Labor between Biology and Religion (Some Bolsheviks’ Reflections Before the Revolution)

Abstract

The article analyses philosophical discussions on the sense of labor in pre-revolutionary Russian Marxism. The author maintains that the “left” Bolsheviks’ thinking presents some common traits and a common philosophical horizon. Both A. A. Bogdanov and A. V. Lunacharsky consider that the human being is not a passive observer of external objective reality or the servant of historical necessity. Being the center of knowledge and action he is able to impose his own rules and to organize the world within the limits of his experience. The problem of human labor highlights some interesting aspects as regards the relationship between humankind and nature, and helps to clarify the specific positions of “left” Bolsheviks on matter and spirit, as well as on biology and religion. With Hegel and Marx, Russian Marxists consider labor as the “mediation” between the human being and the world. Labor is considered to be, on the one hand, the “biological” relationship between the human being and his environment, on the other hand a specific human instance as “useful” labor. Discussion between Bogdanov and Lunacharsky about the use of the word “labor” is conducted in Avenarius’ terminology. According to the author this is the way to put an end to mechanicism, which seemed the scientific grounds of Plekhanov’s orthodoxy, with the help of “energetism” and empiriocriticism. Bogdanov wants to establish a continuity between the understanding of the human world and society, on the one hand, and the natural, physical world-views on the other. Lunacharsky, on the contrary, made labor the cornerstone of a religious-eschatological world-view. And from both their standpoints, the reflection on labor leads to find as its subject not the single human being, but the collective. Refs 28.