Rowley, David G. The dual meaning of ‘empiriomonism’ in the work of Alexander Bogdanov. Studies in East European Thought (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-024-09628-3

Abstract

In Alexander Bogdanov’s work, the term ‘empiriomonism’ is used in two ways: broadly to signify his general worldview (a monist, naturalist, determinist, scientific outlook) and narrowly to refer to the philosophy of cognition and being (a critical, transformed version of the empiriocriticism of Richard Avenarius and Ernst Mach) that he briefly employed to substantiate his general worldview. It has often been said that Bogdanov developed empiriomonism ‘to bring Marxism up-to-date’ with modern science, but this is a misunderstanding. Before he ever used the term ‘empiriomonism’ Bogdanov had already elaborated an up-to-date scientific worldview that presented Marx’s historical materialism as a natural science, and it was this worldview that constitutes ‘empiriomonism’ in the broad meaning of the term. Bogdanov developed empiriomonism (in its narrow sense) not to substantiate Marxism philosophically but to provide an up-to-date philosophical foundation for his own scientific outlook. The worldview he defended in Empiriomonism was precisely his initial scientific outlook, but in the course of justifying it philosophically, he arrived at highly speculative and unscientific conclusions that he quickly abandoned, making empiriomonism, in its narrow sense, a brief episode in his intellectual development.

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Rowley, David G. Marxism as a Natural Science: Alexander Bogdanov’s Anti-Revisionist Revisionism. Historical Materialism (2024) Volume 32: Issue 2; https://doi.org/10.1163/1569206x-bja10035

Abstract

Discussion of Alexander Bogdanov as a Marxist revisionist has largely centred on his philosophy of being and cognition and on Plekhanov’s and Lenin’s accusation that Bogdanov was an idealist renegade from Marxism. However, the real issue of revisionism at the time was not materialism but determinism: the question of whether socialism would appear by the working of the objective laws of nature or the subjective will of human beings. Bogdanov did indeed revise Marxism, but he did so in order to defend it as a natural science. He conceived of society as a form of life subject to biological laws of nature: the need to assimilate energy from the environment and the need to adapt to the environment in the struggle to survive. He reinterpreted the key elements of scientific socialism – the idea that existence determines consciousness and the labour theory of value – in terms of this worldview.