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A philosophy of labour: comparing A. V. Lunačarskij and S. Brzozowski

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Abstract

At the end of 1907 within a couple of months Lunačarskij met both Gor’kij and Brzozowski in Italy and found many important points of contact with each. To compare Lunačarskij’s thought at that time with Brzozowski’s “philosophical program” of 1907 casts some new light on the great variety of interpretations that enlivened Easter European Marxism at the beginning of the twentieth century. On the one hand, it explains Lunačarskij’s “economism” as distinct both from Brzozowski’s extreme anthropologism and Gor’kij’s “cosmism”; on the other, it shows that Lunačarskij’s “philosophy of labour” promoted a violent attitude of conquest and humankind’s domination of nature. Although he criticized Brzozowski’s sympathies with German Idealism, Lunačarskij shared with him a deep appreciation of human creative power, which is evident in his peculiar form of collectivism as well.

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Notes

  1. Arkhiv IMLI, KG-OD, 1-22-7. Bogdanov’s letter to M. Gor’kij, March 18 (5), 1908.

  2. Lunačarskij and Brzozowski gave very different meanings to the term “positivism”: Brzozowski rejected positivism as a form of objectivism, Lunačarskij on the contrary deemed that positivism means a realistic attitude towards the world, “it is an organizational principle in the struggle for life” (Lunačarskij 1905a, 206). According to Lunačarskij, Nietzsche himself could be considered somehow a “positivist” (cfr. Walicki, 1973, 167).

  3. Brzozowski highly admired Giambattista Vico, who stated that truth is verified through creation and invention, so that we can really know only that which we have made ourselves. See Syska-Lamparska 1987.

  4. On Gor’kij’s and Lunačarskij’s God-building, their common positions and their differences, see Sesterhenn 1982.

  5. Lunačarskij firstly published the play Tri Putnika i Ono in 1912, in the volume Idei v maskakh.

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Steila, D. A philosophy of labour: comparing A. V. Lunačarskij and S. Brzozowski. Stud East Eur Thought 63, 315–327 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-011-9153-z

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