sequences”. The approach of “our scriptwriters” to the construction of a script was “utterly feeble”, and this task should fall entirely to the director (Taylor 2010: 46).

The anti-Proletkult campaign

Not only artistic, but also party-political factors were involved in Eisenstein’s departure from the Proletkult. By 1924, both Pletnëv and the Proletkult were coming under increasing pressure from the

32 The Dawns of the Proletkult, an anthology by Vasiliy Ignatov of the verse of several proletarian poets and adapted for the stage by Smyshlyaev, was performed in the Central Arena of the Proletkult in 1920. One of Eisenstein’s first tasks in the Proletkult was to assist Leonid Nikitin with the visual effects. See Yurenev 1985: 42, 44; and Leach 1994: 76–77. 33 On Lunacharskiy’s conservative policies regarding the theatre and Platon Kerzhentsev’s ‘leftist’ critique of Lunacharskiy’s plays, see Fitzpatrick 1970: 139– 161. 34 Aleksandr Tairov was the founder and producer-director of the Kamernyy Theater, “famous for its highly stylized productions of exotic decadent plays and multi-level decorative scenery” (Bulgakowa 2001a: 283).

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Agitprop Department of the Central Committee of the RK (b) and this may help to explain why Pletnëv felt he could no longer take the risk of harbouring within the Proletkult such a maverick as Eisenstein. In September 1922, Pletnëv had felt able, in an article in Pravda entitled “On the ideological front”, publicly to defend the mission of the Proletkult to develop proletarian culture.35 However, one month later he had been subjected to a humiliating rebuff by Yakov Yakovlev, the Deputy Head of Agitprop, in an article that had been prepared in consultation with Lenin and which coincided with the anniversary of the October Revolution.36 In one section of this article, ‘On Proletkult theatre’, Yakovlev had articulated what was, in fact, Lenin’s position, namely that during a period of transition it was more important to assimilate the achievements of bourgeois culture than to attempt “artificially” to create a proletarian culture.37 Yakovlev had apparently attended performances of The Mexican and of Lena. The representation of the revolution in The Mexican, he complained, in no way corresponded to the Russian worker’s experience of class struggle. The production was “dynamic and entertaining” enough, but an American audience would struggle to find anything “proletarian” in it.38 Lena had some revolutionary content, but the first act was spoiled by quasi-Futuristic effects, and there was “a transition to somewhat hackneyed crowd scenes in the style of the Bolshoy Theatre”. Representation of the proletarian masses was deficient – “five actors emitting a friendly ‘u-u-u’ in unison will never transform a crowd into the hero of the action.”39 Yakovlev was unhappy that the Proletkult repertoire included a number of “individualistic”, “counter- revolutionary”, foreign plays that had come to Russia after the Revolution of 1905, notably Flengo40 and The Avenger. Audiences who

35 See Pletnëv, “Na ideologicheskom fronte”, Pravda, 27 September 1922. 36 Yakovlev, “O ‘proletarskoi kul’ture’ i Proletkul’te”, Pravda, 24 & 25 October 1922, The discussions between Lenin and Yakovlev are described in V.I. Lenin o literature i iskusstve 1967 and in Gorbunov 1974: 192–193. 37 For Lenin’s sarcastic annotation of the article by Pletnëv, see V.I. Lenin o literature i iskusstve 1967, 457–466. 38 Yakovlev, “O ‘proletarskoi kul’ture’ i Proletkul’te”, Pravda, 24 & 25 October 1922, in Voprosy kul’tury pri diktature proletariata 1925: 39. 39 Yakovlev, “O ‘proletarskoi kul’ture’ i Proletkul’te”, Pravda, 24 & 25 October 1922, in Voprosy kul’tury pri diktature proletariata 1925: 39–40. Pletnëv had earlier hailed the 1921 production of his own play as being, “for all its weakness…the first shaft of light of a proletarian theatre”. See ‘Na ideologicheskom fronte’, Pravda, 27 September 1922, in V.I. Lenin o literature i iskusstve 1967: 465. 40 Judging by Yakovlev’s article, Flengo must have been performed before 24–25 October of 1922. For a résumé of the plot and a photograph of the production of Flengo by Vladimir Tatarinov, see Leach 1994: 78–79. On 1 February 1925 Flengo was performed in the Bolshoy Theatre as a “musical dramatization of an episode of the time of the Paris Commune”, with music by Vladimir Tsybin and a libretto by “V.Pletnëv and Tyshko”. See http://www.bilet-bolshoy.ru/old- repertoire/flengo

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needed representations of the proletariat, were instead being served up with the fine flowers of decadent art and an imitation of Futurism. No matter how many carpenters and stage-hands (montëry) laboured on these agit-plays (agitki) they would never be transformed into “artistic productions”.41 However, Yakovlev’s target was not so much the Proletkult’s conception of theatre but its conviction that a proletarian culture could be constructed: the Proletkult, in its theses “On the tasks of the proletariat in physical culture”, had proclaimed that “the new physical culture of the proletariat consists of the psycho-physiological education of the qualified individual.” This ignored the fact that the bourgeoisie was already organizing sport for the masses, and organizations like Sokol were inculcating nationalist ideas into the younger generation, using the very same methods that the Proletkult considered to be essentially “proletarian”.42 By contrast, on 12 June 1922, Meyerhold (a “representative of the left-Futurist persuasion”), had delivered a lecture in the Concert Hall (Malyy Zal) of the Conservatoire on the subject of “The actor of the future”. Meyerhold had argued that “Physical training (fizkul’tura) acrobatics, dance, rhythmics, boxing, fencing... were useful subjects, and would bring benefit if they were taught in conjunction with ‘biomechanics’ – an essential subject for every actor.” Meyerhold, had done much to bring the theatre into line with the “crazy tempo” of modern life; and he had not been so foolish as to employ the term “proletarian culture”. Yakovlev’s diatribe was not aimed solely at Pletnëv; indirectly it was aimed at Aleksandr Bogdanov and at one of the leading theorists of the Communist Party, Nikolay Bukharin, who had in some respects been influenced by him.43 Notwithstanding the fact that in December 1920 Bogdanov had stepped down from his leading role in the Proletkult, and by November 1921 had completely withdrawn from the institution, Lenin had come to the conclusion that, as in the past, Bogdanov was a political, as well as an intellectual threat.44 On 4

41 Yakovlev, “O ‘proletarskoi kul’ture’ i Proletkul’te”, Pravda, 24 & 25 October 1922, in Voprosy kul’tury pri diktature proletariata 1925: 40. 42 Yakovlev, “O ‘proletarskoi kul’ture’ i Proletkul’te”, Pravda, 24 & 25 October 1922, in Voprosy kul’tury pri diktature proletariata 1925, 42–43. Yakovlev quotes Meyerhold from the journal Ermitazh (6): 41. 43 Bukharin, whose ideas on culture owed something to Bogdanov, asserted at a conference convened by the Central Committee in February 1925, that Lenin, through the article of Yakovlev, had been criticizing not only the Proletkult but also himself. See Bukharin 1925 (4): 265; and Biggart 1992: 131–158. 44 Bogdanov was not re-elected to the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Proletkult in December 1920, but remained a member of the Central Committee. See the minutes of the Central Committee of the Proletkult and of its Presidium for the period December 1920 to May 1920 in RGALI, f.1230 and in Proletarskaia kul’tura 1921 (20/21): 32–37. In an autobiographical sketch of 1925 Bogdanov wrote that “In the autumn of 1921 my work in the Proletkult came to an end and I

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January 1923, in an article, entitled “Menshevism in Proletkult attire”, Yakovlev returned to the attack and denounced Bogdanov’s views as being inherently oppositional and conducive to the formation of a new political “group or party”; the Proletkult was merely a first step in this direction.45 Then, some time before August 1923, an anthology was published, Against A. Bogdanov, 46 which contained works not only by Lenin but also by G.V. Plekhanov, whose understanding of Marx had since the turn of the century been the butt of Bogdanov’s criticism. Finally, the suspicion that Bogdanov had encouraged the formation of the oppositional Workers’ Truth group led to his detention, between 8 September and 13 October 1923, by the GPU.47 Given that the public campaign against Bogdanov coincided with Eisenstein’s period of activity within the Proletkult, and given the closeness of Eisenstein’s working relationship with Pletnëv, Eisenstein could hardly have been ignorant of the fact that Bogdanov was now an outcast.48 This seems to be the most likely explanation for the absence of any mention of Bogdanov in Eisenstein’s works of this period and of later years.49 Pletnëv, for his part, had by May 1924 fallen completely into line with the policy of Agitprop and was calling for “not several, but a single revolutionary Marxist criticism”.50 In the same year he went out of his way publicly to dissociate himself from “Bogdanovism”.51

devoted myself exclusively to scientific work.”. See Bogdanov, A.A. (Malinovskiy) 1995: 19 and 60, fn.20. 45 Yakovlev, “Men’shevizm v Proletkul’tovskoy odezhde”, Pravda 4 January 1923. 46 V. I. Lenin & G. V. Plekhanov 1923. 47 This episode is dealt with in Biggart 1990 (3): 265–282. 48 Not all leading party officials ostracized Bogdanov. He continued to be highly regarded by Bukharin, Krasin and others. In December 1925, the Commissar for Health, Nikolay Semashko, supported the founding of Bogdanov’s Institute for Blood Transfusion. Stalin was well disposed towards Bogdanov during his lifetime. 49 Lenin’s anathematization of Bogdanov was taken up by Stalin after Bogdanov’s death in 1928, which is doubtless one explanation why, even in his memoirs of 1946, Eisenstein makes no mention of Bogdanov. 50“ne raznaya, a odinakovaya revoyiutsionnaya Marksistskaya kritika”. See the contribution of Pletnëv to a conference convened by the Press Department of the Central Committee of the RKP(b) on 9 May 1924 and chaired by Yakovlev, in K voprosu o politike RKP(b) v khudozhestvennoy literature 1924: 48. In the introduction to this volume, Yakovlev notes that it had originally been intended to hold the conference “a year earlier”. 51 Pletnëv now claimed that whereas he, Pletnëv, was engaged in “practical work”, Bogdanov was an abstract theorist. Bogdanov’s theory that proletarian culture was “socialist culture in the process of development” was identical to that of Trotskiy (Pletnëv 1924b: 37).

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Eisenstein’s departure from the Proletkult

Relations between Eisenstein and Pletnëv approached their nadir when, in mid-November 1924, Eisenstein refused to participate in that part of the planned programme of the Workers’ Theatre that included two plays by Pletnëv. His departure from the Proletkult soon followed. In January 1925 he gave his reasons in separate interviews published in Novyy zritel’ and Kino-nedelya, shortly after Strike had been completed and while the film was awaiting approval by the censor. He had turned his back on Pletnëv’s plays “because of their formal and theatrical qualities” (Eisenstein 1925b: 22). In Eisenstein’s vocabulary “theatrical” was, of course, a term of contempt, but his criticism of the Proletkult ranged more widely: in Novyy zritel’ in 1925 he deplored the absence of any direction (formal or in terms of content) in the repertoire of the Proletkult theatre. The repertoire had been constructed in haphazard fashion and since The Wise Man, only the two plays of Tret’yakov had conveyed any consistent political message. In the forthcoming repertoire there was not a single play with any clear line. Priority was being given to performances for the urban districts, for which the Proletkult theatre was not suited: during his four years with the Workers’ Theatre its policy had been to concentrate on practical exercises for the actors, putting on shows (spektakli) and on working out formats for agit-bouffe and agit-guignol, so that this experience could in due course be passed on to the districts and the provinces. He complained of “harassment” (gonenie) that had begun as early as his staging of The Wise Man, which had been removed from the repertoire after the general rehearsal in 1922 and then re-instated. In the current season, interference had assumed unacceptable forms: the Artistic Council of the Theatre, without informing him, had removed a number of “tricks” from The Wise Man and introduced verbal components of their own. A number of elements had been removed from the last “fight” scene in Are you listening Moscow? Grigoriy Roshal, whose approach to theatre was diametrically opposed to his own, had been brought in. Arbitrary appointments of this nature made it impossible to create a theatre with its own identity. In general, the Proletkult had adopted the role of a ‘censor’: ninety percent of its concerns were with ideological conformity and the fidelity of a production to the details of everyday life. Its approach to both theatre and film was one of “petty-bourgeois realism” (Eisenstein 1925c: 13–14). In Kino-nedelya in 1925 Eisenstein outlined the circumstances of his departure from the Proletkult during the first week of December 1924. The occasion had been the “failure of the Proletkult Executive

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Bureau to recognize my rights as co-author of the script of Strike”. However, there had been a more deep-seated struggle between his own, revolutionary, conception of the theatre and that of the Proletkult leadership: “over the past year my work could not conform with the manifestly reactionary direction (theatrically, formally) taken by the ruling circles of the Proletkult, from the moment that influence passed to people who had always opposed my approach and who stubbornly defended the ‘rightist’ point of view in the theatre… The subsequent direction of work in the Proletkult marked a complete break with the ‘left front’ and, therefore, a strengthening of the position of our enemies in the theatre” (Eisenstein 1925a: 17). Two issues later, in the same journal, Pletnëv dismissed Eisenstein’s claim to represent the cultural avant-garde: Eisenstein possessed only a “formally revolutionary tendency”, that amounted to mere “leftism”. This tendency “manifested itself in a striving for superfluous, self- directed formalism and gimmickry in working out the director’s plan for the film; and in the introduction into the plan of a number of incidents of dubious Freudian purport” (Pletnëv 1925: 9).

Eisenstein, Marxism and ‘Bogdanovism’

Varieties of organization theory

In 1933, Eisenstein wrote that his “personal research and creative work” had from the outset been accompanied by a “study of the founders of Marxism” (Taylor 2010: 244), but in his writings of the 1920s there are only passing and, it sometimes seems, dutiful references to ‘materialism’, ‘collectivism’, ‘organization’ and the ‘dialectic’. Neither in his memoirs, nor in any of his theoretical works, does he give any indication that he was influenced by Bogdanov.52 Can we nevertheless discern conceptual affinities between the two? Charlotte Douglas has noted that the revolutions of 1917 made possible a wide dissemination of Bogdanov’s ideas within the literary and artistic community: the head of the Petrograd Visual Arts Section of the Commissariat for Education, Nikolay Punin, in lectures read to teachers in 1919 “followed Bogdanov’s ideas and terminology closely.” Artists such as Lyubov Popova (an associate of Eisenstein) and Solomon Nikritin, employed the language of ‘organization’. According to Douglas “the organizational order and high level of abstraction in Bogdanov’s Tektologiya lent scientific authority to the artistic structures of constructivism and projectionism”, and there was a “common

52 Sergey Mikhailovich Eisenstein (1898–1948) wrote his memoirs in 1946. The complete text was published in Russia only in 1997.

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conceptual basis”, even if this “did not result in an identifiable style of abstraction” (Douglas 2002: 81–82, 92). Mikhail Yampolskiy, citing V. Zabrodin, has referred to a debate in the Proletkult during which Eisenstein called for a struggle for “1) the organized society…2) the organized human being”, and has detected “behind these formulae…the Proletkultist-Bogdanovist ‘Tektology’, the science of organization” (Yampolskiy 2005).53 However, whilst Tektology might well have influenced Eisenstein’s thinking, ideas on organization during his Proletkult years could just as well have come from other sources. The theatre critic, Platon Kerzhentsev, who spoke at the First Conference of the Proletkult in September 1918 and became a member of the editorial board of Proletarskaya kul’tura, had written a book on organization and was one of the founders of the journal The Time League (Liga Vremeni – Liga NOT). Kerzhentsev was a fierce critic of Bogdanov’s organization theory.54 Such prominent leaders as Lenin, Trotskiy and Krasin were all, at this time, advocates of the “scientific organization of labour”.55 Krasin had always been close to Bogdanov, but Lenin and Trotskiy can hardly be described as his disciples.

Art as cognition and art as propaganda

Did Bogdanov’s theory of the social function of art influence Eisenstein’s ‘theory of attractions’? For Eisenstein, “the theatre’s basic material derives from the audience: the moulding of the audience in a desired direction (or mood)...” (Taylor 2010: 33–36) .For Bogdanov, the function of art was both cognitive and educational: “firstly, to organize a particular sum of the elements of life, of ‘experience’; and, secondly, to ensure that what is created serves as an instrument for a particular collective”.56 The difference is that, for Bogdanov, cognition was one of the interactive processes of social selection, whereas

53 Yampolskiy is mistaken in identifying the Proletkult exclusively with Bogdanov and both with iconoclasm. See Yampolskiy 2005: 49. 54 Kerzhentsev’s Printsipy organizatsii (1918), ran to four editions. His Tvorcheskiy teatr (1918), reached its fifth edition in 1923. In Pravda for 14 April 1923 he criticized Bogdanov’s Tektologiya as “reactionary”. See “O kritikakh ‘Tektologii” (1925), in Bogdanov 1996: 308–315. For Kerzhentsev’s autobiography, see Deyateli... 1989. 55 See E.B. Koritskiy, “Pervye stranitsy NOT”, in U istokov NOT 1990. Two surveys by Sergey Chakhotin on Western experience of organization science had been published in Russia in 1924. His bibliography on the subject was published under the auspices of the People’s Commissariat of the Workers’-Peasants’ Inspectorate (Rabkrin), which had been given responsibility for the “rationalization” of state institutions (Chakhotin 1924a; Chakhotin 1924b). 56 “O khudozhestvennom nasledstve’”(1918), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 150.

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Eisenstein at this time viewed art as an instrument of agitation and propaganda, consciously applied, one might almost say ‘from above’.57

Organizational aesthetics

In the case of one writer who was close to Eisenstein, there is a more evident affinity with the ideas of Bogdanov. The critic Boris Arvatov, who for some time worked as an ‘academic secretary’ in the Proletkult and who had collaborated in the production of The Mexican and in designing the programme of the directing workshop of the Proletkult, contributed articles on the culture of everyday life to both LEF and Proletkult journals.58 The use of objects to convey social meaning in certain episodes of Strike might well reflect the influence of Arvatov.59 Furthermore, for Arvatov, the artist in socialist society was essentially a designer whose works would acquire meaning only when “subordinated to the production process... to the collective’s socially conscious and free will: integralness and organization are the premises of industrial art; purposefulness is its law” (Arvatov 1922 in Bowlt 1991: 229–230). Art was to be regarded as “simply the most efficacious organization in any field of human activity” (Arvatov 1926: 88–89). Here we are close to Bogdanov’s contention that “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... are organizational evaluations (Bogdanov 1922: 516; Biggart 2016). Arguably, Eisenstein was enunciating a similar theory in 1924, when he wrote that, just as the movements of animals, structured in strict accordance with organic laws and unaffected by the “rational principle” were photogenic, and just as the labour processes of workers which flowed in accordance with these laws had been shown to be photogenic, so a successful realization by the actor and director of a montage (assembly) of movements that were purely organic in themselves would be the most photogenic, “in so far as one can define ‘photogenic’ by paraphrasing Schopenhauer’s good old definition of the ‘beautiful’.” In this example Eisenstein’s “level of organization” is the degree of approximation of the actor and director to organic movement. He goes on to express his appreciation of the uniforms of the Japanese General Staff, and of working clothes (e.g., a diving suit), as “functional forms” that can be considered “photogenic” (Taylor

57 See, for example, “The method of making a workers’ film” (1925), in Taylor 2010: 65–66. 58 On Arvatov, see Lodder 1983: 239; Zalambani 1999; and Bulgakowa 2001a. 59 See Arvatov 1925; Kiaer 1997: 105–118; and Albera 1990: 179–184. From materials in the Bogdanov Family Archive we know that Arvatov borrowed books on scientific subjects from Bogdanov.

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2010: 56–57). Here, as with Arvatov, we have a functionalist aesthetic that is cognate with, if not identical to, Bogdanov’s “whatever raises the level of organization of collective life ... in perceptions of the world (mirovospriyatiya) is deemed to be beautiful” (Bogdanov 1922, 516; Biggart 2016).

After the Proletkult

In an interview of 1926, Eisenstein denied that there had been any conflict in his relations with his fellow-workers in the Proletkult: “At that time, these workers were in complete agreement with my artistic views and requirements, although I really belonged to another class and had come to the same point of view only through purely theoretical analysis.” His exasperation had been with the artistic conservatism of the Proletkult leadership (Taylor 2010: 74). In a diary entry for 24 February 1927 Eisenstein made it clear that by November 1924 he had had enough of what he disparagingly refers to as “theatre”: ‘I did not want to do theatre in the Proletkult; I wanted to design new templates to solve experimental problems—Agit-revues (The Wise Man) or political agit-plays (Are you listening, Moscow?) to be staged throughout the entire network of provincial Proletkults. The Proletkult wanted to use our laboratory retorts to cook jam – to make theatre (out of the plays of Pletnëv!) and professional theatre at that! This was one of the biggest differences between us” (Yurenev 1985: 99). Eisenstein’s career was not damaged by his departure from the Proletkult; if anything, the contrary. In January 1925 he declared that he was not prepared to cooperate with the Proletkult in the next seven parts of the film series on the ‘Dictatorship’, which had been contracted to the Proletkult, (Eisenstein 1925c). But that same month the Commissar for Enlightenment and cultural ‘conservative’, Anatoly Lunacharskiy, invited him to make a film celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the revolution of 1905 under the direct auspices of Goskino, an invitation which he accepted (Yurenev 1985: 106–109; Bulgakowa 2001a: 56). Although both Eisenstein and Pletnëv were appointed to the committee that was to oversee the project, it is evident that they could not have worked together in the making of the film.60 Eisenstein had by this time found a new patron in Kirill Ivanovich Shutko, who had acted as his adviser at the request of Goskino during the making of Strike, and who had acquired

60 Other members of the committee were Malevich, Meyerhold, Pletnëv, Shutko, Krasin and the First Secretary of the Moscow City Committee of the RKP (b), Vasiliy Mikhaylov. See Yurenev 1985: 106–109.

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responsibility for cinema in the same Agitprop Department of the Central Committee that had excoriated Pletnëv. Eisenstein and N.F. Agadzhanova-Shutko were appointed as authors of the script.61 His reputation enhanced by the success of Strike, Eisenstein was now able to embark upon a new stage in his career and upon new explorations in theory.

References

Albera, François. 1990. Eisenstein et le constructivisme russe. Lausanne: L’Age d’Homme. Arvatov, Boris. 1922. “The proletariat and leftist art”, translation of “Proletariat i levoe iskusstvo”. Vestnik iskusstv 1922 (1), in Bowlt, John E. (Ed.) 1991: 229– 230. ------1925. “Byt i kul’tura veshchei”. Edited and translated from Al’manakh Proletkul’ta, by Christina Kiaer. October (81): 119–128. ------1926. Iskusstvo i proizvodstvo. Moscow: Proletkul’t. Biggart, John. 1990. “Alexander Bogdanov and the theory of a new class”. Russian Review (3): 265–282. ------1992. “Bukharin’s Theory of Cultural Revolution”, in Anthony Kemp- Welch (Ed.), The Ideas of Nikolai Bukharin. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 131–158. ------2001. “Bogdanov i Kul’tintern”, Vestnik Mezhdunarodnogo Instituta A. Bogdanova (3): 76-87. ------2016. “Bogdanov’s Sociology of the Arts”. In Culture as Organization in Early Soviet Thought. Helsinki: Aalto University. Bogdanov, A. 1922. Tektologiya. Vseobshchaya organizatsionnaya nauka. Petersburg, Moscow, Berlin: Grzhebin. ------1924/1925. O proletarskoy kul’ture 1904-1924. Leningrad-Moscow: Kniga. ------1925. “O kritikakh ‘Tektologii”, Appendix to the third edition of Vseobshchaya organizationonnaya Nauka - Tektologiya. I. Moscow & Leningrad: Kniga. ------1995. Stat’i, doklady, pis’ma i vospominaniya 1901-1928. In Neizvestnyy Bogdanov, Kniga 1, edited by N.S.Antonova & N.V.Drozdova. Moscow: ITs “AIRO - XX”. ------. 1996. Bogdanov’s Tektology, Book 1. Edited and translated by Peter Dudley, Vadim N. Sadovsky and Vladimir V. Kelle, Hull: University of Hull (Centre for Systems Studies). Bowlt, John E. (Ed.) 1991. Russian Art of the Avant Garde. Theory and Criticism. London: Thames and Hudson. Braun, Edward. 1995. Meyerhold: A Revolution in Theatre. London: Methuen. Bukharin, Nikolay Ivanovich. 1925. “Proletariat i voprosy khudozhestvennoy politiki”, Krasnaya nov’, Nr.4. Bulgakowa, Oksana. 2001a. Sergei Eisenstein. A Biography. Berlin, San Francisco: Potemkin Press. ------2001b. “La conférence berlinoise d”Eisenstein: entre la psychanalyse et la gestalt-psychologie”, in: Chateau, Dominique, François Jost, Martin Lefebvre (Eds.), Eisenstein: l’ancien et le nouveau, Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 171- 183.

61 On this episode see Bulgkowa 2001a: 53, 56.

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------2001c. “The Evolving Eisenstein. Three Theoretical Constructs of Sergei Eisenstein”. In Eisenstein at 100. A reconsideration, edited by Al Lavalley and Barry P. Scherr. New Brunswick, New Jersey and London: Rutgers University Press, 389–451. ------2014. “From expressive movement to the ‘basic problem’: the Vygotsky- Luria-Eisensteinian theory of art”. In The Cambridge Handbook of Cultural- Historical Psychology, edited by Anton Iasnitskii and René van der Veer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 423–448. Chakhotin, Sergey Stepanovich. 1924a. Evropeiskaya literatura po NOT. Moscow: NRKKI. ------1924b. Organizatsiya. Printsipy, metody v proizvodstve, torgovle, administratsii i politike. Moscow-Petrograd: Gos.izdat. Cladel, Léon. 1878. Revanche! Episode de la commune, in Mon ami le sergent de ville; Nazi; Revanche! (Episode de la commune). Brussels: H. Kistemaeckers. Descaves, Lucien Alexandre. 1907. Flingot. Paris: A. Romagnol. Deyateli SSSR i revoliutsionnogo dvizheniya Rossii 1989. Moscow: Sovetskaya Entsiklopediya. Douglas, Charlotte 2002. “Energetic abstractionism: Ostwald, Bogdanov, and Russian post-revolutionary art”. From Energy to Information. Representation in Science and Technology, Art, and Literature, edited by Bruce Clarke and Linda Dalrymple Henderson, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. Eisenstein, S.M. 1925a. “Beseda s rezh. S.M.Eyzenshteynom”. Kino-nedelya (4): 17. ------1925b. “Pis’mo v redaktsiiu”. Kino-nedelya (10): 22. ------1925c. “S.Eyzenshteyn i Proletkul’t (Beseda s S.M.Eyzenshteynom)”. Novyy zritel’ (4), 27 January: 13–14. ------1997. Memuary, I. Moscow: Redaktsiya gazety “Trud”. Muzey Kino. Fitzpatrick, Sheila. 1970. The Commissariat of Enlightenment. Soviet Organization of Education and the Arts under Lunacharsky. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Gastev, A. 1922. Stachka. Instsenirovka V.F.Pletnëva. Moscow: Izdanie Mosk.Kom. RKSM. Gorbunov, V.V. 1974. V.I.Lenin i Proletkul’t. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Politicheskoy Literatury. Yakovlev, Ya. 1922. “O ‘proletarskoy kul’ture’ i Proletkul’te”. Pravda, 24 & 25 October and in Voprosy kul’tury pri diktature proletariata 1925, 21–45. ------. 1923. “Men’shevizm v Proletkul’tovskoy odezhde”, Pravda 4 January . Yampolskiy, Mikhail. 2009. “Ot Proletkul’ta k Platonu. Eizenshtein i proekt smyslovoy samoorganizatsii zhizni”. Kinovedcheskie zapiski, Nr. 89. www.kinozapiski.ru/no/sendvalues/960. Yurenev, R.N. 1985. Sergey Eizenshteyn: Zamysly. Filmy. Metod. 1, 1898–1929. Moscow: Iskusstvo. K voprosu o politike RKP (b) v khudozhestvennoy literature, 1924. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo “Krasnaya nov’”. Glavpolitprosvet. Kerzhentsev, P.M. 1922. Printsipy organizatsii. Petrograd: Gos.izdat. ------1923. Tvorcheskiy teatr. 5th edition, Moscow - Petrograd: Gos.izdat. Kiaer, Christina. 1997. “Arvatov’s Socialist Objects”, October (81), 105–118. Kratkaya Literaturnaya Entsiklopediya 1968. 5, Moscow: Sovetskaya Entsiklopediya Leach, Robert. 1994. Revolutionary Theatre. London and New York: Taylor & Francis Lenin, V.I & G. V. Plekhanov. 1923. Protiv A. Bogdanova. Moscow: Krasnaya nov’ Leyda, Jay (Ed.) 1968. Film Essays with a Lecture. Sergei Eisenstein. London: Dobson. Literaturnaya Entsiklopediya 1934. VII, Moscow: Kommunisticheskaya Akademiya.

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Lodder, Christina. 1983. Russian Constructivism. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Mally, Lynn. 1990. Culture of the Future. The Proletkult Movement in Revolutionary Russia. Berkeley, Los Angeles, Oxford: University of California Press. Nikitina, V.R. 1996. Dom oknami na zakat: Vospominaniya. Moscow: Intergraf Servis Pletnëv, V.F. 1920. Mstitel’. Instsenirovka po rasskazu Kladelya v odnom deystvii. Ekaterinburg: Gos.izdat. ------1921a. Mstitel’ Leona Kladelya (Pamyati Parizhsoyi Kommuny 1871-1921). Peterburg: Petropolitprosvet. ------1921b. Lena. Proletarskaya drama v 5-ti deystviyakh. Rostov on Don: Gos.izdat., Donskoe otdelenie. ------1921c. Stachki. Instsenirovka po rasskazu Gasteva. Moscow: Moskovskii Proletkul’t. ------1921d. Stachki. P’esa v 1 deystvii. Ekaterinburg: Gos.izdat. ------1922a. “Na ideologicheskom fronte”. Pravda, 27 September, in V.I. Lenin o literature i iskusstve, 3rd edition. 1967, 457-466. ------1922b. Flengo. Dramaticheskiy epizod v 2-kh deystviyakh po rasskazu Lyus’ena Dekav. Moscow: Biblioteka Vserossiisk. Proletkul’ta. ------1923. Lena. Ocherk istorii Lenskikh sobytii (s prilozheniem). Moscow: Vserossiiskiy Proletkul’t. ------1924a. Lena. (4 aprelya 1912). Kursk: Supplement to Kurskaya Pravda. ------1924b. Prav li t. Trotskiy? - Rechi o proletarskoy kul’ture. Moscow: Vserossiiskiy Proletkul’t. ------1925. “Otkrytoe pis’mo v redaktsiyu zhurnala “Kino-nedelya”, Kino-nedelya, (6): 9. Protokoly Pervoi Vserossiyskoy Konferentsii Proletarskikh kul’turno-prosvetitel”nykh organizatsii 15- 20 sentyabrya 1918.g. 1918. Moscow: Izd. Proletkul’ta. Steinberg, Mark D. 2002. Proletarian Imagination. Self, Modernity, and the Sacred in Russia, 1910–1925. Ithica and London: Cornell University Press. Taylor, Richard (Editor) & William Powell (Translator) 1995. Beyond the stars. The Memoirs of Sergei Eisenstein. London and Calcutta: BFI Publishing. Taylor, Richard (Editor and Translator), 2010. Sergei Eisenstein. Selected Works, Vol.1, Writings 1922–1934. London & New York: I.B.Tauris, Ltd. Tikka, Pia 2009. “Tracing Tectology in Sergei Eisenstein’s Holistic Thinking”, in Oittinen, Vesa ed., Aleksandr Bogdanov Revisited, Helsinki: Aleksanteri Series, Nr.1, 211–234. U istokov NOT - Zabytye diskussii i nerealizovannye idei 1990. Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo Leningradskogo Universiteta. V.I.Lenin o literature i iskusstve 1967. Moscow: 3rd edition, Izdatel’stvo Khudozhestvennaya literatura. Voprosy kul’tury pri diktature proletariata. Sbornik. 1925. Moscow: Gos.izdat. Zalambani, Maria 1999. “Boris Arvatov. Théoricien du Productivisme”. Cahiers du Monde russe, 40/3, 415–446.

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SOMATIC MONTAGE FOR IMMERSIVE CINEMA Clea von Chamier-Waite______

This paper investigates a new notion of cinematic montage for immersive cinema while examining historical precedents in the arts and cinema of the twentieth century. Immersive film creation is in its early stages of development towards a modern, cinematic language, comparable to the invention of rhythmic montage pioneered by Eisenstein and Soviet cinema and followed by the avant-garde cinema of the 1920’s. Immersive cinema makes possible a proprioceptive interaction of form and content, allowing the extension of the signification structure of a film from its internal narrative out into the geometry of the projection space. The concept of somatic montage addresses new forms of montage techniques that marry chronological with spatial sequencing into an embodied, participatory creation of narrative. Somatic montage is presented here as a broader, supra-dimensional notion of what Eisenstein called the ‘disjunctive method of narration’. The expanded architectural expanse occupied by the immersive film affords a spatialized, non-linear juxtaposition of the film’s elements or ‘cells’. The projection architectonics become an ordering element in the compositional flow of the film, allowing the spectator space to build their own field of associations and meaning toward construction of a poetic narrative by navigating a four-dimensional, cinematic space.

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New concepts of space in the arts grew out of the discovery of new geometries and physical laws at the turn of the last century. The invention of non-Euclidean geometry at the end of the nineteenth century and the discovery of Relativity Theory and Minkowski space- time at the beginning of the twentieth century had profound repercussions in the arts, ranging from the traditional avant-garde of the early century to Minimalism in the 1960s and 70s. Hyperspace presents a useful representation for addressing the artistic concepts of space-time – the fourth dimension, motion, and the faceting of perspective that evolved out of this period. The tesseract provides a model-metaphor for forms of composition that derive from the deconstruction of linear sources, allowing for a multi-dimensional re-composition of the parts that actively engages the viewer in constructing associative flow structures. The twentieth century avant-garde movements can be seen as the forbearers of somatic montage in contemporary cinema. Somatic montage1 explores the concept of montage in the visual arts, poetry, and literature, but especially in cine-installation and immersive cinema as a formal construct rooted in the notions of juxtaposition, cells, and collision developed by Sergei Eisenstein and the Soviet cinema. A somatic approach to cinema montage engages a supra-dimensional interaction between the film’s content and the viewer with the immersive space in a unity of form, participation, and content. In a somatic montage the film is physically distributed throughout an architectural or virtual theater. The scenes occupy different spatial as well as temporal locations as an added dimension of montage. Immersive cinema affords expanding the signification structure of a film from its internal narrative out into a navigable projection space. Immersive film creation is in the early stages of development towards a modern, cinematic language. The notion of somatic montage proposed here is presented as a broader, multi-dimensional interpretation of what Eisenstein called the “disjunctive method of narration” (Eisenstein 1949a), made applicable to immersive cinema. The external architecture of the projection space is utilized as an ordering element in the compositional flow of the film, providing the viewer a conceptual and navigable space to build their own field of associations and meaning in the construction of a poetic narrative. Using this construct, the body, with

1 The nomenclature ‘somatic montage’ was first introduced by this author in “The Cine-poetics of Fulldome Cinema” (Chamier-Waite 2013).

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its movements, memory, and sensations, participates in the reading of the immersive cine-poem.

Immersive cinema 2

Immersive cinema is an architectonically enveloping, embodied, cinematic experience that encompasses presentation modes ranging from large-scale, multi-projection installations and panoramas, the frameless hemispherical projections of OmniMAX and planetarium fulldome cinemas, to the full, spherical image space of virtual reality. Fulldome refers to an immersive motion picture medium that is a dome-based, digital video projection environment using a hemispherical projection surface – typically a planetarium dome. The environment extends over 360 degrees in azimuth and down to the dome horizon, approximately 180 degrees and the audience looks upwards at the image space. The images are accompanied by a three-dimensional listening experience using a multi-speaker, spatial sound system. The OmniMAX theaters, also known as IMAX Dome, use the same principal as fulldome cinemas with the exception that the viewers are seated in an amphitheater arrangement, viewing a steeply tilted, frontally oriented dome screen. Virtual reality is a single-viewer system that uses a head-mounted display and an interactive spatial tracking system to create the impression of a fully stereoscopic, spherical image space surrounding the viewer in all dimensions. In all three systems, viewers experience an immersive film space that occupies their entire visual and acoustic space, focal and peripheral, which unfolds itself based on the directed attention of the viewer. Immersive cinema has its roots in the planetarium star show with its illusion of boundless space. The earliest planetarium shows made use of star projectors built by Carl Zeiss in the 1920s (fig. 1). These machines were designed specifically and solely for projecting the fixed stars and nebulae, as well as the Sun, Moon, and planets, into the dome of a planetarium cupola. Larger models included constellations, comets, and other astral apparitions. These superb contrivances of mechanics and optics simulate the progression of the stars across the night sky as the earth rotates. Points of light, static images within them selves, are animated around the dome using a complex set of geared mechanisms.

2 Part of this paper has previously appeared in “The Cine-poetics of Fulldome Cinema”, Animation Practice, Production & Process, 2013 (Chamier-Waite 2013).

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Because the only light reaching the dome is that from the ‘stars’, the negative image space is deep black, creating a convincing, immersive experience. In the 1960s, many planetaria began to combine the star projector shows with multimedia slide shows that used arrays of slide projectors and cross-dissolve techniques. The advantage here was the new ability to add photographic and graphic imagery to their presentations. However, these shows also presented certain drawbacks. First, the slide imagery was static. Second, many of these slide shows were created using conventional optics and projectors. In order to project naturalistically onto a dome, however, the images must be photographed and projected using special curved optics, the ‘fisheye lens’, to pre-distort the planar image so that it matches the curved surface. The visible, rectangular frame of the conventional photographs and the ambient spill light from these projections destroyed the immersive illusion of deep darkness that is the planetarium’s main attraction.

Fig. 1. The Zeiss Model II Star Projector3

3 http://www.carnegiesciencecenter.org/exhibits/zeiss/

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In the 1970s, laser-light shows became a popular addition to the star projector shows. The laser has the advantage of being a highly focused and intense beam of light. Its quality is comparable to the intense points of light projected by the star projector and it does not generate any ‘spill’ light. The laser beam can be animated using a small, mechanized mirror, scanning quickly. With the laser show, the immersive darkness of the planetarium was restored, but with the new addition of colored motion graphics interspersed across the dome. Optical image distortion is also not an issue with laser projection since there is no lens involved. The laser drawing can be designed to accommodate the curvature of the dome although abstract imagery is often used to circumvent the need for geometric accuracy on the dome surface. Combined and synchronized with music, the laser shows became a popular multimedia event in the 1970s. However, they were limited as to content, only able to create ephemeral line drawings (fig. 2).

Fig. 2. Combined laser, star machine, and slide projections in the planetarium. Photo Frank-Michael Arndt, Zeiss-Großplanetarium, Berlin

In the 1980s, a few planetaria installed arrays of conventional video projectors to add patches of photographic, motion-picture elements to their multimedia shows. These attempts were far less successful than

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the slide and laser shows, despite the addition of motion, due to the poor image quality and high expense of early video projectors. Most significantly, the standard quadratic image projection and luminous grey ‘black’ of video projection destroyed the illusion of limitless space created by the dome. These were, however, early attempts at incorporating live- action content using a form of spatial montage, or collage, of the video projection cells with the other light sources. The first immersive film which used moving, photographic imagery seamlessly covering the entire hemispherical space was shown in 1973 in a specially built theater, the new OmniMAX format. OmniMAX films were shot using a fisheye lens and an exceptionally large film format4 to create live-action images for the dome. OmniMAX remained the dominant immersive format until the rapid development of computer animation techniques and high-definition video in the 1990’s contributed to the beginning of fulldome video projection in a standard planetarium. With the innovations of OmniMax and fulldome, the hemispherical projection became truly cinematic and immersive cinema was born. Figure 3 shows a still image from the experimental immersive film Moonwalk (Waite 2010) where the entire, sixty-foot diameter planetarium dome is projected with a photographic image of the full Moon.

Temporal montage

During the silent film era at the beginning of the twentieth century, films were often accompanied by a storyteller who narrated the films, particularly in Russia and Japan. The Japanese narrator, the benshi, not only narrated the films, but also directed the audience’s attention within a continuous wide shot to accentuate certain details on the screen such as a doorway or a window. In a planetarium, the star projector sky is also comparable to a continuous ‘wide shot’ and is traditionally accompanied by a live presenter. Still popular in planetarium shows today, the presenter explains the map of the stars and points out the details of constellations to the audience, drawing their attention to a particular location on the dome screen. The Japanese silent film and the star projector show with their long, wide shots can both be considered ‘proto-montage’ cinema.

4 OmniMAX and IMAX used what is known as a ‘15-perf’, or ‘15/70’, a fifteen sprocket hole, horizontal piece of 70mm film as opposed to the vertical ‘5-perf’, 65mm area of standard large format film, providing three times the image area per frame.

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Earliest cinematography mimicked the conventions of theater and vaudeville, relying on a stationary camera taking up the position of the audience while viewing a complete stage – the original wide shot. The accomplished stage magician turned film pioneer Georges Méliès invented film editing to facilitate his optical tricks in films such as Voyage dans la Lune of 1902. Méliès made figures magically appear and disappear, the first film cuts, but he maintained a continuous space in his films. The attention directing of the Japanese benshi conceives a conceptual precursor to montage, guiding the eyes’ point of focus within a continuous space, but it is not until the innovations of the cut to a close- up by D.W. Griffith5 and parallel editing, the intercutting of two simultaneous events in The Great Train Robbery from 1903 by Edwin S. Porter, do we have the beginnings of true film montage.

Fig. 3. Moonwalk (2010) by Clea T. Waite: fulldome projection at the Adler Planetarium. Photo Mark Webb.

5 Film historians maintain an open debate as to who first used the close-up in film, but especially Eisenstein acknowledges Griffiths as the first director to develop it into an element of modern cinematic language. See (Eisenstein 1949a).

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The concept of montage is essential to modern cinematic language. Like the benshi, the editor, by creating the montage, visually directs our attention through the space and time of a film’s narrative. Art and film theorist Rudolf Arnheim described montage as the formation of the viewer’s interest within the film: “In montage the film artist has a first-class formative instrument, which helps him to emphasize and give greater significance to the actual events that he portrays. From the time continuum of a scene he takes only the parts that interest him, and of the spatial totality of objects and events he picks out only what is relevant. Some details he stresses, others he omits altogether.” (Arnheim 1957) The emphasis in conventional, temporal montage is on producing the impression of a continuous space and time. The narrative continuity edit reinforces spatial orientation through a non-disruptive, invisible style of cutting. An alternative, avant-garde concept of montage that uses a deeply structural and entirely different impetus than ‘continuity editing’ developed in the Soviet Union in the 1920s with filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein as this movement’s most prolific theorist. Eisenstein declared “montage as the chief means of effect.”(Eisenstein 1949b) for the creation of cinema. Eisenstein’s core concept for montage rests in the notion of juxtaposition, of placing two shots next to each other in sequence that are disparate in order to create a new meaning beyond their individual contents through association: “The montage method is obvious: the play of juxtaposed detail-shots, which in themselves are immutable and even unrelated, but from which is created the desired image of the whole. ...combining shots that are depictive, single in meaning, neutral in content – into intellectual contexts and series...not so much to show or to present, as to signify, give meaning, to designate.” (Eisenstein 1949b) Eisenstein’s notion of juxtaposition occurs between non- continuous elements, what he refers to as ‘cells’, single shots of a film sequence. Eisenstein borrows the notion from biology, explaining his concept of the cell as an organic building block of the film’s totality. The cell is a core theme in Eisenstein’s theory. “The shot is by no means an element of montage. The shot is a montage cell. Just as the cells in their division form a phenomenon on another order, the organism or embryo, so, on the other side of the dialectical leap from the shot, there is montage.” (Eisenstein 1949a) Though composed of moving pictures, the cell represents a graphical (or acoustic or textual) unit that functions less due to its internal development in time than due to the associations that arise when one cell progresses to the next in a temporal, linear

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juxtaposition, displacing the viewer abruptly in the space-time continuum of the film and the resulting conceptual leap that this demands. Film theorist and historian David Bordwell summarizes Einsenstein’s approach as “constructivist montage” (Bordwell 1998), suggesting interactions between characters and objects while never including all in the same frame. The joining of two shots yielded an effect or meaning not evident in either shot alone. Jean-Luc Godard, the French Nouvelle Vague filmmaker, has similarly equated this recipe for montage with the dynamic compositions of Constructivist photography, like the portraits of Helmar Lerski (fig. 4), that appeared in contemporary art at the same time as Eisenstein developed his theories in the Soviet Union: “what made possible the kinds of montage {Russians}... was the angled shot: the look sharply up, down, or at a tilt so characteristic of Russian avant-garde cinema…. Renouncing the supposedly 'straight' shot ... did not simply energize the frame with dynamic composition, it also announced it as a partial image, just one choice among many.”(Campany 2008)

Fig. 4. Helmar Lerski, Verwandlungen durch Licht. Gelatin silver print, 1936. (Eskildsen 1982)

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Eisenstein was interested in an aggressive notion of montage, his disjunctive method of narration, using collision and conflict as his theoretical vocabulary. In Eisenstein’s framework, the desired concept to be communicated is constructed in the mind of the viewer, arising from the collision of two different factors. While conflict and collision in Eisenstein’s sense serve to direct the audience’s perception of the narrative through association, these concepts also play a role in the notion of disruptive narrative, non-linearity, simultaneity, and ambiguity that are key themes arising in the arts – in the cinema, literature, painting, sculpture, and music of the European avant-garde of the same period. In “The Ontology of the Photographic Image” from 1960, film theorist and critic André Bazin argued counter to the significance of Soviet montage, defending the long, continous take and emphasizing composition and action within the depth and time of the image, the mise- en-scène. Bazin, like Eisenstein, argued for interpretation by the spectator, but in his notion this occurred by representing a total and complete representation of reality, total cinema (Bazin 2004), rather than through the associations created by the montage of selected details. Bazin was opposed to the manipulation of reality represented by avant-garde montage theory. An example of the mise-en-scène approach can be found in the director Raoul Walsh who relished his long, highly detailed, wide- screen shots of the American West in The Big Trail from 1930, taking a painterly approach to image complexity and duration. Jacques Tati’s Playtime from 1967, with its elaborate sets, intricate action, and long takes, consciously conforms to Bazin’s total cinema approach in its extreme, letting layers of action unfold before the camera in very long, single takes. Notably, both directors also worked with the largest and most immersive format of film available to them, 70mm. The ensuing generation Soviet filmmaker and theorist Andrei Tarkovski’s approach to cinema also owes more to Bazin than Eisenstein, exemplified by the long takes and slow moving camera in Stalker (1979). Tarkovski argues for the precedence of the time within the frame over the successive juxtaposition of shots over time: “Nor can I accept the notion that editing is the main formative element of a film, as the protagonists of 'montage cinema', following Kuleshov and Eisenstein, maintained in the 'twenties, as if a film was made on the editing table… The idea of 'montage cinema'—that editing brings together two concepts and thus engenders a new, third one—again seems to me to be

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incompatible with the nature of cinema. Art can never have the interplay of concepts as its ultimate goal.”(Tarkovskiĭ 1987) For Tarkovski, Walsh, or Tati, montage takes place within the deep time, the extended and highly detailed image, of the shot. Conventional, immersive cinema style principally adheres to Bazin’s concepts of the mise-en-scène and a total cinema. Immersive experiences are composed of wide, visually detailed, temporally long shots, chrono-spatial continuity, linear narrative, and an ongoing fascination with the realistic image. Often there are no edits at all. Video art, in contrast, often explores disjunctive space, visual fragmentation, and narrative ambiguity while using architectonic, immersive constructions of multiple screens. Whereas conventional narratives rooted in literature tend towards closure, video art tends towards dispersal, disrupting linearity and moving meaning outwards by placing cells across multiple screens. By departing from the impulse towards literary realism, the poetry of a more avant-garde approach to cinema emerges through the associations created by spatialized juxtaposition. What is missing from the cinematic language of most immersive films is exactly this notion of evocative, associative montage. Bordwell talks about the use of film montage as the fragmentation of space to build an emotional impact. Poetry and montage are manifestations of the same idiom of fragmentation and juxtaposition, only in different media. As forms of expression, fragmented structures compel the mind to fill in the gaps, opening up an interaction between the recipient and the work by communicating within a conceptual negative space. This is Eisenstein’s notion of the disjunctive method of montage by association. Like the early film avant-garde of the 1920s, a few creators in spherical cinema are exploring the unique, truly media-specific potential of this young medium that emphasizes the inherent spatiality over temporality of the immersive cinema experience. It is important to note that the effectiveness of certain montage techniques, such as rapid temporal cutting in conventional, framed cinema, do not necessarily translate well into the immersive, frameless formats. The visceral effects of immersive media have a heavy impact on the sensory apparatus that can make disrupting the space of the film through fast edits physically unsettling. In spite of this, a rhythmic, associative montage can be achieved in immersive cinema by employing the plane of the image, a spatialized collage structure of cells rather than linear temporality as the axis of composition. Immersion is chiefly about

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space. The metric aspect of creating rhythm through the temporal succession of images can be comparably evoked through the translational time of the eye across the surface of the dome in a spatial montage as it can through rhythmic editing within the time axis.

Somatic montage

At the end of the nineteenth century, a great deal of interest sprang up around the concept of n-dimensional geometry, hyperspace, and the fourth dimension – from serious scientific inquiry to esoteric claims. Within this range there developed two strands of interpreting the fourth dimension. One of these defined the fourth dimension as an additional dimension of space perpendicular to our own three, unimaginable to us yet encompassing our three-dimensional scope as the cube encompasses the square. The other defined the fourth dimension as time, imagining space-time as a continuous, four-dimensional volume of past and future spread along a linear axis of time, all moments existing simultaneously with the present constituting a continually shifting, three- dimension slice of this hyper solid through our lower-dimensional space. “Now the characteristic of time is succession; in time alone one thing follows another in endless sequence. The unique characteristic of space is simultaneity, for in space alone everything exists at once.” (Bragdon 1914). In hyperspace the simultaneity of space is conjoined with the succession of time. Architect and designer Claude Fayette Bragdon, known for his creation of a new, geometrically based, ornamental vocabulary that he called ‘projective ornament’, based on sections of the four-dimensional hypercube, played a key role in popularizing the fourth dimension at the turn of the twentieth century. Bragdon was intrigued by the notion of a supra-dimensional object that is only perceivable in time and then only partially; an object which contains time within its own volume – the four-dimensional hypercube or tesseract. When one does perceive the tesseract, inside and outside become interchangeable – they are simultaneous. The dawn of the twentieth century brought with it, in addition to the invisible dimensions of four-space and beyond, a curved universe in which the familiar rules of Euclidean geometry no-longer applied and a relativistic, space-time continuum that contradicted the notion of single- point perspective. Further developments in physics added the concept of multiple, simultaneous realities in the Heisenbergian realm of quantum

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mechanical cats, and the vast void of nothingness, empty silence, that occupies the majority of matter and space at every scale. These are ‘advanced’ notions implying an ambiguity to reality that we are still learning to understand over one hundred years later, far removed from our every day experience of the world. These profound concepts discovered in mathematics and physics have resonated with creative artists and intellectuals since their inception at the turn of the last century. The cultural impact of these ideas instigated a Modernist series of artistic and philosophical movements. Painting, sculpture, music, literature, cinema, and architecture – influences from the new mathematics and physics can be found in all these forms. Starting with Cubism, Futurism, Dada, and avant-garde cinema, we can follow these influences through the Modernist literature of Joyce, the twelve-tone music of Schoenberg, to the Minimalism of the 1960s, up until the beginning of post-modernism in the 1980s. These avant-garde movements share a formal engagement with breaking the singular point-of-view through the disruption of linear narrative, single- point perspective, and spatio-temporal continuity. Motion, fragmentation, simultaneity, ambiguity, and participation with the work of art are constructs that are indicative of the Modernist approach. The Cubists, for example, aspired to portraying a perceived representation over an observed one. The historian of architecture Sigfried Giedion, in Space, Time, and Architecture, analyzes the Cubist rejection of single point perspective: “Cubism breaks with Renaissance perspective. It views objects relatively: that is from many points of view, no one of which has exclusive authority. And in so dissecting objects it sees them simultaneously from all sides – from above and below, from inside and outside” (Giedion 2009). Giedion’s analysis brings into focus the implication of observer motion and simultaneous interiority/exteriority in Cubism that also features in Bragdon’s description of the tesseract. The Cubist rejection of Renaissance perspective in favor of a multi-point, faceted perspective embraced a notion of spatial unfolding. In cinema, the notion of unfolding can be realized in the concept of spatial montage, the presentation of multiple, time-based cells distributed across a plane to form a three-dimensional, space-time network of associations through simultaneous presentation. With the tesseract model, this unfolding occurs in the fourth dimension in which time-based cells are faceted within a three-dimensional space; a Cubistic, immersive cinema space,

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that extends beyond the plane, allowing a view simultaneously within and without a film, presenting it continuously in space and time. The historical development of these concepts: disjunctive montage, faceted perspective, the curvature of space-time, n-dimensional spaces, spatial montage, and disrupted narrative that arose in the twentieth century culminated in a Modernist Zeitgeist that embraces spatial and temporal ambiguity, simultaneity, fragmentation, peripatetic perception, and a heightened personal involvement with a work of art. The notion of somatic montage gathers these impulses into a formal construct for creating a cinema that occupies three-dimensional space and time; an immersive, somatic, proprioceptive form that extends the notions of temporal and spatial montage, alternative narrative, simultaneity, and multiple viewpoints into an immersive, formal structure for cinematic art-making. The tesseract, with its embodiment of three-space and time, provides a model-metaphor for constructing a spatio-temporal flow structure in an immersive cinema. The observer must navigate through the cinema space using the motion of their body in time to experience all the facets of the tesseract space. In doing so, she experiences the information contained within the space as simultaneous cells occupying its individual faces – faces which can never be seen all at once. She assembles these cells into a unique narrative through engaging her memory to fill in the voids between the spatialized elements as she makes her own peripatetic juxtapositions of this physical and conceptual space. The early twentieth century phenomenological philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty examined the role of motion, the body, and a peripatetic experience in the perception of objects in space, a perception, which he noted, is always partial and must be assembled into a whole through experience. He uses the cube as an example of how we construct meaning through our bodies, assembling fragments of perception together into our memory: From the point of view of my body I never see as equal the six sides of the cube, even if it is made of glass, and yet the word 'cube' has a meaning; the cube itself, the cube in reality, beyond its sensible appearances, has its six equal sides. As I move round it, I see the front face, hitherto a square, change its shape, then disappear, while the other sides come into view and one by one become squares. But the successive stages of this experience are for me merely the opportunity of conceiving the whole cube with its six equal and simultaneous faces, the intelligible structure which provides the explanation of it. … the experience of my own movement conditions the position of an object,

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it is, on the contrary, by conceiving my body itself as a mobile object that I am able to interpret perceptual appearance and construct the cube as it truly is. …In order to be able to conceive the cube, we take up a position in space, now on its surface, now in it, now outside it, and from that moment we see it in perspective. The cube with six equal sides is not only invisible, but inconceivable; it is the cube as it would be for itself; but the cube is not for itself, since it is an object. (Merleau-Ponty and Landes 2013) Somatic montage builds upon a structural foundation rooted in these notions of twentieth century geometric principles that serve as a formal, objective counterpoint to poetic content constructed through associative collisions. In a somatic montage, form and content, geometry and motion, are inextricably interdependent. The immersive architecture that the film projection occupies serves as a constructive factor of its narrative flow. Cinematic elements, cells, are distributed in space as on the facets of a cube. Movement in time by the viewer, through the fourth dimension, provides the connection between these cells which are then assembled in memory to create meaning. This formal approach to composition derives from the deconstruction of linear narrative and the hyper-expansion of the two-dimensional image space, allowing for a multi-dimensional, oneiric re-composition of the parts that actively engage the viewer through movement and memory. Assembling these elements, somatic montage motivates the viewer’s focus, affording the formation of relationships between signifiers in which it is the viewer’s attention that composes the flow of information in a cinematic tesseract. Multi-dimensional, simultaneous information precludes a passive viewing of the somatic film. The experimental fulldome film Moonwalk provides an example of the somatic montage approach. An immersive film about the Moon, Moonwalk is projected into the dome of the planetarium so that the images of the Moon occupy the round volume of the dome’s hemispherical shape. The film and format intertwine form and content. In the film, time-based cells are distributed in a three-dimensional collage across the extent of the image, displaying them simultaneously as well as sequentially in time (fig. 5) and surrounding the viewer on all sides. Spatialized sound and peripheral vision guide the eyes around the dome screen. A peripatetic rhythm is created between the viewer’s own roving attention and the film’s progression. The result is a narrative within a narrative that is lyrical, non-linear, and individual to each viewer, creating what Eisenstein called the dialectical relationship between form and content in a film, the ‘dual unity’: “The dialect of works of art is built

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upon a most curious ‘dual unity’. The effect generated by a work of art is due to the fact that there takes place within it a dual process: an impetuous progressive rise along the lines of the highest conceptual steps of consciousness and a simultaneous penetration by means of the structure of the form into layers of profoundest sensuous thinking. The polar separation of these two lines of aspiration creates that remarkable tension of unity of form and content characteristic of true artworks.” (Leyda 1986)

Fig. 5. Still from Moonwalk, fulldome digital film. (© 2010 Clea T. Waite)

The concept of somatic montage is not restricted to cinema. Or, cinema has become a contemporary metaphor for most artistic manifestations that involve framing space and moving through time. In 1997, Catherine David curated the exhibition DocumentaX in Kassel, Germany. For David, the city was her tesseract and the vistors’ movements through it the time axis, the fourth dimension of her ‘film’. David placed artworks throughout the city, especially along the routes

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between the exhibition locations. Art critic and theorist Rosalind Krauss analyzes David’s cinematic metaphor in Under Blue Cup: “Catherine David,… planned this procession from train station to exhibition park as a kind of filmic sequence carefully edited with one display juxtaposed to another: a series of jump cuts and dissolves. As she explains it: ’Like a film, Documenta is a long and patient process of montage. Working from a more or less coherent script, sequences are isolated and thought out; when their internal structure is established, they are spliced into the whole.6’” (Krauss 2011) For Krauss, David’s curatorial flow is cinematic. Filmmaker and artist Peter Greenaway used a similar structure in his public installation The Stairs-Munich-Projection (1995). Greenaway placed one hundred movie screens throughout the city of Munich, one for each year in the history of cinema. Greenaway, master of indexicality, presented a spatialized database of films which the viewers assembled into individual narratives as they strolled through town, a somatic montage. They could enjoy the rhythms internal to the works on screen or make their own rhythms by standing or moving, waiting or leaving. Somatic montage addresses a growing theoretical concern as immersive cinema gains in status and expands from the highly specialized environments of the planetarium dome and the OmniMAX theater into the increasingly widespread domains of video installation and virtual reality. It addresses the basic principles of cinematic montage in relation to a three-dimensional, architectonic screen as a spatio-temporal experience. The early twentieth century was a time of exceptional creative experimentation in cinema and the arts, part of the Zeitgeist of the new discoveries being made in geometry and physics at that time. Montage theory and contemporary cinematic language are the legacies of this experimentation. Comparable formal experiments in montage are now emerging in immersive cinema media, diverging from the mis-en-scène approach reminiscent of the earliest films and Bazin’s total cinema, to a more disjunctive method of montage as developed by Eisenstein and the proponents of Soviet cinema. The tesseract, the geometric embodiment of three-dimensional space in combination with the fourth dimension of time, provides a model metaphor for a new approach to disjunctive montage in immersive cinema. This strategy promises a rich practice of immersive, somatic cinema that formally engages a supra-dimensional

6 Krauss is quoting David from "A la rencontre de l'art contemporaine, Catherine David et la Documenta X," a television program broadcast on Arte August 10,1997 (Krauss 2011: 55-58)

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approach to participatory interaction between film and viewer in forming meaning. The engaged body, memory, and the expansion of the cinematic experience into a navigable space of simultaneous presentations and ambiguous interpretations unlocks the potential for a more associative, proprioceptive sensibility towards creating a poetic, immersive, cinematic experience.

References

Arnheim, Rudolf. 1957. Film as Art. University of California Press. Bazin, Andre. 2004. What Is Cinema? Vol. 1. Translated by Hugh Gray. Rev Ed. Berkeley CA.: University of California Press. Bordwell, David. 1998. On the History of Film Style. Harvard University Press. Bragdon, Claude. 1914. Projective Ornament. Kindle Edition. Cosimo Classics. Campany, David. 2008. “Stillness.” In Photography and Cinema, 22–59. London: Reaktion Books Ltd. Chamier-Waite, Clea von. 2013. “The Cine-Poetics of Fulldome Cinema.” In Animation Practice, Production & Process, 3:219–33. Bristol, UK: Intellect Journals. Eisenstein, Sergei. 1949a. “Dickens, Griffith and the Film Today.” In Film Form: Essays in Film Theory, 195–256. New York: Harcourt Brace. ———. 1949b. “Statement on Sound.” In Film Form: Essays in Film Theory, translated by Jay Leyda, 234–35. Harcourt. Eskildsen, Ute. 1982. Helmar Lerski: Metamorphosis Through Light. Luca Verlag. Giedion, Sigfried. 2009. Space, Time and Architecture: The Growth of a New Tradition, Fifth Revised and Enlarged Edition. Revised edition. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Krauss, Rosalind E. 2011. Under Blue Cup. The MIT Press. Leyda, Jay, ed. 1986. Eisenstein On Disney - A Classic Book. Translated by Alan Y. Upchurch. 1St Edition edition. Seagull Books. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, and Donald A Landes. 2013. Phenomenology of Perception. Tarkovskiĭ, Andreĭ Arsenʹevich. 1987. Sculpting in Time: Reflections on the Cinema. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Waite, Clea T. 2010. Moonwalk. Fulldome. Experimental. Carl Zeiss AG, Planetarium Section, Jena Germany.

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EISENSTEIN’S ‘MAGIC OF ART’ Introduction: Julia Vassilieva______

‘The Magic of Art’, written a few months before Eisenstein’s death in February of 1948, is a condensed and sometimes cryptic artistic manifesto that I discovered in the private archive of Alexandr Luria, a close friend of Eisenstein. It was first published in the journal Kinovedcheskie zapiski (Moscow 1990), No.8 and later included in Eisenstein’s posthumously published magnum opus, Method (Moscow 2002) as a prologue. The importance of the piece is that it forcefully reiterates several key themes that recur throughout Eisenstein’s theoretical output. First, Eisenstein here revisits his earlier ideas, formulated in his now canonical essay ‘The Montage of Attractions’, concerning audience engagement and spectatorial reaction. His rethinking of the role of the spectator as an essential element of art in general and especially of cinema, and his understanding of the viewer as an active, creative agent, anticipate the subsequent emergence of reception studies in critical theory. Secondly, this concern with the spectator is tied in with another of Eisenstein’s important theoretical positions, namely, his insistence that art should not be mimetic but kinetic – that it should not ‘reflect’ the world but transform it – a contention that has reverberated throughout debates between realism and formalism in cinema over the twentieth century and into the present.

Furthermore, Eisenstein here formulates in a nutshell the pivotal argument of what he termed Grundproblem – the main problem of art, researched and elaborated in Method – which for him consists in the ability of a work of art to mobilize two opposing impulses: one towards a rational, intellectual insight and enrichment, realized mainly at the level of the content of the work, and another towards the engagement of the whole sensory, affective and emotional sphere and achieved mainly through the form of art. The latter, in turn, only becomes possible, according to Eisenstein, because the language of form is based on a plethora of mechanisms developed throughout the cultural history of humankind and its evolutionary prehistory as a species. These mechanisms include such phenomena as synaesthesia; the ability to perceive a part as

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representing the whole; rhythmical repetition, and so on — mechanisms that, working in combination with one another, create the ‘magic’ of art. This magic has almost involuntary power over a spectator, and yet it coincides, for Eisenstein, with the process by which the formation of subjectivity and agency begins.

THE MAGIC OF ART Translation: Julia Vassilieva______Sergei M. Eisenstein 1947

Moscow, 8.VII.19471

Art has never been ‘art for art’s sake’ for me. Nor has it been a way of creating something that would not resemble the world – ‘a world of my own’. And yet it has never had the aim of ‘reflecting’ the existing world, either. I have always taken on the task of deploying of influence to impact upon feelings and thoughts, to exert influence upon the psyche and exercise this influence to mould the spectator’s consciousness in the desired, needed, selected direction. This was clearly stated in the first published declaration of my credo. And it has remained an all-encompassing orientation throughout my work. I shall quote from LEF (1923), No 3 (June–July):

“It is the spectator who constitutes the basic material of the theatre; the objective of every utilitarian theatre is to guide the spectator in the desired direction (frame of mind)… …The means of achieving this are all the component parts of the theatrical apparatus… ...Attraction ... is the primary element in the construction of a theatrical production – a molecular unit of the efficiency of the theatre...

1 First published in Kinovedcheskie zapiski (Moscow 1990), No.8. Later included in Method, Vol. 1, ‘Grundproblem’, pp. 46–47 (instead of an introduction), Moscow 2002: Eisenstein-Centre.

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…. A trick … since it signifies something absolute and complete in itself, … is the direct opposite of an attraction, which is based exclusively on an interrelation - on the reaction of the audience. ….instead of a static ‘reflection’ …. montage of arbitrarily selected independent effects (attractions) but with a view to establishing a certain final thematic effect – montage of attractions. …The way of completely freeing the theatre from the weight of the ‘illusory imitativeness’ and ‘representationality’, which up until now has been definitive, inevitable, and solely possible… ”2

From ‘external’ attractions I have gradually shifted to a system of means that would influence the spectators’ subconscious region – the ‘sub-sensory’ sphere – in other words, exert influence not only over consciousness or the raw emotional and sensory faculties of my spectator, but also exert influences of which the viewer is unconscious. A source of such devices turned out to be the laws of pre- logical thought, and the sphere of their application the form of the work of art itself. But it is interesting that these means are not only related to the stage of sensuous or ‘magical ‘ thought. They are also magical in the sense of overtaking the will of the perceiving subject.3

2 Quoted using the following translation of ‘Montage of Attraction’ by Daniel Gerould. The Drama Review: TDR, Vol. 18, No. 1, Popular Entertainments (March 1974): 77–85. 3 [S. Eisenstein’s note:] “Magic, here, is not an empty figure of speech. For art (the real thing) artificially returns the spectator to the primitive stage of sensuous thinking, to its norms and types, and this stage is in reality a stage of magical connection with nature. When you have achieved, par exemple, a synaesthetic merging of sound and image, you have subjected the viewer’s perception to sensuous thinking conditions, where the synaesthetic perception is the only possible one – there is still no differentiation of perception. And you have the spectator ‘re-oriented’, not to the norms of today’s perception, but to the norms of a primordially sensuous one – he is “returned” to the magical stage of sensation. And the idea that has been realized by a system of such influences, embodied in a form by such means – irresistibly controls the emotions. For the feelings and consciousness in this case are submissive and manageable, almost as if one were in a trance. And from a passive magical state which perceives art synaesthetically – it is possible to move to an actively magical one in which the spectator is possessed and managed by a magician-creator. The former is worked on by the latter.”

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My orientation has shown – and still bears a vestige of – how art’s predecessor, ritual, was used, namely: – to conquer – by exerting influence – to override, to subordinate to one’s will. There (and then) – nature and the forces of nature. Now, in the case of art, the spectator’s psychology (and feelings) are taken possession of, and his ideology is overridden and transformed by my own ideology as a propagandist (by my idea, my conception, my worldview). The project of ‘reflection’ has always appeared to me as passive and unworthy. I always imagined art as ‘one of the means of violence’ – always as a tool (weapon) for transforming the world by changing people’s consciousness. It is interesting that this is directly linked with the process of personality-formation in nature, whereas ‘reflection’ is linked with primary automatism, with the eidetic ability to reproduce, which is a stage lower than personality formation – a purely imitative instinctual phase and directly associated with the lowest reproductive stage – the biological reproduction of oneself in ... descendants: both in animals and in plants. These two consecutive developmental phases coincide at their zero points: the magical capture is achieved by means of reproduction. (The idol of a god made by me is god, and this god gradually falls into my hands: I flog him when he doesn’t deliver a harvest!) In the mimicry dance of creatures such as bees, or in an eidetic drawing (very early) or (later) in ‘pars pro toto’4 in the substitutional ‘part’ (later on – sign), taking-over is conceived through reproduction. Then the functions diverge. Later they overlap. They may be completely oriented in one direction (Repin, Shishkin – the extreme of passive reflection).5 Later on, not only is the objective world reflected, but what is reflected ‘on the canvas’ is a distorted reflection of the world in the psychopath’s dysfunctional psyché (for example, Salvador Dali) etc.

4 ‘the part taken for the whole’. 5 Il’ya Efimovich Repin (1844 – 1930) and Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin (1832 – 1898) were Russian realist painters.

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The hypertrophy of the other line can be found in that ‘aggressive’ view of art that I have (and had). In its realization the unity with reflection is indissoluble. In the beginning this process is fully visible – and can be only visible in cinema: in our credo-films of the 1920s. A minimally distorted ‘in itself’ fragment of reality is presented on its own in the frame (the ‘nec plus ultra’ of reflection6). And a maximum expression of author’s will through the juxtaposition of fragments, in this context, forces – ‘where needed’ (in the desired direction) – the spectator’s consciousness (through his feelings and sensations). All this has been noted to show that the very purpose of my art is, in its ‘profundity’, linked to the primary functions of ritual at a time when art had not yet been singled out as a separate domain from other human activities.

6 ‘the ultimate example of reflection’.

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EISENSTEIN’S ‘CINEMA OF THE MASSES’ Introduction: Oksana Bulgakowa & John Biggart______

In 1925, Sergei Eisenstein delivered to the Russian journalist and poet, Aleksandr Belenson, a text containing a theoretical exposition of his ideas on expressive movement, the Proletkult, the reflexology of Pavlov and Bekhterev, on film and on montage. However, in his book, Kino segodnya (Film Today), published in the same year, Belenson presented a slightly edited version of Eisenstein’s text, under his own name, which purported to be the record of a 1 conversation he had had with the director. Eisenstein wrote an open 2 letter to the newspaper Kino protesting against this abuse. After the première of Battleship Potëmkin in December 1925, Eisenstein’s attitude towards journalists changed and in the course of several months he gave around 25 interviews for the Soviet and foreign press. In 1927, around the time of the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution, more and more foreign visitors to Moscow came to see him. These included Stefan Zweig, Sinclair Lewis, Theodor

Dreiser, John Dos Passos, James Abbe (photographer of the stars), Le Corbusier, Diego Rivera, and the Harvard Professor, Henry Dana. Eisenstein also gave a long interview to Joseph Freeman, an American correspondent for the left-wing paper, New Masses, who was working on his book Voices of October. Freeman incorporated this interview into 3 his chapter on film. According to Marie Seton, Eisenstein in 1927 also “collaborated with Louis Fischer, then the Moscow correspondent of America’s leading liberal weekly, The Nation, on the first comprehensive article explaining his current attitude towards

1 A. E.Belenson, Kino segodnya. Ocherki Sovetskogo kino-iskusstva [Kuleshov-Vertov- Eizenshtein]. Moscow: Author’s Edition, 1925. Aleksandr Belenson (Beilenson, 1890–1949), was also the editor of the Futurist review, Strelets. After the revolution of 1917 he wrote lyrics for popular and patriotic songs. 2 Eisenstein, “Po lichnomu voprosu”, in: Iz tvorcheskogo naslediya S.M. Eyzenshteyna. Materialy i soobshcheniya, eds. Leonid Kozlov, Naum Kleyman, Moscow: VNIIK 1986, 30–36. 3 Joseph Freeman, Joshua Kunitz, Louis Lozowick. Voices of October. Art and Literature in Soviet Russia, New York: Vanguard Press, 1930.

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4 cinematography.” Conceivably, Eisenstein’s experience with Belenson explains the fact that “Mass Movies”, when it was published in The Nation on 9 November 1927 was presented not as an interview but as an article by Eisenstein himself: there was no mention of Fischer, 5 either as interviewer or translator. “Mass Movies” is a comprehensive and popular explanation of what Eisenstein understood to be his original contribution to the art of film and is free of complicated references to psychology, physiology, and Marxism. Possibly it was Eisenstein’s response to the German critic, Oskar A. H. Schmitz, who had denied that The Battleship Potëmkin had any artistic merit, given that the individual was, in this ‘mass movie’, completely absent. Schmitz’s review had been published in Literarische Welt of 11 March 1927 and had provoked a reply by Walter Benjamin who offered a very surprising and very accurate comparison of the film with, not the Bildungsroman, but American slapstick. Like Potëmkin, that genre of grotesque cinema had invented a new formula that represented progress in art and had moved in step 6 with the technological revolution. Later that year, in its issue No.49 dated 6 December, the German journal Die Weltbühne: Wochenschrift für Politik, Kunst, Wirtschaft, published, as one of a number of items devoted to Soviet Russia, an article by Eisenstein under the title “Massenkino” that purported to be an ‘authorized translation’ by the Austrian literary journalist and poet, 7 Otto Basil. This was, clearly, much the same material that had been published in The Nation. However, it was not stated in Die Weltbühne whether Basil’s translation was of the text that had been published in The Nation, or of a Russian text that he or the editors of Die Weltbühne had obtained, directly or indirectly, from Eisenstein. No original Russian texts of the articles that appeared in The Nation and Die Weltbühne are extant. Neither Fischer nor Basil was entirely conversant with the terminology of film production and there

4 Marie Seton. Sergei M. Eisenstein. A Biography. London: The Bodley Head 1952, 119. In fact, Eisenstein had already published “The montage of attractions” in LEF (1923), No.3. 5 Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein, “Mass Movies”, The Nation, Vol. CXXV, No. 3253, 9 November 1927. This was a special issue devoted to “Soviet Russia 1917– 1927”. 6 The texts of Schmitz and Benjamin are reprinted in: Fritz Mierau. Russen in Berlin. Literatur, Malerei, Theater, Film 1918–1933. Leipzig: Reclam 1990, 515–24. 7 “‘Massenkino’ von S.M. Eisenstein”, Die Weltbühne: Wochenschrift für Politik, Kunst, Wirtschaft, No.49, 6 December 1927, 858–860. Basil’s text was later republished, without comment, in Filmwissenschaftliche Mitteilungen (Berlin/GDR), 1967 No. 3. On Otto Basil (1901–1983), see https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Basil

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are passages in both the English and German texts that are obscure. However, given Basil’s claim that his translation was ‘authorized’, the German text was taken as the starting point for this new English translation by Richard Abraham. This new version takes into account what we now know of Eisenstein’s cinematic theory, film technique and vocabulary.

CINEMA OF THE MASSES Translation: Richard Abraham______S. M. Eisenstein 1927

I am a civil engineer and a mathematician by profession. I approach the creation of a film in the same way that I would the design of a poultry farm or the installation of water pipes. My attitude is thoroughly utilitarian, rational and materialist. When the small collective that I lead undertakes some project we don’t get together in an office and design plans. Nor do I set out on my own and wait under an oak tree for poetic inspiration. Our slogan is “Down with intuitive creation!” Instead of dreaming, we take to the road of life. The subject of our latest production The General Line is the village; so we are currently burying ourselves in the archives of the Commissariat of Agriculture; we are assessing thousands of peasant complaints. We attend meetings of the rural Soviets and immerse ourselves in village gossip. The film, which will be ready on 1 January, demonstrates the power of the earth over people and will give the town people an affection for, and an understanding of our peasants. We recruit our actors from the flop houses; we pick them up on the streets. The ‘heroine’ must plough the land and milk a cow. Our films never deal with an individual or a love triangle. We want to depict the masses not the actor. This is a manifestation of the collective spirit that prevails throughout the country. Nor do we ever try to arouse sympathy for the lives of the protagonists in the drama. That would be a concession to sentiment. The achievement of the cinema will be much greater and it will make a much stronger impact if it depicts things and bodies and not feelings. We photograph an echo and the ‘rat-a-tat’ of a machine gun. The effect is physiological. Our psychological method is based, on the one hand, on the work of

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the distinguished Russian scientist, Pavlov, on the operation of the reflexes; and, on the other, on the teachings of Freud. Let us take, for example the scene in Potëmkin, in which the Cossacks slowly, deliberately, descend the Odessa harbour steps, firing into the masses. Through a deliberate composition of the elements of limbs, steps, blood, people, we create an impression, but of what kind? The spectator is not immediately transported to the Odessa wharves of 1905; but as the soldiers’ boots march relentlessly down the steps the spectator recoils involuntarily, so as to escape from the field of fire. And when the pram of the panic-stricken mother goes tumbling down the steps, the spectator grips his cinema seat convulsively, so as to avoid falling into the sea. 8 Our method of montage is an additional tool for achieving such effects. In some countries where the film industry is highly developed, montage is rarely, if ever, practiced. For example, a sledge will be shown hurtling down a snow-covered toboggan slope, until it reaches the bottom. But we photograph the bumping of the sledge, and the spectator feels and even hears this, in the same way that the 9 throbbing of the engines of the Battleship Potëmkin as it steamed into battle had been felt and heard. This means that the movement of things and of machines is not a secondary or insignificant aspect of our films, but a process of fundamental importance. Technical detail, the alternation of object and close-up, side-view, superimposition, constitutes the most important part of our work. Such methods cannot be employed in the theatre. I arrived at the theatre by way of the Proletkult, but soon went over to film. I believe that the theatre is a dying industry. It is (for me) a field for the insignificant artisan. Film is a heavy, highly-organized industry. We always give great thought to both the visual impact and the conceptual impact. We never begin a film without a clear idea of our purpose. Potëmkin was an episode from the heroic struggle of the revolution, filmed with the intention of electrifying the masses. The General Line aims to strengthen the link between town and countryside, one of the political objectives of Bolshevism. October, a film that will soon be seen everywhere, portrays the ten days in autumn 1917 that

8 The term used by Eisenstein was sborka. 9 In the German text – ‘Panzerkreuzer’. Eisenstein’s Bronenosets Potëmkin was distributed in Germany under the title Panzerkreuzer Potëmkin and for the English- speaking world as The Battleship Potëmkin. The original ship, the Knyaz’ Potëmkin Tavricheskiy, was a battleship of the pre-dreadnought class.

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shook the world. It depicts an episode in world history, made by the man in the street, by the worker in the factory, by the lice-infected soldiers from the trenches. It identifies the masses with world history. Of course, certain conditions make our work a bit easier. In October, we worked night after night with four or five thousand Leningrad workers who had volunteered to take part in the storming of the Winter Palace. The government provided weapons and uniforms, as did the army. To supplement the workers and the soldiers we needed a crowd. The word soon got around and a couple of hours later the militia had their hands full controlling a throng of ten thousand. For Potëmkin, the Black Sea Fleet was placed at our disposal. 10 On 7 November 1917, the Avrora, flagship of the Baltic Fleet, went over to the Communists and steamed up-river on the Neva to bombard the Winter Palace. The state lent us the ship for the filming of this scene in October. Just as we take our materials from life, so we take our scenery from real life. We never construct streets, towns or villages. Those that already exist are more authentic. Permission to film is readily granted. No private property-owner can protest against the use of his land or demand payment for its use. Naturally, these things considerably reduce production costs. Potëmkin was a staging post. The General Line and October are a step forward. They are closer to life. We are constantly learning. We know that our method is the only correct one and that its potential is limitless. [The version of Eisenstein’s article that was published in The Nation concluded with the following paragraph, which does not appear in the German version.] “Our method and America’s highly developed movie technique ought to be a powerful combination. For this reason we are interested in an invitation to work in the United States during the next year. If our activities here permit, and we are granted freedom of 11 action in the United States, we may soon be there.”

10 The cruiser Avrora had formed part of a ‘second squadron’ that operated in the Baltic Sea during the First World War, but it does not appear to have been a flagship, in the sense of having served as the headquarters of the squadron commander. At of the end of 1916 the Avrora was in dock in St. Petersburg for repairs. Its crew played an active part in the revolutions of February and October in 1917. See http://www.aurora.org.ru/eng/index.php@theme=info. 11 In the intervening years Eisenstein travelled widely in Europe but it was May 1930 before he arrived in the United States.

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PARADISE ORGANIZED. THE PHILOSOPHICAL DIMENSION OF ALEXANDER BOGDANOV’S UTOPIAN NOVEL, RED STAR James D. White______

The utopian novel Red Star is one of the best known and most accessible of Alexander Bogdanov’s writings. In the guise of describing the lives of the inhabitants of Mars, Bogdanov sets out his ideas on the nature of a future socialist society. While the format of a novel is an unaccustomed one for Bogdanov’s writings, nevertheless the ideas contained in it are themes that appear in his more avowedly theoretical works. It is even possible that Bogdanov had in mind a readership for his novel that was familiar with his other publications. It is certainly true that to understand Red Star in all its depth it is necessary to appreciate the many references in it to ideas and concepts that the author had elaborated prior to the writing of his novel. The purpose of this paper is to examine this philosophical and

ideological dimension of Red Star and to suggest what its place in Bogdanov’s wider system of thought might be.

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Chronology

When Red Star was published in 1908 Bogdanov had already achieved a considerable standing as a socialist theoretician and Social- Democrat leader (Bogdanov 1908). He had been active in the workers’ movement since 1894, and had stood at the head of the Bolshevik fraction during the 1905 revolution in St Petersburg. As a member of the St. Petersburg Soviet, he had been arrested and imprisoned until May 1906. In the following year he had gone into exile in Finland, where Red Star was written (Grille 1966: 159). By 1908 Bogdanov already had published a number of books and articles, whose influence can be seen in the novel. These include his textbook on economics, A Short Course of Economic Science (Bogdanov 1897; 1906b), his two early philosophical works The Basic Elements of the Historical View of Nature (Bogdanov 1899) and Perception from a Historical Point of View (Bogdanov 1901), the collection of articles From the Psychology of Society (1906) (Bogdanov 1897; 1906a) and his main philosophical work of the period Empiriomonism (1904-06) (Bogdanov 2003). When Red Star was written, however, Bogdanov had still to publish his celebrated Tektology: A Universal Science of Organization, but in Red Star one can observe how the idea for Tektology was evolving out of his earlier philosophical ideas. The action of Red Star itself is set in 1908 and Bogdanov locates it precisely in the times through the eyes of his hero, Leonid. It is in the wake of the failed revolution of 1905, when the workers have been resoundingly defeated and the peasant movement is being mercilessly repressed. Despite the despair that had infiltrated the ranks of his former comrades, Leonid is convinced that a new revolutionary upsurge was near at hand. It was in this context that through one of the characters, Bogdanov indicates the role that his utopian novel was to play: “Blood is being shed for the sake of a better future... But in order to wage the struggle one must know what that better future is.” (Bogdanov 1979: 48; Bogdanov 1984: 47)

Bogdanov’s Dynamic Ideal

Bogdanov calls Red Star a ‘utopia’, that is, it represents for him an ideal world. And it was in the context of a discussion on ideals that the idea for Red Star had its origins. The discussion in question took place during Bogdanov’s period of exile in Vologda between 1901 and 1903. This period was one of intense intellectual development for Bogdanov,

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and much of it was stimulated by debates with his fellow exile, the philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev (Biggart 1980). Berdyaev belonged to the group of thinkers, which included Sergei Bulgakov, Petr Struve and Mikhail Tugan-Baranovskiy, who had become disillusioned with the variety of Marxism that had been propounded by Plekhanov and turned instead to Kant and other idealist philosophers. In Vologda Berdyaev gave a series of lectures, and in an article entitled ‘The Struggle for Idealism’, presented a critique of the Marxism which he had recently abandoned. He found Marxism poor in its spiritual and moral content. It rejected goodness, morality and beauty, all the most elevated aspects of human existence. He deplored the idea that the new society would emerge as a result of a social cataclysm, a Zusammenbruch. This would take place mechanically, in such a way that there would be no place for idealism. Moreover, “the new society that would emerge from this dialectical movement would most probably be as self-satisfied, complacent and philistine as the one it had replaced” (Berdyaev 1901: 17–18). Although Bogdanov polemicized against Berdyaev, it was not to defend the kind of Marxism that Berdyaev had rejected, but to interpret Marx’s ideas in such a way that they would answer the objections that Berdyaev had raised. In the article ‘What is Idealism?’ Bogdanov took up the points that Berdyaev had raised, including the accusation that the new society would be self-satisfied, complacent and philistine. He agreed that a socialist society should not be a static one, and as an example of how it should not be, gave the image of the future society as depicted by Edward Bellamy in his utopian novel Looking Backward 200-1887 (Bellamy 1888), which was popular at the time. What Bogdanov says about Bellamy’s novel provides an insight into the approach he took in writing Red Star. This is: “Bellamy’s ideal - the future society portrayed in his novel - obviously corresponds to the idea of ‘progressiveness.’ But progress is only progress as long as it is carried out continuously, as long as the harmony and fullness of life continues to increase. Bellamy’s society is one that has become petrified in satisfaction and complacency, placidly resting on its laurels following the victories gained by preceding generations over nature, both social and external - such a society does not incorporate any stimulus for further development - it in itself is not progressive. Consequently, Bellamy’s utopia in the last analysis is not a progressive ideal, and present-day idealists regard it as a philistine caricature of their own ideals” (Bogdanov 1906a: 22).

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In the light of Bogdanov’s critique of Bellamy, one knows in advance that a prominent feature of his own novel is going to be a serious challenge posed by the forces of nature to the socialist society of the future. An indication that Bogdanov’s attitude to static ideals did not only apply to Bellamy’s novel, but was an integral part of his philosophical system of thought emerges from his polemic with Lunacharskiy on the pages of Empiriomonism. From Avenarius, Lunacharskiy had taken the concept of the ‘perfect constant’, a state in which the organism is in complete equilibrium with its environment, comparable to a foetus in the womb. This, Lunacharskiy believed, was a worthy ideal, and thought it a pity that Bogdanov had not accepted it. Bogdanov, however, replied that he did not consider this ideal at all worthy, and regarded Avenarius’s conception of progress as a relic of a conservative and static view of life (Bogdanov 2003: 204–205). The exchange of views also shows that whereas Lunacharskiy’s conception of the ideal was the complete reconciliation of humanity with nature, Bogdanov saw humanity and nature as eternally at odds. The dynamic conception of the socialist ideal was incorporated in the corresponding section of Bogdanov’s Kratkiy kurs ekonomicheskoy nauki (Short Course in Economic Science) published in 1906. There he explained that the needs of humanity would grow in the very process of labour and experience. Each new victory over nature and its mysteries would stimulate new challenges and fresh discoveries. Power over nature meant the continual accumulation of the energy of society acquired by it from external nature, and this energy would seek an outlet and find it in the creation of new forces of labour and knowledge (Bogdanov 1906b: 285). In the light of this dynamic conception of the socialist society, one duly finds in Red Star that though Martian society has overcome individualism and established comradely relations between people, the struggle with nature goes on. As one of the characters explains: “Happy? Peaceful? Where did you get that impression? True, peace reigns among people, but there cannot be peace with the natural elements. Even a victory over such a foe can pose a new threat. During the most recent period of our history we have intensified the exploitation of the planet tenfold, our population is growing, and our needs are increasing even faster. The danger of exhausting our natural resources and energy has repeatedly confronted various branches of our industry” (Bogdanov 1984: 79; Bogdanov 1979: 98). Commentators have been at a loss to explain this passage. Loren Graham poses the question: “Why does this pessimism show up so clearly

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in Bogdanov’s writings?” He absolves Bogdanov of being secretly out of sympathy with Marxism, or of being, like George Orwell, an early apostle of the dangers of socialism. His conclusion is that Bogdanov was prescient enough to recognize the problems faced by ‘post-industrial societies’ (Bogdanov 1984: 242–243). Graham does not realise that the struggle with the natural elements Bogdanov describes is not meant to detract from his utopia, but to be an essential part of it.

The Structure of Red Star

The consideration that Martian society must have important challenges to face in its struggle with nature is one that to some degree determines the structure of the Red Star. On the whole, however, Bogdanov follows the template of Edward Bellamy’s novel rather closely. In Looking Backward the hero, the young American Julian West, falls into a deep hypnosis-induced sleep and wakes up 113 years later in 2000. While he has been asleep the United States has been turned into a socialist utopia in which all the industry has been nationalized and there is a moneyless economy. West is fortunate enough to have the new system explained to him by his host Dr Leete. A romantic element is supplied when West falls in love with Leete’s daughter Edith. Towards the end of the novel a note of ambiguity is introduced when West ostensibly wakes up back in the nineteenth century, doubting if he has ever been in the future at all. But this is resolved when it turns out that he has only dreamt about returning to his own times, and that in reality he is still in the future and is able to marry Edith. In Bogdanov’s novel, Leonid’s trip to Mars plays the same role as Julian West’s transference to future times. Leonid, the hero, is befriended by a mysterious character Menni, who reveals himself to be a Martian who has come to earth to look for suitable humans to take back to Mars to instruct on life there and to help the Martians better understand life on earth. The main focus of the novel is the description of the collectivist society on Mars. Leonid falls in love with the Martian girl Netta, but because, in a fit of rage he kills Sterni, her former husband, he is banished to his native Earth. There Leonid suffers hallucinations and is treated in a psychiatric hospital, where he suspects that his visit to Mars has been an illusion. Leonid throws himself into the revolutionary struggle and is severely wounded, but almost on the point of death he is rescued by Netta and transported back to Mars. The close parallel with Bellamy’s novel raises the question: why didn’t Bogdanov set his novel at some point in the future on Earth? Or, to

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put this another way: what was the advantage to Bogdanov of locating his utopia in a Martian rather than in an Earthly setting? The answer must be that it gave him greater freedom, since he did not have to refer to any specific places or times, or to make predictions that would later turn out to be mistaken. In particular, he would not have to explain how socialism on Earth had come about, something that, as emerges from the novel, he was uncertain about.

Comradely Cooperation

In his introduction to the 1929 publication of Red Star Boris Legran reminds his readers that in 1908 when Red Star was published Louis Bleriot had still to make his epoch-making flight across the English Channel (Bogdanov 1979: 5). Judged against the technological level of the real world, Bogdanov’s anticipation in Red Star of space travel and other future scientific developments seems truly remarkable. On his trip to Mars Leonid experiences weightlessness, which Bogdanov describes as if he had actually witnessed how human bodies and liquids behave in a spacecraft outside Earth's gravity. On Mars Leonid finds that the Martians are familiar with nuclear energy, anti-matter, synthetic fabrics, 3-d films and speech-to-text devices. In the field of medicine they make wide use of blood transfusions, still a recent development in 1908. However, it is not Martian technical achievements that form the centre- piece of Bogdanov’s utopia, but the fabric of socialist society, which in his philosophical writings he termed ‘comradely cooperation.’ Bogdanov illustrates this cooperation by recounting an episode in which Leonid is operating a machine while working at a Martian factory. When his concentration lapses, he is immediately helped by his fellow- workers. Leonid discovers that the Martian workers do the same for each other as a matter of course. The incident brings home to Leonid that although he has been judged suitable by Menni to be taken to Mars because of his lack of individualism, he is nevertheless much more individualistic than the collectivist Martians (Bogdanov 1979: 125–130; Bogdanov 1984: 96–99). There are several aspects to Bogdanov’s concept of collectivism, reflecting different strands in his thought. One of these is the elimination of the organizer/executive division that is the distinction between people who organize and those who carry out orders. For Bogdanov this is the earliest and most fundamental social division, which afflicted mankind, one, w hich preceded the formation of social classes. It was responsible for authoritarian thinking and for the dualist view of the world that

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divided phenomena into the physical and the psychic. In socialist society this division is overcome, and the monist view of the world is restored (Bogdanov 2003: 34–35). Even on the trip to Mars Leonid discovers that Martian society is not authoritarian. Menni is the captain of the spacecraft, but he does not have the power of command. His instructions are followed because he happens to be the most experienced pilot of the spacecraft (Bogdanov 1984: 38). On Mars itself the comradely relations prevailed between the individuals, with a directness and absence of formality. Great individuals are not commemorated, only important events. A second aspect of Bogdanov’s concept of collectivism is the elimination of specialization into trades and professions. The analysis of the human predicament that pervades Bogdanov’s writings is the fragmentation of human society brought about through specialization and the division of labour. The concomitant of this fragmentation is authoritarian relationships and outlooks, fetishism, including commodity fetishism, and the compartmentalization of experience and knowledge. The obverse side of this analysis is Bogdanov’s quest for means to heal these divisions and to re-integrate society, the human personality and the various sciences into a harmonious whole. Bogdanov’s vision of the socialist utopia is one in which the fragmentation of all previous forms of social organization are overcome. From his earliest works Bogdanov was concerned to find a means by which this fragmentation of society and experience by the division of labour could be overcome. The solution that he proposed was “the elaboration of general methods in all spheres of production.” With the development of machine industry, in which machines would become more specialized, while the labour of the workers became more homogeneous, the formulation of these general methods would become increasingly feasible. They would break down the barriers between the workers that the division of labour had erected, and foster the development of ‘synthetic cooperation’ (which Bogdanov later termed ‘comradely cooperation’) (Bogdanov 1901: 201–203). There is thus a close association between ‘general methods’ and the formation of comradely cooperation among the workers. This close association is carried over into Red Star. In the novel Leonid undergoes training in such general methods when he goes to work at a Martian clothing factory. He had to study the established scientific principles of industrial organization, as well as the structure of the factory in which he was employed. He had to acquire a general notion of all the machines in use there, and know in detail the one

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with which he would be working (Bogdanov 1984: 96; Bogdanov 1979: 126). Leonid worked by turns in all sections of the factory, supervising the operation of the various machines. In an article written in 1910 Bogdanov expanded on the connection between the mastery of general methods and the development of comradely cooperation: The proletariat needs a science in its life and struggle, but not the one which is accessible to people only in fragments and leads to mutual misunderstanding between them. In conscious comradely relations the most important thing is, on the contrary, the complete understanding of one another. The working out of socialist knowledge must, therefore, aspire to the simplification and unification of science, to finding the general methods of investigation, which would give the key to the most varied specialisms and would allow the rapid mastery of them – as the worker in machine production, who knows by experience the general features and general methods of his technique can comparatively easily transfer from one specialism to another (Bogdanov 1990: 102). By the time Bogdanov had published his second novel, Engineer Menni, in 1912, he had begun to elaborate his science of general methods, to which he had given the name ‘Tektology.’ In Engineer Menni Tektology is introduced in a context of overcoming the specialisms engendered in individualist society that obstructed mutual understanding. A third aspect of Bogdanov’s concept of collectivism is the absence of any legal or moral compulsion. This is an idea that appears from the earliest of Bogdanov’s writings, where he argues that legal or moral norms are fetishes that first appeared in primitive clan society. In capitalist society, which was divided into organizers and the organized, law, morality and manners were framed in the interests of the former, the group responsible for the distribution of the social product (Bogdanov 1899: 194–197). It was Bogdanov’s belief that in a socialist society no element of compulsion should determine people’s behaviour; what they did should be entirely voluntary. No formal code of behaviour would be necessary when the relations between people were characterized by comradely cooperation. In a rare autobiographical passage Bogdanov recalls how his ideas on morality had got him into trouble while a member of a Social Democrat group in Khar’kov while he was studying medicine there between 1895 and 1899 (White 1981). “On discovering what kind of questions were being posed, I declared that I considered myself to be a ‘vulgar’ Marxist and that as far as moral principles went I could only see in them social fetishism conditioned by the relations of production. I barely escaped paying dearly

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for my audacity. My moral comrades met in my absence and discussed whether to expel me from the organization for immorality. They were tending towards the affirmative, because a person who thought that morality was a fetish was obviously immoral. It was only by a stroke of luck that, having quarreled with the leaders, I managed to resign from the organization before the decision was taken. It was only later, from one of the members, that I learnt how near the pleasant prospect had been of receiving the rank and title ‘expelled for immorality’” (Bogdanov 1911: 82). Red Star begins with the separation between Leonid and his Earthly girlfriend Anna, arising out of a similar difference of opinion on morality. While Anna believes that the class ethics of the proletariat would necessarily become the universal moral code, Leonid held that the proletariat was moving towards the destruction of all morals, and that the comradely feeling uniting people would not develop fully until it had cast off the fetishistic husk of morality (Bogdanov 1979: 15; Bogdanov 1984: 25). In respect of the question of morality, Red Star goes further than Bogdanov’s philosophical writings, since Leonid did not recognize fidelity to his partner as an obligation, considering polygamy in principle superior to monogamy, since it provided for both a richer private life and a greater variety of genetic combinations. He is supported in these views by Menni, indicating that Leonid’s conception of morality is generally accepted on Mars. In the course of the novel, Leonid not only forms a relationship with Netta, but also, in her absence, with her friend Enno. From Enno Leonid learns that Netta has been married to two people at the same time. It is clear from the novel that Bogdanov upholds the principle of sexual equality, though this too is not an issue that is prominent in his other writings. Bogdanov does not mention the point specifically in Red Star, though he does in the the chapter on Socialist Society in Short Course in Economic Science,, that Mars has no state structure or other political institutions (Bogdanov 1906b: 284). These are rendered unnecessary because people’s behaviour is regulated by considerations of mutual understanding and sympathy. There are very few limits to the freedom Martians enjoy. One of them is the necessity to impose restrictions on patients suffering from nervous disorders. Netti, however, emphasizes that the use of such compulsion in these cases is very different from the way it would be applied on Earth. There all practices are codified into laws, regulations and moral codes which dominate people and constantly oppress them. On Mars force did exist, but it was either a symptom of

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illness or as the rational response in a given situation, but in neither case was any formal code of law or morals involved (Bogdanov 1979: 104). Leonid finds that Mars is so lacking in any restrictions to freedom of any kind that he is surprised to find that Martian poetry observes laws of rhyme and meter (Bogdanov 1984: 78).

The Socialist Economy

For Bogdanov it is the relations between people that was the essential element in his concept of socialism. It is this relationship that determines how both the production of products on Mars is organized and also how they are distributed.

Production For Bogdanov machines play a major part in the socialist economy, and in doing so fill several roles: they eliminate the age-old organizer/executive divide; they overcome the division of labour; they harness the power of nature (Bogdanov 1906b: 279–280). In Red Star Bogdanov devotes some evocative passages to the relationship of the machines to the people: Hundreds of workers moved confidently among the machines, their footsteps and voices drowned in a sea of sound. There was not a trace of tense anxiety on their faces, whose only expression was of quiet concentration. They seem to be inquisitive, learned observers who had no real part in all that was going on around them. It was as if they simply found it interesting to watch how the enormous pieces of metal glided out beneath the transparent dome on moving platforms and fell into the steely embrace of dark monsters...It seemed altogether natural that the steel monsters should not harm the small, big-eyed spectators strolling confidently among them: the giants simply scorned the frail humans as quarry unworthy of their awesome might (Bogdanov 1979: 75). In Bogdanov’s description the colossal machines perform a variety of operations on the blocks of steel, indicating the different human trades and specialisations that they have replaced.

Distribution In an essay entitled ‘Exchange and Technology’ published in 1904 Bogdanov had argued that the form of distribution developed historically as an adaptation to the society in which it took place. In patriarchal society products were distributed by the patriarch; in capitalist society exchange was the form of distribution of the products of social labour. It

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was noticeable that in this form of distribution the organizers of labour were much better rewarded than the executives of labour (Ocherki..., 1904: 279–288). In a socialist society the organizer of distribution was society as a whole. Society would distribute labour and also the product of that labour. In the chapter on Socialist Society in his Short Course in Economic Science Bogdanov stated that the complexity of the organization of distribution demanded a level of statistical and information technology which was still distant in his own times (Bogdanov 1906b: 282). The Martians, however, had attained this level. As Menni explained to Leonid: The Institute of Statistics has agencies everywhere which keep track of the flow of goods into and out of the stockpiles and monitor the productivity of all enterprises and the changes in the number of workers in them. In that way it can be calculated what and how much must be produced for any given period and the number of man hours required for the task. It then remains for the Institute to calculate the difference between what there is and what there should be, and to make this known to everyone. A flow of volunteers then re-establishes the equilibrium (Bogdanov 1979: 78). To Leonid's inquiry if there was any restriction on the consumption of goods, Menni informed him that there was none; everyone took whatever was needed in whatever quantities they desired. There was no need for money, documentation or any form of compulsion; all labour was voluntary. The Martian economic planning system had the necessary flexibility to respond to changed circumstances. As Menni explained, the Institute of Statistics had to be alert to new inventions and changes in environmental conditions that might affect industry. Labour might have to be transferred to different branches of industry, necessitating a re- calculation taking the new factors into account, if not with absolute precision, then at least with an adequate degree of approximation (Bogdanov 1979: 79).

The Socialist Revolution

A significant aspect of Red Star is Bogdanov’s conception of two types of socialist revolution: that by which the socialist utopia was achieved on Mars, and the one by which a socialist society might be achieved on Earth. These two scenarios represent an evolution in Bogdanov’s thinking.

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On his way to Mars in the spacecraft Leonid passes his time profitably by studying Martian history. He discovers that Mars has undergone the same kind of historical evolution as Earth has: from feudalism to capitalism and subsequently to socialism. But because the topography of Mars is more homogeneous than Earth, the people were much less divided into separate races, nationalities and linguistic groups than the inhabitants of Earth. As a result, the socialist revolution on Mars had been a relatively peaceful affair. Strikes had been the workers’ main weapon; the uprisings that had occurred were restricted to a few, almost exclusively agricultural regions. The possessing classes had bowed before the inevitable, and even when the government had fallen into the hands of the workers’ party, had not attempted to assert their interests by force (Bogdanov 1984: 56). The revolution Bogdanov is describing here, in which strikes were the main weapon, was the one in which he himself had been involved in 1905. The difference was that in Russia the ruling classes had not given in so easily, and the revolution had been mercilessly crushed. The implication was that Bogdanov’s hopes for a successful outcome of the 1905 revolution had been dashed, because the revolution had taken place in conditions of great social disparity, where class divisions were deep and antagonistic. The ferocity of the 1905 revolution and the relentlessness of its suppression must have been a rude awakening for Bogdanov, and this is reflected in Red Star. In his writings before 1905 the revolution to introduce a socialist society is presented as a fairly smooth and mechanical process -- as a realignment of the superstructure of society with its base (Bogdanov 1906a: 105–106).But after the experience of the actual revolution his views changed considerably. The opposition to the revolution had been too determined, the radical intelligentsia had deserted when the reaction had begun to triumph, and Bogdanov had found that among the workers authoritarian attitudes were by no means absent (Bogdanov 1910: 116; Bogdanov 1990: 101). In 1908 Bogdanov was aware that the coming revolutionary upsurge might not be the prelude to the establishment of a society based on comradely cooperation. This impression is reinforced by the lengthy disquisition on the prospects for a socialist revolution on Earth that Bogdanov puts into the mouth of Sterni, the advocate of colonizing the Earth. Sterni is pessimistic about the chances of a successful socialist revolution on Earth in view of the obstacles to it which exist there. Earth is riven by political and social divisions. This means that instead of following a single uniform pattern of development, the struggle for socialism is split into a variety of

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autonomous processes in individual societies with distinct political systems, languages and nationalities. In view of this, one had to expect not one, but a number of revolutions taking place in different countries at different times. Sterni could imagine that the individual advanced countries where socialism had triumphed would be like islands in a hostile capitalist and even pre-capitalist sea. In those circumstances, where socialism survived, its character was likely to be distorted by the years of encirclement. This socialism would not be like Martian socialism. Moreover, Sterni pointed out: “Centuries of national division, a mutual lack of understanding, the brutal and bloody struggle will all have left deep scars on the psychology of liberated Earthly humanity. We do not know how much barbarity and narrow-mindedness the socialists of Earth will bring with them into their new society” (Bogdanov 1979: 156). At various junctures in his speech Sterni also drew his audience’s attention to the fact that the incessant internal bickering of the peoples of the Earth had led to the development of the psychological peculiarity which they called patriotism. This feature made any co-existence of Martians and Earthlings impossible, and meant that if the colonization of Earth were to be undertaken, the inhabitants of Earth would have to be annihilated. Fortunately for the Earthlings, Netta presented a convincing argument to counter Sterni’s, and it was agreed to attempt the colonisation of Venus rather than Earth (Bogdanov 1984: 116–119). There are a number of significant things about Sterni’s speech. The most striking is that it is remarkably prophetic, something that present day readers of Red Star can appreciate more than those of 1908. Bogdanov accurately predicted the phenomenon of socialism in one country, the hostility towards it, and the attendant barbarities and narrow-mindedness. While other critics of the Soviet state have argued about the precise juncture at which it degenerated, Bogdanov’s analysis in Red Star could foresee that the kind of revolution which socialists were trying to bring about would be degenerate from its very inception. Socialism on a world scale, the socialism of comradely cooperation, would not be achieved unless something specific were done to ensure its success. By the time Bogdanov wrote his article ‘Socialism of the Present’ in 1910 he had become convinced that the way to eliminate the authoritarian thinking and the narrow mindedness among the workers was “to create newer and newer elements of socialism in the proletariat itself, in its internal relations and its everyday conditions of life: to work out a socialist proletarian culture.” (Bogdanov 1990: 101) That is, he believed that comradely cooperation was not only a characteristic of a

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socialist society, but also the means by which that society would be achieved. Thus, Bogdanov’s concept of Proletarian Culture was a solution to the problem of carrying out a socialist revolution that he had raised in Red Star (White 2013).

Conclusions

Bogdanov was a writer particularly suited to supply Russian Social Democracy with its utopia in the novel Red Star. From his earliest writings he had analyzed the human predicament in terms of the fragmentation of society: the division into those who gave orders and those who carried them out, the compartmentalization of people into trades and professions, and the antagonism of social classes. He also analyzed the perverted view of the world to which this social fragmentation gave rise. Implicit in this analysis was the aspiration that at some point in the future these divisions would be overcome and society made whole. This is the vision which Red Star provides; it imagines a society in which the divisions of the past have been healed, and humanity has finally become integrated. The fact that Bogdanov’s main ideas of the period could be integrated so seamlessly into the format of a novel is indicative of the unity of Bogdanov’s thinking and the mutual compatibility of his ideas. At the centre is the concept of comradely cooperation. This is a relationship free of any form of compulsion in which people have a mutual understanding and sympathy, which determines how they behave towards each other. Much of their experience is shared experience, and this is facilitated by the absence of special trades or professions, and by the integration of knowledge into a general science of organization, which subsumes all the other sciences. Red Star is a culmination of what had gone before; it embodies Bogdanov’s philosophical ideas of the previous decade, and presents them in the concrete and accessible form of a narrative. But Red Star also looks to the future, indicating areas in which Bogdanov would develop his ideas in subsequent years. One can see how the concept of ‘general methods’ that would span different areas of knowledge would evolve into Tektology, and the need to foster in the workers the principles of comradely cooperation to prepare them for the socialist society of the future would prompt Bogdanov to elaborate his ideas on Proletarian Culture. In its unique way Red Star marks an important juncture in Bogdanov’s intellectual development; it is the work in which his existing system of thought is re-evaluated in the light of the 1905 revolution and the progression towards Tektology and Proletarian Culture is begun.

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References

Bellamy, E. 1888. Looking Backward 200–1887. Boston: Ticknor & Co. Berdyaev, N. 1901. “Bor’ba za idealizm”: Mir Bozhiy10(6), June. Biggart, J. 1980. “Bogdanov and Lunacharskiy in Vologda”: Sbornik (Yearbook of the Study Group on the Russian Revolution) 5: 28-40. Bogdanov, A. A. 1897. Kratkiy kurs ekonomicheskoy nauki. Moscow: Izd.knizhnago sklada A.M.Murinovoi ------.1899. Osnovnye elementy istoricheskogo vzglyada na prirodu. St Petersburg: Izdatel’. ------. 1901. Poznanie s istoricheskoy tochki zreniya. St Petersburg: Tipografiya A. Leiferta. ------. 1906a. Iz psikhologii obshchestva. St Petersburg: Delo. ------. 1906b. Kratkiy kurs ekonomicheskoy nauki. 7th augmented edition, Moscow: S. Dorovatovskiy and A. Charushnikov. ------. 1908. Krasnaya zvezda (Utopiya). Saint-Petersburg: Tovarishchestvo khudozhnikov pechati ------. 1910. Padenie velikogo fetishizma (sovremennyy krizis ideologii). Vera i nauka (O knige V. Il’ina “Materializm i empiriokrititsizma”). Moscow: S. Dorovatovskiy and A. Charushnikov. ------. 1911. Kul’turnye zadachi nashego vremeni. Moscow: S. Dorovatovskiy and A. Charushnikov. ------. 1979. Krasnaya zvezda: roman-utopiya; Inzhener Menni: fantasticheskiy roman. Bibliotheca russica. Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag. ------. 1984. Red star: the first Bolshevik utopia. Ed. L. R. Graham and R. Stites. Trans. C. Rougle. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ------. 1990. Voprosy sotsializma: Raboty raznykh let. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo politicheskoy literatury. ------. 2003. Empiriomonizm: Stat’i po filosofii. Moscow: Respublika. Grille, D. 1966. Lenins Rivale: Bogdanov und seine Philosophie. Cologne: Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik. Ocherki realisticheskogo mirovozzreniya. Sbornik statey po filosofii, obshchestvennoy nauki i zhizni. 1904. St Petersburg: S. Dorovatovskiy and A. Charushnikov. White, J. D. 1981. “Bogdanov in Tula”: Studies in Soviet Thought 22 (June): 33–58. ------. 2013. “Alexander Bogdanov’s Conception of Proletarian Culture”: Revolutionary Russia 26(1): 52–70.

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EISENSTEIN’S SYSTEM THINKING: INFLUENCES AND INSPIRATIONS Oksana Bulgakowa______

In 1931 Eisenstein started work on a basic theoretical book, Method, that would present his theoretical system. In the very first notes he defines a goal that seems to be similar to Bogdanov’s tectology: to find a basic structure, isomorph for a work of art but also for the growth of plants and bones, for human society and the organization of bees or ants. Eisenstein’s system thinking is inspired and defined by his basic hypotheses: the structure of an artwork is perceived as a form that equates to multi-layered consciousness in the transition from the pre-logical, sensual to logical thought that the recipient experiences during the ecstatic perception of an art work. Basic principles of modernist art – fragmentation, montage, visualization, and rhythmic recurrence, the object of Eisenstein’s analysis, – determined the new form of Eisenstein’s writing and thinking and revolutionized the theory and the form of its rendition. Eisenstein rejects linear logic and seeks for forms of a hypertext that in his eyes are closer to the associative, spherical, and labyrinthine thought structures, which to date have only found expression in modernist art experiments.

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Alexander Bogdanov introduced the term “Tektology” to describe a discipline that would unify social, biological and physical sciences by considering them as systems of relationships; tektology analyzed the organizational principles of theses systems. The word came from Ernst Haeckel, whose book with multi-colour illustrations of animals and sea creatures Kunstformen der Natur, Art Forms of Nature, inspired Eisenstein, as well as Haeckel’s theory of evolution which claimed that ontogeny, an individual organism's biological development, parallels species' evolutionary development, phylogeny. We can only speculate about the possible influence of Bogdanov’s system thinking on Eisenstein (Yampolskiy 2008/2009, 45– 90; Zabrodin 2005). At the time when Eisenstein worked in Proletkult Bogdanov had lost his power. The idea of new collective art that Bogdanov envisaged for the proletariat, an art that does not know fetishism and individualism, defined the early work of Eisenstein from Strike to October. These films were inspired by mass actions within Proletkult, like Evreinov’s Storming of the Winter Palace. The mass action became Eisenstein’s signature as a film director. But at the same time he was also inspired by Meyerhold’s idea of movement on stage, Arvatov’s concept Production art, Futurist and Constructivist aesthetics, Rosicrucian hermeneutics, psychoanalysis and experimental psychology among many other topics. Later Eisenstein tried to find the basic principle of organization that defined a closed and specific area: the work of art. But this work was understood very broadly. He contextualized the moving images – of Disney, Griffith, Chaplin and his own – in the broad context of the development of visual culture from cave painting to modernism. The idea of dynamic stability or isomorphism could be found in Eisenstein’s approach but with distinct differences. In this paper will try to follow the traces of Eisenstein’s system thinking. In 1931 Eisenstein started the work on a basic theoretical work Method that would present his theoretical system. In the very first notes he defines the goal that seemed to be similar to Bogdanov’s tectology: to find a basic structure, isomorph, for a work of art but also for the growing of plants and bones, for human society and the organization of bees or ants, with references to the books of Michelet and Maurice Maeterlinck. He introduced long quotations from the anthropologist Franz Boah and the zoologist Friedrich Hemplemann, as well as psychologists Alexander Luria, Ernst Kretschmer and Heinz Werner. He sought out contacts with Soviet physicists and physiologists but never mentioned Alexander Bogdanov. The name of his

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collaborators in Proletkult Boris Arvatov or Sergey Tretyakov, appeared only in his personal diaries. Eisenstein’s theoretical project was the theory of a modern artist who postulated that the basic principles of modernist art – fragmentation, montage, visualization, and rhythmic recurrence – determined the new form of writing and thinking and in this way revolutionized the theory and the form of its rendition. In this way, Eisenstein’s theory acquired the qualities of an aesthetic product inspired by the experimental prose, Cubist painting, or filmic devices. However, the modernist character of the unfinished book Method, a fragment, whose meaning becomes apparent in conjunction with the other fragments, collided with the totality of Eisenstein’s claim to offer a universal theory that was to include all arts and all artworks as well as the laws of artistic thought. This contradiction was typical for the period. The theory would itself become an all-embracing oeuvre of Eisenstein. Eisenstein worked on Method, his last book, and one that he never completed, for sixteen years (1932–1948) until his death. He altered the title several times, made frequent corrections to the book’s plan, but the main concept remained unchanged. In the context of his earlier theoretical projects — the Spherical Book of 1929 and the Montage book of 1937 — his basic idea of Method initially appears rather strange, reductionist (in spite of the material, which has no limitations), and then enigmatic. Yet it is precisely the earlier projects that provide a key to understanding the particular nature of Method. In the late 1920s Eisenstein planned his Spherical book. The inner necessity for writing it lay in polemic demarcation. His rivals, the directors Pudovkin, Timoshenko and Kuleshov, had just published their books on film theory as well as the Russian formalists, who had severely criticized Eisenstein’s innovative treatment of film language in October (Timoshenko 1926; Pudovkin 1926, 1927; Kuleshov 1929). But Eisenstein wanted more: he wanted to offer a comprehensive concept that attempted to break up the usual forms in the 1920s of fixing a theory, that is, the form of a manifesto, an article or even a book. “It is very hard to write a book. Because every book is two- dimensional. I wanted this book to be characterized by a quality that on no account fits into the two-dimensionality of a printed work. This requirement has two aspects. First, that this bundle of essays should on no account be read and pondered one after the other. I wished that they be considered simultaneously, because ultimately they portray a number of sectors, which are arranged around a general constitutive point of view — the method — but aligned to different areas. Second, I wanted to create the mere spatial possibility that would make it possible to step from each contribution directly into another and to make

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apparent their interconnection [...] Such a synchronic manner of circulation and mutual penetration of the essays could be carried out only in the form... of a sphere [...] Unfortunately [...] books are not written as spheres [...] My only hope is that this book, which expounds the method of reciprocal reversibility will be read precisely according to the same method. In the expectation that we shall learn how to read and write books as rotating spheres. Today we have more than enough books like soap bubbles. Particularly about art.” (Eisenstein 1988, 344) Eisenstein wrote these thoughts in his diary on 5 August 1929. Between March and August 1929 he repeatedly worked on a plan for a possible anthology (RGALI 1923–1–1030, 12; 1923–1–1012, 1– 2).1 It was not a collection of the texts he had published or conceived. The project demanded an entirely new approach to the organization of the texts as an unmotivated changing of perspectives and methods of analysis, which would freely communicate with each other, but would still allow jumps into different dimensions at any time. Eisenstein probably gave up the idea of finishing the book around 1932, for up to this date one still finds traces of the project. In the essays for the Spherical Book, which Eisenstein wrote in rapid succession from 1928–1929, montage is explained according to various models. Montage is comprehended (1) as a conditioning method to create a chain of conditioned reflexes — as understood by reflexology (“Montage of Film Attractions”); (2) as a collage, a combination and recombination of different materials — as understood by constructivism (“Montage of Attractions”); (3) as a system of oppositions, which produce meaning— as understood by linguistics (“Perspectives”) and exemplified by Japanese characters (“Beyond the Shot”); (4) as a hierarchical system with changing dominants — influenced by experiments with new music and Yuriy Tynyanov’s verse theory (“The Fourth Dimension in Cinema”); (5) in terms of the law of unity and the struggle between opposites — “The Dialectical Approach to Film Form”, or as a synesthetic procedure that forces the various senses — seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting — to communicate with each other (“An Unexpected Juncture”). Nearly all concepts that Eisenstein introduces in this text (attraction, dominant, overtone, and interval) are associated with the different models of analysis and interpretation. In this book, the metaphysical symbolist, the vulgar Marxist, and the dialectician that are Eisenstein all co-exist, side by side. Parallel to the Spherical Book, Eisenstein planned to write a psychoanalytical book about himself and how his theory originated, My Art in Life — a further possible sector (Eisenstein 1997/1998: 13–23). The polarity of the positions sketched here, constant changes of points

1 For a detailed account of this project, see: Bulgakova 1996: 31-108.

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of view and dimensions, creates a tension between the sectors, for the principle of simultaneity was not to be abandoned. It is the only project in which such polarity is admitted. This approach lifts the Spherical Book out of the traditional development of theory and impressively demonstrates the new theoretical mentality of the twentieth century. At the beginning of the twentieth century the world of closed holistic systems suffered a breakdown. A multitude of different types of discourse appeared; they treated the work of art in its various aspects without aspiring to cover the whole (Iser 1999: 35). Totality as a utopia was passé, but one adapted the results of a single science as the worldview — according to old habits — and thus two modes of thought, the new and the old, were mixed together. A discourse was not capable of translating the phenomenon of art into a referential language, and therefore metaphors were used instead of concepts. Theory also aids understanding of the discourse, not only the phenomenon of art, and thus the result was double reflections and self– reflection, mixing of ontological and operational aesthetics. A modest professional analytical approach became established. The Spherical Book is a product of this approach. Eisenstein joins the ranks of specialists, who, like the formalists, are able to determine what literature is and what constitutes film. He is one of them, yet he behaves like a man from the last century — he wants totality, with all his expert knowledge. His Spherical Book is the most radical attempt at achieving a unity in permanent change from one level to another, based on reinterpretation and a variable use of the non–compatible sectors. Eisenstein offers a total framework for these different discourses by taking the model of a rotating sphere, which enables transitions and guarantees multiple perspectives. In Method Eisenstein explores how consciousness functions via the imprints it leaves in art forms and art techniques. His ideas about the effects of art undergo a radical re–interpretation. He suggested that during ecstatic perception of a work, art would activate and provoke within the observer a shift to pre–logical, sensual thought, which breaks through rational consciousness like a jolt, as the unconscious does in Sigmund Freud’s model. Thus the structure of an artwork is perceived as a form that equates to multi–layered consciousness and the entire diversity of forms are viewed as an endless chain of invariants that stem from the basic trauma that consciousness experienced in the course of evolution, at the transition from pre–logical to logical thought. Whereas in the first Spherical Book the effects of art are explained with the aid of conditioning, in Method the return to the basic (evolutionary) trauma secures the co–participation. Eisenstein discovers a structural analogy between his concept and those of Marx and Freud (and does not mention Bogdanov): Freud seeks a basic substance to

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explain the human psyché and discovers a simple and universal conflict; Marx does this with the structure of society. Eisenstein also looks for a similar, primary conflict in art, which he calls the “basic problem” [Grundproblem], and at first uses this as the title of the book. Starting from the assumption that there is a basic conflict between the layers of consciousness, the traces of which are captured in art forms, Eisenstein then proceeds to new conceptions of isomorphic structures and, finally, to a universal model of analysis through which heterogeneous phenomena can be described, structured, and investigated: painting, film and circus and music. Eisenstein uses the concepts of sensuality and rationality to describe different mental structures; sometimes he refers to mythical, “concrete” or “objective” thinking and avoids the use of psychoanalytical concepts. In the 1930s he uses Lévy–Bruhl’s term “pre–logical thinking”, but when this term was criticized, he exchanges it for “sensual thinking”, which he finds in Marx. Eisenstein studies works written by linguists, anthropologists, missionaries, and ethnographers.2 With his interest in archaic structures, Eisenstein is part of a general contemporary trend (following the same path as T.S. Eliot, D.H. Lawrence, Ezra Pound, Aby Warburg, Antonin Artaud). However, it is not the archaic per se, or the mythological practices of the régimes of Stalin or Hitler that interest him, but rather the modernist experiments in the arts, which he compares with examples from classical antiquity, the Renaissance, and the Enlightenment. Eisenstein regards the formalized structures of sensual thinking as a reservoir for the artistic means. Eisenstein’s analytical model, which he calls Method, can attribute all art phenomena to one and the same schema (pre– logical/logical, sensual/rational, consciousness/unconscious). The model in Method is characterized by a strange reductionism, analogous to the interpretation of the primary and secondary features of psychoanalytical hermeneutics. Eisenstein transforms a law of dialectics about the unity of contradictions into binary opposition. Vyacheslav Ivanov interpreted the book as a utopia of total semiotization of the world (Ivanov 1977). However, on closer scrutiny the semiotic interpretation of the model in Method reveals severe limitations. In one of the final chapters of Method, “Circle”, Eisenstein returns to his idea for Spherical Book, and on 17 September 1947 remarks “In 1932 I began to organize my theoretical notes on film (which I have been doing for fifteen years now), and I noticed that I

2 Eisenstein wrote many notes in the margins of his copies of the books: Lévy-Bruhl 1922 (Russian edition 1930); Werner 1926; Kretschmer 1922 (Russian edition 1927); Winthuis 1928; Granet 1934; Covarrubias 1937; Bilz 1940.

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dream of writing a Spherical Book, because for me everything is related to everything and everything passes over into everything. The only form that corresponds to this is the sphere. To [change] from one meridian to any other meridian. Since that time I have longed for this book, and now perhaps more than ever” (RGALI 1923–2–268). The grounds for the amalgamation of Eisenstein’s first and last project lie in the way he thinks and writes. He rejects linear logic and seeks forms of a hypertext that in his eyes is closer to the associative, spherical, and labyrinthine thought structures which to date had only found expression in modernist art experiments, not in theoretical writings. The theory of pre-logical mental structures, which are mediated by art forms, emerges as a hybrid work, constructed according to the principles of an artwork. In 1932, Eisenstein compiles a catalogue of themes for the projected book. He lists the thematic nodes and the examples that he will use to illustrate the parallels between pre-logical thinking and artistic devices: pars pro toto — synecdoche and close-up; sympathetic magic — the function of the landscape in literature; participation — actors’ experience; the reading of tracks by a hunter — constructing the plot of a detective story (Eisenstein 1989: 13–23). Over the next sixteen years, Eisenstein writes four different versions of the book; each of them focuses on different aspects and applies different mode of analysis (close to his idea for the Spherical Book): (1) exploration of the formalized structures of pre-logical thinking (Method I); (2) investigation of the basic forms; (3) the genesis of his theoretical model in the form of “theoretical” memoirs; and (4) the anthropological foundations of this theory.3 In the first version of the book, Method I (1932–1940), Eisenstein concentrates on means of expression and arts that do not need or allow verbalization: gestures, intonation, music, and circus. The gesture is seen as the Ur-form, the origin of the word, which is why Eisenstein collects material about the role of pantomime in Shakespearean theatre and the acting style of Henry Irving. Eisenstein reads memoirs by Russian actors and returns to his own concept of expressive movement as well as Meyerhold’s idea for the gestural “pre- play”. Intonation is understood as a substitute for meaning; therefore, Eisenstein takes long excerpts from Yvette Guilbert’s book, L’Art de chanter une chanson (Guilbert 1928). Although the sections on circus and Wagner do not actually get written, Eisenstein makes a detailed plan of the circus chapter (November, 1933), and reads works by and on

3 I do not refer here to the version of the text compiled by Kleiman 2002, but to the archive manuscript (RGALI 1923-2-231-270, 321-323), which will be published 2007 in four volumes by Potemkin Press, Berlin.

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Wagner. In Method I., neither vision nor hearing are regarded as the basic senses for a theory of art, but instead the sense of touch — a sense that is usually excluded from aesthetic theory and for which there is no method of conservation. Eisenstein does not seem to know the texts by Johann Gottfried Herder and Walter Benjamin; his interest in touch was aroused by Denis Diderot’s writings, Filippo Thommaso Marinetti’s Tactilism manifesto and a book by Léon Daudet (Daudet 1930). In the chapter about the features of pre-logical thinking, Eisenstein attempts to include the senses of smell and taste in his theory, but abandons this later. He returns to the sense of touch as one of the basic senses involved in the origins of the arts in the fourth book, Anthropology, which begins with a chapter on haptic sense. Eisenstein’s attentiveness to phenomena that are non-verbal or incapable of being preserved by modern recording techniques also makes him interested in rhythm. Eisenstein regards rhythm as a basic element in the creation of an effective artwork, because the biology of an organism is based on rhythmic principles (breathing, peristalsis, the functioning of the heart), as is ecstatic experience. Eisenstein attempts to link the ideas of the German school of experimental psychology and physiological aesthetics, associated with Ernst Kretschmer, Wilhelm Wundt, and Friedrich Nietzsche, with inspirations from his study of the mystical practices of Ignatius of Loyola. However, his analysis of the ecstatic state and the production of ecstasy in art is later expanded into a separate study, “Pathos” (1946/1947), in which Eisenstein uses the examples from the Rougon-Macquart series of novels by Zola that he lists in the catalogue of themes in Method I (Eisenstein 1967 : 91–128). From the language phenomena, Eisenstein selects examples of linguistic pre-logic, particularly mimetic and magical practices like incantations, he examines the relationships between a sound, the shape of a letter, and the meaning, Filippo Thommaso Marinetti’s and Velemir Khlebnikov’s onomatopoetic. This section comprises theories of the origin of names and metaphor, research on various kinds of slang, dialect, and argot. Metaphors are regarded as a practice connected with taboos, as a deviation from naming and calling. Eisenstein studies writers, who have broken up the forms of logical language (Edgar Allan Poe, James Joyce, Marcel Proust), followed the logic of dreams (Gérard de Nerval), or who work with ambivalent double meanings (Anatole France’s irony, the collection of erotic riddles and fairy tales of Aleksandr Afanasiev). He attends Nikolai Marr’s lectures on the origin of languages. Marr’s paleontology which seeks connections between the stem of a word and its meaning, directs Eisenstein’s interest toward the origins of art, the Ur- phenomena of representation: cave paintings, children’s drawings, outline drawings, and silhouettes. In all these forms, Eisenstein looks for the connection between rhythm and

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movement, and finds this perfected in the ornament. Via the ornament as pictorial embodiment of rhythm, Eisenstein approaches the dynamic phenomenon of the plot. The plot is interpreted as a pre-logical and mimetic phenomenon, as an embodiment of the ritual, which is based on the rhythmic organization of movement and verbal ambivalence. The shift of the analysis of non-verbal phenomena to the plot is explained through a step-wise construction: 1. Double meanings, linguistic ambivalence, which enable a connection to be made between motor kinetic? functions and the trope (metonym, metaphor, riddle), on the basis of magical practices: non- naming, a transferred naming, ritual incantation, etc. 2. The masculine, the feminine, and the bisexual as a physical form of ambivalence. 3. Ambivalence in a character (Jekyll and Hyde) and in the personality of an artist (Lewis Carroll and Charles Dodgson). 4. In perennial themes (the search for a father). Eisenstein has not yet worked out in detail the connection between these steps but only sketches it. Eisenstein interprets the ambivalence as an invariant of the unity of opposites and tries to find a dialectical formula of form, which he describes, however, with the help of Freudian terms such as “urge”. For the Method I. he wants to write a series of studies and portraits under the title “Le cas de …” which can be translated as “The [...] case”, or “The file on [...]”. Honoré de Balzac, Jules Verne, Lev Tolstoy, Stendhal, and Lewis Carroll are the candidates for his “case-studies”. Eisenstein intends to analyze the individual consciousness of an artist in whose personality and work ambivalence is forcefully present as an expression of conformity to general laws. In this section he also wishes to investigate utopias as an expression of the same drive operating at the level of the collective unconscious. The word “start” appears in this substantial manuscript of 315 double-sided pages, which also includes material and excerpts collected during the eight years of work, for the first time on 25 June 1940 when Eisenstein comes across a text by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe about objective (gegenständliche) thinking. Before he had used Tolstoy’s term “concrete thinking” or Jonathan Swift’s “language of objects”, Eisenstein is writing a chapter about the sense of touch as a substitute for vision and all other senses when he reads Goethe’s “Significant Help Given by an Ingenious Turn of Phrase”. He tears the pages out of the book, and puts it in the folder with his notes. The new plan foregrounds expressive movement, visual representation, and character wherein he looks for a dynamic triad consisting of kinesis, mimesis, and psyche. At this time Eisenstein finds a German title for the book, Grundproblem — basic problem, which

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replaces the first version, Grundthema — basic theme. Whereas Grundthema was placed in the context of notes on bisexuality, Grundproblem appears in the notes on dialectic. Henceforth the concept develops in two directions and culminates in two volumes of his study - about the basic forms and the genesis of his theoretical model (both 1942–1943). Eisenstein discards the chapters on utopias and Lev Tolstoy and focuses the analysis of rhythm, expressive movement, ornament, silhouette drawings, metonymy, and metaphor around a new nucleus, namely, the construction of the plot. Ambivalence in language is developed in a chapter on riddles and magic rituals. From the ritual, which brings together magic, imitation, movement, gesture, and rhythm, Eisenstein can proceed to a situation that he understands as materialization of the trope in the plot. The analysis of a situation, like a slave and a king exchanging clothing, for example, is performed on many literary examples from E.T.A. Hoffmann, Lion Feuchtwanger, Heinrich Heine, William Shakespeare, and Balzac. Eisenstein wants to show that the figures of pre-logical thinking form the basis of the “appealing anecdote” in the plot. The perennial themes and characters are now not restricted to the search for a father but include blood vengeance (Hamlet) and incest (Oedipus). Eisenstein does not analyze Coleridge and Kipling’s Kim, as he had planned earlier, but instead examines the detective story in detail. The manuscript ends abruptly in the middle of a chapter on Balzac’s L’auberge rouge and Dostoyevskiy’s Brothers Karamazov, because Eisenstein had to begin shooting Ivan the Terrible. In January 1944 he begins a new volume, which he refers to as “Part 2”. Here Eisenstein thinks the entire concept over as an anthropological project. He returns to the sense of touch, animism, and chthonic myths. The body is now no longer a model but a direct source and material of art. The skin is analyzed as the surface for painting, the tattoo as the first auto portrait, the womb as a primal form and origin of architecture and ceramics. Bodily fluids and excretions (blood, urine, and excrement) head up the original color spectrum. The skeleton, as a model for structure, is substituted by the fluid body, and plasmatic, polymorphic qualities sought in the form. Expressive movement is studied taking the amoeba as an example. Disney becomes a central object of the analysis because in his work plasmatic qualities of form, color, and rhythm are combined with animism and totemism (Eisenstein 2012). The semantics of the basic visual forms are investigated in place of the plot; here, the circle is a central focus. Freud’s Oedipus is replaced by Otto Rank’s hypothesis concerning the primary trauma of birth. This is why Eisenstein does not use the search for a father as a perennial theme but instead the archaic myth of the deluge. Pars pro toto in painting, which was not treated at length in

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Method I, becomes a chapter of some length the series of paintings The Bathers by Degas; the composition is interpreted as embodying the basic drive to return to the womb, which is caused by birth trauma. In the previous volume, both struggle and the law of fusion of opposites are focal points; here the more archaic state of non-differentiation is evoked. The last notes for this book, which were written four days before Eisenstein died, begin with a quotation from Rigveda, which is about the original non-separation of existence and non-existence. In one of the last chapters, Eisenstein wanted to provide an overview of the school of Soviet film, embedded in one of his basic ideas that cinema represents the last stage in the development of the arts because it encompasses all experiments and forms (RGALI 1923–2– 244). In his last notes for Method, this project is replaced by another more ambitious plan. Eisenstein outlines a project on film history as an expression of the collective unconscious in which Russian and American film traditions play a role as well as the French surrealists and German film (RGALI 1923–2–268; Kracauer 1947). The analysis of the collective unconscious in film inspired by Siegfried Kracauer’s recently published book From Caligari to Hitler replaces the chapter on utopias, which was scrapped. Both titles, Grundproblem [Basic Problem] and Metod [Method], allude to discursive clichés. When philosophy became established as a discipline at German universities in the mid-nineteenth century, “Grundproblem” was one of the most frequent words used in the titles of academic works on the history of philosophy, aesthetics, and psychology.4 Whereas the word in Russian has a certain enigmatic quality, Grundproblem in German is just as much a cliché as the word “method” in Soviet discourse of the 1930s. However, the word could also have a programmatic meaning: method is not the same as theory, law, or canon; it designates an operative, open, and dynamic system that guides epistemological and practical activity. Eisenstein understands the concept to mean the specific way of thinking itself; thus his book does not provide a canon but an analytical formula, which can describe not only art but also thought. Whereas both titles, Grundproblem and Method, are distinguished by their firm place in contemporary discourse, the disciplines in which Eisenstein locates his project are not in the least traditional. In his diary — parallel to the catalogue of themes for Method I— Eisenstein notes the components that together form the basis of his theory.

4 The catalogue in the State Library in Berlin lists over 100 books published between 1880 and 1932 in which the word Grundproblem appears in the title.

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The list consists of the first letters of words: “Х Ec — Ecstasy D [ialectics] — on method (synopsis of dialectics). М [ysticism] — history of dialectics (mysticism as preliminary [stage]). I [ntroduction] Sup [erposition] — on the question of knowledge/epistemological devices? techniques. R [ecurrence] — (imitation). L [inguistics]” (RGALI 1923–2–1131, l. 31).5

The nodes that are the sources and elements of Method, and thus define it, bring together various gnoseological models (dialectics, mysticism), specific problems of aesthetics (imitation), and psychology (ecstasy, superposition) in a strangely sexualized epistemic structure. Ecstatic states have connections with mysticism, which Eisenstein defines as the preliminary stage of dialectics. At the beginning of the twentieth century mysticism enjoyed a revival and was a hot topic of discussion in European modernism. The image worlds in the dreams of St. Theresa of Avila and Juan de la Cruz are discussed by Charles Baudelaire (Les Salons, 1845) and Dmitriy Merezhkovskiy (Die spanischen Mystiker, 1939). The protagonists of Ulysses (1925) and La Nausée (1938) read Ignatius of Loyola and are well aware of the hallmarks of his psychological techniques. Eisenstein was introduced to various hermetic and mystic doctrines in 1920 by the Rosicrucian Boris Zubakin, who was also a big influence on the young Mikhail Bakhtin. Eisenstein collected literature on mysticism all his life, which shocked German left intellectuals.6 In his relationship with Konstantin Stanislavskiy, who had discovered yoga techniques for his acting method before Eisenstein did, there is jealousy: Eisenstein does not interpret Stanislavskiy with reference to Buddhism, but with reference to Loyola’s mental Exercises. In Eisenstein’s understanding, the comic is a mirror image of ecstasy. He is not interested in classic texts of the early twentieth century on humour (by Bergson or Freud), but primarily in grotesque Mexican humour that is drug-induced: vacilada. “Vacilada is argot for the hilarious trance caused by marihuana” (Brenner 1929: 180). Eisenstein had experienced and studied this phenomenon while in Mexico. Further, the passages he quotes from Baudelaire’s Les paradis artificiels of

5 Eisenstein uses Ya (Yazykoznanie for Linguistics), the last letter of the alphabet.

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1860 (Baudelaire 1946) are all concerned with the particular kind of hilarity associated with taking opium. Perhaps Eisenstein became aware of these passages through reading Entwicklungspsychologie by Heinz Werner, who quotes from Baudelaire frequently. “D [ialectics]” is understood primarily as the fusion of opposites; perhaps this is why mysticism is defined as its preliminary stage. One foundation of mysticism doctrine is the notion of the “opposites falling together into one”, for which Nicholas of Cusa suggested the term coincidentia oppositorum. The intention was to describe a paradox phenomenon of this unity, by which opposites still remain opposites. Only this bipolar state allows describing the phenomenon of God or the basis of existence. As the source, which introduced him to bipolarity, Eisenstein names Otto Weininger’s book Geschlecht und Charakter, Gender and Character he read in 1920 (RGALI 1923–2–1109, 133). Eisenstein was not interested in Weininger’s apocalyptic predictions but in the anthropological interpretation of male–female as the dialectical basis of our culture and knowledge. He was fascinated by the notion of androgyny, which travelled from Plato via the alchemists to Emanuel Swedenborg and was celebrated in Russian symbolist circles. Eisenstein nourished his notions about androgyny from the cabbala and fictional and ethnographic works: Ernest Crawley’s The Mystic Rose (1902), Das Zweigeschlechterwesen (1928) of Josef Winthuis, Balzac’s novella Seraphita (that popularized Swedenborg’s ideas and presented them in the form of a love story), and novels by Joséphin Péladan. He quotes from Vasiliy Rozanov and his book Ljudi lunnogo sveta (People of the Moonlight, 1913), which is understandable: Rozanov understands bisexuality as an epistemological, not an ontological, category, Eisenstein turns dialectics into a sexualized and anthropological concept by interpreting dialectics as a mystical coincidentia oppositorum and as embodiment of the male–female in androgyny: “Dialectics is a projection into consciousness (in a philosophical conception) of the bisexuality of our structure. The legends about the breaking apart of the sexes. Bisexuality as a remnant — as a memory of an existing phenomenon of bisexuality ([Adam’s] rib and the separation of Eve)” (Diary, 10.III–22.VIII. 1931; Mexico, RGALI; 1923–2–1123, l. 182). The ancient myths provide the material to understand the phenomenon of unity: “The most archaic type of “unity in the universe” — close to our sexually undifferentiated forefathers; the separation of Ad[am] and

6 Videotaped recollections of Hans Feld, archive of the Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek, Berlin.

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Eve, Plato’s being, the story of Lilith and the two people who were joined at their backs (in cabbala) — is actually closer to the vegetative phenomenon. Here I shall have to insert facts from the biological drama before the evolution of the sexes — after [Charles Stockard] The Physical Basis of Personality [New York: W. W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1931]. For example, the question of same-sex twins, who develop from one egg [...] Genius — is a person who fills the dialectic development of the universe and can engage with it. Bisexuality as a physiological pre-condition must be present in all creative dialectics” (RGALI; 1923–2–1123, l.. 138–139.). Eisenstein notes these thoughts in his diary and then writes a letter to Magnus Hirschfeld, dated 23 May 1931, and asks him for proof of Hegel’s bisexuality.7 Eisenstein’s ideas about conflict, or struggle, are similarly sexualized. The books about conflict that he consults are not confined to Marxist interpretations, such as Friedrich Engel’s Dialektik der Natur, which he reads in 1926 in a recently published Russian translation. In 1930/1931 he studies The Philosophy of Conflict (1919) by the British sexual psychologist Henry Havelock Ellis. In Eisenstein’s notes there is a frequently mentioned thought about the conflict-laden harmony in a work of art, which is based on bipolarity, on the union of opposites, which strive “upward” and “downward”.8 The reference to Ellis makes one suspect that this state should not be interpreted as a description of ecstatic, mystic, or dialectic unity, but as an orgasm, which is defined in Method as a short-lived but the ‘most common’ transition to ecstasy (something for everyday use)— attainable repeatedly and regularly. Recurrence and imitation stand at the golden section in Eisenstein’s schema. Elsewhere, recurrence is for him inseparable from rhythm and imitation. For as he states in his text “Imitation as Mastery” (1929), the art of the modern age, which includes his works, does not imitate the form but the fundamental structure, that is, the rhythmic organization. With reference to film, this is not the pictorial representation, but the ideogram of motion (Eisenstein 1989: 46–48). These two phenomena are also connected to ecstasy and mysticism. Loyola’s Exercises propose achieving an ecstatic state through rhythmic repetition. In the first third of the twentieth century rhythm appears to be a universal remedy for solving all problems. Economists, psychologists, philosophers, and artists all have high praise for rhythm.

7 The draft of the letter is in Eisenstein’s diary, published in Eisenstein 1998: 96-97. 8 “The dialectics of an artwork is based on a highly interesting polarity. The effect of an artwork derives from the fact that a contradictory process is at work in it: the impetuous, progressive, striving upward to higher mental levels of consciousness and at the same time in the form of penetrating levels of deepest sensual thought.” (Eisenstein 1988: 146)

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They declare it to be a mediator between nature and art, which safeguards the aesthetic perception and helps to overcome the fragmentation so celebrated in modern art. Rhythmic principles are sought in the space (Vasiliy Kandinskiy) and movement (Max Reinhardt, Vsevolod Meyerhold), in the awareness of poetry, music, and film (Hans Richter’s Rhythmus 21, Leopold Survage’s Rhythme coloré). In 1919 Osip Brik writes Zvukovye povtory (Repetition of Sound) and in 1929 Andrei Belyy Ritm kak dialektika (Rhythm as Dialectics). Eisenstein quotes from René Fülöp-Miller’s book Die Phantasiemaschine and Ernst Kretschmer’s Medizinischer Psychologie, where the effect of rhythm is explained through vegetative-somatic functions of the human organism. Eisenstein’s fascination with biological nature of rhythmic effects seems to be very close to Nietzsche’s determination of aesthetic values and categories as biological as manifested in his concept of Dionysian intoxication (Rausch) (Barck 2000: 386–388). Eisenstein, whose notion of ecstasy resembles the physiological state of intoxication, is not so radical. Rhythm and repetition he takes as a model for imitation and explains it with reference to the nature of aesthetic perception. Rhythm is their basis because Eisenstein sees nature, humans, and artistic work as a circle that guarantees the union of the cosmic, biological, and social. Eisenstein makes first notes and selects quotations on rhythm for Method after having read Wilhelm Reich’s essay on the orgasm. In 1934 Eisenstein contacts Reich and asks him for a copy of his book on orgasm in which rhythm is investigated. Reich’s reply is enthusiastic: “I was particularly pleased to hear from a leading comrade in the artistic field that art has a great deal to do with the central problem of the living substance, with orgasm.” He sends Eisenstein the book plus some issues of the journal that he publishes in exile in the Netherlands and also gives his views on Eisenstein’s Potemkin: “In Potemkin one is completely overcome by its rhythm, which is a direct continuation of the biological- sexual basic rhythm. As far as I am able to judge, the rational thoughts of communism are most effective in film when they are linked in a good way with our biological rhythm.” (Eisenstein 1984: 254) The French term “superposition” does not fit in with the sexualized concepts discussed above (dialectics, mysticism, ecstasy, recurrence, rhythm). Eisenstein had investigated this peculiarity of perception and thinking in his text “The Dialectical Approach to Film Form” (1929), which was to be included in the projected Spherical Book. The phenomenon of superposition, which was observed in stereoscopy, drew attention to the differences between natural perception and perception via technical apparatus. In general it was attributed to the de-stabilization in the understanding of subjectivity (Crary 1990). Eisenstein, however, sees superposition as a creative potential of human

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thought processes, which continually re-structures the “imprints and impressions”. It is these reflections that help Eisenstein to see montage as something non-linear: montage is not realized by a successive sequence of images but consists in a series of superpositions, “[...] in fact successive elements are not positioned side by side, but on top of one another. For the concept (feeling) of movement arises in the process of superposition of the retained impression of the first position of the object and the position of the object that is seen next [...] The discrepancy between the contours of the first image memorized and the image that is perceived next — the conflict between them — creates the feeling of movement [...] The eye follows the direction of an element. It retains the visual impression, which then clashes with following the direction of the second element.” (Eisenstein 1989a) The technique of superposition causes the perception of three- dimensionality and is the origin of the illusion of movement in film projection and the image (= symbol). When two variables of an order are superposed, something arises that opens up access to a higher dimension: the one picture plus the other sum up to an image, the one image plus the other sum up to an abstract concept. The impression is two-dimensional, the imagination is three-dimensional. The concept must include a temporal, fourth dimension. This concept not only interprets the montage, but also re-interprets the image in the film — it exists in the process of remembering and forgetting, and the perception of the image functions as interaction between the memory of what has just disappeared and the forgetting of what was just seen. Thus not only the origin of the illusion of movement in film, but film itself is understood as materializations of the human memory. Symbol and concept are linguistic phenomena that mean a change of dimension (image → word), and Eisenstein’s reflections on montage always end with his reflections on the nature of film language. Thus it is not coincidental that his list of “sources and components” ends with “L [inguistics]”. Eisenstein is familiar with all contemporary trends and developments in linguistics. Eisenstein’s interest in cases where language comes up against its own limitations leads him to the work of Fritz Mautner, who developed a model whereby the world is doubled in language, which in principle cannot perform its task of rendering reality because there is no analogy between the statement and the object of reference. Eisenstein has his doubts about this radical position and turns to Karl Bühler, who also works on the structure of thought and verbalization of vision. Eisenstein’s manuscript contains a typewritten translation of a chapter out of Karl Bühler’s Sprachtheorie. Die Darstellungsfunktion der Sprache (1934), which examines the connections between language and film from the standpoint of representational

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functions. Bühler’s interest in this was originally aroused by his study of jumps which Eisenstein compares with the spatial breaks in film montage (from the close-up to the long shot) and the movements of an observer around an object. Both cannot be continuous because they are repeatedly interrupted by pauses and diversions. In language breaks are bridged by syntax, and in film by dynamics. In Bühler’s opinion the breaks are not caused by technology but by the nature of perception, and in support of his view he analyses texts by Homer, which he interprets like montage lists. This approach definitely influences Eisenstein’s analyses of literary descriptions from works by Aleksander Pushkin, Guy de Maupassant, and Lev Tolstoy.9 While reading, Eisenstein takes note of the spatial fragmentation, the framing, the movement of the eye as manipulated by the author through the details in a close-up or a long shot, and unmotivated changes of the perspective. Yet Eisenstein does not subscribe to Bühler’s conclusion, namely, that linguistic representation is always richer than a film’s due to the compact character of a linguistic unit. Bühler also compares the skills of a film viewer to those of a detective, who has to read the visual clues and construct a causal relationship between them. Eisenstein compares himself to a pathologist, which is similar to Benjamin’s surgeon. He also refers to Salieri, to whom he intends to dedicate his unpublished book, as a pathologist. Eisenstein says that the post-mortem, analysis by dissection, always results in a static approach, but this is overcome in his studies by dynamics coming from film. As a scientific frame of reference Eisenstein uses paleontology, which investigates life in bygone periods through analyzing fossils. Georges Cuvier, whose name appears in the very first notes for Method I., played an important role in establishing the discipline of paleontology and became famous for his reconstructions of extinct animals from fossil remains. In Eisenstein’s Method double readings constitute one track and this basis becomes the link in order to relate the image (a fragment) to the context, a dynamic narrative (plot) and unite both thought paradigms. The paradigms, which determine intuitive and rational insights, are foregrounded by Carlo Ginzburg in his analysis of an evidential paradigm. The first type includes the interpretation of a trail by a hunter, of symptoms by a psychoanalyst, and of clues by a detective. This type of knowledge is connected with a hypothetical paradigm of medicine, which always deals with symptoms and never with transparency. The exact, rational knowledge, worked out for science, excludes the individual view for this makes mathematical

9 The most well-known of these texts is “Pushkin, the montageur” (Eisenstein 1995: 109-223).

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classification impossible. In this case, numbers and data are interpreted but not feelings produced by the senses, like a smell or a musical tone. This is why physiognomy and graphology, which belong to the first paradigm, lose their scientific status in the twentieth century. However, when the statistical method (such as Bertillon’s) fails and is unable to grasp the subject (in the case of criminology, the criminal), a method of identification emerges that is based on a trace (i.e. the fingerprint), which reproduces the evidential paradigm. Semiotics also belongs to this paradigmatic world, whose origins could be dated back to the 1870s (Ginzburg 1989: 96–125). Eisenstein follows the first paradigm. He explores the sciences that do not provide exact descriptions — paleontology, psychoanalysis, graphology, physiognomy, ethnography, and anthropology — and with their aid he interprets gestures, intonation, and stories that are based on pars pro toto. Among the traces that Eisenstein attempts to decipher and classify are formal structures of language and thinking in images — pre- logical thought. In fact paleontology is of fundamental importance to the project because Eisenstein not only analyses fragments, he produces text mainly in the form of fragments. The fragmentary nature of the project even permeates the syntax, for parts of sentences are missing or marked with dots, brackets and dashes, which convey intonation and gestures. The text consists of notes, diary entries, analyses and quotations from scientific literature and illustrated journals, pulp fiction, belletristic literature, and political commentaries. The text material by other authors in five different languages becomes a part of Eisenstein’s own text, just like the glued-in pictures, photos, drawings, and pictograms. Fragmentation and montage strongly characterize thinking in the new, twentieth century. Eisenstein, a master of dialectical montage in film, carries this principle over into theory. His model attempts to outwit epistemological instability through re-contextualization and interpretation. The collection of selected quotations is taken from a variety of sources and disciplines that are self-exclusive, like psychology and psychoanalysis or mysticism and Marxism, for which Eisenstein finds a new, surprising context and new references. Thus Eisenstein, who with his intertextuality, referentiality, incompleteness of discourse, arbitrary fragmentation, repetition, and shifts exhibits all the characteristics of a post-modernist, brings us back to an interpretative narrative. To understand the text in Method requires special skills. The reader must move through the pages like through the labyrinth of a hypertext, follow unmotivated changes of perspective and associative jumps, read drawings and pictograms, and instead of a causal logic follow the argumentation of the pictorial logic of the author; that is, the reader must read a scholarly study according to rules that are otherwise

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only applied to poetic texts or films. Eisenstein does not see this as any kind of rupture. He does not write linearly or diachronically, but spirally, spherically, and simultaneously; he writes in the way that thinking often functions. The ideal form of this publication would be a hypertext, which would retain the virtual simultaneity of all the references, but which would also make it impossible simply to follow the flow of the text. The double nature of the old and the new forms threaten to break the book apart from within. This makes reading the work both a tortuous and a fascinating experience, as its author intended: the beginning and end should be reversed and contradictions united into a symbiosis of information and deformation. For Eisenstein, the advent of film was the prerequisite for creating a new kind of theory of art, thanks to the analytical nature of the film itself. Taking new forms, it can provoke the reader, into embracing new models of perception. The film art reveals the structure that remains hidden in other arts., It enables one to manipulate the direction, the attention, and the meaning, making the analysis productive. Close-up, double exposure, and reverse movement are film tricks, but Eisenstein understands them as reifications of figures of thought. Above all, these figures determine the thinking of the author. Method is a product of the visualization and cinematographization of thought, a further experimental, ecstatic, and dialectical film by Eisenstein.

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Barck, Karl-Heinz 2000. Ästhetik/Ästhetisches, in Ästhetische Grundbegriffe, edited by Karl-Heinz Barck et al., vol. 1, Stuttgart: Metzler . Baudelaire, C. 1946 Les paradis artificiels. Paris: J. Vautrain. Bohn, Anna. 2003. Film und Macht: Zur Kunsttheorie Sergei M. Eisensteins, 1930–1948. Munich, diskurs film Verlag Schaudig & Ledig GbR, vol. 16. Brenner, Anita. 1929. Idols behind Altars. New York: Payson & Clark. Bulgakowa, Oksana. 1996. Sergej Eisenstein: drei Utopien. Architekturentwürfe zur Filmtheorie. Berlin: PotemkinPress. Crary, Jonathan. 1990. Techniques of the Observer. On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Covarrubias, Miguel. 1937. The Island of Bali. New York: A. A. Knopf. Daudet, Léon. 1930. Les Rythmes de l’homme. Cancer et malaises. Paris, Bernard Grasset. Eisenstein, Sergei. 1967. Izbrannye proizvedeniia v 6 tomakh, vol. 3. Moscow : Iskusstvo. ------1984. Eisenstein. Schriften, edited by Hans-Joachim Schlegel, vol. 4. Munich: Hanser. ------1988. Das dynamische Quadrat. Schriften zum Film, edited by Oksana Bulgakova and Dietmar Hochmuth. Leipzig, Reclam. ------1989a. “Dramaturgie der Filmform” in Herausforderung Eisenstein, edited by Oksana Bulgakowa. Berlin: Akademie der Künste der DDR.

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------1989b. “Nachahmung als Beherrschung”, in Herausforderung Eisenstein, edited by Oksana Bulgakowa, 46–48. Berlin: Akademie der Künste der DDR. ------1989c. “Über den Kriminalroman”, in Herausforderung Eisenstein, edited by Oksana Bulgakowa, 13–23. Berlin: Akademie der Künste der DDR. ------1995. “Pushkin, the montageur”, in Sergei Eisenstein, Selected Works. Towards the Theory of Montage, Vol. 2, edited by Richard Taylor, 109–223. London: BFI, Bloomington, Indiana: University Press. ------1997–98. “My art in life”, Kinovedcheskie zapiski 36/37: 13–23. ------1998. Eisenstein und Deutschland, edited by Oksana Bulgakowa. Berlin: Henschel. ------2012. Sergei Eisenstein, Disney, edited by Oksana Bulgakowa and Dietmar Hochmuth. Berlin: PotemkinPress. Fülöp-Miller, René. 1931. Die Phantasiemaschine. Eine Saga der Gewinnsucht. Berlin, Wien, Leipzig: Paul Zsolnay Verlag. Ginzburg, Carlo. 1989. Clues, Myths, & Historical Method. Translated by John and Anne Tedeschi. Baltimore: John Hopkins UP. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. 1995. “Scientific Studies”, in Goethe: The Collected Works, edited and translated by Douglas Miller, 39–41. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press. Guilbert, Y. 1928 . L’Art de chanter une chanson. Paris: Grasset Granet, Marcel. 1934. La pensée chinoise. Paris: Alcan. Iser, Wolfgang. 1999. “Interpretationsperspektiven moderner Kunsttheorie”. in Theorien der Kunst, edited by Dieter Henrich and Wolfgang Iser. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp. Ivanov, Vyačeslav V. 1977. Ocherki po istorii semiotiki v SSSR. Moscow: Nauka. Kleiman, Naum. 2002. Metod. 2 volumes. Moscow: Muzey kino. Kracauer, Siegfried. 1947. From Caligari to Hitler. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. ------1995. The Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays. Translated by Thomas Y. Levin. Cambridge, London: Harvard UP. Kretschmer, Ernst. 1922. Medizinische Psychologie. Ein Leitfaden für Studium und Praxis. Leipzig: J.A. Barth. Kretschmer, Ernst. 1927. Meditsinskaya psikhologiya. Moscow: Zhizn’ i znanie. Kuleshov, Lev. 1929. Iskusstvo kino — moy opyt. Moscow: Teakinopechat. Lévy-Bruhl, Lucien. 1922. La mentalité primitive. Paris: Les Presses universitaires de France. ------1930. Pervobytnoe myshlenie. Moscow: Ateist. Pudovkin, Vsevolod. 1926. Kinorezhissur i kinomaterial. Moscow: Teakinopechat. RGALI (Russian State Archive for Art and Literature), Moscow The four numbers in the endnote citations refer to the document’s location. 1: Depository (fond); 2: Inventory (opis’); 3: Administrative unit (edinitsa khraneniya); 4: page (list). Timoshenko, Semen. 1926. Iskusstvo kino: Montazh fil’ma. Leningrad: Academia. Weininger, Otto. 1903. Geschlecht und Charakter. Eine prinzipielle Untersuchung. Wien, Leipzig: Braumüller. Werner, Heinz. 1926. Einführung in die Entwicklungspsychologie. Leipzig: J.A. Barth. Winthuis, Josef. 1928. Das Zweigeschlechterwesen bei den Zentralaustraliern und anderen Völkern. Leipzig: C. L. Hirschfeld. Yampolskiy, Mikhail. 2009. “Ot Proletkul’ta k Platonu. Eizenshtein i proekt smyslovoi samoorganizatsii zhizni”, Kinovercheskie zapiski 89/90: 45–90. Zabrodin, Vladimir. 2005. Eizenshtein: popytka teatra. Moscow: NLO.

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Published in Tangential Points Publication Series (Crucible Studio, Aalto University, 2016) ISBN 103204787103ABC

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