Abstract
Abstract In my paper, I first focus on Aleksandr Bogdanov’s systems theoretical understanding of culture and highlight the tektological foundations of culture. In this part, I analyze his organizational account of culture and interpret his tektological approach as a theory of the social dimensions of culture and the cultural dimensions of society. Second, I discuss the term ‘proletarian culture’, its definition and its role in Bogdanov’s theory of socialism. I argue that Bogdanov’s vision of a future socialist society is connected with establishing a socialist culture. He considers the proletariat a bearer of socialist ideology and deduces its unique political role from its unique position in the system of social knowledge. With his idea of proletarian culture, Bogdanov drafts a programme of proletarian evolution which challenges Lenin’s programme for proletarian revolution. My last step concerns Bogdanov’s account of proletarian art. I argue that, in order to understand Bogdanov’s concept of art properly, we should differentiate between the terms ‘culture’ and ‘art’. The category of culture appears to be a form of organization of a social group, and the category of art is a form of aesthetic self-understanding and self-expression of a social group. My analysis focuses on proletarian art as a form of the self-consciousness (ideology) of the working class.
Highlights
Amongst Bogdanov’s numerous scientific and philosophical texts, Tektology, the universal organizational science, is undoubtedly his most significant contribution to the history of ideas
Nature in general and human beings in particular are the subjects of the organizational processes
Bogdanov introduces a dynamic model of the world that describes it as an eternal, continual organizational process, an infinitely unfolding canvas of forms of different types and levels of organization – from the simplest elements of inorganic nature to human collectives and cosmic systems
Summary
Amongst Bogdanov’s numerous scientific and philosophical texts, Tektology, the universal organizational science, is undoubtedly his most significant contribution to the history of ideas. The movement for proletarian culture spread across Soviet Russia in the early years of the Revolution and acquired a complex social and intellectual character It was partly directly inspired by the ideas of Bogdanov, but this new movement proved to be very far removed from Bogdanov’s original project of a social, cultural, moral and political education of the working class which he considered the ‘socialist revolution in the working class’ (Bogdanov 1995a: 100). In his paper Nauka i rabochij klass (Science and Working Class) (1918), Bogdanov specifies the concrete steps of his programme of proletarian education as including the development of a ‘general science’ as a universal methodology that would allow the regulation of nature and the carrying out of socialist transformations of society He repeated constantly that the working class, because of its organic weaknesses, its ideological immaturity and a lack of ideological autonomy, would not step up to its function as an organizer-class if it did not collect organizational experience and adopt organizational tools
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