Proletarian Science
Given the Proletkultists' fascination with machines and the work environment, it is hardly surprising that some participants became enamored of the idea of a proletarian science. This idea proved to be one of the movement's most controversial proposals, exciting horrified responses from those who believed that the very notion of a class-specific science called the immutable dictates of nature into question.[4] Repeated
[3] V. D. Aleksandrovskii, "Veriu ia—my griadushchee vynianclaim," in Proletarskie poety pervykh let sovetskoi epokhi , ed. Z. S. Papernyi and R. A. Shatseva (Leningrad, 1959), pp. 102–3.
[4] See, for example, the comments of a Tver medic, Pervaia Tverskaia gubernskaia konferentsiia kul'turno-prosvetitel'nykh organizatsii (Tver, 1919), p. 24.
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assurances that the Proletkult did not intend to challenge Newton's laws often fell on deaf ears.[5]
The theory that evoked such passion was the brainchild of Aleksandr Bogdanov. Although Bogdanov was a medical doctor and was convinced of technology's guiding role in social evolution, he did not address himself to the natural sciences alone. The Russian word for science, nauka, like the German word Wissenschaft , applies to all scholarly disciplines, from studies of literature to physics. Bogdanov aimed to bring all knowledge into a single organized system that he called "tectology," or the science of organization.[6]
For Bogdanov all forms of science, even the most rarefied and abstract branches, reflected and sustained the social system that generated them. The way that scientific knowledge was structured, transmitted, and ultimately applied under capitalism helped to solidify the capitalist order. Bogdanov believed that the basic purpose of science was to organize labor power. Although capitalists applied scientific knowledge to bolster their own exploitative labor practices, the socialist system with the proletariat at the helm would restructure scientific knowledge to suit its radically altered social and economic goals. "The working class needs a proletarian science," insisted Bogdanov in his most famous essay on the subject. "This means a science that is acceptable, understandable, and accountable to [the proletariat's] life mission, a science that is organized from the proletariat's point of
[5] See M. N. Smit, "Proletarizatsiia nauki," Proletarskaia kul'tura , no. 11/12 (1919), pp. 27–33, esp. p. 31.
[6] For explanations of Bogdanov's organizational science see Zenovia A. Sochor, Revolution and Culture (Ithaca, 1988), pp. 45–56; Ilmari Susiluoto, The Origins and Development of Systems Thinking in the Soviet Union (Helsinki, 1982), pp. 46–69; Alexander S. Vucinich, Science in Russian Culture, 1861–1917 (Stanford, 1970), pp. 446–54; and idem, Social Thought in Tsarist Russia: The Quest for a General Science of Society, 1861–1917 (Chicago, 1976), pp. 206–30. For a highly critical view see Dominique Lecourt, Proletarian Science? The Case of Lysenko , trans. Ben Brewster (London, 1977), pp. 137–62.
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view, one that is capable of leading [the proletariat's] forces to struggle for, attain, and implement its social ideals."[7]
The advocates of a new science did not reject the achievements of past generations, but they felt that the proletariat would have to apply this knowledge in a different way. When a critic charged that both the bourgeoisie and the working class would use the same methods to cure disease, Aleksei Samobytnik-Mashirov countered that this was not necessarily true. Capitalists used prescriptions and medicine, but the proletariat would examine the social causes of illness and combat them through better health care and medical insurance.[8]
However, Bogdanov and his supporters had more than a socially conscious application of acquired knowledge in mind. They insisted that the working class would fundamentally restructure scientific information. Science under capitalism was overly specialized, fragmented, and arcane. The proletariat would synthesize knowledge into one unified, monistic system and tie it to life and labor.[9] To achieve this goal, scientific learning could not simply be popularized or democratized because such an approach only meant transmitting accepted truths in an easily accessible form. Nor was it sufficient to proletarianize the institutions of higher learning. Instead science had to be socialized ; it would be altered and reexamined to meet the needs of a well-organized social system.[10] In the words of a character from Bogdanov's utopian novel, Engineer Menni , "The proletariat must master [science] by changing it. In the hands of workers it must become much