Abstract
This paper studies Bukharin’s Theory and Practice from the Standpoint of Dialectical Materialism presented at the 2nd International Congress of the History of Science in London, June 29–July 3, 1931. Bukharin’s paper has not received the attention it deserves despite the fact that it provides the theoretical framework for the paper mostly highlighted in this Congress, Boris Hessen’s The Social and Economic Roots of Newton’s Principia. In this work, I try to show that Bukharin’s main achievement is a theory of science based on the concept of practice and at the same time present the internal coherence and the logical structure of Bukharin’s schema. Finally, I discuss what, in my opinion, is a drawback in Bukharin’s paper: his failure to discuss the possibility for scientific objectivity.
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Notes
The papers of the Soviet delegation given at the Congress were published with help from the Soviet embassy in a book Science at the Crossroads, only 10 days after the end of the conference. The second edition of this book appeared forty years later (Werskey 1971). Accounts of the congress include Joseph Needham’s Foreword to the 1971 edition of Science at the Crossroads. This edition also contains a well-researched introduction “On the Reception of Science at the Crossroads in England” by G. Werskey who also gives an account of the Congress in his book The Visible College (London 1978), pp. 138–149.
The “Classical Tradition” which includes thinkers such as Lenin, Luxemburg, Preobraženskij, Bukharin and Trotsky is a product of the failure of the Marxism of the 2nd International and the capitulation of its leadership to bourgeois politics in relation to its stand in the advance of World War I. This tradition ends violently with the Stalinization of the USSR marked by the execution of Bukharin in 1938 following the parody of the Moscow trials and the assassination of Trotsky in 1940, in Mexico. After this period the “Classical Tradition” ceases to exist and is replaced by the official Soviet version of Marxism-Leninism according to the line promoted by Stalin’s “Questions of Leninism”. The Classical Tradition was revived in the wake of the events of May 68 in Europe with the theoretical current represented by Isaac Deutcher, Christian Rosdolsky and Ernest Mandel (see Skordoulis 2008).
Alexander Bogdanov died on April 7, 1928 as a result of a blood transfusion experiment that he conducted on himself at the Institute for Blood Transfusions he founded in 1926. Bogdanov was an early member of the Bolshevik Party and later the leader of various Bolshevik splinter groups. Bogdanov’s split with Lenin is well-documented by the latter’s attacks on his alleged “Machism” in Materialism and Empirio-criticism. Bogdanov’s contribution to science was his “universal organizational science” (or “Tektology”). The history of Bogdanov’s personal and professional interactions with Bukharin is not well-documented, but Bukharin’s speech at Bogdanov’s funeral is indicative of his appreciation for the deceased.
The conflict of opposing forces causes a disturbance of equilibrium, a new combination of forces leads to the restoration of equilibrium.
The Soviet Union was the first country in the world to establish a specialized institution for the study of the history of science and technology. In 1921, the Russian Academy of Sciences organized the Commission on the History of Knowledge, which in 1931 was transformed into the Institute for the History of Science and Technology under the direction of Bukharin. The institute published, in 1933–36, several volumes of the Archive of the History of Science and Technology, devoted to the elaboration of a Marxist approach, with strong emphasis on socioeconomic analysis. After the arrest and execution of Bukharin, this field of scholarship was reestablished only on Stalin's personal intervention in 1944.
The most important papers in the collection were: “Marxism and Natural Science” (by Y. M. Uranovskij), “The Old and the New Physics” (by S. I. Vavilov), “Marx and Engels on Biology” (by V. L. Komarov).
Bukharin writes explicitly: “But historically there is no absolutely unmixed individual sensation, beyond the influence of external nature, beyond the influence of other people, beyond the elements of mediated knowledge, beyond historical development, beyond the individual as the product of society—and society in active struggle against nature” (Bukharin 1931/1971:13).
In Marx’s first thesis on Feuerbach (Marx 1845/1970), practice is defined as “sensuous human activity.” In Soviet textbooks of Marxism, e.g. (Deyev 1987) and (Konstantinov et al. 1981), practice is defined as man’s multifaceted and purposeful activity aimed at mastering and transforming natural and social objects. But this definition, as well as Marx’s, brings into the forefront the concept of “activity” whose definition has caused a debate in Marxist circles and still is under discussion (see Blunden 2009).
Here Bukharin (1931/1971: 14, n6) quotes Hegel: "Theoretical capacity begins with the presently existing, given, external and transforms it into its conception. Practical capacity, on the contrary, begins with internal definition. The latter is called decision, intention, task. It then transforms the internal into the real and external—i.e., gives it present existence. This transition from internal definition to externality is called activity." (G. Hegel: "Introduction to Philosophy," sections 8 and 9).
Marx’s 2nd Thesis on Feurbach states (Marx 1845/1970): “The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question. Man must prove the truth, i.e., the reality and power, the this-sidedness [Diesseitigkeit] of his thinking, in practice. The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking which is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question”. Bukharin (1931/1971: 15) quotes the German text.
One could argue that the practice of scientists shows a way of accepting scientific theories on the basis of the practice criterion. Quantum Mechanics, whose basic theoretical premises are still under a philosophical dispute, has been accepted by the scientific community of physicists on the basis of its successful practical applications.
The socio-economic formations—"modes of production," "economic structures"- differ from one another in the particular character of the relationship between theory and practice.
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Skordoulis, C.D. Bukharin and the Social Study of Science. Stud East Eur Thought 67, 75–89 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-015-9230-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-015-9230-9