Ilyenkov’s most widely noted contribution was his study of the ideal, of how ideals come into being as perfectly material cultural products, the archetype of which is money. His study of Capital, “The Abstract and Concrete in Marx’s Capital” is a masterpiece. Ilyenkov gained a formidable reputation as an interpreter of Hegel even outside of the ranks of Marxism. Ilyenkov was a communist, and the frustration of life in Brezhnev’s USSR became more and more unbearable for him.
Another great philosopher of this generation was Feliks Mikhailov who tackled the seemingly insurmountable philosophical problems that arise as soon as the orthodox Marxist begins to look beyond the simple slogans of philosophical materialism. During the late 1970s, Leontyev’s work began to come under some criticism, criticism generally basing itself on the work Vygotsky, of which Leontyev himself had been seen as the foremost authority, signaling the development of a new generation of critical Marxist thinking. But in the late 1970s, an entire generation of Soviet psychologists died: Luria and Meshcheryakov died in 1977, Leontyev and Ilyenkov in 1979, Ilyenkov by his own hand. Creating a Marxist cultural psychology in the post-Stalin USSR faced an almost insurmountable difficulty: Marx had plenty say about the social and psychological problems arising from bourgeois society, but the Soviet Union was supposed to be free of all such ‘contradictions’. Even those who were wise enough to know that this was nonsense had no opportunity to theorise the pathology of Soviet life, being quite unable to talk or write about such things with other people. Science cannot be built without discussion. This meant that there was a firm line beyond which Soviet psychology could not go without descending into hypocrisy. Even a brilliant Soviet psychologist like Vasily Davydov presaged his analysis of child development on ‘really existing socialism’ being a norm, against which the pathologies of other societies were measured (Kozulin 1990). Perhaps Ilyenkov’s solution was the only way out? But in those precious two decades between a thaw in the suppression of scientific enquiry and the death of the Vygotsky’s continuers, contact was made with the West. In 1962, a young psychology graduate on a student exchange from Indiana University, Mike Cole, arrived in Moscow for a year of research into ‘reflexes’ under Luria (APA 2006). Cole frankly admitted that the significance of Vygotsky’s work which Luria was urging on him utterly escaped his understanding. Nonetheless, Cole took on the task of translating and publishing Luria and Vygotsky’s work in the US. Through Cole’s collaboration with Soviet academics, his own research and teaching, and the steady flow of English translations, a current of Cultural Psychology grew up in the US. Other Americans, such as James Wertsch also visited Russia and contributed to the work of interpreting, translating and exporting this conquest of the Soviet Union. Many, many others like Jaan Valsiner, R. van der Veer, Dot Robbins also played an important role. Finland has always enjoyed a close relationship with Russia, and Yjrö Engeström’s group in Helsinki is probably the main vehicle for the transmission of Activity Theory to the West. There has also been an outflow to the West of Russian academics, schooled in “Cultural Historical Activity Theory” (CHAT). After decades of isolation behind an ‘iron curtain’, in reconnecting with the West, the impact of the social movements (feminism, civil rights, etc.) began to contribute to the development of what is fundamentally an emancipatory theory. There is a great irony here. A Marxist theory of the mind was born in the cauldron of the Russian Revolution, but was repressed precisely because of its revolutionary Marxist character, despite the fact that Marxism was the official state doctrine. After 30 years in hiding, it escaped to take root in the U.S., the bastion of capitalism and anti-communism, where in order to survive it had to keep its Marxism under wraps. But in a double irony, the crisis which befell Marxism in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union left CHAT largely unscathed, because of the non-political shape it had adopted for the purposes of survival in the past. So CHAT is now a worldwide current in the human sciences, largely overlooked by anyone going in search of Marxism, because it is located in the professional lives of teachers and social workers, linguists and psychologists, almost all of them politically on the Left, but no kind of Party. In the opinion of many, it is the most important intellectual gain of the whole period of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath in the USSR. References -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- American Psychological Association, (2006) Citation for Michael Cole: Award for Distinguished Contributions to the International Advancement of Psychology, American Psychologist, Vol. 61, No. 8, pp. 902-917, Washington DC. Cole, M., (1996) Cultural Psychology. A Once and Future Discipline, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Cole, M., Levitin, K., Luria, A., (2006) The Autobiography of Alexander Luria. A dialogue with The Making of Mind, Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Earlbaum. Goethe, J. W. v., (1996) Goethe on Science. An Anthology of Goethe’s Scientific Writings, Selected and introduced by Jeremy Naydler, With a foreword by Henri Bortoft, Edinburgh, UK: Floris. Khrushchev, N, (1956) Report of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to the 20th Party Congress ( [1956]), Moscow: Foreign Languages Pub. House. Kozulin, A., (1990) Vygotsky’s Psychology. A biography of Ideas, Cambridge MA. Harvard University Press. Levitin, K., (1982) One is not born a Personality. Profiles of Soviet Educational Psychologists, Davydov, Prof. V.V. editor, Moscow: Progress Publishers. Luria, A.R., (1979) The Making of Mind: A Personal Account of Soviet Psychology, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press . Luria, A. R., (1987) The Mind of a Mnemonist. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Marx, K., (1975 [1844]) Private Property and Communism, MECW vol. 3, p. 293, London, UK: Lawrence & Wishart. Marx, K., (1975a [1845]) Theses on Feuerbach, MECW vol. 5, p. 3, London, UK: Lawrence & Wishart. Marx, K., (1996 [1867]) Preface to the First Edition of Capital, MECW, vol. 35, p. 8, London, UK: Lawrence & Wishart. Sedov, L., (1980 [1936]) The Red Book on the Moscow Trials, London: New Park Publications. Vygotsky, L.S., (1971 [1917]) The Psychology of Art, Boston MA: MIT Press. Vygotsky, L.S., (1987 [1934]) “Thinking and Speech,” Collected Works, Volume 3, p. 39-285, New York: Plenum Press. Vygotsky, L.S., (1997 [1924]) “The methods of reflexological and psychological investigation,” Collected Works, Volume 3, pp. 35-50, New York: Plenum Press. Vygotsky, L.S., (1997a [1927]) “The Historical Meaning of the Crisis in Psychology: A Methodological Investigation,” Collected Works, Volume 3, p. 233-343, New York: Plenum Press. Vygotsky, L.S., (1992 [1926]) Educational Psychology, Florida: St. Lucie Press. Vygotsky, L.S., (1998 [1934]) “Problems of Child (developmental) Psychology,” Collected Works, Volume 5, p. 187-318, New York: Plenum Press _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
