The Bogdanov Issue: Reply to My Critics

The Russian Review, vol. 49, 1990, pp. 457-65 The Bogdanov Issue: Reply to My Critics JOHNERICMAROT My essay [The Russian Review, July 1990] was an attemptto explain the Vperedistsplit, led by Bogdanov, from the Bolshevik faction of the RSDLP.In contrastto earlierinterpretations,I triedto show thatBogdanov did not partfrom Lenin over theirdifferencesof philosophy,orthodox Plekhanovist materialismversus Mach's empiriocriticism.Nor did they separatebecause Bogdanov dissentedfrom the Bolsheviks' decision to participatein the Duma, althoughit is true that Bogdanov and Lenin did assess that participationdifferently.I argued, instead, what they split over was their general political approachor outlook: specifically, over Bogdanov's desire to have the Bolsheviks place their emphasis on pedagogical/propagandistictasks. That did cause them to differ not only on how to assess participationin the Duma, but much more generallyon the value of the Bolsheviks' day-to-daywork in connectionwith the workers' mundanepracticalactivities, "wherethey were at." My concern with the Bolshevik-Vperedistsplit is part of a broader effort to understandBogdanov's ideas in relation to those of Lenin. My methodologicalpoint of departureis that the ideas of these men, and the several generations of intellectuals of which they are a part, are best grasped in relationshipto their political practice. This is because they were not concerned to solve intellectualproblemsqua intellectualproblems. They were, above all, concernedwith the Russianworkers' movement and helping that movement to develop fruitfully, and their ideas, however theoreticaland complex, were shapedfor this end. Specifically, theirideas were aimed at party-politicalorganizationsthroughwhich their connectionwith the workers'movementwas mediated.I do not deny that one can ask other questions about the ideas of these men; but, do assert that an absolutely indispensableway to understandthem-to be able to say in what ways they are similar,in what ways they differ,what distinctions are important-is by way of a detailed accountof the interrelationships of their ideas to theirpolitical interventions-political interventions such as led up to, broughtabout, and resultedfrom the Vperedist-Bolshevik split. I believe some of my centraldifferenceswith my critics can be 458 The RussianReview tracedto the primacyI give to these men's practicesas an indispensable, if not the only, key to understandingtheir ideas. My point of departurewas that the political unity of Bogdanov and Lenin in the Bolshevik leadershipfrom 1904 to 1909, despite their clear philosophicaldifferences, was predicatedon an overridingagreementon the tutelaryrole of the intellectualsin the Partyin helping the proletariat come to revolutionary Social Democratic consciousness, a conception they sharedwith most of the leading thinkersof West EuropeanDemocracy, as Aileen Kelly rightly recognizes. Andrzej Walicki [in the July 1990 Russian Review] devotes much space to spelling out differencesamong Lenin and Bogdanov and Western European Social Democratic leaders on the role of the intellectual. I agree, for the most part, with his accountof these differences,but do not agree with his assessmentof its relevance.For I was in no way attempting to argue that Bogdanov shared with Lenin, let alone with all the other EuropeanSocial Democraticthinkers, an identical view on the natureof and the reasons for the tutelaryrole of the intellectualsvis-a-vis the working class. My point was that, despite their differences,what was of overriding importancewas their agreementon the need for this tutelaryrole: most important,Lenin and Bogdanov agreed, as did the rest of European Social Democracy, that the workerscould not, out of their own activity, come to revolutionaryconsciousness. It was this point of agreementthat was central, and not theirdifferences,for it overrodetheirdifferencesand in practice broughtBogdanov and Lenin togetheron the need for a party like the Bolshevik party and in their common participationin thatparty. Walicki asserts that Bogdanov and Lenin were so sharplyopposed in theirunderstandingon the role of the intellectualsvis-a-vis the working class, that it drove them apart.Zenovia A. Sochor [TheRussianReview, July 1990] even claims thatBogdanov opposedLeninfundamentallyfrom the very beginningon the vanguardParty.Walickispecificallyarguesthat, for Bogdanov, all knowledge and truth is "derivedfrom praxis," from productivelabor and from the "differentforms of class struggle,"so that knowledge is "always relative, class-bound, sociologically determined and praxis-oriented."Walickithen goes on to say that, given Bogdanov's praxis-based epistemology, Bogdanov simply could not have held the view I attributeto him of the tutelaryrole of the intellectualsthroughthe Party, because "it could not be justified by [Bogdanov's] theories."He says the "verypossibility" (my emphasis) of this tutelaryrole "involves two assumptions:first, that it makes sense to talk about 'objective truth'; second, that such truth is accessible only to those people who have a properprofessional training."Since Bogdanov's philosophy was a "radical rejectionof both of these assumptions,"he simply could not have held Marot'sReply 459 the view I attributeto him. How then could they have worked together from 1904 to 1909 if they differed so radically, as Sochor and Walicki assert, on the Party and its tutelaryrole? Walicki finds this no problem. "In fact, this might be true about Bogdanov's practice but could not be justifiedby his theories."In otherwords, Bogdanov simply did not understandthe implicationsof his own viewpoint, or was so insufficientlycommitted to them that he acted against them in practice. I believe this sort of reasoning is also implicit throughoutSochor, who is preparedto find in Bogdanov's theories a "clear departurefrom the premises of WhatIs to Be Done?" regardingthe tutelaryrole of intellectuals. I find this sort of reasoning extremely perilous and difficultto justify. One discovers what one believes to be a crucial disagreementbetween individualsbased on one's own analysis of their texts; then, when their practicetends to bely this disagreement,ratherthan seek some further explanationas to how to reconcile the disparity,one simply asserts inconsistency between theory and practice. This sort of procedureis, in general, difficultto justify, for, as we all know, the relationshipbetween theory and practice-especially epistemology and practice!-is exceedingly elusive and certainly practice cannot be understoodto follow from theory as a logical deduction. What practicesdo and do not follow from a given theory is always a question of complex reasoningand argument. More specifically,given the ratherextreme sensitivityto the interrelationships between theory and practice in the Russian Social Democratic movement, to say that an intellectual revolutionarylike Bogdanov or Lenin is simply acting in a way thatis entirelyinconsistentwith his theory should raise doubts. I believe thatWalicki, by speakingof the relationshipbetween practice and theory, indeed epistemology and political outlook, as if it were one of logic and deduction, has simply imposed his own idea of what practices must be inconsistentwith Bogdanov's theory.I agree with him entirely that Bogdanov's epistemology was opposed to Lenin's, and that he viewed Marxism, like othertheories, as expressingthe experienceand standpointof a specific class, in this case, the proletariat,and not of scientific bourgeois intellectuals. Nevertheless, I believe Walickihas no basis for concluding that thereforeBogdanov must, somehow, have opposed the tutelary role of intellectuals in the workers' movement. This fails to note what seemed to Bogdanov the obvious fact that, despite its origins and significancein the proletariat'sposition and experience, intellectuals could graspMarxismmore systematicallythancould most workers, and thereforehad a crucial pedagogical role to play. It fails also to note, as Aileen Kelly rightly points out [TheRussianReview, July 1990] that the particularideology which supposedly sums up the workers' experienceends up, de facto, being definedby the intellectualsand imputed 460 The Russian Review to the workers. For this reason, as Kelly rightly emphasizes, despite appearances,the Bogdanovist perspectivecould bring about a highly paternalistic relationship between intelligentsia and the working class. As Kelly says, Bogdanov and Lenin "were united on one common belief: in the indispensability of the intelligentsia . . . The intelligentsia are pre- cluded by their class origins from creating a collectivist ethic of the future, but they alone can define and expose deviationsfrom it, because it is they who invented the rules of the game." Indeed, what are we to conclude from Walicki'sown evidence with respect to his view that Bogdanov simply could not have believed in the intelligentsia imposing consciousness from outside. "Bogdanovwas not horrifiedand scandalizedby the hypothesisthat the Soviet state might be ruled, in the transitionalperiod by scientific engineers ratherthan workers," says Walicki. But who, then, besides intellectuals like Bogdanov, were judging the appropriatenessof this substitutionof the rule of the technical intelligentsia for the workers and how long the supposed transition period was to last? More directly to the point, Walickitells us of Bogdanov's "sensitivityto the dangersof a prematureseizure of power," which he believed, "was betterthanpopularanarchy,"and that"theworkers rule should be a result of their maturity"(Walicki'semphasis). Is this really such a long way, in practice, from the scientistic position of classical Social Democracy,supposedlyabhorredby Bogdanov, whose "main aim," as Walicki tells us, was "to avoid the danger of a revolutionary voluntarism."Isn't it obvious thatin both cases, it is the intellectualswho are warrantedto judge just what representsmatureworkers' consciousness and whetherthe workers, in any given case, have achievedit? It should perhapsbe pointed out in passing that Kelly muddies the water when, in commenting on my argumenton the centrality of the tutelary role of the Party, she says that all Social Democrats, including Lenin, were, from the start, materialistsand thus believed thatconsciousness could be changed by experience. No doubt this is true. But Lenin, Bogdanov, and the RSDLP more generally neverthelessconcluded that the experience of the proletariatwould not be enough in itself to lead them to adopt Social Democraticconsciousness. Thus, in the turn-of-thecenturydispute opposing the Iskristsand the economists, all Social Democrats, "orthodox"and "revisionist"alike, agreed that class consciousness developed actively, throughthe experienceof class struggle, but they disagreed about how far that struggle, left to itself, would actually go. The Iskrists-Lenin, Martov, Akselrod, and Plekhanov-argued that workers' struggle, on its own, would never transcenda reformist stage and progressto a revolutionary,Social Democraticone. The Partywould make up for the lack of revolutionaryactivity among workersby substitutingfor it the Party'sscientificallybased worldview and program.Bog- Marot'sReply 461 danov shared the Iskrist perspective, and he continued to see the revolutionaryprocess in this light after the 1905 Revolution:"The proletariat's ideological revolution-the achievement of class selfconsciousness-precedes the all-round social revolution."' Quintessentially this was the argumentof the Vperedists, as well as the programmatic basis of their political unity. It was also one argument, among others, the Iskristshad deployed in favor of organizinga vanguardParty accordingto their specifications. In the 1905 Revolution masses of workersengaged in activity that was revolutionary,not simply reformist or narrowly trade-unionist,so that there was now, at last, a practicalbasis for revolutionaryconsciousness. The experience of 1905 prompted Lenin to extend a materialist interpretationto this new and unprecedentedactivity, not to invent that interpretationout of whole cloth. Lenin's new position from 1905 that revolutionaryexperience could itself revolutionize workers' consciousness was thereforea majorbreak, althoughI never implied that its implication was to deny the need for a Party. What then caused the split? Kelly reaffirmsher view that Bogdanov developed a voluntaristphilosophy opposed to orthodoxMarxistmaterialism professed by Lenin and Plekhanov. She agrees with me that Bogdanov's adhesion to Bolshevism in the summer of 1904 expressed his strongly held belief that the RSDLP needed, as Kelly says, to "assume conscious control over the spontaneousworkers' movement."2By 1909 Bogdanov, Kelly says, was challengingLenin's leadershipof the Bolsheviks. UnfortunatelyKelly never spells out the natureof this challenge. Throughouther commentaryshe refers to "politicaltactics"and "tactical considerations"that divided Lenin and Bogdanov in 1909 withoutdetailing what these tactics were, let alone what was differentaboutthem. I did not dispute Kelly's view that philosophicalbeliefs of the two men were connected to their political split in 1909, I only disputed the connectionKelly made. The Menshevikcritiqueof empiriocriticism,she says, restatingher 1981 position,3offereda "useful insight into the unarticulatedpremises"of Bolshevik practice. Nevertheless, along with David Joravsky I argued against the view that empiriocriticism was, 1Bogdanov, Padenie velikogofetishizma: sovremennyikrizis ideologii (Moscow, 1910), p. 114. 2Indeed, Bogdanov attackedthe Mensheviks for denying precisely this role to the RSDLP and for resurrectingthe old economist heresy that workersneeded no Partyto lead them. See Bogdanov, "Nakonets-to!"and "Roza Luxemburgprotiv Karla Marksa,"in Nashi nedoruzumeniia(Geneva, 1904). For Kelly to assert elsewhere that Bogdanov denouncedLenin's view of the Party'srole as "contraryto orthodoxMarxism"is puzzling in the extreme. Bogdanov never said this. 3Kelly, "Empiriocriticism:A Bolshevik Philosophy?"Cahiers du monde russe et sovietique 21 (January-March1981), pp. 89-118. 462 TheRussian Review somehow, a Bolshevik philosophy. Kelly questions my agreementwith Joravsky,claiming that Joravskyonly disagreedwith those who claimed that Lenin identified "machism"with a specific political tendency. But Joravsky also examined at length the identificationof "machism"with Bolshevism made by the Mensheviks(and by Kelly), and concludedthat it, too, was "erroneous."4 But if empiriocriticism articulatedthe philosophical premises of Bolshevik practice, why did Lenin attackthe philosophicalpremises of his own practice in Materialism and Empirio-criticism?In Kelly's view only Lenin'sruthlessdeterminationto undermineBogdanovpoliticallyby irrationallycharacterizingBogdanov's philosophical conceptions as non-Bolshevik-can explain why Lenin would actually defend philosophical positions at odds with his activist political practice. I have already expressed strong reservationsregarding a similar claim of inconsistencybetween theoryand practicemade by Walickiwith respect to Bogdanov. Like Walicki-only in reverse-Kelly deduces an appropriateepistemological standpoint, empiriocriticism,from Lenin's political practice. But, unlike Walicki,Kelly thinksshe can avoid positing a contradictionbetween Lenin's theory and practiceby saying that Lenin's practice includes a "utilitarianattitudeto philosophicaltruth"which is itself an "epistemologicalposition." In fact, Kelly does not give an accurateaccountof Lenin's practice at all because Lenin explicitly attacked,in practice,-by publishingMaterialism and Empirio-criticism-the very epistemologicalutilitarianism Kelly attributesto Lenin. To suggest, as Kelly does, that Lenin wrote a philosophical treatise merely to rationalizea political breakwith Bogdanov, is to acknowledge that the actual groundsfor breakingwith him lie elsewhere. This is what I arguedin my essay, noting thatthese philosophical differenceswere real, not contrived, reflectingreal, not illusory, differences of political outlook. I argued that the split between Bogdanov and Lenin was derived neither from differences over philosophy nor from mere tactical differences, but from differencesof political outlook, made sharpby their differing conclusions from 1905. Bogdanov drew from 1905 further reaffirmationof his view of the need for pedagogy and propaganda, whereas Lenin developed his Marxist view on the connection between change in experience and change in consciousness, by droppingthe idea that workerscould not, out of their own experience, come to revolutionary consciousness. I did not perhapsbring out enough that though Bogdanov and the Vperedistssupportedthe Bolshevik majorityon participationin the Duma 4Marxismand NaturalScience, pp. 33-36. Marot'sReply 463 and opposed the otzovists on this question, nevertheless they assessed participationin the Duma and the otzovist currentdifferently.Thus Lenin saw it as "being where the workers were," as participatingin their struggles and developing their consciousness in the course of struggle. Bogdanov and the otzovists, in contrast, tended toward abstention, though in differentways and for differentreasons. Bogdanov thoughtthat participationin the Duma as part of a wrong orientationdetractedfrom the crucial task of offering to workers a well-rounded worldview. He thought he might get the supportof the otzovists because both shareda desire to counterbourgeois ideology, the otzovists by avoiding participation in bourgeois institutions, Bogdanov by providing a worldview that could not be gotten merely through such participation.This set Lenin against both. Convinced that the Party had to engage in the day-to-day struggles with workers, even if not revolutionary,Lenin opposed the different forms of abstentionof the Vperedistsand the otzovists. Kelly denies the significance, and perhaps even the fact, of this difference in approach. Lenin she says was as tutelary as Bogdanov, if not more. Indeed, his whole politics, she argues, was based on controlling spontaneityas exemplified in WhatIs to Be Done? She grantsthat in 1905 Lenin declaredthe working class spontaneouslySocial Democratic and decided to open the Partyto workers. But she dismisses the significance of all this, saying by 1907 he had relapsedinto his old authoritarian concern to control spontaneity and "revertedto his former concept of professional revolutionaries."Nevertheless, Kelly's view essentially ignores the trajectoryof the workers' movement. In 1905 workerswere revolutionaryand Lenin urged Social Democratsto participatefully and unreservedlyin factory committees, in trade unions, and in the Soviets. Party membershipgrew from a few hundred to seventy thousandby mid-1907. It then abruptlydeclined as a result of the onset of counterrevolution,signaled by Stolypin's coup d'etat. Lenin closed the gates of the Partyin response to the departureof workersand the ebbing of revolutionaryconsciousness flowing from the ebbing of revolutionaryactivity. Kelly says that at this point Lenin revertedto his old views. I deny this and there is a test, 1917. In 1917 the Bolsheviks did not suppress spontaneity,they participated in it. Revisionist historiansof 1917 have establishedbeyond a reasonable doubt thatthe Bolsheviks were an integralthoughdistinctivepart of the social forces pressing for fundamentalchange.5They participated in all the workers' institutions, including the Soviets, as a matter of course. The Bolsheviks showed an acute sensitivity to shifting popular moods and desires. At the same time the political and organizationalsuc5 See Ronald GrigorSuny, "Towarda Social History of the OctoberRevolution,"AmericanHistorical Review 88 (1983) pp. 31-52. 464 The Russian Review cess of the Bolsheviks was predicatedupon their capacity to provide a political and organizationallead for the popularmasses in general, and for a majorityof workersin particular. The Bolsheviks were able to play a vanguardrole in 1917 in part because of the way Lenin and the majorityof Bolsheviks had workedover and critically accepted the experience of 1905. In "The Assessment of the Russian Revolution,"written in April 1908, a few weeks before the split with Bogdanov, Lenin declaredthat 1905 had "provideda model of what has to be done . .. For the proletariat,the workingover and critical acceptance of the experience of the revolution must consist in learning how to apply the then methods of strugglemore successfully."6 But Bogdanov and a minorityof Bolsheviks evaluatedthe 1905 Revolution very differentlybecause it provided a model of what the Bolsheviks had failed to do, and of what yet needed to be done: apply other methods of struggle by adopting the Vperedist program of proletarian culture. The role of Bogdanov in 1917 was thereforequite different. As Sochor has shown,7despite Bogdanov'sovert concernto prepare the workersto rule, Bogdanov grew increasinglyapprehensiveaboutthe radicalizationof the workers'movementin Russia between Februaryand Octoberbecause it pointed to the seizure of power by a workingclass not yet endowed with a well-formed proletarianculture-a clear sign that Russian Social Democrats had failed to work for the proletariat'scomplete ideological transformationas an indispensablepreconditionfor socialism. And Russian Social Democratswere still, in 1917, not working for the working class's ideological demystification. Instead, they were engaged in "some kind of strange scholasticism"which excluded "all breadthand independence of thought,"Bogdanov complained. Indeed, Mensheviksand Bolsheviks were not "conscioussocialists"at all because they were ignorantof the "economic and historicalfoundationsof Social Democratic teachings."8 As a result of the failure of the socialist intelligentsiato exercise a tutelaryrole in the workers' movement, Bogdanov logically denied the legitimacy of a number of importantworkers' demands, or objected to their practicalrealization. Specifically,he opposed the implementationof the eight-hourday; he had a very low opinion of the factory committees because so many ordinaryworkers and so few "experts"ran them; he denied the working class possessed "clear socialist consciousness;"and once again, as in 1905, counterposeda Social Democratic party of the 6Collected Works,vol. 15, p. 53. 7Revolution and Culture: The Bogdanov-Lenin Controversy (London, 1988), pp. 93-94 and 97. 8Bogdanov, "O partiinomedinstve,"Novaia zhizn, June 13, 1917. Marot's Reply 465 "Europeantype" to the Soviet.9 In sum, the workerswere not yet ready for socialism in Russia-or anywhere else, for that matter-until they had been ideologically preparedby the "scientific and technical intelligentsia." 10 Ed. note: John Biggart chose not to reply to his commentators. 9Bogdanov, Zadachi rabochikhv revoliutsii(Moscow, 1917) p. 14. 10Bogdanov, "Put' k sotsializmu,"Krasnyipodarok, no. 13 (April ?) 1917 (Moscow).