BOGDANOV, CRITICAL SYSTEMS THINKING, POST-CAPITALISM, AND QUANTUM PHYSICS

Critical Systems Thinking and the Management of Complexity, Jackson, M.C., Wiley, 2019

Published on January 5, 2021

Dr Mike C Jackson OBE
Centre for Systems Studies
9 articles
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The work of the Russian revolutionary and polymath Alexander Bogdanov (1873-1928) is provoking significant interest in a variety of fields. Let's consider his recent impact as a forerunner of critical systems thinking, a prophet of post-capitalism, and provider of a worldview consistent with quantum theory.

Bogdanov and Critical Systems Thinking

Bogdanov's Essays in Tektology first appeared in English in 1980, translated by Gorelik. It was immediately clear that his work posed a challenge to the dominant narrative, in the West, that sees von Bertalanfy and Wiener as the founding fathers of systems thinking. In 1996 the Centre for Systems Studies, at the University of Hull, published a translation of Book 1 of his Tektology, overseen by Peter Dudley and Vadim Sadovsky. Last year Orsan Senalp, a PhD student at Hull, alerted me to recent English translations of Bogdanov's The Philosophy of Living Experience (2016 - David Rowley) and Empiriomonism (2020 - David Rowley); to the excellent biography Red Hamlet by James White (2018); to John Biggart's numerous essays on Bogdanov and the Russian Revolution; and to the book Paradigm Lost (Stokes, 2015). The latter book - a not wholly reliable source, it has to be said - makes the case that Bogdanov's work represents a 'lost paradigm' of critical systems theory. My interest was renewed and I read these works together with Bogdanov's science fiction novels Engineer Menni and Red Star. My attempt to make sense of Bogdanov's life, philosophical, scientific and science fiction writings, to relate these to the history of systems thinking and critical systems thinking, and to tease out his legacy, can be found in this video presentation and discussion:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/qyf4zmkgxhn483e/Jackson%20Bogdanov.mp4?dl=0

You have to paste this into your browser.

As previously pointed out by Slava Maracha, there are particularly close links between Bogdanov's thinking and what Stafford Beer was trying to achieve with the Allende government in Chile - technology and socialism, a universal science of organisation (tektology/cybernetics), application to the whole of society, autonomy, self-regulation and learning, science for the people ('the people project' and Proletkult). With regard to critical systems thinking, there are shared commitments to systems thinking, critical and social awareness, and improvement for all. However, there are significant differences between Bogdanov's 'monist' approach and critical systems thinking's 'pluralism' - i.e. its advocacy of a variety of systems approaches corresponding to emergent properties at different levels of complexity (physical, biological and social). It is great that Bogdanov's thinking can now be employed in debates about the future direction of critical systems thinking.

Bogdanov and Post-Capitalism

Bogdanov's writings and especially his science fiction novel Red Star, depicting a communist society on Mars, have influenced thinking about what a post-capitalist society might look like and how it could be achieved.

Paul Mason's book Postcapitalism: A Guide to our Future (2015) takes inspiration from the novel's account of the necessary preconditions - economic and technological - for a different kind of society, and from its suggestions about the type of people that would make it possible:

"In the novel, Martian communism is based on abundance: there is more than enough of everything. Production takes place on the basis of realtime and transparent computation of demand. Consumption is free. It works because there is a mass psychology of cooperation among workers".

Paul Mason also notes Bogdanov's prescience in insisting that post-capitalist society has to be sustainable for the planet. Here's his session on Red Star/Empiriomonoism presented at the Kosmopolis festival in Barcelona in 2019.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUi85TBVKGs

McKenzie Wark's Molecular Red: Theory for the Anthropocene (2015) draws heavily on Bogdanov's work to provide 'a radical new critical theory for the 21st century'. He argues that the threat of climate change represents a 'world-historical moment' that should make us (as collective labourers) reimagine what we can make of the world. Bogdanov's thinking is crucial because:

" He took the core of Marxism to be the labor point of view. He thought that if labor was to organize the world, it needed to develop its own organization of knowledge, which he called tektology, and its own means of cultural development, or proletkult".

He goes on to describe what he feels Bogdanov has to teach us about the possibilities of 'cyber-communism' and the development of a new kind of knowledge. He also alerts us to the significance of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy: Red Mars, Green Mars and Blue Mars, published in the early 1990s. In these science fiction novels about collaborative labour, different knowledge paradigms and 'world-building', a character called Arkady Bogdanov represents the 'Bogdanov' position.

In a poem prefiguring a third science fiction novel, which was never written, Bogdanov expresses the views of 'A Martian Stranded On Earth' about our world;

"The harmony of life is outside their ken.

Though their souls swarm with hazy ideas,

The inherited past is lord of these men;

It has ruled them for so many years.

Their infantile babble and rapacious desires

Veil all but a rare flash or spark

Of other dreams and passions that vaguely aspire

To a culture that glimmers afar".

Perhaps, guided by Bogdanov, we are beginning to more clearly discern what our future could be like.

Bogdanov and Quantum Physics

When I was seeking, in the book pictured above (2019), to show how moderrn physics had abandoned mechanism and embraced systemic concepts such as relationships, interaction, indeterminacy, and emergence, it was to the work of Carlo Rovelli that I turned for guidance. Carlo Rovelli, as well as being a distinguished physicist is a great popularizer of the new thinking. I was intrigued, therefore, to read an interview with him in 'Physics Today’ (February, 2019) and his response to the question 'What are you reading right now?':

ROVELLI: An extraordinary book by Alexander Bogdanov, Tectology. Bogdanov was a great Russian intellectual at the beginning of the 20th century. His ideas anticipated aspects of cybernetics, system theory, and contemporary structural realism.

Orsan Senalp had already been exploring the Italian edition of Carlo Rovelli's new book Helgoland (English translation due March 2021). Apparently the book contains an account of the relationship between Bogdanov and Lenin, a discussion on how Bogdanov's ideas provide insight into what quantum theory is about, and Rovelli's acknowledgement of Bogdanov as a key influence alongside Heisenberg. No doubt, it was thinking such as this, from Tektology Book 1, that inspired Rovelli:

"This universe displays an infinitely unfolding canvas of forms, of different types and levels of organizedness - from unknown elements of the ether to human collectives and systems of stars. All these forms, in their mutual relatedness and struggle, and its constant changes, constitute the organizational process of the world, infinitely split in its parts, but continuous and unbreakable as a whole".

The publication of Rovelli's book will further enhance knowledge of and respect for Bogdanov's thinking.

Critical systems thinkers should be proud to recognise Bogdanov as a founding father of their enterprize. He provides a vision of a post-capitalist future, a systems approach for getting there, and an appreciation of the role that new technologies can play in transforming society for the better. There are flaws in his thinking, of course, but Bogdanov was never a dogmatist and he would value the debates that are beginning to coalesce around the incredibly significant issues he raised.

For further discussion of these issues, please join the Critical Systems Forum on Linkedi

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Dr Mike C Jackson OBE
Centre for Systems Studies
Published • 4mo
9 articles
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Some thoughts on the growing popularity of Bogdanov's work and its relationship to critical systems thinking. hashtag#systemsthinking hashtag#systemsthinkingdaily hashtag#systemsengineering hashtag#systemschange hashtag#systemsdesign hashtag#criticalsystemsforum hashtag#enlightenedenterpriseacademy hashtag#leadership hashtag#work hashtag#management hashtag#futureofwork