-----Original Message-----
From: ESRCs East West Programme [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of Serguei A. Oushakine
Sent: Sunday, May 19, 2013 2:37 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Seeking volunteers to translate writings of Alexander Bogdanov --
Publishing Project


http://bogdanovlibrary.org

The Historical Materialism Book Series at Brill <
http://www.brill.com/publications/historical-materialism-book-series > has
initiated a project to publish ten volumes of English translations of the
major theoretical and polemical works of the Russian Social-Democrat,
Alexander Bogdanov (Alexander A Malinovsky, 1873-1928).

Alexander Bogdanov was a co-founder, with Lenin of the Bolshevik fraction of
the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, and he played a leadership role
in the RSDLP during the Revolution of 1905. After the revolution, he split
with Lenin over both theoretical and practical issues, and his polemics with
Lenin provide a fascinating glimpse into Russian Social Democracy between
the Revolutions of 1905 and 1917. Bogdanov played no political role in the
October Revolution, but afterwards he was an influential figure in Soviet
culture. He founded and led the 'Proletarian Culture' movement from 1918-20;
he helped found and was a member of the Socialist (later Communist) Academy;
he was a faculty member in Moscow State University's Institute of Scientific
Philosophy; and he was the director of Russia's first institute for blood
transfusion in the last two years of his life.

Bogdanov was first and foremost a historical materialist. His life project
was to express the fundamental principles of historical materialism in what
he felt was the most up-to-date scientific terms. He believed that the task
of philosophy was not to contemplate the world, but to change it. He
believed that the motive force of historical evolution originated in labour.
He looked forward to a collectivist society and a culture created by the
working class. Early in his writing career, he believed that the empiricist
philosophy of Ernst Mach and Richard Avenarius -- reinterpreted from the
standpoint of labour collectivism -- best served as the foundation of a
materialist view of the world. Later, as his political activity subsided, he
attempted to develop a scientific approach toward understanding the nature
of future collectivist society and the necessary cultural, social, economic
and political changes involved in any attempt to bring about such a society.
His contribution to the analysis of culture, long before 'cultural studies'
came into existence, was enormous and his influence in articulating the new
approach of 'ideological science' was significant. Finally, Bogdanov's idea
of tektology, later discovered in the theory of systems, was a bold attempt
to theorize organizational structures as such, ultimately resulting in the
theorization of socialism as the ultimate goal of human collective
existence.

The General Editors of the Bogdanov Library are John Biggart, Evgeni V
Pavlov, and David G Rowley, and the Advisory Board includes Craig Brandist,
Georgi Gloveli, McKenzie Wark and James White.

The projected volumes are as follows:

Volume 1: Empiriomonism -- This volume will contain all three volumes of
Bogdanov's _Empiriomonism_, a collection of essays which express his first
fully developed reformulation of historical materialism on the basis of
Richard Avenarius's Empirio-criticism.

Volume 2: Essays in Social Psychology (1901-1906) -- This is a collection of
essays originally published in 1904 and revised and enlarged in 1906.
Among the key ideas that Bogdanov develops is the principle of
'socio-morphism' -- that forms of thought are modeled on forms of labour and
economic relationships. He also carries on polemics with other philosophical
trends.

Volume 3: Political Writings (1904 to 1928) -- This volume will include some
of Bogdanov's general writings on liberalism and Menshevism, but will be
primarily devoted to tracing the divergence between Lenin and Bogdanov which
culminated in the formation of the Vpered group of the RSDLP which contested
Lenin's claim to be the standard bearer of true Bolshevism.
Materials will include Bogdanov's analysis of the split within Bolshevism;
his writings on the First World War (where he provided the first definition
of 'War Communism'); his commentaries on the February Revolution and on
Lenin's seizure of power and his interpretation of social and political
developments after October 1917, notably his writings on the emergence in
Soviet Russia of a 'new class'.

Volume 4: Our Disagreements: Against Plekhanov and Lenin -- This volume will
provide the philosophical aspect of Bogdanov's break with Lenin. It will
contain _The Adventures of a Certain Philosophical School_, _The Fall of the
Great Fetishism_ (which includes Bogdanov's response to Lenin's _Materialism
and Empiriocriticism_), and a selection of shorter essays on philosophy.

Volume 5: The Cultural Tasks of Our Time: Essays on Proletarian Culture
-- Bogdanov's key writings on Proletarian Culture, including _The Cultural
Tasks of Our Time_, selections from _On Proletarian Culture, 1904-1924_, and
various articles from the journal _Proletarian Culture_ and elsewhere.

Volume 6: The Science of Social Consciousness -- The basis of this volume
will be the 1914 short book called _The Science of Social
Consciousness: A
Short Course of Ideological Science in Questions and Answers_ that lays the
foundation for Bogdanov's theory of ideology (or 'spiritual culture').  
This
will be a companion volume to the volume on 'cultural tasks'.

Volume 7: The Tenth Anniversary of Excommunication from Marxism -- This
volume will include: Selections from _The Tenth Anniversary of
Excommunication from Marxism_ (1914), selections from Bogdanov's unpublished
autobiographical manuscripts, from his biographical observations concerning
other revolutionary figures, and from unpublished letters and
communications.

Volume 8: Philosophy of Living Experience -- _The Philosophy of Living
Experience. Materialism, Empiriocriticism, Dialectical Materialism,
Empiriomonism, the Science of the Future. Popular Outlines_ (1913; 1923)
with the appendix to the 1923 edition, 'From Religious to Scientific
Monism'. This is Bogdanov's summative statement of his philosophy that
anticipates his ultimate philosophical achievement: universal organisational
science.

Volume 9: Tektology: Universal Organisational Science -- This will contain
all three parts of _Tektologiia: Vseobshchaia organizatsionnaia nauka_, a
pioneering work in systems theory, in which Bogdanov proposed that all
physical, biological and human sciences could be unified by treating them as
systems of relationships and by seeking the organisational principles that
underlie all such systems.

Volume 10: Writings on Socialism -- This volume will contain a variety of
articles and books on socialism and political economy, including 'On
Socialism', _New World_, 'Socialism in the Present', _Problems of
Socialism_, _The Socialism of Science: The Scientific Tasks of the
Proletariat_, selections from _A Short Course of Economic Science_, and
economic essays from the 1920s.

The translation of Volumes One, Three, Four, Five, Seven, and Eight are
already in progress. The editors are eagerly seeking volunteers to translate
the remaining volumes. Potential translators should contact any of the
General Editors: John Biggart ([log in to unmask]), Evgeni Pavlov
([log in to unmask]), or David Rowley ([log in to unmask]).

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