Instead of an editorâs introduction, I am including a brief autobiography of Alexander Bogdanov, an appreciation of Bogdanovâs intellectual achievements by V.A. Bazarov, one of his closest friends and associates and a philosopher in his own right, and a brief discussion of the original text and my translation of it.
The history of the text is as follows:
Bogdanovâs first two philosophical works, Osnovnye elementy istoricheskogo vzgliada na prirodu, and Poznanie s istoricheskogo tochki zreniia, had been written for a popular audience. As Bogdanov suggested in his autobiography, he wanted to provide a whole worldview for workers who had accepted the principles of historical materialism and Marxâs critique of capitalism. He was sharply criticised, however, by certain Russian revisionist Marxists for writing too simply; they accused him of philosophical ignorance and for glossing over profound issues of epistemology and ontology.1
Bogdanov responded with two philosophically sophisticated articles laying out the foundations of his neutral monist philosophy of knowing and being, âIdeal poznaniia (Empiriokrititsizm i empiriomonism)â [âThe Ideal of Cognition (Empiriocriticism and Empiriomonism)â]2 and âZhiznâ i psikhika. (Empiriomonizm v uchenii o zhini)â [âLife and the Psyche. (Empiriomonism in the theory of life)â],3 both of which were published in 1903 in Russiaâs leading philosophical journal, Voprosy filosofii i psikhologii [Problems of Philosophy and Psychology]. They became the first two chapters of Volume One of Empiriomonism to which he added a third chapter âUniversumâ, which was written specifically to complete Volume One, published in 1904.
Book One has considerable inner unity. Its task, according to Bogdanov, was âto find that path along which it would be possible to systematically reduce all the gaps in our experience to the principle of continuityâ (p. 130), and he identifies three gaps: the gap between âspiritâ and âmatterâ, the gap between âconsciousnessâ and âphysiologyâ, and the gap in the field of experiences that separates the individual from the universal and individuals from one another. The three chapters deal with these gaps in succession.
Book Two (published in 1905) was less unified. The first chapter (4 in the present volume), âThe âThing-in-Itselfâ from the Perspective of Empiriomonismâ, was a response to the charge from the camp of the âorthodoxâ Marxists that Bogdanov was an idealist. The second chapter (5), âPsychical Selection (Empiriomonism in the Theory of the Psyche)â, which had been published in Voprosy filosofii i psikhologii in 1904,4 deals with the problem of how a physical brain can acquire knowledge of the external world through purely physical processes. In the third chapter (6), âTwo Theories of the Vital-Differentialâ, Bogdanov criticises Avenariusâs concept of the âvital-differentialâ and defends his own understanding of it.
All the chapters of Book Three were written specifically for it and had not previously been published elsewhere. It was published in 1906, after the relaxation of censorship after the Revolution of 1905, and this permitted Bogdanov to write much more openly about issues connected with Marxism. In the âPreface to Book Threeâ (Chapter 7 in the present volume) Bogdanov recounts how his philosophical thought developed and criticises Plekhanovâs metaphysical materialism. In the second chapter (8), âSocial Selection (Foundations of the Method)â, Bogdanov takes up the question of causation in social change, applying the same energetical principles to social forms that he had applied to mental forms in âPsychical Selectionâ. In the third chapter (9), âHistorical Monismâ, Bogdanov demonstrates how his conception of social selection applies to the relationship between base and superstructure. What Marx refers to as âthe material forces of productionâ, Bogdanov calls âthe technology of productive labourâ, and what Marx refers to as âthe production of material lifeâ, Bogdanov calls âassimilation of energy from the environmentâ. But for both Marx and Bogdanov, the process is the same: the mode of production conditions social, political, and intellectual life. The fourth chapter (10), âThe Self-Awareness of Philosophy (The Origin of Empiriomonism)â, provides what Bogdanov terms a âsocial-geneticâ, empiriomonistic explanation of empiriomonism itself. That is, he analyses the social basis of his own philosophy in order to understand how it is ideologically derivative of deeper-lying social conditions. He concludes that âpoint of view, while not being âmaterialistâ in the narrow sense of this word, belongs to the same order as âmaterialistâ systems, and it is consequently the ideology of the âproductive forcesâ of the technological processâ (p. 407).
Book One of Empiriomonism was first published in 1904.5 A second edition was published in 19056 and a third in 1908.7 Book Two was published in 1905,8 and a second edition was published in 1906.9 Book Three was published in 1906.10 This translation is based on the 1905 editions of Books One and Two and the 1906 edition of Book Three. I compared these editions with the 2003 edition edited by V.N. Sadovskii,11 based on the latest editions of each volume, and, with the exception of the omission of five paragraphs from Chapter Five, Part A, Section Two (which I have included in my translation), I found only minor stylistic changes and typographical corrections.
Any attempt at a word-for-word translation of one language into another is out of the question, and this is certainly true for Russian and English. The Russian language is gendered and highly inflected, and word order is not as important to meaning as it is in English. Bogdanov takes full advantage of this feature of Russian, and native English speakers who are ingrained with the patterns of English word order can find his prose very hard going. In the process of reproducing Bogdanovâs ideas in idiomatic English, I have reordered and reformulated his sentences, and I have freely divided his sometimes very long and complex sentences into shorter ones. In addition, where Bogdanov uses nouns to indicate action, I generally use verbs. Where his repeated use of pronouns might be confusing, I substitute the noun to which the pronoun refers. If this is not a âword-for-wordâ translation, however, I have done my best to make it an âidea-for-ideaâ translation.
The editors of the Bogdanov Library have decided not to interrupt the flow of the text by inserting transliterated Russian words in brackets after problematic terms, and I will therefore discuss problems in terminology here.
Bogdanov does not employ arcane or idiosyncratic philosophical terminology. Regarding the basic empiriocriticist/empiriomonist understanding of human cognition, he adopts Ernst Machâs vocabulary. Thus, âbodiesâ (tela in Russian, Körper in German) that make up physical reality are decomposed into âelementsâ (elementy, Elemente), that is, separate âsensationsâ (oshchushcheniia, Empfindungen), which are also often referred to as âpsychical imagesâ (predstavleniia, Vorstellungen). It has been easy to maintain a one-to-one translation of terms associated with perception: âperceptionâ (vospriatie), âimpressionâ (vpechatlenie), âsenseâ (chuvstvo), âfeelingâ (chuvstvovanie), âsensationâ (oshchushchenie).
The greatest difficulty presented by Bogdanovâs terminology is not that he uses terms in idiosyncratic ways, but that he often uses the same term to mean a number of different things, sometimes in a philosophical sense and sometimes in an everyday sense. A case in point is predstavlenie. When he discusses perception as it relates to empiriocriticism, Bogdanov uses predstavlenie as a translation of Machâs Vorstellung. âPresentationâ was the English term that was used to translate Vorstellung at the time, but it has fallen out of use, and I have chosen to translate predstavlenie â when used to mean Vorstellung â as âpsychical imageâ. However, Bogdanov often also uses predstavlenie simply to mean âconceptionâ and ârepresentationâ, and in those cases I translate it accordingly. Thus, when âpsychical imageâ appears in the text it is always a translation of predstavlenie, but it is not the only translation of predstavlenie.
Sviazâ presents the same problem. In everyday language, it can mean âtieâ, âbondâ, âconnectionâ, âlinkâ, ârelationshipâ, etc., while, as a technical term in Russian philosophy, sviazâ means the interdependent and mutually-conditioned interrelationships of physical phenomena. When Bogdanov uses sviazâ in a non-technical sense, I translate it as either âtieâ or âconnectionâ. When Bogdanov discusses the concept of causality, he employs the expression prichinnaia sviazâ, which I translate as âcausal relationshipâ (the standard English expression), and, therefore, whenever Bogdanov uses sviazâ in relation to the idea of causation, I translate it as ârelationshipâ. But when it is clear that Bogdanov has the technical philosophical usage of sviazâ in mind, I translate it as âinterconnectednessâ.
Bogdanovâs use of concepts drawn from Mach and Avenarius causes some ambiguity for translating German (and Russian) terms for âexperienceâ. In German, Erlebnis refers to a single event of consciousness and Bogdanov translated it as perezhivanie (which can also connote feeling, worry, anxiety, tribulation), while Erfahrung refers to the totality of a personâs conscious past and Bogdanov translated it as opyt (which can also connote experiment, trial, practice). English, however, uses âexperienceâ for both concepts. Works of psychology in English typically avoid this problem by using the word âsensationâ to mean a single event of consciousness, but I have reserved âsensationâ as the exclusive translation of oshchushchenie. Moreover, Bogdanov uses perezhivanie in three separate meanings: (1) a single sensory event; (2) a single conscious event (a necessary distinction, since some perezhivaniia occur outside of consciousness); and (3) a single episode in someoneâs life. I have found no satisfactory terms to translate these separate meanings (and, indeed, some usages are ambiguous), so I have translated opyt and perezhivanie as âexperienceâ and rely on the reader to understand the meaning from the context.
The term zakonomernostâ also has an everyday and a technical meaning. In ordinary usage, it means regularity, conformity to a pattern, obeying rules, etc. Dictionaries of philosophy, however, take zakonomernostâ to mean âconformity to the laws of natureâ consistent with the conception that physical reality is governed by cause and effect. This is indeed what Bogdanov had in mind, except that, whereas he conceived of the processes of the universe as invariably subject to cause and effect, he understood âlaws of natureâ to be human formulations, the truth of which is relative to its time. Consequently, although I translate zakonomernostâ with the word âregularityâ, the reader should keep in mind that what Bogdanov has in mind is the invariable regularity of the natural world in which nothing occurs without a cause and all occurrences have consequences. At the same time that Bogdanov was developing the philosophy of empiriomonism, Russiaâs revisionist, neo-Kantian Marxists used the word zakonomernostâ to mean âdeterminismâ.12
The same sort of caution to the reader is necessary for the term obshcheznachimostâ (for which the standard dictionary definition is âvalidityâ or âgeneral validityâ). I translate it as âsocial validityâ because of the explanation that Bogdanov himself provides in The Philosophy of Living Experience, where he says that obshcheznachimostâ is what Karl Marx meant by the phrase gesellschaftlich gültig in his discussion of commodity fetishism in Capital,13 and the standard English definition of gesellschaftlich gültig is âsocially validâ. However, readers should keep in mind that âsocially validâ does not mean that the objective world is somehow created by social agreement but that it is only received and understood by social agreement. In âBogdanov as a Thinkerâ above, V.A. Bazarov defines obshcheznachimostâ as âobjectivityâ and indicates that Bogdanov considers âthe regularities of natureâ to have âuniversal meaningâ. James D. White, one of the foremost authorities on Bogdanovâs thought, translates obshcheznachimostâ as âuniversal validityâ.14
It is a pleasure, once again, to thank Evgeni Pavlov for his continued encouragement and advice. He reviewed the entire manuscript and has been an invaluable reference for problems of translation. I am very grateful, as well, for Georgii Gloveliâs expert editing of âBogdanov as a Thinkerâ and for sharing it with me.
Peter Struve wrote a highly critical and dismissive review of Osnovnye elementy (G-d [P.B. Struve] 1899), and Nikolai Berdiaev treated Poznanie with similar disdain (Berdiaev 1902).
Bogdanov 1903a.
Bogdanov 1903b and 1903c.
Bogdanov 1904a. Incidentally, a detailed summary of this article was published in one of Americaâs leading philosophical journals, The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods. Bogdanoff 1906.
Bogdanov 1904b.
Bogdanov 1905a.
Bogdanov 1908.
Bogdanov 1905b.
Bogdanov 1906a.
Bogdanov 1906b.
Bogdanov 2003.
The question of determinism versus free will was a central point of contention between revolutionary Marxists (who stood behind historical materialism) and the neo-Kantian revisionists (who believed in free will and transcendent values). Thus, in his translation of the contributions of Marxist revisionists to the symposium, Problems of Idealism, Randall A. Poole has translated zakonomernostâ as âdeterminismâ. Poole 2003.
Bogdanov 2016, p. 215.
White 2018.