Red Star

by Loren R. Graham

  Its mighty song rang loud and clear.

  Life gave you love both warm and tender,

  In triumph proved your ally true.

  Your proud heart softened and surrendered—

  Embracing life, you loved it too.

  Alas! You could not break the power

  Of iron will and logic cold;

  You could not be life’s chosen lover—

  And then the fateful bell did toll.

  And so, lest life be stayed or hampered,

  You leave the ranks; your struggle ends.

  The warrior’s blade for battle tempered

  Can sometimes break, but never bend.

  You bore your burdens gladly, lightly;

  You shoulder this one now as well.

  Like life itself your cause was mighty—

  In death your love proves greater still!

  The last words were broken by sobs; the tears gushed in torrents from Nella’s eyes, and she could not see Menni make a single swift movement . . .

  Peacefully, joyfully, amid the kisses of the woman he loved, by sunrise he had fallen asleep, murmuring the words: “Nella . . . Netti . . . Victory!”

  Epilogue

  Menni’s death untied many knots. It dealt a heavy blow to his enemies, disproving their cries about his monarchistic ambitions and immediately putting them in the position of slanderers who had been exposed by the facts. The question of the “Project dictatorship” fell away at the same time, as Netti was not at all interested in such power for himself. A Central Project Board was organized from among Menni’s former colleagues. Netti, its chairman, took complete charge of technical matters. He wielded considerable influence; thanks to him, relations between the Central Board and the unions were peaceful for almost ten years. Netti himself understood very well, however, that such a situation was only temporary, and he used these years to elaborate in detail on the plan of the Great Project so that it could continue when the time had come for him to go.

  Little by little the staff of Project Administration changed. Some died, others retired, still others transferred to other posts. Finally Netti found himself in the minority. An industrial crisis broke out, and, encouraged by the ruling party, the Administration decided to take advantage of it to worsen labor conditions. Netti immediately resigned and threw himself into organizing the struggle against this encroachment. The crisis was considerably aggravated by a gigantic strike that stopped the Great Project, the energetic offensive of the workers’ party against the government, and uprisings in several different places. In view of such enormous difficulties, the ruling circles decided to retreat for the time being. But from this moment on there were no longer any ambiguities in class ideologies, and the rupture of the proletariat with the entire existing social order became definitive.

  At about that time Nella died. It was almost as if she had been waiting to do so until another young and beautiful woman with clear radiant eyes had replaced her at Netti’s side. The workers loved Nella, calling her simply “Mother.” Hundreds of thousands marched in her funeral procession and strewed flowers over her grave. On the evening of the day of her burial Arri also passed away.

  Leaving his work as an engineer, Netti directed all his scientific research toward fulfilling his old plan of transforming science so as to make it accessible to the working class. An entire school of cultural revolutionaries formed around him. A number of his pupils—some of them were from working-class backgrounds while others had abandoned the opposing camp of young scholars—worked together with him on the famous Encyclopedia of Labor, from which the proletariat drew both guidance and inspiration in its later struggle for ideological unity.

  It was while working on this project that Netti made his greatest discovery and laid the foundations of Universal Organizational Science.* He sought to simplify and unify scientific methods, and to this end he studied and compared the most disparate approaches applied by man in his learning and labor. Netti found that the two spheres were very intimately related, that theoretical methods derived entirely from practical ones, and that all of them could be reduced to a few simple schemes. When he then compared these schemes with various organic combinations in nature and with the means by which nature creates her stable and developing systems, he was once again struck by a number of similarities and coincidences. Finally he arrived at the following conclusion: no matter how different the various elements of the Universe—electrons, atoms, things, people, ideas, planets, stars—and regardless of the considerable differences in their combinations, it is possible to establish a small number of general methods by which any of these elements joins with another, both in spontaneous natural processes and in human activity. Netti clearly defined three basic “universal organizational methods.” His pupils continued his work, scrutinizing and developing his conclusions in more detail. Thus was born Universal Science, which soon embraced the entire organizational experience of mankind. The philosophy of former times was nothing but a vague presentiment of this science, while the laws governing nature, social life, and thought that had been discovered by the different disciplines turned out to be individual manifestations of its principles.

  From this time on the solution of the most complicated organizational questions became the task not of a talented individual or genius, but of a scientific analysis that resembled the mathematical calculations used to solve problems of practical mechanics. Thanks to this, when the time came for the radical reformation of the entire social order, even the most serious difficulties of the new organization could be overcome relatively easily and quite systematically. Just as natural science had earlier served as a tool of scientific technique, now Universal Science became a tool in the scientific construction of social life as a whole. Even before this period, however, it had found widespread application in developing the organizations of the working class and preparing them for the final, decisive struggle.

  Although he lived to be an old man, Netti witnessed only the first battles of this struggle, which continued for half a century. His children were not outstanding people, but neither were they a disgrace to the memory of their great forebears. They fought just as honestly and bravely for the cause of humanity.

  __________

  *This refers to Bogdanov’s own system of Tectology.

  A MARTIAN STRANDED ON EARTH

  Published as a supplement to the second (sixth) edition of Red Star in 1924, the poem outlines the content of a third novel which Bogdanov planned but never completed. A Martian has reached Earth but is unable to return to his native planet, where mankind has attained a superior level of communist civilization.

  A MARTIAN STRANDED ON EARTH

  Our ship plunged and crashed against Earth’s solid face.

  My comrades are all dead and gone.

  There is no return from this damnable place,

  This cruel planet is my home from now on.

  In the bottomless night, glowing brightly out there

  Is Mars, my native red star.

  But the pull of Earth is heavy to bear

  And its atmosphere weighs on my heart.

  The choice is a grave one—from this life depart

  Where all but outrages my view,

  Taking with me a dream of my own native Mars

  Where reason and brotherhood rule?

  Or bear this deep anguish and tormenting pain

  For a life that is alien to me,

  For a life that wretchedly gropes on in vain

  Toward happiness, seeking to be free?

  Yes, people—it may seem that the difference is small

  Between them and my own Martian race,

  But their hearts and their souls are not ours at all,

  And I am no friend of their ways.

  The harmony of life is outside their ken.

  Though their souls swarm with hazy ideas,

  The inherited past is the lord of these men;

  It has ruled them for so many years.

 
Their infantile babble and rapacious desires

  Veil all but a rare flash or spark

  Of other dreams and passions that vaguely aspire

  To a culture that glimmers afar.

  But then once again, like a barrier of steel

  —Invisible, but most surely there—

  The difference in nature between them and me

  Springs up, and I’m plunged in despair.

  I yearn for a union with life proud and free,

  For fraternity sacred and pure,

  But this shadowy world chills my heart as I see

  The tragedy I’m doomed to endure.

  But then I hear Science, whose voice sounds on high

  From my home in the sky far away:

  “They too are the children of almighty Life,

  Your younger blood brothers are they.

  “You are older than they, but you scaled the same stairs

  Toward consciousness, knowledge, and light.

  Your path was as brutal and wretched as theirs

  And as often was lost in the night.

  “It was violent and raw and drenched through in gore,

  And by vileness and greed was it stained,

  But such are the roads to ideals, and what’s more,

  They are paved with illusions and pain.”

  My poor weary heart listens meekly and feels:

  Yes—this, then, is the fate sealed for me—

  To labor and struggle in this bleak rocky field

  For the future that one day will be.

  For the bright day when man will grope blindly no more

  But will see how his task must be done;

  If he chooses the path that leads straight to the core

  He and life can then fuse into one.

  When space, yes, and time have been conquered by man

  And the elements and death are but words,

  Our two races will merge into one mighty clan

  Of builders of brilliant new worlds.

  So this is the mission for which I’ve been spared;

  I must banish despair from my breast

  And serenely press on to life’s border, and there

  Leave behind me this one last behest:

  Take a word of farewell when the victory is won

  To my loved ones on the star of my birth—

  Tell them their brother is glad to have come

  To this wondrous young planet called Earth!

  BOGDANOV’S INNER MESSAGE

  Loren R. Graham

  Alexander Bogdanov’s novels Red Star and Engineer Menni were popular illustrations of his theories of politics and philosophy.1 Red Star portrayed developed socialism on the planet Mars and it opposed socialist humanity and cooperation to capitalist cruelty and individualism. The hero, Leonid, held out the hope that socialism could soon be created in Russia. Published almost ten years before the Russian Revolution of 1917, the book was popular among Russian radicals both before and after that date. Engineer Menni, published five years later, in 1913, was based on the success of the earlier work and portrayed the history of Mars during the period of capitalism that preceded the events narrated in Red Star. Let us look more closely at these novels, first Red Star and then Engineer Menni, in an attempt to understand more fully Bogdanov’s intentions.

  The primary ideological goal of Red Star, the encouragement of revolution, is clear. However, the novel contains a secondary message which has not been noticed, yet which is striking and prescient. Indeed, the novel is an example of how the readers of a utopia may consider it a success yet not understand what the author meant when he wrote it.

  Was Red Star merely an effort by Bogdanov to present the Russian workers with a visible model for their revolutionary strivings? At first glance Mars does appear to serve this role, to be a socialist utopia, pure and simple. Many of the goals of European socialists have been realized there: all means of production are common property; class conflict has disappeared; money is no longer used; education is based on collectivist principles; the economy is scientifically and centrally planned, a task accomplished with the help of a computer center; artistic life has been reorganized around the needs of the society as a whole rather than around great individuals; political hierarchy and authoritarianism have disappeared (interestingly, there is no mention of a ruling communist party, nor of any political parties); violence, wars, and racism are similarly absent; medical science has advanced to such a degree that people live indefinitely long lives; the workers of Mars have escaped the stultifying effects of the division of labor by switching occupations voluntarily whenever they wish; furthermore, they have become inherently fair-minded and altruistic, they have dropped all the superfluous conventions of bourgeois society, and they treat each other honestly and sincerely. In sum, Martian society seems to be an inspiring model of socialism, one particularly instructive for Earthlings still struggling with the last phases of exploitative capitalism.

  And yet if one penetrates beyond this obvious message of social well-being on Mars, one finds that Bogdanov has given Mars another whole set of surprising characteristics that introduce elements of dystopia into his picture of socialism. When the Earthling Leonid remarks to one of his Martian friends that Mars seems so happy and peaceful, the reply is, “Happy? Peaceful? Where did you get that impression?” And the Martian then tells Leonid of the multitude of problems facing socialist Mars. Many of the industries are so dangerous that they must be kept underground; the population is growing so rapidly that food shortages and even famines are predicted within several decades; natural resources are rapidly being exhausted, as is the radioactive matter that is the main source of energy; in order to continue to utilize their diminishing minerals the Martians have been forced to destroy their beloved forests and degrade their environment; the prolongation of life by advanced medicine has resulted in the problem of forcing people to decide when to end their own lives, and suicide clinics are provided for that purpose.

  The favorite form of drama on Mars is tragedy. Even some of the blessings of socialism have brought their unfortunate reverse sides: the elimination of the division of labor has increased the accident rate in Martian factories, as workers shift from one workplace to another, constantly using machines with which they are not familiar. And nervous disorders have not disappeared, but instead are one of the two most common forms of illness. Most surprising of all, instead of colonialism being merely one of the last stages of decadent capitalism, as Marxists usually believed, socialist Mars has created a Colonial Croup in its government and is preparing to create colonies on either Earth or Venus, or both.

  Why does this pessimism show up so clearly in Bogdanov’s writings? Was he secretly out of sympathy with the Marxism to which he professed allegiance? Was he an early apostle of the dangers of socialism, an antecedent of such writers as Orwell?

  A careful study of Bogdanov’s life and writings shows that, contrary to the implication of these questions, he was a sincere, albeit idiosyncratic, Marxist who was committed to the construction of socialism. But he believed that even after socialism had been successfully created, civilization would be plagued by a whole series of problems, which we would now probably recognize as problems of “postindustrial societies.” Bogdanov was brilliantly prescient in sketching out issues that would face all industrialized nations two generations after he first conceived them: the dangers of atomic energy, the problems of preserving the environment, the dilemmas of biomedical ethics, and the shortages of natural resources and food. Indeed, Bogdanov believed that nature was a far more implacable foe than the class enemy. The capitalists would eventually be defeated, but nature never would be; as one of his Martian heroes observed, “the tighter our humanity closes ranks to conquer nature, the tighter the elements close theirs to avenge the victory.”

  We begin to see, then, that a proper appreciation of Bogdanov’s importance requires that he be regarded as much more than a Russian revolutionary trying to rally the spirit
s of a discouraged proletariat. He was a deeply original thinker about the relationship of science and society. He would have fitted well into one of the university programs formed in the United States and Europe in the late seventies on “Science, Technology and Society.”

  In one of the most interesting passages in Red Star a Martian tries to explain to Leonid why the problems which plague Mars are so incomprehensible to Earthlings. The Martian observes that the reason these issues are “beyond your understanding is because in your world they are eclipsed by others which are more direct and obvious.” These more obvious problems are the struggles between classes, groups, and individuals. Thus, Bogdanov believed that only after the proletarian revolution had been successful and had eliminated struggles among human beings would they see that a more daunting battle still lay ahead: the struggle of united humanity to avoid being overwhelmed by the by-products of its own technological successes. No wonder that Lenin had his doubts about whether Bogdanov’s writings were adequately inspiring!

  The utopian novels Red Star and Engineer Menni were based on philosophical principles which Bogdanov worked out in detail in technical articles and books. Understanding Bogdanov, then, requires looking at these other works and then returning to his novels about the Red Planet. We will find in his technical treatises two basic ideas that influenced all of Bogdanov’s work and life: the first was an explanation of why people disagree on so many topics, the second, an effort to show how, despite these disagreements, understanding is still possible. These two ideas—the one pessimistic, the other optimistic—were imbedded in Bogdanov’s personality, driving him alternately to revolutionary hopefulness and individualistic despair.