Forthcoming in Historical Materialism but you can see an advance copy here:

Abstract

Alexander Bogdanov made three assertions regarding his adoption of Marxism: that the economic textbooks he first used had nothing in common with Marxism, that his worker-students prompted him toward Marxism, and that a work by Lenin was the decisive influence in that regard. Only the latter two statements are credible, since he must have first learned the economic doctrines of Capital from the textbooks that he later disparaged as ‘bourgeois’. His first work, A Short Course of Economic Science, is indebted to them for its basic economic concepts. It is also grounded on Marx’s critique of capitalism. Its constant foregrounding of labour reveals the influence of his students, and its historical perspective suggests the influence of Friedrich Engels. In blending these influences, Bogdanov created a quite original work that substantiates the two key principles of scientific socialism – the labour theory of value and the idea that existence determines consciousness.