In this study of 1937, A.V. Shchegolov subjects to critique the views of Bogdanov on Tektology and Equilibrium Theory and shows the links between Bogdanov and the theories of political leaders such as Bukharin, Trotsky and Zinoviev and economists such as Kondratiev, Rubin, Groman and others. In his final economic writings Stalin indicates the continued prevalence of the views of Bogdanov amongst Soviet economists as indicated by the theoretical writings of Yaroshenko. After 1953 the traditions of Bogdanov, Bukharin and Yaroshenko became dominant in the Soviet Union and People’s China as is clear from the writings of Soviet and Chinese political leaders and economists. This is evident from the promotion of Yaroshenko by Khrushchev in the 20th Congress of the CPSU, the writings of Brezhnev and Kosygin and Mao’s’ Critique of Soviet Economics.’

Bogdanov completely moved away from Marxism in his understanding of dialectics as the science of the general laws of development of nature, society and human thinking. The materialist dialectic of Marx and Engels is interpreted by him as an unresolved relic of Hegelianism. Dialectics is translated by Bogdanov into the “only scientific language,” by which he understands mechanics. Bogdanov comes up with tektology – a “universal organized science” that tries to establish universal mechanical laws for both nature and society. Bogdanov’s tektology is an attempt to contrast materialist dialectics with an expanded mechanistic system that claims to be universal and complete. Bogdanov’s tektology is one of the most striking and extreme expressions of mechanism in philosophy. It is completely opposed to materialist dialectics. The main core, the “essence” of it, is the theory of equilibrium, opposed to the law of the unity of opposites. Bogdanov’s mechanism is by no means external to idealism. Bogdanov brought to the extreme the mechanistic aspects inherent in the empirio-criticism of Mach and Avenarius. Machism, since it claimed to overcome mechanistic natural science, often spoke against mechanism in words, but at the same time in practice pushed through mechanistic metaphysics and its reverse side – absolute relativism. Bogdanov, believing that overcoming materialism has basically already been accomplished by empirio-criticism, openly pursues mechanism, but not on a materialistic basis, like the natural sciences of the 19th century, but on the basis of his idealism.

There is an organic relationship between Bogdanov’s empiriomonism and his tektology. “Organizational science“ is a logical conclusion from Bogdanov’s idealism. Since consciousness organizes objective reality, it is necessary to develop universal principles of this organizational activity. Since consciousness organizes both nature and society in the same way, then their laws, from Bogdanov’s point of view, should be similar and identical.

We have already said in Chapter III that all those mechanistic provisions that subsequently formed the basis of tektology – the universalization and absolutization of the laws of mechanics, – in particular the law of inertia, the theory of equilibrium, the denial of self-motion and the recognition of external influences as the only source of movement – all this had place in Bogdanov’s earliest works. But in them, the scope of organizational “creativity,” organizing and reshaping the world based solely on the desires of people, was limited by the recognition of material objective reality. Since matter is independent of human consciousness and has its own laws of development, it cannot be considered as a passive raw material that is arbitrarily disposed of by the organizing activities of people. But empiriomonism represents the most fertile ground for tektology. The material for organization in it is not objective nature, but the obedient chaos of “elements of experience”, which can be cut and combined as desired.

Tektology is one of the most important components of Bogdanov’s philosophy, and only on the basis of clarifying the essence of his “organizational science” can his theory of knowledge be fully understood, although Bogdanov himself categorically claims that his tektology is not associated with either empiriomonism or any other philosophy. It is “the doctrine of universal organizational laws“, which, according to him, can be applied with equal success by both materialism and idealism. Bogdanov admits that he personally proceeds in tektology from his empiriomonism, but this, in his opinion, is not an indispensable condition for the application of tektology. “I don’t understand,” wrote Bogdanov, “what prevents anyone who wants to say: “And behind the elements-activities there is hidden a thing in itself, which is matter... If this adds something for you or you find that this is better, –  lease. But tektology, as a study of organizational patterns, is simply not affected by this.”¹

Bogdanov believes that there is a fundamental difference between tektology and any philosophical system. Every philosophy is supposedly contemplative in its essence and is limited to a description of the world. Therefore, it is not needed at this stage and should be discarded. Bogdanov here also tries to refer to Marx, precisely to his thesis that “philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.” Tektology, which denies all philosophy, according to Bogdanov, allegedly proceeds from this thesis of Marx. It “does not represent or describe the world as a single whole, but transforms it into an organized whole, which it has not been before.” According to Bogdanov, the unity of experience is achieved not as a result of knowledge of the unity of the objective world, but “is created through an active organizational way.”

In fact, Bogdanov by no means abandoned empiriomonism.

The fact that Bogdanov in a certain period (1912-1913) transferred the centre of his activity to the revision of dialectics, as well as his persistent efforts to fundamentally distinguish the areas of organizational science and philosophy, represent nothing more than a manoeuvre caused by the fact that his own philosophy had by this time been finally exposed by Lenin. That is why he proves that materialists can successfully apply the principles of his organizational science. It is known that Bukharin fell for, as Lenin put it, Bogdanov’s bait, arguing that “tektology is something other than empiriomonism,” and put it as the basis of his mechanical methodology.

Thus, the statements of both Bogdanov and Bukharin himself that tektology is supposedly fundamentally different from empiriomonism are fundamentally false. It is impossible to speak of any independent “tektological” period, different from the empirio-monistic one, which was recognized by Bukharin. Bogdanov’s development of tektology does not represent any deviation from Machism at all. On the contrary, it logically inevitably follows from Machism and is, to a certain extent, its completion, coinciding with Bogdanov’s final transition after the collapse of the “Forward” group from “left-wing” otzovist positions to openly liquidationist ones.

It was at this time that Bogdanov abandoned all political struggle and began to engage exclusively in promoting peaceful cultural activities, preaching the theory of creating a “proletarian culture” within the framework of capitalist society. Empiriomonism was fully consistent with both the previous otzovist and new political positions of Bogdanov, since it substantiated with its reactionary essence both “liquidationism inside out,” covered with a “revolutionary” phrase, and clearly Menshevik, undisguised liquidationism. But since Bogdanov had by this time completely switched to Menshevik positions in politics, he was faced with the task of developing in his idealistic philosophy precisely those aspects of it that would most “convincingly” justify his new, openly reformist, cultural tactics. And this goal was best met by mechanicism, which, as has already been clarified, was always characteristic of Bogdanov’s philosophy. Therefore, Bogdanov does not abandon empiriomonism, but begins to develop one of its components – mechanicism.

Bogdanov rebels against the “non-monistic” nature of dialectical materialism, which recognizes the existence in a period and society of qualitatively different areas with specific, irreducible to mechanics, patterns. Bogdanov explains this “dualism” of dialectical materialism by passivity and contemplation, characteristic, in his opinion, of all materialism, which takes the world as a ready-made one, and does not build it. The unity of the world, according to Bogdanov, can be achieved only if we understand that the world is a product of the organizing activity of people and that all the processes occurring in it are of an organizational nature.

Proving this position, Bogdanov proceeds from the fact that all human activity represents organizational activity. People not only organize themselves for purposeful activities, but also organize production. The essence of production, according to Bogdanov, lies in the organizing connection of people with machines, machine parts with each other, raw materials with the working mechanism of machines, etc. At the same time, Bogdanov generally considers the concept of production inaccurate and replaces it with the same process of organizing things. He also reduces the class struggle to the struggle of various organizational forms. Ideological activity is also organizational. Thinking organizes thoughts and ideas, cognition systematizes experience. “The scientific terms “to know”, “to prove the truth,” writes Bogdanov, “have an objective meaning – to organize this or that set of data.”

Bogdanov is not interested in the specifics of various processes in nature and society. He strives to level out the most opposite phenomena, fitting them into a general organized scheme. This initial defect of tektology determines all its scientific sterility and worthlessness. What scientific or practical significance can the statement have that any phenomenon is an organizational process, if at the same time the uniqueness of the internal laws of this process is not only not revealed, but, on the contrary, is fundamentally ignored?

But Bogdanov attributes organizing activity to nature, endowing it with all those properties and features that are inherent in the purposeful activity of people. The difference between different forms of matter, according to him, comes down only to different degrees of their organization. Inanimate means unorganized. In general, Bogdanov sees the main task of science in establishing the absolute identity of the laws (in his terminology, the unity of “methods of organization”) of nature, society and thinking. The establishment of this identity, from his point of view, is possible because the paths of spontaneous-organizational creativity of nature and the conscious-organizational activity of people are the same. Bogdanov tries to prove the latter by a number of analogies between natural and social phenomena: between the social life of people, on the one hand, and ants and bees, on the other, between centralist types of organization in nature (the atom, the solar system, a swarm of bees with its queen) and in society (monarchies, etc.).

Putting forward the thesis about the unity of the purposeful activity of people with the spontaneous-organizational activity of nature, Bogdanov slides into the recognition of teleology. Organization, according to his own definition, is “the grouping of elements in a spirit of expedient unity.” And since organizational activity extends to the entire world, including the inorganic, then all of nature turns out to be an expedient unity. Bogdanov’s socio-morphism leads him to teleology and, thus, to a descent into clericalism. Striving to verbally destroy all fetishism, Bogdanov turns out to be a preacher of the crudest fetishism.

It should be noted that in the above attempts to establish complete identity of laws both in nature and in society, Bogdanov is by no means original. All these analogies were borrowed by him down to the smallest detail from Spencer and other representatives of the “organic school” of bourgeois positivist sociology. Bogdanov tried to pass off the vulgar mechanism and evolutionism of the ideologists of the bourgeoisie of the late 19th century as the last word of proletarian science and philosophy.

Bogdanov’s desire to establish the unity of “world-building” on the basis of universal laws, absolutely identical in any area of nature, clearly reveals the idealism of his tektology. Bogdanov’s tektological laws can be universal only because they are established exclusively by the subject. The object to which these laws are applied has no effect on them. It cannot be otherwise. In order for tektological laws to be “universal” and leave aside the specific features of the laws of the cognizable object, they must be completely independent of it, that is, introduced into the object from the outside, from consciousness.

Bogdanov, in his previous works (“Basic elements of a historical view of nature”, “Empiriomonism“, etc.) repeatedly emphasized that reason dictates its laws to nature. Lenin proved that this thesis of Bogdanov was essentially borrowed by him from Kant. In “Tektology” these words of Lenin are fully confirmed. Bogdanov actually views the law in a Kantian way, as an abstract scheme, independent of the object and imposed on it by consciousness. This determines the universality and uniformity of tektological principles, for the entire diversity of nature, as well as its unique nature, turns out to be not characteristic of the objective world, but created by the activity of consciousness, artificially connecting elements – sensations into complexes and equally arbitrarily establishing a difference between them. The difference between Kantianism and Machism in this matter is only that, according to Kant, consciousness organizes the world on the basis of necessary a priori laws, according to the Machists, on the basis of the principle of economy of thought.

But Bogdanov himself has an apriorism on this issue. Since tektological laws, according to Bogdanov, are universal and generally binding, therefore, in essence they must be a priori. And Bogdanov elevates this dead schematism to the highest principle of science.

Bogdanov imposes abstract universal tektological laws not only on nature, but also on society. He states that the laws of nature and society are developed in the process of labour, but the object of labour is completely ignored by Bogdanov. As a result, labour essentially deals with itself and is reduced to a monotonous abstract effort that overcomes any resistance. Therefore, Bogdanov disappears the specificity of various forms of labour, determined by the difference in its objects and those specific social conditions in which the labour process takes place. From here flowed the notorious Bogdanov-Bukharin “law of labour costs,” which equated the laws of the most different formations.

Dialectical materialism shows that the laws of movement and development of things are objective and internal to the things themselves. The difference in the forms of motion of matter also gives rise to the specificity of their patterns. Dialectical materialism recognizes the unity of the world, which lies in its materiality, and on this basis – the unity of its laws. But this unity does not at all mean absolute identity, laws of all areas of the objective world, as Bogdanov is trying to prove.

The general laws of motion of matter are expressed in various special, specific laws inherent in each specific form of motion of matter.

Bogdanov replaces the dialectic of the general, the particular and the individual with a purely mechanistic solution to this problem, dissolving the individual and the particular in the general.

If we declare the laws of all social formations to be identical, then they will become known in advance; historical science, therefore, has no need to hide them. Its task therefore comes down to a simple description of the course of the historical process, which is what Bogdanov did in his course on political economy. Thus, having started with a critique of the Machian interpretation of the tasks of science as a description of phenomena, Bogdanov himself completely remained in Machian positions.

Bogdanov's revision of materialist dialectics, as already mentioned, consists of an attempt to replace dialectics with a mechanistic theory of equilibrium. But the theory of equilibrium, which Bogdanov considers his best creation, was not created by him. Tektology slavishly copies, down to the smallest detail, the theory of equilibrium formed by a number of bourgeois philosophers: Spencer, Dühring, etc. Spencer, forty years before Bogdanov, developed the theory of equilibrium in detail. Spencer identifies all the laws of nature and society, squeezing them into a small number of universal schemes that apply to any phenomenon. Any movement, according to Spencer, occurs in the direction of greatest pressure, occurs as a result of the struggle of external forces – the system and the environment – and continues until a mobile equilibrium is established between them. But the ideologist of the liberal bourgeoisie, Spencer, through the theory of equilibrium, tried to justify the reconciliation of class contradictions. Bogdanov declares the theory of equilibrium to be a methodology of revolutionary action.

First of all, Bogdanov rejects the doctrine of internal contradictions as a source of movement. “By real contradiction one can understand only one thing: the struggle of real forces of two oppositely directed activities. Is this what Engels was talking about? Obviously not... Dialectics is not where Engels found it according to the Hegelian method.”²  Movement begins and ends with balance. According to Bogdanov, internal equilibrium is a function of external equilibrium – between the system and the environment. The latter, according to his theory, is the decisive factor of any movement. As long as there is equilibrium between the environment and a given system, the structure of the system does not change. Violation of equilibrium with the environment leads to disruption of internal equilibrium; the structure of the system is rebuilt until equilibrium with the environment is achieved again on a new basis.

Any internal contradiction, according to Bogdanov, is a disorganizing factor. The task of science, in his opinion, is to eliminate the contradictions of experience. Here Bogdanov comes even behind Spencer, who still recognized differentiation as a progressive factor. In general, according to Bogdanov, there is no development in the world. Nothing qualitatively new is created in the process of development; only a regrouping of pre-existing elements occurs. This understanding of “development” by Bogdanov logically follows from his mechanistic concept and from his denial of the objectivity of quality. No matter how you combine homogeneous or heterogeneous but unchanged particles, you will not get anything qualitatively new. Only a new combination of old elements will take place. Therefore, the term “development,” according to Bogdanov, is too vague and unscientific. Instead, we need to talk about the organizational process, about the increase or decrease in the organization of complexes. And here Bogdanov trails behind Spencer, who still recognized evolution, although without leaps, without interruptions, etc. Bogdanov, who imagines himself to be an ideologist of the proletariat, in fact turns out to be even more reactionary than the ideologist of the English bourgeoisie of the second half of the 19th century.

Bogdanov considers his ultra-mechanistic tektology as the most complete expression of the ideology of the proletariat, striving to rebuild the world. The entire history of the ideological development of the working class, according to Bogdanov, comes down to the search for tektology. He counts Marx and Engels among his predecessors. He considers their dialectical materialism to be the first and still imperfect form of tektology. Marx and Engels, according to him, uncritically transferred Hegel’s teaching about the contradictory nature of development, which actually exists only in thinking, to the objective world.

Bogdanov believes that Marx and Engels mistakenly universalized dialectics, not understanding that dialectics is just a special case of an organizational process, when this process proceeds through the struggle of opposing tendencies.

In fact, according to Bogdanov, “organizational processes in nature are accomplished not only through the struggle of opposites, but also in other paths.”³  These “other” paths, in his words, are reconciliation and “cooperation” of opposites. Bogdanov especially attacks Marx and Engels for their recognition of the law of the unity of opposites. The unity of opposites, in his opinion, can only take place in concepts. In reality, there are only external contradictions, antagonism between the system and the environment.

Bogdanov declares the laws of dialectics to be subjective. For example, Bogdanov proves that the triad (which he considers to be the universal law of motion) is purely arbitrary. We can take any moments of the process as the starting point, antithesis and synthesis, depending on what we want to say. We also look for similarities between different stages of the process depending on the goals of cognition, and not on the basis of the internal logic of the process.

Thus, Bogdanov’s main attacks on Marxism come along the lines of criticism of the law of the unity of opposites. The fight against dialectics is carried out by Bogdanov from an extreme mechanistic position and once again demonstrates all the metaphysical limitations of his thinking. Bogdanov is unable to rise above the philistine criterion of “common sense.” Recognizing the internal contradictoriness of things is for him “the highest degree of nonsense,” for which he classifies Marx and Engels as Hegelian idealists. In fact, the true idealist in his criticism of dialectics is Bogdanov himself, for he believes that dialectics is possible only in thinking, and recognizes only monotonous mechanical laws in reality.

Lenin criticized not only empiriomonism, but also tektology, in particular the essence of the latter – the theory of equilibrium. He revealed the idealistic basis of tektology and its connection with empiriomonism. In his comments on Bukharin’s “Economics of the Transition Period,” in which the latter openly pushed through the theory of equilibrium, Lenin wrote: “...Isn’t it more accurate to talk about the “necessity of a certain proportionality” than about the “point of view of equilibrium”? More precisely, more accurately, because objectively the first, and the second opens the door to philosophical vacillation away from materialism to idealism.”⁴

Dialectical materialism recognizes that equilibrium exists in nature, but only as a moment, as a special case of movement. The theory of equilibrium absolutizes balance, turning it into something self-sufficient, into a universal and all-encompassing law. The theory of equilibrium reflects only moments of immobility and rest, without reflecting the entire richness of real forms of movement. Thus, it is not dialectical, but metaphysical in essence.

Bogdanov’s tektology was almost completely adopted by Bukharin. The latter also considered dialectics only as a special case of the universal theory of equilibrium, applicable only in the study of revolutionary periods. In “The Politics and Economics of the Transition Period” Bukharin wrote: “It is absolutely clear that the dialectical-historical point of view, which puts forward the principle of constant variability of forms, the principle of knowledge of the process, should be emphasized when analyzing the era where shifts of social layers are occurring with unprecedented speed of a directly geological type.” Bukharin, apparently, interprets dialectics in a subjective way. Lenin, in his marginal remark, sharply criticizes Bukharin. “From this phrase it is remarkably clear that for the author, spoiled by Bogdanov’s eclecticism, the dialectical “point of view” is only one of many equal “points of view”. Wrong!”⁵

Lenin emphasizes that the vacillations of Bukharin, who never understands dialectics, push him into the camp of reaction, towards idealism. Bukharin himself admits that he uses Bogdanov’s terms, moreover, in the sense in which they are used by Bogdanov, that is, he borrows from the latter not only terminology, but also the content of his views. The results did not fail to show up very quickly. Lenin, in the same remarks on “The Politics and Economics of the Transition Period,” emphasizes Bukharin’s Machist tendencies. “Bukharin “took the terms” “in the meaning” in which they are used by Comrade A. Bogdanov, – and did not think that both the terms and their meaning in Bogdanov were “founded” ... by his philosophy, the philosophy of idealism and eclecticism. Therefore, very often, too often, the author falls into scholasticism of terms (agnostic, Humean-Kantian, on philosophical foundations) that contradicts dialectical materialism (i.e. Marxism), into idealism (“logic”, “point of view, etc. outside the consciousness of their derivation from matter, from objective reality, etc.”).⁶  Lenin points out that in Bukharin’s writings subjectivism and solipsism repeatedly come to the surface: he unravels him, proving that “that’s not the point who “considers” who is “interested”, but in what exists independently of human consciousness.”⁷

Recognizing dialectics only as a special case, Bukharin openly replaces it with the theory of equilibrium. Movement is determined by the antagonism of external forces. Internal contradictions are subjective; speaking about them, Bukharin puts the word “contradictions” in quotation marks, as “inaccurate” and “unscientific.” The main driving force of any development is an external contradiction – between a body or system of bodies and their environment. At the centre of his “research” Bukharin places the study of the equilibrium of a given system. The chapters of his “Theory of Historical Materialism” are titled: “Equilibrium between Society and Nature”, “Equilibrium between the Elements of Society”, “Disturbance and Restoration of Social Equilibrium”. Bukharin defended these views not only in The Theory of Historical Materialism, this encyclopedia of mechanicism, but also in his most recent “works” (for example, articles on Marx, etc.).

Bogdanov is developing a detailed universal diagram of the organizational process. He bases his reasoning on the concept of an organized complex. Every whole, according to his theory, is just the sum of its parts. Any organized complex, according to Bogdanov, is fundamentally less than the sum of its parts, since when they are added, part of the energy inevitably remains unused due to inconsistency between the individual parts.

Already in this first position of tektology, its entire opportunistic essence becomes clear. Its subjectivity is also reflected here: despite all Bogdanov’s talk about collectivism, he puts the individual at the basis of tektology. The unification, the organization of individuals, according to Bogdanov, does not increase their strength, but, on the contrary, reduces it. The whole can only practically be greater than the sum of its parts in the sense that its energy is greater than the resistance of the medium. For example, a person can lift only 6 pounds, so he cannot handle a stone weighing 8 pounds. Two people will be able to lift not 10 pounds, but somewhat less due to the fact that there will always be a certain inconsistency between their actions. But two people can move an eight-pound stone. What was inaccessible to one became accessible to two. It is only in this sense, according to Bogdanov, that one can say that an organized whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

This conclusion of Bogdanov alone shows the complete inconsistency of his reasoning about organization and orderliness. He understands organization only as a mechanical composition of forces. He ignores such a basic principle of organization as the division of labor. There is no doubt that both in nature and in the technical production process one can find a lot of cases when the addition of forces leads to the fact that part of their energy practically remains unused. But this position cannot be absolute. When properly organized, the productivity and power of each individual unit increases on an enormous scale. It is enough to remind everyone of the well-known examples of A. Smith and Marx about manufacturing, when a simple association of workers and division of labour significantly increases the productivity of each worker. A. Smith gives figures for the increase in labour productivity at the pin factory. A single craftsman produced no more than 20 pins a day, workers in a manufactory – up to 4,800. Engels in Anti-Dühring quotes Napoleon's words about the comparative fighting capacity of the Mamluks and French soldiers, clearly showing that the power of an organized and cohesive whole, in this case an army, significantly exceeds the simple sum of the fighting power of individual soldiers.

The inconsistency of Bogdanov's theory is clearly confirmed by the Stakhanov movement. Thanks to new forms of division of labour between miners and riggers, Alexei Stakhanov cut down 102 tons on the first day instead of the norm of 7 tons. If we take into account that there were 2 fixers behind him, then the output per person was 34 tons, – 5 times against the norm. Subsequently, individual Stakhanovite miners began to cut down over 1,000 tons per day, which (including the riggers) amounts to over 100 tons per working person.

Organization, according to Bogdanov, is correlated with resistance. Every organized complex resists attempts to disunite or even change it. Bogdanov tries to obscure the reactionary essence of tektology, giving it the appearance of an active, valid science. Thus, he considers his greatest merit to be the fact that he allegedly destroyed the old idea of resistance as something inert and passive. In fact, resistance, according to him, also represents activity, but opposed to other activity. Physics by the time Bogdanov began to write his “tektology” had already shown, based on the electromagnetic theory of matter, that inertia is a manifestation of the energy of moving matter, or rather, the interaction of moving bodies. Bogdanov, having used this position to substantiate idealism, ascribes to himself the honour of a truly important discovery, which he copied from truly great scientists.

In addition, Bogdanov himself actually takes a point of view opposite to the one he cites here. We have already found out above that the complexes of elements to which Machism reduces all bodies are in themselves inert and passive. The activity of complexes is not inherent in them, but is introduced into them from the outside – by human labour and consciousness that organize these elements and complexes. And here Bogdanov fails to hide his metaphysics.

In general, tektology consists of flat mechanistic reasoning that must prove the universality of a particular position and its applicability in both organic and inorganic nature, and in society, and in thinking. Thus, development and progress, according to Bogdanov, are an increase in the organization of the complex, regression is its decline. And here Bogdanov’s persistent attempts to prove that nothing new can arise, that development is a simple increase or decrease, are striking.

The rest of the tektology scheme is based on the theory of equilibrium. To give it the appearance of an original, and, moreover, scientific work, Bogdanov introduced a whole series of new terms that essentially denote well-known principles of mechanics. Bogdanov distinguishes between a formative and a regulatory mechanism in any organizational process. The basis of the forming mechanism is conjugation – the connection of elements. Connection – according to Bogdanov – is the primary factor, separation is secondary. Conjugation underlies every event. The labour process is a combination of materials, tools and labour power. It's the same in thinking; In order to distinguish, one must first compare. Only complexes that include homogeneous elements that serve as links can be united, because it is not opposites that are united, but homogeneous elements. In general, the more heterogeneity within a complex, the less stable it is. An ideal complex is one in which there are no contradictions.

Thus, Bogdanov puts the principle of universal identity at the basis of tektology, which is especially clearly proven by the original concept – conjugation. If connection is the main type of connection of any phenomena of experience, then contradiction is reduced only to a special case of conjugation, identity. The difference between antagonistic and classless society disappears, because class society, according to Bogdanov, is based on cooperation and not on class struggle.

Another form of connection introduced by Bogdanov is ingression. Complexes rarely connect directly. Most often, their connection requires intermediate complexes – ingressions, which connect the complexes of our experience into a continuous chain. World ingression is continuous. Bogdanov acts as an idealist here too. The chain connection, he said, is just “a form of our thinking about organized combinations.” And Bogdanov copied this idea from Spencer. According to Spencer, the unity of the universe and its continuity are products of our subjective experience.

The doctrine of ingression once again clearly reveals the mechanism of Bogdanov’s philosophy. Since elements and complexes, according to Bogdanov, do not have internal self-motion, their mutual transitions and interconnections are impossible. Therefore, they can only be connected by an externally introduced connecting link. What this link is and in what relation it is to the connected complexes is indifferent from the point of view of tektology. Ingression includes telegraph wires that connect people located thousands of miles away from each other, and translators that establish mutual understanding between people of different nations. Bogdanov writes that it is always possible to establish negotiations and peace between fiercely fighting enemies, you just need to find suitable mediators.

The opportunistic essence of Bogdanov’s methodology really sticks out here. Intelligent mediators, he argues, will always be able to reconcile the bourgeoisie and the proletariat by explaining to them the commonality of their interests. The doctrine of ingression turns into an apology for social compromise.

The theory of equilibrium is revealed with particular clarity in Bogdanov’s teaching on the regulatory mechanism. Once the complex is created, it must be fixed. This task is performed by the regulating tektological mechanism. Its universal form is selection, natural and artificial. The essence of the selection principle is that the system or organism is regulated by the environment. The change that corresponds to the tasks of the complex is saved and consolidated, the inappropriate one is eliminated by a new selection. Conservative selection maintains a fluid balance between the system and the environment. In this case, the energy pumped out by the system from the environment is equal to the energy given by it to the environment. Progressive selection leads to an increase in the amount of activity of the system due to the energy of the environment. Bogdanov sees the shortcoming of Darwin and other founders of the idea of selection in the fact that they did not understand the active role of human labour in selection, considering selection only as a passive adaptation, and in the fact that they placed struggle as the basis for selection, while the decisive factor from the point of view Bogdanov's point of view is cooperation.

Bogdanov ends his presentation of his theory of the “formative mechanism” with the so-called “theory of separateness,” which fully reveals the entire idealism of tektology and its unity with empiriomonism.

The world, according to Bogdanov, is one and continuous only insofar as our experience is one and continuous. But a single world consists of “separates”, of separate complexes. Bogdanov emphasizes that the division into separate ones is purely conditional. From the general unity we highlight what our attention and our activities are currently directed to. One compartment is delimited from another by the so-called “tektological boundary”, where the activity of the complex meets the resistance of the environment. Depending on practical needs, we can draw this tektological boundary in different ways.

Therefore, all the diversity of the world is conditional and created by our consciousness. The world represents an abstract and continuous identity. Individual things are created and destroyed by our thinking completely arbitrarily and actually exist only in consciousness.

So, the formative mechanism is based exclusively on mechanical combinations of complexes. The basis of their combination is connection. Bogdanov carefully removes from his scheme any hint of the effective role of internal contradictions. Heterogeneity and contradiction, he argues, only destroy the system. The decisive role in the world belongs not to struggle, but to cooperation. The internal structure of any body and its development are determined by the relationship between the body and the environment.

As a true mechanist, Bogdanov gives the regulatory mechanism a central place in tektology. Not development, not movement of the system, but its regulation. The whole question of the development of society comes down to the problem of the activity of the energy balance. If this balance is active, then it is impossible, and indeed unnecessary, to change the social system, and no internal contradictions, no class struggle will be able to shake it. Bogdanov writes that the reason for the aggravation of class contradictions in capitalist society is the fact that in the era of imperialism, thanks to armaments and wars, society gives more energy to nature than it receives from it. The direct conclusion from these provisions that Bogdanov makes is the following: if capitalists manage to sharply increase the technology of their production, so that, despite all the wars, an active energy balance is maintained within society, then the class struggle will inevitably weaken, despite the fact that millions of workers will die in war.

From here the exceptional importance Bogdanov attaches to technology becomes clear. As long as technical progress takes place in a capitalist society, its existence is ensured, Bogdanov argues. The death of capitalism can only occur as a result of the suspension of technological progress. Bogdanov distorts the dialectic of productive forces and production relations of capitalism, denies their conflict, which became aggravated in the era of imperialism. In fact, any partial rise in productive forces that still takes place in capitalist society, in particular the growth of technology, not only does not strengthen the capitalist system, but is a factor in the further aggravation of its contradictions. Any increase in production, firstly, occurs due to an attack on the working class, through capitalist rationalization, direct reduction of wages, etc., and secondly, it encounters an ever-shrinking market, which accelerates the onset of the next economic crisis.

These provisions of Bogdanov were later completely adopted by Bukharin. They were clearly reflected in Bukharin’s theories about “organized capitalism.” The connection between the basic capitulatory concepts of the right and the theory of equilibrium is clearly visible.

Bogdanov’s doctrine of selection as a universal form of regulation was also not first put forward by him. Back in the 70’s of the 19th century, the bourgeois school of “social Darwinism” (Wallace, Vaccaro, Guplowicz, Ammon, etc.) tried to extend Darwin’s doctrine of selection, the struggle for existence to society. Marx and Engels qualified these attempts as arch-reactionary.

The greatest revolutionary natural science theory of the 19th century was used by bourgeois sociologists to prove the eternity of class society with its class inequality and struggle. And here Bogdanov obediently follows the lead of the most reactionary ideologists of the bourgeoisie (this is discussed in detail in the next chapter).

Bogdanov’s transfer of the laws of the animal world to society, the doctrine of selection, the biologization of society, also represents a form of manifestation of mechanicism. Such ultrabiologism is not fundamentally different from mechanicism.

Based on his theory of equilibrium, Bogdanov formulates his notorious law of the weakest link or least favorable conditions. The structural stability of the whole, he argues, is determined by the stability of its weakest component. Bukharin used this Bogdanov position to substantiate his “theory” of alignment with bottlenecks.

The principles of tektology were widely used by various counter-revolutionary movements. They helped methodologically “substantiate” the counter-revolutionary Trotskyist denial of the possibility of the victory of socialism in the USSR, the programme for the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union, because the balance of class forces within the USSR, according to the anti-Marxist theory of balance, is determined by the balance of forces between the USSR and the capitalist environment.

The right-wing restorers of capitalism, from the same “methodological grounds,” concluded that the kulak would peacefully grow into socialism, who would have nowhere to go, since he would be surrounded by powerful collective farms. From the doctrine of balance, the energy balance between nature and society, flowed a right-wing opportunist emphasis on slowing the pace of industrialization and the priority development of light industry and agriculture. The latter, according to the right, are more likely to produce products for the funds invested in them and thereby create a more favorable energy balance between nature and society.

Bogdanov accepted, with some modifications, Spencer’s theory of differentiation and integration as the basic principles of development. He tries to show that an increase in heterogeneity does not always lead to a weakening of the complex. Sometimes its dissimilar elements enter into so-called “additional relationships” with each other (for example, during the division of labour in society) and form more stable combinations. But Bogdanov immediately stipulates that the increase in this stability is only a temporary phenomenon. The heterogeneity of elements simultaneously gives rise to intra-system contradictions (the separation of labour, for example, gives rise to classes and class struggle). These ever-increasing, intra-system contradictions can be resolved in two ways: they either lead to a crisis, or are eliminated by introducing new connecting elements (i.e., reforms). Bogdanov here actually recognizes the possibility of two paths of transition from capitalism to socialism: revolutionary and evolutionary.

The crises themselves, according to Bogdanov, are nothing more than a change from one organizational form to another. During a crisis, there is not a qualitative change in society or any other system, but only some regrouping of its elements. And here, according to Bogdanov, nothing happens. As soon as the regrouping of elements within the system leads to the establishment of equilibrium between the system and the environment, the crisis immediately ends. Thus, crises upset the balance only to restore it on a new basis.

Bukharin, following Bogdanov, also argued that the disproportionality and disorganization of capitalism is the only cause of crises, completely ignoring the main contradiction of capitalism, its antagonistic class nature. The source of crises, according to Bukharin, lies not in the conditions of production, but in the conditions of circulation. In post-war “organized” capitalism, Bukharin argued (before the global economic crisis), crises are impossible at all, not to mention their aggravation.

It is known that Marx proved that crises are, among other things, one of the forms of “regulation” of production in a capitalist society. But he emphasized that they express the indignation of the growing productive forces against capitalist production relations. It is clear that Bogdanov took only their regulatory side in crises and discarded their destructive revolutionary role.

These are the basic principles of Bogdanov’s tektology. Mechanicism and subjective idealism underlie it in the same way as the rest of Bogdanov’s theories.

Organizational science, with all its external schemes, with which it replaces the true laws of motion of things, is absolutely sterile and anti-scientific. Bogdanov himself is forced to admit that tektological schemes impoverish the real wealth of the world and represent bare abstractions. But this, in his opinion, is inevitable, since the wider the scope of the scheme (and he has it on a global scale), the poorer their content should be. Bogdanov does not recognize any logic other than formal.

Tektology, and especially its central core – the theory of equilibrium – is the theoretical basis for opportunism in the labour movement, in particular right-wing opportunism, which grew, like Trotskyism, into a counter-revolutionary gang of collaborators of fascism, fighting for the restoration of capitalism in the USSR. The theory of equilibrium justified the right-wing restorers' suppression of the class struggle within the USSR. The system of the Soviet Union, from the point of view of the right, was based on the “balance” of two sectors – small-scale goods and socialist. The task of the party’s policy, as the rightists understood it, was to maintain this “balance” at all costs, that is, to abandon the reworking of small-scale commodity farming and the attack on the kulaks. This meant abandoning the policy of industrialization of the USSR for the sake of preserving the relationship between industry and agriculture that existed at the beginning of the first five-year plan, which the right portrayed as a balance between them. The right relied on the development, first of all, of agriculture and light industry, supposedly ensuring this balance.

According to the right, only as a result of the uniform “harmonious” development of city and countryside could such a level of productive forces be achieved when the collectivization of the countryside would occur spontaneously, the kulak would have nowhere to go and he would grow into socialism. All this was only designed to disrupt the construction of socialism and to restore the capitalist system in the USSR.

From the theory of equilibrium follows also the comparison with bottlenecks. It is not for nothing that the theory of equilibrium was so popular among saboteurs – Kondratiev, Rubin, Groman and others, who widely used it to justify their sabotage “works.”

Bukharin's theory of organized capitalism was also associated with the theory of equilibrium. Bukharin believed that as capitalism develops, its organization increases. Internal contradictions are being smoothed out, only external, international contradictions between individual countries are intensifying. Consequently, a revolution, according to Bukharin, can only arise as a result of international clashes, i.e., wars. Bukharin combined the struggle against the construction of socialism in the USSR with the struggle against the international proletarian revolution.

The theory of equilibrium was included as one of the constituent elements in the eclectic “methodology” of counter-revolutionary Trotskyism. The theory of equilibrium substantiated the Trotskyist “theory” that the balance of class forces within the USSR is determined by the balance of forces between the USSR and the capitalist environment and this, along with other reasons, supposedly leads to the impossibility of building socialism in the USSR before the victory of the world revolution. Denying the possibility of building socialism in one country, the counter-revolutionary Trotskyists and Zinovievites slipped into an open struggle for the restoration of capitalism in the USSR, turning into the leading detachment of the fascist counter-revolution, entering the direct service of the fascist Gestapo and, on its instructions, fighting against victorious socialism using methods of terror, sabotage and espionage.

In the era of socialist construction, especially during the reconstruction period, when the party launched a full-scale offensive against capitalist elements, criticism of the theory of equilibrium, first given by Lenin in the fight against Bogdanovism, acquired enormous relevance. Exposing the bourgeois restorationist essence of the theory of equilibrium and its manifestation in the new conditions of class struggle was to become one of the main tasks of the philosophical front. But the Menshevik idealists ignored this task. For six years they fought with the mechanists on various issues: about quality and quantity, about the law of the unity of opposites, etc. But they tried to resolve all these issues divorced from the practice of class struggle and socialist construction. Speaking against the mechanists in defence of the law of the unity of opposites, they criticized them without at all affecting the theory of equilibrium. Only after Comrade Stalin’s speech at the conference of Marxist agrarians, where a crushing criticism of the theory of equilibrium was given, did the Menshevik idealists publish a collection of articles devoted to criticism of the theory of equilibrium. But here, too, their criticism was predominantly academic.

In Deborin’s works “Philosophy and Marxism“, “Dialectics and Natural Science” a lot was said about the law of the unity of opposites in modern physics, in Hegel, etc. But Deborin never once raised the question and connection between the correct understanding of the law of the unity of opposites and party policy. Moreover, Deborin himself ultimately slipped into the theory of equilibrium.

Deborin borrowed from Hegel, in addition to worsening it, the concept of the development of contradiction from simple identity through different stages of contradictions to the reconciliation of opposites. According to Deborin, at the beginning of development, the subject does not contain any contradictions. Then differences arise; difference turns into opposition, opposition into antagonism, and, finally, reconciliation occurs, that is, the disappearance of contradictions.

Thus, the process begins with the absence of contradictions and ends with their absence. This corresponds to the theory of equilibrium: from equilibrium, through disequilibrium, to a new equilibrium. It is clear that, speaking against the mechanistic theory of equilibrium, the Menshevik idealists were unable to deal a decisive blow to mechanicism. This task was brilliantly accomplished by the greatest theorist and leader of the international proletariat, Comrade Stalin, who opposed the theory of equilibrium with the full armour of materialist dialectics.

Comrade Stalin associated the destruction of the theory of equilibrium with the defeat of the right-wing opportunist attitudes to which it led. Based on the synthesis of the richest material of the class struggle of the proletariat in the era of imperialism and under the dictatorship of the proletariat, the greatest experience of socialist construction carried out under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party, Comrade Stalin not only refuted the theory of equilibrium, but also developed, following Marx and Lenin, materialist dialectics, raising it to the highest step.

“Of course, you know,” Stalin said at a conference of Marxist agrarians in December 1929, “that among communists the so-called theory of “equilibrium” of the sectors of our national economy is still in circulation... According to this theory, it is assumed that we have, first of all, the socialist sector is a kind of box, and we also have the non-socialist sector, if you like, the capitalist sector, this is another box. Both of these boxes lie on different rails and peacefully roll forward without touching each other. It is known from geometry that parallel lines do not intersect. However, the authors of this wonderful theory think that someday these parallels will converge, and when they converge, we will get socialism. At the same time, this theory loses sight of the fact that behind the so-called “boxes” there are classes, and the movement of these “boxes” takes place in the order of a fierce class struggle, a struggle for life and death, a struggle according to the principle of “who will win?”⁸

Comrade Stalin showed that the theory of equilibrium does not reflect the actual course of development of the USSR economy, but “objectively has as its goal to defend the positions of individual peasant farming, to arm the kulak elements with “new” theoretical weapons in their struggle against collective farms and to discredit the positions of collective farms.”⁹

Comrade Stalin emphasizes that the theory of equilibrium has nothing in common with Marxism-Leninism.

“One has only to extract the theory of reproduction from the treasury of Marxism and contrast it with the theory of sectoral equilibrium, so that not a trace remains of this latter theory.”¹⁰

Stalin's analysis of the development of the USSR in the transition period, analysis of the struggle of various sectors of the national economy, i.e., the struggle of classes, exposing the reactionary essence of the theory of equilibrium as the ideology of the bourgeoisie, the ideology of capitalist restoration, leaves no stone unturned from this “theory”, proving that the real course of development of the USSR economy at the past stage of development shows not the reconciliation and balance of the socialist and capitalist sectors, but their struggle, leading to the destruction of the capitalist sector and the complete victory of the socialist sector.

Developing criticism of the bourgeois theory of equilibrium, Comrade Stalin shows that there can be no balance between the two different foundations of the Soviet economy – between the largest and most united socialist industry and the most fragmented and backward small-scale peasant economy. Agriculture must be consolidated and transferred to the path of expanded reproduction, which must be achieved on the basis of the socialist path of development.

“Therefore, the question stands like this: either one path or another, either back – to capitalism, or forward – to socialism. There is no third path and cannot be. The theory of “equilibrium” is an attempt to outline a third path. And precisely because it is designed for a third (non-existent) path, it is utopian, anti-Marxist.”¹¹

While trying in words to lead the village along the “middle”, small-scale commodity path, right-wing opportunism in reality fought for the capitalist path of agricultural development, for the restoration of the rule of the bourgeoisie and the oppression of the working masses in the USSR.

Thus, on the basis of the revolutionary practice of social construction, having revealed the bourgeois-kulak, restorationist essence of the theory of equilibrium, Comrade Stalin dealt a decisive blow to it. Comrade Stalin’s criticism of the theory of equilibrium was extremely important for exposing the theoretical roots of right-wing opportunism and for its complete defeat.

The defeat of the theory of equilibrium is one of the most striking facts of Comrade Stalin’s struggle for the unity of revolutionary theory and revolutionary practice of the struggle, which he waged from the very first days of his revolutionary activity. In a historic speech at a conference of Marxist agrarians, Comrade Stalin emphasized the lag of our theory from the victories of the practice of socialist construction. Almost simultaneously with this, Stalin exposed the counter-revolutionary essence of the Rubinism in political economy, showing that both the Rubinists and the mechanist economists focused all their attention on “talmudized abstractions”, on scholastic disputes, abandoning the study of the Soviet economy and international imperialism under the influence of the class enemy and in favour of to him. Comrade Stalin was the initiator and leader of the struggle against Menshevik idealism. Stalin’s characterization of the Deborin group as Menshevik idealism represents an example of the unity of philosophy and politics and reveals both the philosophical and political essence of Deborinism.

The specificity of the approach, taking into account the complexity and historical uniqueness of the phenomena and stages under study, deep penetration into the essence of historical processes, revealing their internal contradictions, driving forces, trends and development prospects, the absence of any sign of schematism and templates are characteristic features of the Marxist-Leninist method, – materialist dialectics, – brilliantly applied and developed by Comrade Stalin.

Stalin always fought for revolutionary, creative Marxism, against dogmatic “Marxism,” for the development and enrichment of all aspects of Marxist-Leninist theory on the basis of new historical material, new experience of class struggle.

Contrasting dogmatic “Marxism” with creative Marxism, Comrade Stalin wrote: “The second group (creative Marxism – A. Shch.), on the contrary, shifts the centre of gravity of the issue from the external recognition of Marxism to its implementation, to its fulfillment to life. Outlining ways and means of implementing Marxism appropriate to the situation, changing these ways and means, when the situation changes – this is what this group mainly turns its attention to. This group draws directives and instructions not from historical analogies and parallels, but from the study of surrounding conditions. In its activities, it relies not on quotes and sayings, but on practical experience, testing each step by experience, learning from their mistakes and teaching others how to build a new life. This actually explains that in the activities of this group, word does not diverge from deeds, and Marx’s teaching retains its full living revolutionary force. To this group “The words of Marx are quite appropriate, according to which Marxists cannot stop at explaining the world, but must go further in order to change it. The name of this group is Bolshevism, communism.”¹²

The best representative of creative Marxism is Stalin himself. The demands and distinctive features of revolutionary creative Marxism listed by him reveal the entire gulf between the “living soul of Marxism” – materialist dialectics and the wretched tektological schemes of Bogdanov, adopted by the latter’s student – Bukharin.

Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Institute of Philosophy, A. V. Shchegolov, Lenin’s Struggle Against Bogdanov's Revision of Marxism, State Socio-Economic Publishing House, Moscow – 1937, pp. 122-151.

Translated from the Russian by Polina Brik.

Endnotes:

1.  A. Bogdanov, Tektology, part I, p. 11.

2.  A. Bogdanov, Philosophy of living experience, p. 243.

3.  A. Bogdanov, Philosophy of living experience, p. 261.

4.  “Lenin collection” 11, pp. 384-385.

5.  “Lenin collection” 11, pp. p. 387.

6.  Ibid, pp. 400-401.

7.  Ibid, p. 385.

8.  J. Stalin, Questions of Leninism, 10th ed. , pp. 300-301.

9.  Ibid, p. 301.

10.  Ibid, p. 301.

11.  J. Stalin, Questions of Leninism, 10th ed., pp. 302.

12.  Stalin, On Lenin, 1937, p. 6.

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