Mckenzie Wark, Molecular Red: Theory for the Anthropocene (Verso, 2015), 54, 12. Wark’s work has played a major role in the recent revival of the Russian thinker in the English language.
Aleksander Bogdanov, Essays in Tektology: The General Science of Organization (Intersystems Publications, 1984), 1.
Bogdanov, Essays in Tektology, 184.
Bogdanov, Essays in Tektology, 184.
Bogdanov, Essays in Tektology, 63.
Bogdanov, Essays in Tektology, 184.
This is equivalent to Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen’s insight into the economic process as the transformation of “low” into “high entropy.” Such a convergence is no surprise; like Bogdanov, Georgescu-Roegen was greatly influenced by the philosopher and physicist Ernst Mach. See Nicholas Georgescu-Rogen, The Entropy Law and the Economic Process (Harvard University Press, 1971).
Closed, that is, in the technical sense of the term: it exchanges energy but not matter with its environment.
Aleksander Bogdanov, “Goals and Norms of Life,” in Russian Cosmism, ed. Boris Groys (e-flux journal and MIT Press, 2018), 194.
Bogdanov, “Goals and Norms of Life,” 185.
Bogdanov, “Goals and Norms of Life,” 185.
Bogdanov, “Goals and Norms of Life,” 185.
Wark, Molecular Red, 11.
Although he personally does have some unfortunate remarks to make about this synchronic diversity. Aleksander Bogdanov, Philosophy of Living Experience: Popular Outlines (Haymarket, 2016), 24–25.
Bogdanov, Philosophy of Living Experience, 158, 249.
“Nature is what people call the endlessly unfolding field of their labour-experience.” Bogdanov, Philosophy of Living Experience, 42. This should be understood as a sort of retrospective projection, of course: the idea is that, regardless of what concept was used by different human collectivities to designate this totality, it is equivalent to “nature” as Bogdanov understands it; and even if a group did not itself have the concept of such a totality, its experience could still be gathered in such a way.
Bogdanov, Philosophy of Living Experience, 13.
For Bogdanov, as for Claude Lévi-Strauss, the impulse in this direction is an internal demand of thought itself, which he explains in organizational terms: “Any organisation is organised precisely to the extent that it is integrated and holistic. This is the necessary condition for viability. This is also true of cognition, once we recognise that cognition represents the organisation of experience. Therefore cognition always tends toward unity, toward monism.” Bogdanov, Philosophy of Living Experience, 236.
Bogdanov, Philosophy of Living Experience 10.
T. J. Clark, “For a Left with No Future,” New Left Review, no. 74 (2012): 75. For a sharp rejoinder, see Alberto Toscano, “Politics in a Tragic Key,” Radical Philosophy, no. 180 (2013).
A. C. Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy: Essays on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth (MacMillan & Co., 1912), 23.
Clark, “For a Left with No Future,” 59.
Albert Camus, Le Mythe de Sysyphe (Gallimard, 1942), 168. My translation.
This two-part text is a version of the introductory essay to the Brazilian edition of Aleksander Bogdanov’s Essays on Tektology (Ensaios de Tectologia: A Ciência Universal da Organização, Machado, 2025).