Call for Papers Marxism & Sciences no. 8 (Vol. 4, issue 2)

-Call for Papers-

Marxism & Sciences: A Journal of Nature, Culture, Human and Society

Issue 8

Summer 2025

Marxism and Systems Science - The Technosphere: Systems, Things, and Infrastructures From Tektology, Cybernetics and Computational Planning to the Complexity Paradigm and Platform Capitalism

Issue Editors: Sascha Freyberg, Joost Kircz & Örsan Şenalp

Deadline for abstracts: March 1

Deadline for finished articles: June 1

Issue publication: September 2025

Marxist thought and practice have always centrally focused on the analysis of systems, things, and (technological) infrastructures—along with the possibilities inherent in alternative systems organized by collective ownership and state planning. These discussions have gained renewed currency in the digital age. To explore these questions today means to elaborate a Marxist epistemology of systems that goes beyond the old dichotomy of historical vs. structural analysis.

In this special issue, we want to investigate the relation of Marxism and systems science, in history, theory and practice. We construe systems science broadly, with a particular emphasis on those conceptions which developed in the Marxist tradition with a dialectical approach. Additionally, we understand there to be a longstanding relationship between systems theory, political economy, organisation, computational means, theories of economic planning, and global social history, represented by traditions such as Immanuel Wallerstein’s world systems theory.

In recent years, world systems analysis has been recast in light of the debate around the notion of the Anthropocene. Representative is the work of the geologist Jan Zalasiewicz, who has argued we should understand the artefacts of human planetary activity as comprising the Technosphere. As Zalasiewicz writes, “The technosphere encompasses all of the technological objects manufactured by humans, but that is only part of it…. [It] comprises not just our machines, but us humans too, and the professional and social systems by which we interact with technology…. A proto-technosphere of some kind has been present throughout human history, but for much of this time, it took the form of isolated, scattered patches that were of little planetary significance. It has now become a globally interconnected system – a new and important development on our planet.”

This debate provides an occasion to revisit Marxist resources for understanding human labour in connection with the “scientific-technological revolution” and the “great acceleration” of the twentieth century. We can consider key moments in history, from the famous Bogdanov-Lenin debate to the anti-technocratic work of Evald Ilyenkov, the systems theory of Blauberg, Sadovsky, and Yudin, and cybernetics in the socialist realm.

In the special issue we would like to address the following questions: Is system science more than a theory of an administered world? Does it go beyond an effort to improve the status quo and transform the system altogether? What role does systems theory play in Marxist thought and the history of socialism more generally? What epistemological changes are presented by the development of technologies such as AI? Are current developments reducible to old questions about statistics and data, or do they contain novel dynamics?

Additionally, we might ask: what were the contexts informing the development of Marxist systems theories? Which problems do we encounter today when pursuing these perspectives, and how successful were syntheses of the Marxian critique of political economy and systems thinking? What are its prospects today, and where are revisions needed?

Also, Is it significant that the first two versions of systems science, developed by prominent Marxist theorists Bogdanov and Bukharin, were suppressed by the Soviet regime and only reemerged in the post-war US context?

Given the broad topic, we are looking for contributions from different fields and perspectives, including historical and analytical methods, and systematic and speculative approaches alike. We particularly welcome contributions that give a comprehensive overview of a specific field, case study, or problem.

Possible topics may include:

Revisiting Bogdanov’s work and its reception

Cybernetics in socialist planning in view of computation (e.g. in Chile, DDR, USSR, China, etc.)

Marxist analyses of systems (e.g., trade, money, the internet)

Marxist systems theories (World systems theory, the Regulation School, etc.)

Materialist dialectics and systems theory

Hegel, Marx and Engels as precursors of the systems paradigm

The problem of inherent positivism in techno-futurist ideas

Dialectics of nature and earth-systems science

The Technosphere and the debate about the Capitalocene

Marxist epistemology of systems and infrastructure

Capitalist appropriation of systems sciences (neo-liberalism, neo-institutionalism, Governance theory, Club of Rome, RAND, etc.)

Cybernetics in socialist planning and computation

The rise of complexity science in the neoliberal era (Manhattan Project, Santa Fe Institute, etc.)

Marxist (and post-Marxist) critics of systems sciences and complexity governance

Digital infrastructures and platform capitalism

Proposals

Please send abstracts of your proposal with max. 300 words to marxismandscience@gmail.com

Select Bibliography:

Biggart, J., Dudley, P., & King, F. (Eds.). (1998). Alexander Bogdanov and the origins of systems thinking in Russia. Ashgate.

Blauberg, I. V., Sadovsky, M. V., & Yudin, E. G. (1977). Systems theory: Philosophical and methodological problems. Progress Publishers.

Bogdanov, A.A. Red Star: The First Bolshevik Utopia. (1908). Edited by Loren R. Graham and Richard Stites. Indiana University Press 1984.

Bogdanov, A., and Peter Dudley (1996). Bogdanov’s Tektology. Hull: Centre for Systems Studies; and: Bogdanov, A. (1980) Essays in Tektology, George Gorelik(trs), The systems inquiry series.

Gare, Arran (2000). Aleksandr Bogdanov’s history, sociology and philosophy of science. Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 31,2: 231 -248. See also the praise by C. Rovelli (2023). Relational interpretation of quantum mechanics and Alexander Bogdanov’s worldview. Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 40(2), 312–319.

Ilyenkov, E.: Leninism and the Metaphysics of Positivism Online: https://www.marxists.org/archive/ilyenkov/works/positive/positii.htm.

Lenin (1908) Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. Critical Comments on a Reactionary Philosophy. Vol. 14. Collected Works. Progress Publishers, 1968.

Susiluoto, I. (1982). The origins and development of system thinking in the Soviet Union. Political and philosophical controversies from Bogdanov and Bukharin to present-day re-evaluations, Phd thesis, Helsinki: Annales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae Dissrtationes Humanurum Litterarum 30, Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia

Wallerstein, I. (1974-1989) The Modern World-System, 3 vols; and idem. (2004) World Systems Analysis: An Introduction. Online: https://archive.org/details/worldsystemsanal0000wall

Zalasiewicz, Jan. “The Unbearable Burden of the Technosphere.” The Unesco Courier. March 27, 2018. Online: https://courier.unesco.org/en/articles/unbearable-burden-technosphere