Nikolai Bukharin was a profound and original thinker on applying the sciences in the Soviet Union. Transcribed here for the first time this absorbing essay, written at the zenith of his authority, summarizes much of that thinking up to that point.

‘Science and the Soviet Union’ by Nikolai Bukharin from International Press Correspondence. Vol. 7 Nos. 60 & 61. October 27 & November 3, 1927.

Great historical upheavals cannot be estimated in their entire extent and significance until a certain time has elapsed since the actual historical “event”. Former revolutions whether they were the rebellions of Chinese peasants or Egyptian slaves or the “classical” revolutions of the European bourgeoisie cloaked their objective significance in the mantle of a more or less phantastic ideology. It was only post factum that the Puritan ideology of the Roundheads came to be recognised as the embryo of a “calculating”, “rational”, and “capitalistic” spirit. Similarly, it was post factum that the slogans of “liberty, equality, and fraternity” could be interpreted as meaning the liberty of the bourgeois individual, the “economic man” of political economy, free to buy and sell goods and free to buy and exploit the labour power of the proletarian.

Regarded from this standpoint, the proletarian revolution is distinguished by the fact that it was from the very beginning conscious of its class characteristics and its historical role. Its tremendous general human importance was possible because of this clear perception of its class significance. Its essential role of a battering ram, opening up a way from the “preliminary history of mankind” to its “actual history”, was possible precisely because it was the revolution of a class fully aware of its own historic role. And yet the universal historic importance of the proletarian revolution will not be manifest in its full extent until a few decades have elapsed. Life is so infinitely richer than “grey theory” and there is such a tremendous multiplicity of factors that escape accurate calculation, that one can speak with every certainty of the inevitability of a series of historical surprises. If the character and significance of the proletarian revolution are known in their broad and general outline, this is by no means in contradiction to the thesis that the course of events is bound greatly to enrich our experience by filling the abstract schemes with a real and living content and by supplying a number of new details and features which alone are able to furnish a complete and tangible picture of the upheavals to come.

Then years have passed since the victorious proletariat seized power. Of these ten years, not more than half were, strictly speaking, devoted to constructional work, for the first five years constituted a period of desperate armed struggles against class opponents who were aided by all means of foreign intervention. In the history of the world, five years, or even ten, are a very, very small period of time. And yet can we say that this short period has not deepened our know- ledge of the dictatorship of the proletariat? Not only is the Soviet system of State, “discovered” by the revolution and theoretically explained by Lenin, a “new idea” of our epoch. Another such new idea is the economic policy of the proletariat (“New Economic Policy”), besides which there are many more. And are we to assume that the creative power of the masses and their organisatory forces will draw the line at this? Is it not rather obvious that, with the rise of economy and the strengthening of the Socialistic forms, we shall still witness a series of such “new ideas” also in regard to economics and in regard to what is known as “mental culture.”

The revolution has widened our mental horizon to a tremendous degree. In doing so, it has pitilessly destroyed a number of old fetishes, inveterate ossified conceptions, not infrequently characterised by the obstinacy of popular prejudice. Ten years of the proletarian State and of far-reaching revolutionary fermentation in the whole world have very greatly enhanced the interest in enlightenment both as regards time and space. Not very long ago the orientation of scientific thought was mainly European. Imperialism and colonial wars have to some extent broken down this restriction, but they have done so mainly in a barbaric form, a characteristic case in point being the destruction, during the Boxer expedition, of the 20,000 volumes of the great Chinese encyclopedia by the “civilised Powers”. The international revolutionary process leading to the insurrection of the colonial populations, again, destroys the conceit of the great Powers, the racial barriers, the dominating and barbaric relation towards the so-called “peoples devoid of history”, who are, however, very plainly vindicating their right to a historical life by transforming themselves under our very eyes from objects of imperialist violence into subjects of an active historical process.

The revolution, moreover, sharpens our eyes for the change in historic and social formations, permitting us to see into the future with far clearer vision. Before the Bolshevist revolution of the proletariat in Russia, there was no empiric proof of the possibility of a Socialist construction; now such proof is patent to all who have eyes to see and ears to hear. It was the greatest conceivable tragedy for a considerable part of our intelligenzia that they were not able to perceive the perspectives of development. Bred on the basis of the capitalistic economy, they moved wholly in a sphere of conceptions adequate to this system, transforming the relative categories of capitalism, in regard to economy (“private property”, “private initiative”, and the like), politics (the bourgeois State in general and the bourgeois democracy in particular), and culture, into indestructible institutes peculiar to human society as such. And though they acclaimed the “murderers of tyrants”, they turned in horror from the proletarian revolt, as from an attack on the eternal and dignified assets of human culture in general. This historical narrow-mindedness could be overcome solely by the experience of constructional work. If the intervention of the time from 1918 to 1921 had swept away the young workers’ State, the press of the whole world, from that of the boulevards to that of the most eminent circles of science, would have found thousands of ways of proving the collapse of Socialism. At present, however, even the economic experts of the bourgeois world are forced to recognise the fact of the existence of two systems, the capitalist and the socialist.

The Soviet Union, however, is but now making the first steps on its upward path. The proletarian State is not yet in a position to devote adequate means to the development of “mental” culture in its qualified forms. In the first place the centre of gravity lies in the accelerated construction of the material productive forces of the country, in the first line the development of gigantic industrial plants. This comparison, however, is only conditional, for further development will confront us with tremendous scientific and cultural tasks is, indeed, already doing so and if imperialism does not frustrate our work the Soviet Union will become the centre and sanctuary of the scientific life of the world.

This results from the very nature of the proletarian revolution and the Socialistic work of construction, and therefore does not contain any element of exaggeration. It is but necessary to give up the stereotyped views in which there is expressed that narrowness of horizon peculiar to the capitalist world.

Paradoxical though it may seem, the first phase of the proletarian revolution, which found supreme expression in the October rising, was wholly imbued by the scientific spirit. The Communist policy of the class struggle is a scientific policy; indeed, it is the only scientific policy. There is not a single party, not a single class, and not a single staff of leaders in the political arena that rests on such a sober, objective, and scientific analysis of the relations between the social forces and the fundamental tendencies of development as the workers’ class, the Bolshevist party, and its leader, Lenin. In no connection has the power of Marxist scientific prevision been so eminently apparent as in the course of our revolution, apart naturally from the general highly intelligent predictions of Marx himself. In the future, after many decades, it will appear with absolute lucidity how it was the scientific Marxist theory which, after it had penetrated the masses and had thereby become a great social factor of power, eventually led forth humanity from the sanguinary imperialistic cul de sac in which it had become involved, how it was the Leninist dialectic, translated into the reality of revolutionary action, that opened up new vistas to the history of the world. If at present these utterances sound to many like mere theses prompted solely by the desire to nonplus the bourgeoisie, they will nevertheless become the axioms of future generations.

The destructive period of the revolution, meanwhile, rests almost exclusively on the social sciences. Its period of construction will serve increasingly as a presumption for a powerful scientific prosperity of all sciences, of science as a whole. In this connection there will inevitably have to be a revolution in science itself, and that in various directions, in regard to the methods employed, in regard to the organisation of scientific work itself, in regard to the relations among the various scientific subjects, in regard to the practical significance of science, and finally, if we may say so, in regard to the self-recognition of science.

In capitalist society the scientific division of labour is almost just as anarchically ordered as are the economic foundations. In spite of surprising progress in natural sciences (in the widest sense of the word), it has of late been possible to observe that the scientific idea of the capitalist world has got into a blind alley similar to that into which the capitalist art has entered. In the realm of art we observe a painful amount of petty analysis and complete unproductivity when it comes to questions of synthetic construction. The same thing, however, may be observed to some extent in the realm of science. We shall not even speak here of the social sciences, which are in a state of complete incapacity and in which the rejection of theoretical generalisations represents almost the last word of

theoretical wisdom. Even in the natural sciences advance has been achieved only in one or other of the special disconnected fields. Whenever there is a question of any greater generalisation, we can immediately observe a condition of complete in- security, with an unmistakable tendency towards agnosticism, idealism, religion, mysticism, and the like. Oscillation between extreme rationalism and a fetishism of “pure science” on the one hand, and the pragmatic criterion of individual utility or even the complete denial on principle of all and every “ratio” on the other that is what governs the realm of scientific self-recognition,

In contrast to this, the structure of Socialism affords a true and real foundation for the self-recognition of science. Similar to the economic activity of Socialism, its scientific activity has the tendency to translate itself into terms of socially organised work, the individual regions of which mutually fructify one another instead of isolating themselves by means of the armour of industrial works, trusts, private property, and competition. The great significance of this transformation is not yet so fully apparent as it will be in the near future. Viewed from the quantitative standpoint we are still poor, but we are already advancing to great qualitative changes, which will in due course also afford us the necessary quantities. The best workers of bourgeois science generally assume the standpoint of what is known as “pure science”, which they imagine to be the most fertile and valuable. From the standpoint of a systematic scientific “economy”, however, it is quite clear that the ideology of “pure science” is a fetishistic contortion of the actual relations of things, an ideology which has turned “forms of development” into “fetters of development”. Every scientific law is a formula expressing objective facts. As a fact, the law is something beyond our cognition, as a formula it is translated into human terms. The criterion of correspondence with reality therefore by no means contradicts the fact that the formulas of cognition are instruments and organs of our fundamentally practical orientation. The failure to comprehend this truth necessarily entails the separation of one branch of science from another. And just this is the main reason of the crisis of bourgeois science.

Socially organised and systematic scientific work is a new principle, deeply rooted in the systematic economy of Socialism. It demands of every scientific worker complete self-sacrifice and the devotion of his entire scientific enthusiasm. At the same time it creates a clear relationship between scientific work and the entire working system of human society, makes a new connection, on a large public scale, between theory and practice, mental and physical work, “pure” theoretic science and applied science, and among the various fields of science, an activity which is bound to fructify in the highest degree all the separate branches of science, which after all form a certain whole.

It is perfectly absurd to picture the Socialist principle of physical and mental work and the socially organised combination of theory and practice in the form of mere isolated “orders” issued by factories to the scientific laboratories, and nothing more. Nothing is farther from the spirit of Socialist culture in general and Socialist science in particular than a flat empiricism, immediately restricted to the solution of a series of technical tasks. The constant process of the emancipation of labour (not only socially but also the liberation from the pressure of elementary natural forces by means of their domination and rational exploitation) forms the basis of a new distribution of all productive factors of society out of the sphere of material labour in the narrower sense of the word, into that of intellectual labour, and is bound to enlarge tremendously the extent of scientific interest and the circle of scientific problems.

At the same time, the Socialist organisation of society gives all science a uniform method by an inevitable application of the dialectic materialism of Marx. This process is already actively making itself felt in the Soviet Union. The fight against idealism in science has found a powerful ally in the dictatorship of the proletariat. The indignation of the tearful idealists at the alleged absence of “freedom of thought” is at bottom only annoyance at the disappearance of the “monkey trials”, which are certainly inconceivable in the territory of the proletarian dictatorship.

As a State organisation, the Soviet Union selects the sharpest and most effective weapon from the scientific arsenal of mankind and wages war on every form of scientific and philosophical superstition. If we consider what a colossal amount of energy is wasted by bourgeois science for the purpose of a “philosophical” and quasi scientific vindication of bourgeois society, for that is what the defence of idealistic positions ultimately amounts to, we cannot fail to see what tremendous costs, what innumerable “faux frais” are incurred by the intellectual work of the bourgeois world. The social and practical roots of the scientific theories, which must become altogether obvious in the case of a more or less systematic organisation of scientific work, kill the remnants of idealism, which may ultimately be classed with theological treatises, books on witchcraft, and the expatiations of the theosophists.

True, not all materialism is dialectic. And it is a matter of course that the “public opinion” of learned circles will not at one stroke adopt a method which has borne such surprising fruit in its application to the social sciences. And yet we may observe that “instinctive materialism” passes into dialectic materialism, while the latter conquers one realm of science after another, finding ever growing recognition and coming to re- present the one and only scientific method. The unity of the materialistic method very greatly enhances the cognitive vigour of science, both because it is materialistic and because. it is a unity.

In a certain sense the method of dialectic materialism carries on the best traditions of the bourgeoisie, in so far as the latter once fought against the cult of idols and fearlessly revealed the real connection of things. In enriching materialism by dialectics, the Marxian form of materialism casts its glance over all barriers on which the bourgeois methodology of to-day has inscribed its famous “ignorabimus”. In consistently dispersing all the spirits of idealism, from the chimera of vitalism in biology and the illusions of the “pure logicians” in mathematics to the abashed scepticism of the numerous agnostics, dialectic materialism combines the boldest empiric research, which it deems unlimited, with the precise generalising work of theoretic thought.

Finally, mention must be made of the immense extent and immense and growing importance attained by the influence of science.

Socialism is the powerful tendency towards a rationalisation of social life in general and of its economic basis in particular. This tendency must necessarily be founded on the most precise scientific analysis of the respective factors. Science here develops the tendency to become a universally penetrating force.

This rationalisation of social relations, and especially of social conditions of production, has nothing in common with the rationalism of the eighteenth century. The rational principle (i.e. the systematic principles) of the economic policy of the proletariat is founded on an exact scientific analysis. For Marxism, liberty is a recognised necessity, and not merely an arbitrary reflection of human understanding. The economic scheme is no mere combination of figures, accepted as a matter of course as ideal, but the result of a strict calculation of real proportions, the outcome of a scientific treatment of these relations in circumstances representing a material basis for the execution of a plan (i.e. that of a State concentration of means of production). It obviously follows that, the speedier the increase of the Socialist section of economy, the greater will be the cope of this plan, of rationalisation, and of precise scientific prevision. Polemics against Socialism, setting up the thesis of the eternal dualism of the economic process in which the contrast between the rational principle (or system) and the irrational (economic anarchy) appears in the form of a principle, immanent in every society as such are, when all is said and done, based on the thoroughly childish dogma of Adam Smith, according to which the exchange of commodities forms an endless chain and the desire to exchange is one of the fundamental qualities of the human “soul”. For the capitalistic snails, grown fast to the shell of capitalistic conditions of production, this dogma represented an “axiom”. The revolution of the working class, however, has broken the shell and with it the axiom.

The systematic economy of Socialism, therefore, calls for a gigantic expansion of scientific activity. The result is the “system”, a result which is at the same time an immediate directive. From this point of view, again, the economic policy is inevitably permeated with science, which has become a powerful lever of social transformation. The very dimensions of the “economic entirety” forming the object of systematic influence, show how manifold must be the realms of science which bring the process of Socialist construction into operation and subsequently fructify this construction. If the gigantic American laboratories could be created on the basis of an engineering industry, which, though concentrated, is yet severed by private property interests, there cannot be the least manner of doubt, but that the gigantic effort of the united and socially organised Socialist work of construction will create (and has, indeed, already begun to do so) a yet more magnificent system of scientific institutions which will embrace all sciences, from geology and mechanics to medicine, psychology, and ethnography. Owing to private property and capitalistic profit interests, the “flight of thought” of the bourgeois world is curbed; the efforts of scientific ingenuity in the Soviet Union will be restricted by nothing but the natural limitations of the country. Even at present, economists must reckon with figures of gigantic importance when making their calculations. And this is no more than the nucleus of future economic plans. Even to-day, Soviet engineers must construct gigantic power-works, the erection of which is hindered by no private interests or ground rents. And this is only the germ of the future economic plans. These relatively small beginnings are of the greatest value to us, since they bear eloquent testimony to the truly magnificent possibilities in store for the Socialist system of science.

The scientists of the Soviet Union were quite right in placing the study of the productive forces of our Union in the very centre of their programme of work. Work is in full progress in all directions. But here, again, the sphere of problems will be far greater than is the case in the capitalist countries.

And this not only for the reasons mentioned above. In Capitalist society there is no regard for the saving of the human organism. The more Socialism advances in our country, on the other hand, the greater will be the degree of attention paid to the living working force, the working individual, and the mass of physiologic organisms. The capitalistic study of mankind (including so-called psychotechnics) starts from the principle of capitalist “lucrativity”, whereas Socialist economy is most vitally interested in sparing the organism of the worker. This means, in future, an advance of those sciences which are occupied with the study of mankind, both from the standpoint of the physiology of work and from that of physiology altogether. Then there is another aspect of the case. Capitalist Society systematically oppresses the so-called “alien peoples”, while Socialist society emancipates all nationalities, having, indeed, already given a powerful stimulus to the advance of national cultures. This means, in future, a great development not only of ethnography, but also of history, philology, and other subjects referring to the study of national peculiarities. In such branches of learning as comparative linguistic studies, e.g., or in the theory of language, attempts are noticeable which are in direct opposition to the philological theories influenced by “Great Power” considerations. Without going in detail into these attempts, we can observe that the changed relations among the peoples on the territory of the Soviet Union afford a solid basis for the development of new scientific approach to questions in a series of theoretic directions.

There is still a very important side of this question, which we must not fail to mention even in a short analysis of the peculiar position of science in the Soviet Union. It is the problem of the cadres of scientists. During the civil war and the epoch of starvation, the ranks of the scientists were greatly diminished. A considerable proportion of those that remained, however, very heroically surmounted all difficulties and continued their work. It must be admitted that there is an insufficient number of really qualified scientists. The whole progress of development, however, points to a quicker, rather than a slower, advance in this direction, too, in the Soviet Union as compared with the capitalist countries.

It may very well be said that that system of social relations is on a higher historic level, which is better able to develop its reserve of qualified, or what is generally termed “talented”, mental workers. And just in this respect the proletarian democracy is unsurpassed as a State. Here for the very first time gigantic masses of the population are being raised to a higher level of culture; for the first time obstacles are being removed from their path: for the first time education has come to lose the character of a caste or class monopoly for a numerically insignificant part of the population. In other words. it is the first time in the history of mankind that the area of selection for leaders and qualified cultural workers has been widened to such an extent.

Almost every process has its own phraseology, and the process of the proletarian revolution is no exception to this rule. At present we have an enormous extension of elementary education. Hitherto we have seen no results in the sense of an intensification of culture, but we shall soon begin to see them. We are already starting to approach this phase of development, and then the problem of a reserve of scientists will be solved just as at present that of the reconstruction of our economy is being solved; we shall experience a “turbulent growth” in the number of qualified mental workers.

The Soviet Union is a country of the greatest possibilities; it is not in vain that even bourgeois “geopoliticians” promise it a brilliant future. Its rapid development, however, will not only ensue as a result of quantitative factors, the quantity of territory and the quantity of population; not only as a result of the country’s unique position across the gigantic European- Asiatic Continent, nor of its inexhaustible natural resources, many of which are still lying undisturbed, nay, undreamt of, in all quarters of the gigantic proletarian realm. This progress, which will increase in velocity as it advances, will result from the fact that the October Revolution of the proletariat has wrenched round the rudder of all social development, opening up to the people of the former Tsarist Empire possibilities which are wholly unknown and inaccessible to capitalist countries.

The October revolution, however, is no isolated fact. Nor does the Soviet Union stand apart from the great international revolutionary movement. On the contrary. The October revolution itself was the outcome of the gigantic crisis of the capitalist system of the world. The Soviet Union is the first great revolutionary crystal, round which other crystals will inevitably form. And the further the revolutionary process develops, the more the great work of transforming the world advances, the more magnificent will be the prospects opened up to science.

The terrible crisis which humanity is experiencing can only be solved by movements like the October revolution and formations like the Soviet Union. Imperialism attempts to solve the problem by the preparation of new wars of extermination, and the science of the capitalist world places itself on all hands in the service of this task. Pacifism merely weakens the will of the workers but cannot withstand any scientific criticism, seeing that it is based on illusions which have no root, in real facts, The idealistic and mystic tendencies of the present-day bourgeois world are a process of decadence and pronouncedly hostile to precise scientific enlightenment and rational thought. Among all the forces of present-day society, it is only the working class that can lay claim to the role of a mass force, which will preserve humanity from a terribly destructive catastrophe.

That is why science in the Soviet Union is called upon to fulfil a very noble task, that of fostering the cause of the liberation of mankind from the shame of our time, the barbarity of imperialism. It assists in creating a new system of relations, in which there will be no more room for wars; for violence, and for a mercenary spirit. It assists in setting up a rational form of economy, guided by a union of reasonable minds. It assists in the establishment of Socialism.

In doing all this, science raises its own importance to an unusual height. From the handmaid of theology it once became the handmaid of the golden calf. Under our own eyes it is turning into the friend and helpmate of toiling mankind. It helps to build up Socialism, the construction of which is in itself science applied to action. Socialism and science are in- separable. The highest degree of a systematic State is the highest degree of scientific management. The prosperity of Socialism therefore means not only the prosperity of material productivity and the elimination of coercion of one man by another, but also the very greatest triumph of human knowledge. If the creator of the electric chair on which Sacco and Vanzetti breathed their last, and the instigators of the “monkey trials” against the most eminent natural scientific theory of the nineteenth century talk of the “barbarity of the Soviets”, and when the inspirers of new imperialist wars let loose their “Augurs” with the cry of “the Soviets versus civilisation”, the working class of our country can join with its scientists in quietly maintaining that the red flag of the “great rebellion” of October has for all times become the flag not only of emancipated physical labour but also of liberated science.

The ECCI published the magazine ‘Communist International’ edited by Zinoviev and Karl Radek from 1919 until 1926 irregularly in German, French, Russian, and English. Restarting in 1927 until 1934. Unlike, Inprecorr, CI contained long-form articles by the leading figures of the International as well as proceedings, statements, and notices of the Comintern. No complete run of Communist International is available in English. Both were largely published outside of Soviet territory, with Communist International printed in London, to facilitate distribution and both were major contributors to the Communist press in the U.S. Communist International and Inprecorr are an invaluable English-language source on the history of the Communist International and its sections.

PDF of full issue 1: https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/inprecor/1927/v07n60-oct-27-1927-inprecor-op.pdf

PDF of full issue 2: https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/inprecor/1927/v07n61-nov-03-1927-inprecor-op.pdf