Alex Levant

This piece critically follows David Bakhurst’s 2009 article “Reflections on
Activity Theory” in light of recent developments in the field. It sketches
three directions for further research. First, it examines his identification
of “two strands” of activity theory (AT) – the philosophical, which
he associates with E.V. Ilyenkov and other Soviet theorists, and the
organizational, which he associates with Yrjö Engeström and Cultural-
Historical Activity Theory (CHAT). Drawing on recent scholarship, it
interrogates this understanding of AT, and examines how political
commitment cuts across these strands. Second, it engages Bakhurst’s
critical assessment of Engeström’s triangle model of activity, and
supplements it with a critique of CHAT’s “radical localism” – an
understanding of activity as the unit of analysis that contains the basic
characteristics of the whole. It follows Avis, Colley, Dafermos, Jones,
Mojab and Gorman as well as Warmington, who note the occlusion
of broader social relations and contradictions from the triangular
representation of local activities, and it posits Ilyenkov’s dialectical
conception of activity, which understands the unit of analysis as an
entry point into the whole, as a way to grasp those broader social
relations. Third, it takes up Bakhurst’s critique of anthropocentrism in
the Marxist tradition in light of current literature on the Anthropocene.
In contrast to dominant philosophical trends, which locate climate
change in anthropocentric perspectives inherited from Enlightenment
thought, it suggests how AT can recast the issue in relation to the
organisation of human activity.

This article seeks to excavate and mobilize Activity Theory (AT) for a conversation with recent trends in contemporary philosophy that attempt to overcome the relativism of the linguistic turn while accepting the latter's core critique of Enlightenment conceptions of the human and nonhuman. Specifically, it focuses on Ilyenkov's concept of the thinking body as a useful contrast to the ascription of agency to matter, and instead helps to illuminate the social practices that animate the material world.

"This paper reconsiders the established reading of Luxemburg’s conception of spontaneity,
where she is said to have overestimated the role of spontaneity and underestimated
the role of the party because of an economic-determinist view of history.
It reconsiders this view by re-reading Luxemburg’s concept of spontaneity through
the work of Walter Benjamin, Antonio Gramsci and E.P. Thompson. Using conceptions
of subjectivity not yet available at the time of these debates, as well as the recent
scholarship of Lars Lih on Lenin’s What Is To Be Done?, this article illuminates both
conscious and unconscious processes behind what often appears to be spontaneous
resistance, and offers a new reading of Luxemburg’s critique of Lenin’s views
on organization in 1902
1905. It argues that Luxemburg’s perceived economism is
produced by her critics’ own economistic reading of spontaneity. In contrast, it suggests
that her depictions of spontaneous activity speak to historical processes that can be
illuminated by conceptions of subjectivity developed after her assassination, and which
require a substantial reconceptualization of the nature of subjectivity beyond the limits
of classical Marxism."

"This article aims to introduce E.V. Ilyenkov’s ‘Dialectics of the Ideal’, first published in unabridged form in 2009, to an English-speaking readership. It does this in three ways: First, it contextualises his intervention in the history of Soviet and post-Soviet philosophy, offering a window into the
subterranean tradition of creative theory that existed on the margins and in opposition to official Diamat. It explains what distinguishes Ilyenkov’s philosophy from the crude materialism of Diamat, and examines his relationship to four central figures from the pre-Diamat period: Deborin, Lukács, Vygotsky, and Lenin. Second, it situates his concept of the ideal in relation to the history of Western philosophy, noting Ilyenkov’s original reading of Marx through both Hegel and Spinoza, his criticism of Western theorists who identify the ideal with language, and his effort to articulate an anti-dualist conception of subjectivity. Third, it examines Ilyenkov’s reception in the West, previous efforts to publish his work in the West, including the so-called ‘Italian Affair’, as well as existing scholarship on Ilyenkov in English."

E.V. Ilyenkov is widely considered to be the most important Soviet philosopher in the post-Stalin period. He is known largely for his original conception of the ideal, which he deployed against both idealist and crude materialist forms of reductionism, including offfijicial Soviet Diamat. This conception was articulated in its most developed form in ‘Dialectics of the Ideal’ (2009), which was written in the mid-1970s but prevented from publication in its complete form until thirty years after the author’s death. The translation before you provides for the fijirst time the complete, unabridged and unedited text of ‘Dialectics of the Ideal’ in English translation, including the author’s own subsequent comments on the text.

The Ideal in Human Activity by E. V. Ilyenkov is a substantial tome consisting of two complete books and three articles, which offers for the first time in the form of a single volume the majority of this renowned Soviet philosopher’s work currently available in English translation.

"In Moscow today, old Soviet pins, which had once been awarded to
school kids as a rite of passage, are sold as souvenirs to tourists. These pins are an example of the many ruins of the Soviet Union that have experienced a metamorphosis: they connote an entirely new set of meanings that have supplanted their previous significance without any change in their material form. This article explores the transformation of these “cultural treasures” through the creative output of another Soviet “ruin”: the post‐Stalinist philosopher, Evald Ilyenkov, whose work challenged the hegemony of Soviet Diamat, but has not been adequately studied in the West."

"This review-essay explores the subterranean tradition of ‘creative Soviet Marxism’1 through a
recent book by the Russian philosopher Sergey Mareev, From the History of Soviet Philosophy:
Lukács – Vygotsky – Ilyenkov (2008). It provides a brief overview of the history of Soviet philosophy
so as to orient the reader to a set of debates that continue to be largely unexplored in the
Western-Marxist tradition. Mareev offers a new account of the development of Soviet philosophy
that not only explodes the myth that Soviet philosophy was simply state-sanctioned dogma, but
also reinterprets the relationship between the key creative theorists so as to offer a new way of
understanding its development that challenges several key-aspects of the dominant Western
scholarship on this subject. He argues that alongside official Marxist philosophy in the Soviet
Union – the crude materialism of Diamat and Istmat – there existed another line, which
counterposed the central rôle of social activity in the development of human consciousness. He
traces this line of anti-positivist theory from V.I. Lenin through Georg Lukács and Lev Vygotsky
to Evald Ilyenkov – a pivotal figure in the ‘Marxian renaissance’2 of the 1960s, but who ‘has to
this day remained a Soviet phenomenon without much international influence’.3 Specifically,
Mareev disputes the rôle of A.M. Deborin as a precursor of the Ilyenkov school, and instead
introduces Georg Lukács – a figure primarily recognised in the West as one of the founders of
Western Marxism – into the line of development of creative Soviet Marxism. Furthermore, he
reconsiders the rôle of V.I. Lenin and G.V. Plekhanov – the so-called father of Russian social
democracy – in the development of Soviet philosophy. In the process, the author provides a
detailed history of the emergence of Diamat and Istmat, and shines a spotlight on a figure widely
recognised as the most important Soviet philosopher in the post-Stalin period – E.V. Ilyenkov."

This special section on ‘Rethinking Leninism’ emerges from sessions organized at the Society for Socialist Studies’ Annual Meetings, held at the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences in May 2009 at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. The articles re-consider Lenin’s legacy, suggesting new ways of understanding his political thought and the implications for political strategies on the left today.

Dialectics of the Ideal provides a window into the subterranean tradition of ‘creative’ Soviet Marxism, which developed on the margins of the Soviet academy and remains largely outside the orbit of contemporary theory. With his ‘activity approach’, E.V. Ilyenkov, its principal figure in the post-Stalin period, makes a substantial contribution toward an anti-reductionist Marxist theory of the subject.

In Dialectics of the Ideal: Evald Ilyenkov and Creative Soviet Marxism Levant and Oittinen provide a window into the subterranean tradition of ‘creative’ Soviet Marxism, which developed on the margins of the Soviet academe and remains largely outside the orbit of contemporary theory in the West. With his ‘activity approach’, E.V. Ilyenkov, its principal figure in the post-Stalin period, makes a substantial contribution toward an anti-reductionist Marxist theory of the subject, which should be of interest to contemporary theorists who seek to avoid economic and cultural reductionism as well as the malaise of postmodern relativism. This volume features Levant’s translation of Ilyenkov’s Dialectics of the Ideal (2009), which remained unpublished until thirty years after the author’s tragic suicide in 1979.

This article interrogates current conceptions of thinking machines of the future. In contrast to dystopian visions of the future, where humans become dominated by machines of their own making, I argue that this future already happened some time ago, and that we are, in fact, already living in the future that we dread might come to pass.

Foreword - Alex Levant and Vesa Oittinen I. DIALECTICS OF THE IDEAL E.V. Ilyenkov and Creative Soviet Marxism: Introduction to Dialectics of the Ideal, Alex Levant Dialectics of the Ideal (2009), Evald Ilyenkov II. CONTEXTS Ilyenkov in the Context of Soviet Philosophical Culture: An Interview with Sergey Mareev, Alex Levant and Vesa Oittinen Prospects for a Cultural-Historical Psychology of Intelligence, Birger Siebert Evald Ilyenkov, the Soviet Spinozist, Vesa Oittinen III. COMMENTARIES Reality of the Ideal, Andrey Maidansky Metamorphoses of Meaning: The Concept of the Ideal from a Semiotic Perspective, Tarja Knuuttila Evald Ilyenkov's Dialectics of Abstract and Concrete and the Recent Value-Form Debate, Vesa Oittinen and Paula Rauhala Emancipating Open Marxism: E.V. Ilyenkov's Post-Cartesian Anti-Dualism, Alex Levant IV. SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL Published works by Ilyenkov References Index

This special section on ‘Rethinking Leninism’ emerges from sessions organized at the Society for Socialist Studies’ Annual Meetings, held at the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences in May 2009 at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. The articles re-consider Lenin’s legacy, suggesting new ways of understanding his political thought and the implications for political strategies on the left today. Resume: Cette section speciale sur le theme ‘Re-penser le leninisme’ est le resultat de sessions organisees lors des reunions annuelles de la societe pour les etudes socialistes, qui se sont deroulees pendant le Congres des sciences humaines en mai 2009 a Carleton University a Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Les articles reinterrogent l’heritage de Lenine, suggerant des nouvelles manieres de comprendre sa pensee politique et leurs consequences en termes de strategie politique pour la gauche aujourd’hui.

This chapter specifically brings Evald Vasilyevich Ilyenkov's thought to bear on a set of debates about structure and agency that developed in the journal Open Marxism (OM) between 1992 and 1995. It focuses on John Holloway's contribution to these debates an important contemporary philosopher in the Western Marxist tradition whose book Change the World without Taking Power has been quite influential and the subject of much debate. The chapter demonstrates the relevance of Ilyenkov's work to the project of OM . It also takes seriously recent criticisms of Holloway and the philosophy that informs his political conclusions. Drawing on Ilyenkov's post-Cartesian anti-dualist reading of Marx, the chapter addresses some of these criticisms, specifically OM 's perceived subjectivism. It shows how the dominant categories of intellectual histories Western Marxism and Soviet Marxism exclude the subterranean tradition of creative Soviet Marxism. Keywords: creative Soviet Marxism; Evald Vasilyevich Ilyenkov; John Holloway; Open Marxism (OM) ; post-Cartesian anti-dualist; Western Marxism

Sergey Nikolaevich Mareev is one of the main figures in the Ilyenkovian heritage among present-day Russian philosophers, and he has written several books developing the themes of Evald Vasilyevich Ilyenkov's philosophy, such as The Dialectics of the Logical and the Historical and Marx's Concrete Historicism . Ilyenkov is credited with understanding Marxist dialectics not only as a general theory of development, but as logic and a theory of knowledge. In other words, he charted a direction of Marxist research into the field of epistemology and methodology. Ilyenkov agreed that Marxism was a variety of Spinozism, as Engels had characterised it in conversation with Plekhanov. For Ilyenkov, Marxism was the culmination of the development of all previous intellectual culture, and above all the development of philosophy. All philosophical culture is concentrated in the history of philosophy, and there can be no philosophy beyond the history of philosophy. Keywords: Engels; Evald Vasilyevich Ilyenkov; Marxist dialectics; philosophical culture; Sergey Nikolaevich Mareev; Spinozism

This article aims to introduce E.V. Ilyenkov’s ‘Dialectics of the Ideal’, first published in unabridged form in 2009, to an English-speaking readership. It does this in three ways: First, it contextualises his intervention in the history of Soviet and post-Soviet philosophy, offering a window into the subterranean tradition of creative theory that existed on the margins and in opposition to official Diamat. It explains what distinguishes Ilyenkov’s philosophy from the crude materialism of Diamat, and examines his relationship to four central figures from the pre-Diamat period: Deborin, Lukács, Vygotsky, and Lenin. Second, it situates his concept of the ideal in relation to the history of Western philosophy, noting Ilyenkov’s original reading of Marx through both Hegel and Spinoza, his criticism of Western theorists who identify the ideal with language, and his effort to articulate an anti-dualist conception of subjectivity. Third, it examines Ilyenkov’s reception in the West, previo...

This paper reconsiders the established reading of Luxemburg's conception of spontaneity, where she is said to have overestimated the role of spontaneity and underestimated the role of the party because of an economic-determinist view of history. It reconsiders this view by re-reading Luxemburg's concept of spontaneity through the work of Walter Benjamin, Antonio Gramsci and E.P. Thompson. Using conceptions of subjectivity not yet available at the time of these debates, as well as the recent scholarship of Lars Lih on Lenin's What Is To Be Done?, this article illuminates both conscious and unconscious processes behind what often appears to be spontaneous resistance, and offers a new reading of Luxemburg's critique of Lenin's views on organization in 1902–1905. It argues that Luxemburg's perceived economism is produced by her critics’ own economistic reading of spontaneity. In contrast, it suggests that her depictions of spontaneous activity speak to historical processes that can be illuminated by conceptions of subjectivity developed after her assassination, and which require a substantial reconceptualization of the nature of subjectivity beyond the limits of classical Marxism.