The Riddle of Ilyenkov’s Last Book: Why Did A.A. Bogdanov Turn out to be His Final Opponent?

Abstract

The article is devoted to the analysis of significance of the last book by E.V. Ilyenkov Leninist dialectics and metaphysics of positivism. Despite the fre­quent judgments that this book is not a successful work of the philosopher, it is proved that, on the contrary, it is very important, because, in fact, it is his dying final ideological testament. Since this book by Ilyenkov is devoted to the analy­sis of Materialism and Empirio-criticism by V.I. Lenin, the article argues for the non-triviality of this Lenin’s book, and this also contradicts the frequent opinions that it tells only about the “basic truths of materialism”. The article also analyzes the philosophy of A.A. Bogdanov as the main deathbed opponent of Ilyenkov in absentia and shows the originality of his version of philoso­phy in the context of the Marxist philosophical tradition. The final conclusion of the article is that, under the guise and in the person of Bogdanov and Russian machism, Ilyenkov criticized the stagnation current in Soviet society and the So­viet state under Brezhnev, the theoretical and socio-political stagnation, incom­patible in his opinion with the desired further movement towards communism according to Marx and Lenin, because the three “whales” or logical foundations of Machism highlighted by Ilyenkov in the book – the principles of balance, economy of forces and organization – are at the same time a description of those principles that became decisive in the USSR in the 1970s, in the lives of ordi­nary Soviet people, and in leading party politics, in Soviet reality as a whole.