Социальная Революция

This article consists of notes taken at a series of lectures delivered by Bogdanov in Moscow during 1920 and published in Russian as a series of three articles.

The first two of these articles, which deal with proletarian poetry and proletarian criticism, were published in The Labour Monthly last year, and copies can still be ordered. The conclusion of the third article illustrates the Communist attitude to the artistic inheritance of the working class by reference to “Hamlet” and other classics. We hope to publish this in a future number. Continue reading «Religion, Art and Marxism»

Метки: eng

It should be noted that the poetry of the bourgeois world still preserves a great deal of the authoritative consciousness, because bourgeois society has preserved also many elements of authoritative collaboration, of authority and subordination. The variety of the bourgeois groups — big capitalists and petty ones, higher intellectuals, landowners, backward and progressive, stock exchange speculators, renders, &c., together with the different intermixtures and combinations of these groups — naturally gives rise to a variety of forms and subject matter in their poetry, but the basic type is general for all of them. Continue reading «Proletarian Poetry \ Alexander Bogdanov»

Метки: eng

The epoch of capitalism has not yet been completed, but the instability of its relations has become quite obvious. The fundamental contradictions of this system which are deeply undermining it, and the forces of development which are creating the basis of a new system, have also become quite clear. The main features of the direction in which social forces are moving have been marked out. It is, therefore, possible to draw conclusions as to what form the new system will take and in what way it will differ from the present system. Continue reading «Socially Organised Society: Socialist Society \ Alexander Bogdanov»

Метки: eng

SOURCE. Marlen Insarov, O prichinakh passivnosti proletariata [On the Reasons for the Passivity of the Proletariat], pp. 198-286 in Na smenu marksizmu i anarkhizmu [Beyond Marxism and Anarchism] (Gruppa proletarskikh revolyutsionerov-kollektivistov [Group of Proletarian Revolutionary Collectivists], 2004)

The author, an activist in a left communist (1) organization, surveys the condition of the industrial working class in contemporary Russia and Ukraine and discusses why the general level of its class consciousness, solidarity, and militancy is (from his point of view) so low.

The real wages of Russian workers fell sharply in the 1990s. The drop was comparable to that which occurred in the first phase of Stalinist industrialization (1928-33). In order to survive, most working class families were forced to supplement wages with earnings from work on the side (in the cities) or produce grown on garden plots (in rural and semi-rural areas). Continue reading «A PASSIVE WORKING CLASS?»

Метки: eng

The day after All Fools Day 2007 in the Ukraine was followed by April 2nd…

On the evening of that day all Ukrainians were glued to the television. But not because they were broadcasting “Umorina” (an annual comedy festival – translators note). They were broadcasting the speech of President Yuschenko in which he informed the Ukrainian people of his decision to dissolve the parliament, and to hold new elections on May 27th this year. The reason for this dissolution was that a great number of deputies have quit the opposition in order to join the governing coalition where they will earn more money. According to the President this violates the constitution which only allows for the formation of fractions on the bases of agreements between the different parties (which includes all their deputies) represented in parliament. Deputies cannot as individuals move from one fraction to another, swelling the ranks of the parliamentary majority as they spontaneously fancy. Someone in the governing coalition joked: perhaps the President has mixed up the First of April with the Second? Continue reading «The Dissolution of the Verhovna Rada (Supreme Council – Ukrainian parliament) or Will We have a New 1917?»

Метки: eng

In magazine of SPGB “Socialist Standard” (April 2007) was published article of Stefan “Bogdanov, technocracy and socialism”.

The name of Russian great revolutionary Marxist Alexander Bogdanov (1873 – 1928) is almost totally forgotten as in Russia, as in West. He is forgotten not only by academic science (devil with it!), but in revolutionary milieu too. In this milieu long decades of years he was known only as object of criticism of Lenin in Lenin’s work “Materialism and empiriocriticism”. Continue reading «Alexander Bogdanov – technocrat or collectivist?»

Метки: eng

If we shall study real history of the proletarian struggle, we can see, this history has 3 main stages, which has big differences one from other. This stages has correlation with 3 main stages of evolution of capitalism: revolutionary, reformist and reactionary.

First stage – it is proletarian struggle of epoch of Sturm und Drang of capitalism. In historical centre of world capitalism – in Western Europe – this stage had ended after defeat of Paris Commune (1871). Because capitalist unification of world is result of capitalist development, not it presupposition, in other historical areas of capitalism, where capitalist development had began later, then in Western Europe, chronology of stages is different from Western Europe, and, what is very important, this stages are intermingled. Force of Russian and Spanish proletarian movement of beginning of 20 century had its roots in first stage, weakness of this movement had its roots in second stage. Continue reading «M. Insarov. 3 stages of the proletarian struggle»

Метки: eng