Lenin on Mars

In the succeeding sections the resolution still more confuses the question of the convocation of a popular constituent assembly. Propaganda which proclaims confidence in the State Duma on this score is downright reactionary, while to say that a constituent assembly should be convened by a “democratic organisation of the people” is much like proposing to call a constituent assembly through a committee of friends of the people living on the planet Mars.

SOURCE: Lenin, V. I. “The Latest in Iskra Tactics, or Mock Elections as a New Incentive to an Uprising” (17 October 1905, Proletary, No. 21), in CW, Vol. 9.

168

TO HIS MOTHER*

P.S. Today I read an amusing newspaper article on the inhabitants of Mars in connection with a new English book by Lowell, Mars and Its Canals. Lowell is an astronomer who has worked for a long time in a special observatory which, I believe, is the best in the world (in America). It is a scientific work. It argues that Mars is inhabitable, that the canals are a miracle of engineering, that people on that planet must be two and two-thirds the size of our people here, and that they, furthermore, have trunks and are covered with feathers or animal skins and have four or six legs. Hmm... the author [2] cheated us by describing the Martian beauties only in part, according to the principle that “... the deceit that elevates is dearer to us than a host of vulgar truths”. [3]

A new story by Gorky has been published—The Last.

1 The letter to which this is the postscript has been lost.—Ed.

2 A. Bogdanov, author of the novel Krasnaya Zvezda (The Red Star).—Ed.

3 These words are from Alexander Pushkin’s The Hero.

SOURCE: Lenin, V. I. Letter to his Mother (1908), translated by George H. Hanna, in V. I. Lenin: Collected Works, Volume 37, (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1977), p. 389. Written in the summer of 1908. Sent from Geneva to Mikhnevo, Serpukhov Uyezd, Moscow Gubernia. First published in 1929 in the journal Proletarskaya Revolyutsiya No. 11. (Vol. 37 in PDF).

Behold the new hash our cook has prepared. Engels is speaking of being beyond the point where our sphere of observation ends, for instance, of the existence of men on Mars. Obviously, such being is indeed an open question. But Bazarov, as though deliberately refraining from giving the full quotation, paraphrases Engels as saying that “being outside the realm of perception” is an open question!! This is the sheerest nonsense and Engels is here being saddled with the views of those professors of philosophy whom Bazarov is accustomed to take at their word and whom Dietzgen justly called the graduated flunkeys of clericalism or fideism.

SOURCE: Lenin, V. I. Materialism and Empirio-criticism: Critical Comments on a Reactionary Philosophy (1909), (in CW, Vol. 14), Chapter 2.2: ‘'’Transcendence,’ Or Bazarov ‘Revises’ Engels, excerpt, p. 117.

“Here is an example. Kievsky starts his article by asking: “Is not this (self-determination) the same as the right to receive free of charge 10,000 acres of land on Mars? The question can be answered only in the most concrete manner, only in context with the nature of the present era.”

“The position is different in Eastern Europe. As far as the Ukrainians and Byelorussians, for instance, are concerned, only a Martian dreamer could deny that the national movement has not yet been consummated there, that the awakening of the masses to the full use of their mother tongue and literature (and this is an absolute condition and concomitant of the full development of capitalism, of the full penetration of exchange to the very last peasant family) is still going on there.”

SOURCE: Lenin, V. I. “A Caricature of Marxism and Imperialist Economism,” chapter 2. “Our Understanding of the New Era” (1916), in CW, Vol. 23.

The volume referenced is Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, but I am unable to find this quote anywhere in this volume or anywhere else:

“On Mars, self-correcting systems and moving equilibria solve all problems of supply and demand…. In utopian consumption, goods flow without surplus or shortage…. Economic equilibrium is paralleled by equilibrium of bodily energy flows…. The Martian body and society are godlike; they possess perfect plenitude” (Lenin 1962, 66).

REFERENCE: Lenin, V.I. 1962. Collected Works. Edited by Clemens Dutt. Translated by Abraham Fineberg. Vol. 14. Moscow: Progress Publishers.

SOURCE: Ervin, Jarek Paul. 2026. “Bogdanov’s Red Star and Ilyenkov’s Critique: Science Fiction, Technology, and Politics.” Marxism & Sciences 8: 199–209.

Lenin, H. G. Wells, & Science Fiction

Chapter 2 of The Life and Thought of H.G. Wells:
Between the Past and the Future: [On The Time Machine]
by Julius Kagarlitski

Red Stars: Political Aspects of Soviet Science Fiction
by Patrick McGuire

Dystopia west, dystopia east: the vanishing of speculative fiction under Stalinism
by Erika Gottlieb

Evald Ilyenkov & Activity Theory: Bibliography of Writings in English

Science Fiction & Utopia Research Resources:
A Selective Work in Progress

Marx and Marxism Web Guide

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