Alexander Bogdanov Conception of Social Revolution

Abstract

The article deals with the concept of social revolution of Alexander A. Bogdanov (1873—1928), an outstanding and original thinker, philosopher, economist, and leader of the wing in Russian social-democracy, which can be called the non-Leninist Bolshevism. The most cardinal difference between Bogdanov's version of Bolshevism and Lenin's one was the position, closely linked to his theory of proletarian culture, that the proletariat must first transform itself, become a socialist class “for itself” and only after that undertake the socialist transformation of society as a whole. Bogdanov repeatedly stressed the necessity of precisely this sequence of events in his works and based on this he built his concept of social revolution. The key distinguishing feature of Bogdanov's concept of socialist revolution is the idea of its twofold essence. For Bogdanov, revolution is not only the destruction of old, obsolete forms of social life, but also the creation of “new forms of collective life”, it is both “social criticism and social creativity”. Both sides of the revolution aim to “harmonize human existence”.