An Attempt to Answer, "What Is Culture?"

A question, that is so simple to ask, and it seems like it should be nearly self-explanatory, after all, we are all living, and breathing our cultural norms every day. Unfortunately, finding a true answer to simple questions is rarely so simple, and the bourgeois definition of culture, that it’s “the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group”, feels so incredibly limited. After all, surely, culture has to come from somewhere, and the answer can’t simply be the minds of academia-poisoned intellectuals, and pop icons. So, this means, that culture must develop, and if that is true, then it must take the form of dialectical struggle. So, we must find the roots of the contradiction that defines culture first.

In the early days of the bourgeois, their culture was relatively loose, defined, rather than by what it is, by what it was not. Materialism implies that there is a resistance between two things, however this resistance is not constant. The resistance between such great authors as Dickens, Shelley, and Hugo, against the aristocratic class defines the literature of these early years of the bourgeois, as much as the defiance of the reactionary feudal hold over of the Catholic Church. We may be inclined, as it were, to say that this sort of resistance, this contradiction between the old class, and the new, was the driving force behind the development of western bourgeois culture, but the reality is much different.

As has been mentioned, countless times, by countless others, people become aware of their social position, often slowly, and only by virtue of their classes historical development. So, it must be clear to us, that while there is, and has been, an effort by the most “gentle” (and we sincerely appreciate their soft glove concealing the cane) members of the bourgeois to position this as the first contradiction. What we actually see in these early days is an effort at prevention. The resurgence of aristocratic elements could not be allowed. Proto-capitalist uprisings had been occuring in Europe since as early as the 1500s, and indeed the merchant class learned a great deal in these struggles for liberation from feudalism. But, the final blow had to come, not on the first two fronts, but in the education, literacy, and social development of the bourgeois class, an expansion from the merchant and artisan classes. This natural emergent phenomenon was blessed with a gift that the working class is not, they had a distinct group who in spite of their wares being purchased by the aristocracy, was working to subvert them.

The decay of the aristocracy’s superstructural hold, the development of a proletarian urban class, and the rise of industrial capital as an economic power meant that the bourgeoisie was finally in a position that they could smell the blood in the water. As the royalty often wavered between landed aristocrats and the bourgeois, opportunists will often find a way, the bourgeois began a campaign that could be described as encirclement. Artisans stopped producing art for the aristocrats. Peasantry flock to the city away from large land owners and towards a new idea. Theoreticians begin to pump out documents about the rights of personhood, and to foment the idea that there is a god higher than God. That the God of free men, the god of the liberal, the god of the new world, that god is the god who is the individual, realized in capital. Without the cultural hegemony to enforce true terroristic violence against the bourgeois, depleting reserves of wealth from decadent lifestyles, and the rapid expansion of wealth amongst the bourgeois and proletarian classes (a trend which will react inward, violently), the aristocracy were weakened. It was not necessary to establish bourgeois culture in opposition to them except in as much as the last guillotines to fall were not the ones which removed the aristocrats heads, but the ones that ripped them from the soul of the working class. This swift execution is defined by its rapidity, and its sudden end.

The development of the town, a key historical event is the first time we see a true proletariat in a modern context. In spite of this, and as always, there were those who mourned progress. Engels’ summary response to them when discussing the housing question is simple. They say that the land being owned by the whole of the proletariat, that housing being guaranteed legally, and that the efforts of the working class to abolish the feudal and bourgeois land ownership system is utopian, and his response is clear. That there is nothing more utopian than trying to mythologize the ownership of buildings and dwellings as being universal, that the working class necessarily requires the right to safe and stable home, and that the development of towns is essential to the rise of the working class.

The story of the town and the development of the working class are tied together so explicitly that it may ultimately be unnecessary for me to elaborate on it at any sort of length here, but I must note that the development of the proletariat economically is mandatory for the development of the proletariat socially, culturally. The development of social welfare societies in the context of cities has been expounded on, likewise, at great length and still I feel the need to provide some level of summary for it. Most importantly, and relevantly is the idea, still pushed today, that we have to seek these piecemeal appeasements of the working class, that if we don’t beg for scraps our whole meal will disappear.

Perhaps, as Lu Xun tells us, during the revolution, and during poverty very little culture can develop, and this is true. Revolutions are a time for both, and for some time, it will seem as if the revolution was wasted. But, this is not the whole story, only a part of it. The working class does not deserve to beg for scraps. The development of the social welfare system, the town, and the proletariat have thus far in history served one goal. They build the homeless shelter next to the slum, an imminent threat, they build the welfare office in the slum, and they build the slum. All of this is an effort to pacify the working class.

This has all sought to facilitate the capitalist goal, the division of labor into increasingly atomized and specialized jobs. To say this is not to say that it is negative, the development of capitalism has been a historical necessity, it must be realized so that the working class can develop the autonomy to sell its labor, and gain freedom from the land. This has allowed for the phase of history, the current epoch, to exist. It has allowed for the final demand of history to be answered, and for the working class to respond.

But perhaps, in this case, it is too easy for us to define something in a specific context without understanding it. The bourgeois definition provides us with a base, that culture is in some way related to human interaction. And so, we are forced to turn to the first modern social scientists, to consult with history. Why is it that the bourgeois philosopher Schiller would have the audacity, so soon, only one generation out from the bourgeois revolutions "Man is free, even were he born in chains," this position, wild even in the modern context saw its refutation near immediately, as Dietzgen notes, "man is born in chains and must struggle for freedom. The heaviest chains, the strongest fetters were put on him by Nature." Perhaps, to the early wise bourgeois philosophers they imagined that their stance was manageable, that they would end history.

However, we can't go around offering our enemies the gifts that they don't even consider to give to us, and amongst these is the benefit of the doubt. We have to assume that these theorists such as Schiller, Sorel, Croce, many of whom were experts at a truly modern strategy, were not just incidentally pacifying but actively. The results of this effort serves at one goal, the flattening of contradictions between classes. So too, uncoincidentally, does the bourgeois definition of culture. We are lucky, in many ways, and gifted with a benefit that none before us had. We are not simply able to exercise some measure of bodily autonomy unlike the serfdom and peasantry of feudalism, we are able to take the firsts step.towards culture. While our leisure time may be limited, for the first time in history education has become widespread amongst antagonistic classes. This gift, and indeed, it is a gift, has assisted in the propagation of progressive literacy campaigns, and given the proletariat the knowledge to combat their propaganda efforts, in spite of them.

The other side of this education is that the working class is subjected to an inoculation campaign against the embrace of their own culture. Now, the theories presented by each of the former on individuals and culture are similar enough that we can say, confidently, that the contradictions between them are not antagonistic, but they do need to be addressed. Gramsci takes a radical, and I will argue proletarian stance on culture. That each person of the working class is capable of higher culture while Eden argues that this higher culture is only possible for the leisure class. These two, however come to resolve this contradiction in what I believe is a differing definition of culture.

But, the key here, is in their unity. The two, in spite of their disagreements regarding the ability of proletarian culture to advance under capital find unity in this point and the point which I have endeavored, through this walk through culture to reach. In every epoch, in every nation, there are at least two cultures which exist concurrently. The culture of the ruling class which seeks to use all apparatus at its disposal to prevent class consciousness , and the culture of the exploited class, which develops to tear this old culture asunder.

So, the answer to our burning question to this point is still no more clear based on us knowing that there is more than one culture existing, in fact one may say that at this point the bourgeois outline of culture is simpler, after all, one thing must necessarily be less complicated than two is the capitalists adage for form over content. Elimination of class contradiction and social complexity certainly simplifies the issue for the bourgeois in this case.

The answer of course is that we see something else that is both emergent as the proletariat develops and obvious under any level of speculation. That even within the bourgeois class there are contradictory elements. The super structural goals of the bourgeoisie are in fact often so contradictory that certain elements are forced to aid, temporarily, the proletariat in their goals. We see it in increased wages, healthcare, and the occasional arrests of those who make the cultural decline of the modern bourgeois too apparent.

Ultimately, this does not negate the fact that competition for land was fierce amongst the peasantry, and their ownership of land did not negate squalid living conditions. It did not make their status elevated, and it did not allow for them to fully own the products of their own labor. So, if these things are true, then we can conclude, accurately, that the peasantry, or the return to feudal land ownership systems is not the solution to the cultural contradiction between the peasantry and the bourgeois, any more that these social reforms solve the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.

If it is true that these cultural contradictions exist amongst the bourgeois then it must be true also, the class which seeks only to tear them asunder and move forward history. So, from this we can say that two things are true. The capitalist culture is one defined by narrative. The truth is subjective, and the individuals Opinions and Narrative are essential. This, in the context of a rejection of feudalism served to guarantee the first freedoms to the working class. The right to sell your labor, and the right to your own body in the British and French legal codes.

The contrary point of this, the contradiction that exists within this, is the basis of all historical development of the Ideology of Praxis, the rejection of the narrative where the bourgeois lust for the individual's particular "truth". The culture of the proletariat is in the exposure of Truth. In every aspect of development the proletariat has sought to find a structure that offers not a story to tell about the world, but to truly and deeply understand the world, and dominate nature. To be able to organize the force of labor and to maximize its ability to be dominant over forces of nature. This has taken myriad forms, but all of them serve the same goal. To move forward the wheel of history, to take ideology, the atomized and individual sets of worldview, and from them craft a truly Historical Ideology, not that of the layman which is defined by the limited experience of only one, but one which is the sum total of human experiential knowledge.

So, the answer can not be simply that we seek to establish fact over narrative, what an absolutely sterile, and useless existence that would be, no? After all, this cultural contradiction may be one of the primary elements, but for it to be the only element would create a world so devoid of enjoyment that we would have to assume that the working class would be better off as it is now. Without art of its own, without the ability to create and develop its own Ideology, in opposition to the Ideology of the bourgeois, the working class would continue to be left isolated and alone. It is for this reason that the All-Union Conference of Proletarian Writers denounced Menshevism, Anarchism, and Trotskyism, each reactionary on the issue of dominance for different reasons.

It is plain to see, that this culture of truth becomes more expansive in the days before revolutions, and indeed, that it is impossible to control power without this ideological weaponry. Prior to socialist revolutions we see something happen, time and time again. The proletarian culture stops acting as a response to bourgeois culture but becomes a fighting culture, a partisan culture. The development of art in this period will be expansive, but it is rarely ever geared to creating a new art. To the burning of Raphael for the creation of our tomorrow.

The phrase, itself has so often been called a Nietzschean idea, is not, to the outside, it seems that what it advocates is a total destruction of culture. Pisarev who, unfortunately, never got to see the glorious October Revolution, said before it even came, "Here is the ultimatum of our camp. What can be smashed must be smashed; whatever will stand the blow is sound, what flies into smithereens is rubbish; at any rate, strike out right and left, no harm will or can come of it." There we see the reality, that it is not nihilism which created this will to destroy, rather it was hope. Revolutions and labor are the unification of this contradiction. In labor, raw materials are destroyed, taken, through the force of humanity, and reshaped into a new and complete thing. In revolution, that which is old, reactionary and chaotic is destroyed, remolded into a society better suited to organization, and the progress of history. The shift from quantity to quality in this case is both in the destructive process and the remaking process.

When Pisarev spoke it was not of a desire to destroy all that exists any more than organization is the rejection of spontaneous action. We do not seek to make destruction, or spontaneous action impossible, but rather to see them both come to fruition in unity. Excessive destruction leads to an amalgamation of petit bourgeois elements becoming the determining factors as they attempt to reformulate a proletarian state in their idealist image. Excessive structure creates a situation in which the elevation of the intellect to new heights is limited.

What is our basis for talking about destruction? It’s clear, when we look to the past to inform our future that some level of destruction will be an absolute necessity in revolution, an unfortunate reality, that many things are reactionary and must be destroyed. But, the alternative to this is to allow the forces of reaction to flourish. The Soviet Union and China had a gift given to them in some ways by an underdevelopment of capitalism. They were not required to live under the sole hegemony of bourgeois forces. This gave them both the opportunity to divert the efforts of the aristocracy and the bourgeois from focusing together, as the contradictions between them were still antagonistic. The rising tide of socialism, the world over was ultimately a combined effort of many different factors.

Post World War 1 the degredation of strength of the various bourgeois forces weakened them against the freshly trained and militant working class. But, perhaps it is not accurate to use these examples, as they ultimately both represent at least partial failures in the prevention of the resurgence of their enemy ideology. We all know and appreciate the story of the French Revolution, the noble alliance of the working class, rising haute bourgeois, and emerged petit bourgeois against the aristocracy. Perhaps, here we should be reminded of the development of towns once again. Almost 20% of the population had moved into cities, and as a result had begun the process of proletarianization. French inheritance laws had almost completely collapsed the strength of their aristocracy, as few owned significant tracts of land. Ironically, the french aristocracy enforced the flattening of contradictions which ultimately gave rise to the alliance of the disparate and antagonistic groups. This takes us, collectively, to the conditions in the days before the revolution. In the days of the radicals.

When Herbert, Robespierre, and Marat were accused of being opposed to the rule of law, they each knew what the issue was. “Indulgence for the royalists, cry certain men, mercy for the villains! No! mercy for the innocent, mercy for the weak, mercy for the unfortunate, mercy for humanity.” This rallying cry is not one which is opposed to the poor, or opposed to peace, but one which understands a simple truth. Antagonistic contradictions must be resolved antagonistically, that revolutions are necessary to resolve these contradictions. The victory of a revolution not only implies but demands the victory of one class over another.

So, as the contradictions which create the revolutionary days deepen, and the sentiment of the masses becomes more revolutionary so too does the words used by revolutionaries. “Let the despot govern by terror his debased subjects; he is right as a despot: conquer by terror the enemies of liberty and you will be right as founders of the republic.” The words which would go on to define the revolutionary and radical period, from the same piece in which we are told, “The government in a revolution is the despotism of liberty against tyranny. Is force only intended to protect crime?” It becomes clear, in spite of the words of the modern capitalists, about capitalism not requiring force to preserve that even their own revolutionaries did not agree.

Now, on to the real meat of the matter. What does destruction mean? I prefaced this the way I did because this topic will always to some extent be dangerous to communists, and is largely, I magine why it is so carefully avoided for most of our tradition. Afterall, it was a former-socialist, turned violent reactionary who would go on to pen the word, “There is nothing for us to admire today but the dreadful symphonies of the shrapnels and the mad sculptures that our inspired artillery molds among the masses of the enemy.” Clearly, not the statement of a proletarian internationalist, but of a violent and dangerous reactionary. So, we must consider, what was it that first drew the socialist cause to revolutionary violence? How did we determine that this is a part of the organization of labor?

The answer was complicated, and at present seems so incredibly obvious. Because, as Marx tells us, “it is better to end with terror, than terror without end”. In his thorough study of the French revolution, two events emerge as obvious. The first, is that the state becomes absolutely indispensable for the suppression of classes. The second, that it was absolutely necessary to overthrow violently this enemy class. So, when we suppress an enemy class what all do we suppress? Surely it’s not exclusively limited to the repression of their financial goods, although that is a portion, surely. But, in the French Revolution, it was necessary to go beyond that. Divine kings require divinity, and so it was, that the most radical sections of the French Revolution were forced into warfare against the divine. Marat and Hebert began a campaign against the Catholic church which would go unrivaled in history. As the last vestiges of legitimacy were removed from the aristocracy, as their ideological base was re-baptised at Nantes, so to their ideology was executed with the “asses in red”. The decimation of church ideological leadership was a necessity for the strength of bourgeois hegemonic dominance, and so to it is for the dominance of proletarian ideology.

It's easy at this point for the cowards, counter-revolutionaries and bourgeois to write us off as being set on violence, and perhaps to some extent we are. Unfortunately, so is history, as it has shown us the antagonistic contradictions between classes and their cultures can only be resolved in revolution. And so it has become apparent that only one class can survive when two are in contradiction. The prognosis of history is and always has been this: exploiting classes can not survive without the exploited, but those who are exploited can survive without their masters.

So, when we pursue a definition of culture, which can be considered competently marxist, we must now seek a definition. Gorky told us that he wrote in the same tradition as those who created the undying legends at the birth of culture, and this was certainly true. So, when we seek to describe culture we have to define it in relation to class. So, to avoid to broad of a scope we will seek to define the culture of the bourgeois, and the culture of the proletarian.

Therefore, for the sake of the duration of this piece at least, we will define culture in this way: Culture is the set of social standards which arise with a class, and are formed through the struggle between the dominant and subordinated class. It is reinforced through education, art, media, and created from the economic conditions which give rise to the class. It is also reinforced through the creation of these cultural works. The dominant class culture must necessarily become hegemonic in order for the maintenance of class relations under any mode of production. Otherwise, this culture is subject to numerous false starts, or incidents where in it is returned to a subordinate position, as the early bourgeois, and as the slave rebellions of Rome. bourgeois culture is a culture which is defined by the narrative of the individual, the elevation of the individual, and the isolation of the existence of objects from meaning. The bourgeois sees the individual as the primary organization form of society. They seek to detach meaning, or where they do not seek to detach meaning from an object of study, they seek to atomize and isolate it. In the cultural sphere, this has led to the bourgeois engaging in all kinds of backdoor deals. Through their front organizations (because the bourgeois state is, ultimately, the party of the bourgeois, even when there are multiple so called parties within it) such as the ford foundation and the fairfield foundation they seek to reify their hegemonic control. The process of bourgeois culture has shifted it from being a revolutionary one capable of creating new and exciting art, to being a sanitized, sterile, non creative force. In place of creation, the bourgeois see only formless and contentless recreations of their own Ideology, which has lost all sense of validity.

The proletarian culture, by comparison is still in its stage of rising, and we see it often in the way that the worker-writers of pre-revolutionary periods treated themselves. Lu Xun tells us that his trade is mining, and he is more knowledgeable in that than writing. Maxim Gorky and Lu Xun are both intimately aware of the fact that their role is first as a worker, and second as a writer, should the masses need them they would have been willing to once again to move to their new post.

Therefore, we must seek to define the working class’ culture, not against the bourgeois one, because, in time, the culture will become dominant, and to treat it as a reaction against the current dominant culture is to treat the bourgeois revolutionaries as the solidified capitalist class. The quality of this class will likewise change. So, at present working class culture, art, and intellectualism is propagandistic. We have a culture which is driven by making our dissatisfaction known, and this yelping goes ignored. It’s when this artwork makes a shift, the artwork turns from the yelps of pain, turn into the cries of revolt. During this period the art becomes propagandistic, no longer driven by the meek crying of pain. Thus, our progress will culminate at some point.

During the revolutionary period, culture will not be expanding for the working class, we will be asserting our dominance, and clearly, few right with bullets flying past their head, just as few right when they are busy or starving. Finally, in the days after the revolution, there will be a cultural renewal. An outburst from the destructive days of the revolution. In the new society, freshly born, proletarian culture flourishes for the first time. The Russian cosmists were not, as many claimed utopians in the sense of Thomas Moore, they were, instead an emergent outcropping of the social phenomenon around them. In a time when the poetry of the factory floor, theatre without the theatre, and orchestra in public were so common, it was impossible to not see the rapid expansion of social culture.

The logical conclusion of this was of course that humanity would be able to reach the stars, and, after having beaten the bourgeoisie, why not turn their eyes to that ultimate oppressor, death. They sought to make scientific advancements, achievements up until then unknown, not some far off fantasy, but a reality as obvious as the materialist work they were surrounded by. Likewise, the kusnitza and proletkult writers were attacked as cutural nihilists, because in their fervor for the future they were willing to destroy the past. But, even in this moment, so fresh from the fires of the destruction of the old world, Bessalko, and Bogdanov both defended the study of the old cultural traditions and writing styles.

So, what can we say confidently? The Proletarian Culture is one which always seeks truth through the most modern methods of science available. The Proletarian Culture is one which is driven by discipline and organization, this is where materialism is the guiding force of dialectics, because as Bogdanov says, “matter is the means by which resistance is organized.” The Proletarian Culture is defined as much by it’s spontaneity and ability for creative growth as it is by its ability to dominate and control nature. This constantly shifting spontanetiy must be controlled, but not suppressed into non-existence. It’s an essential part of the way the masses move and react.

The Proletarian Culture when given free reign has sought to liberate not just its own class, but to abolish the value form, and to eliminate class in its entirety. The class which will decisively end history is able to do this only through its own self-abolition. Ultimately, the drive of the proletariat to self-abolish will include the abolition of its own culture. The Proletarian Class is currently one of propaganda, partisanism, and fighting. To propagandize does not mean to lie, it means that we must always seek to inform with the utmost sincerity and honesty about our goals. This will to fight and struggle will not diminish under the socialist mode of production, but will instead be brought to its own fruition. This will allow struggle against disease, illness, natural catastrophe to reach new heights, without the impingement of the profit motive. Without the reigns of capital Proletarian Culture will act as the driving superstructural force of history until the abolition of class.

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To speak the truth is the most difficult of all arts, for in its "pure" form, not connected with the interests of individuals, groups, classes, or nations, truth is almost completely unsuitable for use by the Philistine and is unacceptable to him.

- Maxim Gorky, The Phillistines from Culture and the People

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Endnotes

1. “culture." Merriam-Webster.com. 2019. https://www.merriam-webster.com (19 November 2019).

2. Engels, Friedrich “Chapter III” “Supplement on Proudhon and the Housing Question” from “The Housing Question” 1887

3. Engels, Friedrich “Chapter IV” “Supplement on Proudhon and the Housing Question” from “The Housing Question” 1887

4. Lu Xun “Literature of a Revolutionary Period” April 8, 1927

5. Engels, Friedrich “The Great Towns” from “Conditions of the Working Class” 1845

6. Marx, Karl “The Real Basis of Ideology” from “Part I: Fruerbach” in “The German Ideology”

7. Marx, Karl “Buying and Selling Labor” from “Capital”

8. Joseph Dietzgen, "The Religion of Social Democracy" 1870

9. This strategy has come to be defined recently by the work of Slavoj Zizek. It produces a factory of propagandistic and false "counter-cultural" narratives rather than seeking to dig at the truth. The strategy itself is to state something which is true, or almost true, and to treat this simple statement as a revolutionary advancement. In the best of cases, this is done simply out of misunderstanding of Marxism, in the worst of cases, as by bourgeois politicians is done to siphon revolutionary potential. I am torn, for the duration of this work between calling it Zizekian, and calling it Sorelian, as both operate on the same malicious schema. They take genuine well meaning socialists, divert their attention, and through a bait and switch have them embracing Right Hegelianism. That said, in the modern era, few have read Hegel, and even fewer have the desire to break down the Zizekian tactics. A brief thank you for the comrades engaging in the often thankless work which accompanies exposing the bait and switch.

10. Klein, Molly “The Protocols of the Learned Lacanian of Ljublitzia, (https://alphonsevanworden.tumblr.com/)

11. Antonio Gramsci, "Illiteracy" 1917

12. Eden & Cedar Paul, "Proletcult" 1921 p. 23-25

13. Ibid. p. 27-30

14. Lenin, Vladimir “Chapter I” from “On the Development of Capitalism in Russia”

15. Friedrich Engels, "Anti-Dühring" 1870

16. In this case the domination of nature does not mean the destruction or elimination of nature, but the subordination of the world around us to the human cause, which includes preventing capitalists ecological devastation. It is not coincidental that this is cited to slander marxists as anti-ecology.

17. Alexander Bogdanov, “The Philosophy of Living Experience” 2016 trans. By David G. Rowley

18. The First All-Union Conference of Proletarian Writers, “The Ideological Front and Literature” 1925

19. Vladimir Kirillov, “We” 1917

20. Stites, Richard, “Revolutionary Dreams” 1989 p. 68

21. Lenin, Vladimir “On the Development of Capitalism in Russia”

22. Mao Tse-Tung “Analysis of the Classes in China” 1926

23. Wilde, Robert. “France Before the Revolution.” ThoughtCo, 22 Oct. 2019

24. Robespierre “Justification of the Use of Terror” 1794

25. Mao Tse-Tung “The Place of Antagonisms in Contradiction” from “On Contradiction”

26. Stalin, Josef “Non-Party Simpletons” April 15, 1912

27. Robespierre, Maximillian “On the Principles of Political Morality”

28. Marinetti, F.T. “War, The World’s Only Hygiene”

29. Marx, Karl “The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte”

30. Hebert, Jacques “Fuck the Pope”1790

31. Gorky, Maxim, “Soviet Intellectuals” in “Culture and the People” (New York, NY International Publishers, 1939)

32. Kusnitza Poets Editors Group, Pravda, 1923 issue no. 186

33. Gramsci, Antonio “Validity of Ideology”

34. Lu Xun “Literature of a Revolutionary Period” April 8, 1927

35. Ibid.

36. Svygator, Alexander “Our Affirmations”

37. P. Bessal'ko, "O forme i soderzhanii," Griadushchee , no. 4 (1918), p. 4.

38. Bogdanov, Alexander “The Workers Artistic Inheritance” 1924

39. Alexander Bogdanov, “The Philosophy of Living Experience” p. 53 2016 trans. By David G. Rowley

40. Lenin, V.I “Honest Defenceism Reveals Itself” 1917