A.A. Bogdanov as a Sociologist and Utopian: the «Klass für Sich» Problem

Abstract

The article explicates the sociological and socio-utopian aspects of the general organizational concept of the Russian scientist encyclopedist A.A. Bogdanov (1873–1928), who referred himself to the sociological school of Marx. Bogdanov's modification of the Marxist approach to the social structure of capitalist society is shown, emphasizing the problem of becoming a "class for oneself" ("klasse für sich"), on the one hand, for the industrial proletariat, on the other hand, for the social group of technical intelligentsia. Bogdanov's analysis of technical intelligentsia as a sociological category is considered in the context of the Russian debates of the early twentieth century. about the class nature of the intelligentsia, the American utopia of technocracy and the utopia of "proletarian culture" by Bogdanov himself.