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[Zulu]: "Materialism & Empiriocriticism" had one and only one objective, and it was purely political: to lump A. Bogdanov together with Mach and thus denigrate him to the point of slander to undermine his popularity within the Party (which had nothing to do with Mach). It was Lenin's gravest mistake. Treating it as some kind of a profound study in philosophy is ridiculous. Why this was done by the priests of the Marxist parish in the USSR is understandable, why it is kept being done by some people in the 21st century is not...

[P. Cockshott]: Are you expressing an opinion in support of Mach or of Bogdanov?

[Zulu]: Bogdanov, of course. Except it's not an opinion, but a fact. I mean, the nature of that Lenin's work as a political attack on a fellow Bolshevik. A matter of opinion would be whether that attack and the chosen path of attack was really necessitated and justified or not. And as much as I love Granpa Lenin with all my heart for all that he did, in my opinion, the particular affair in question was completely unnecessary and unjustified, damn fucking shame and a debacle.

[John Lowrie]: I agree. Bogdanov was not the subjectivist of Lenin's caricature but a decided objectivist. Thus he states, "The objective character of the physical world consists in the fact that it exists not for me personally, but for all... the objectivity of the physical series - this is its universal validity". On the other hand, subjective experience was that which lacked universal validity". Incidentally, Bogdanov was arrested the night of 8th September 1923 and put in the Lubyanka prison. So much for those who hold that the degeneration of the revolution was all Stalin's doing! Bogdanov, who despised Plekhanov's "universal philosophy" of dialectical materialism, protested against Plekhanov's alluding to him as a Machist.
The irony is all the greater, for Lenin ensured that Bogdanov's writings were given little exposure, while later Stalin turned Lenin into figure of papal infallibility and Bogdanov was excommunicated from the sacred circle of Leninist orthodoxy. The irony is that at the time Stalin characterised Lenin's "Materialism and Empiriocriticism" as a storm in a teacup and secretly communicated his support to Bogdanov and his group. Even more ironical is Bogdanov's reply to Lenin in ''The Fall of the great Fetish.'' Bogdanov had argued that ''Social being and social consciousness..is identical.'' Lenin contended that this was 'idealism.' Now Bogdanov pointed out that if speech arises as an essential component in the course of the production process, then social being and social consciousness are identical. (Only now are Bogdanov's works being translated into English.)
The irony continues in that in his "Concerning Marxism and Linguistics" of 1948 Stalin reaffirmed Bogdanov's thesis, albeit without acknowledgement. He had already done this with his thesis in ''The Foundations of Leninism''that revolution was likely to occur at the weakest links in the imperialist chain. Stalin attributed this thesis to Lenin, but in fact it was taken from Bogdanov's "Tektology"

[Zulu]: Yeah. The irony is that Bogdanov sort of anticipated all that in his response to "Materialism & Empirio-Criticism". It's called "Faith and Science" and is yet to be translated. There Bogdanov both dissects the work itself, and utilizes it to illustrate the difference between the two modes of thinking. The tendency to seek and proclaim "absolute truths" and the reliance on authority in the arguments characterize Lenin as essentially a religious thinker...
I used to get triggered, when I was but a neophyte, when some people called Marxism a "secular religion". But the facts are there, and after reading Bogdanov I had to admit that "Materialism and Empirio-Criticism" certainly gave the Soviet scholastics a lot to work with. One most egregious example was the crusade against "Einsteinianism" that almost got underway when certain professors, encouraged by the "triumph" of Lysenko over "Morganism-Weismannism", began quotemining it to "prove" all revisions and additions to classical mechanics to be bourgeois idealism. This attempt fell flat on its face rather quickly though, as a bunch of real physicists wrote a letter to L. Beria to the tune of whether he wanted Marxist-Leninist purity or the nuclear bomb. The choice was plain and simple enough.
In general, the relation of Lenin and Bogdanov is a long, sad and didactic story. And it starts with the fact that the former was a lawyer by trade, and the latter was a physician. So, in his "Empiriomonism" Bogdanov set out to supplant the Hegelian mumbo-jumbo of the classical Marxism with something more in line with the contemporary scientific method, which was still under development at the time, so that it could remain up-to-date and what it proclaimed to be - a theory of scientific communism. But Plekhanov and then Lenin said: "No, Hegelian mumbo-jumbo stays in place, because who are we to doubt Marx?"
Then, in the aftermath of the Revolution of 1905-07, there was a disagreement about the path the Bolsheviks should take, and most importantly about who gets to control the party funds, and in particular N. Schmidt's inheritance. Next there were a few games of chess between Lenin and Bogdanov, which, according to M. Gorky, Lenin all lost and got real mad about it. So one can't help but suspect that mere pettiness played some part in the subsequent Lenin's drive to marginalize Bogdanov and his close associates (who had their own differences between them). Most of them (Krassin, Lunacharsky, Bazarov) would rejoin the top ranks of the Bolsheviks in 1917, but not Bogdanov, who apparently thought that it would be impossible for him to collaborate with Lenin, so he remained with the "other ranks" (his clandestine moniker from 1905 being "Private", by the way).
That's why I call it a debacle. Bogdanov would have been an invaluable asset to the Party and the young Soviet republic in any position - the higher, the better. But alas, instead of any serious attempt at rapprochement, Lenin chose to be petty to the end and torpedoed another good idea of Bogdanov, namely, the Proletkult...
If only Lenin could find it in himself to be able to accept the fact that Bogdanov was more insightful about some things. The possibilities might have been amazing. They could have made another glorious duo on the pages of history, like Marx & Engels, Castro & Guevara... The saddest part is that even from the rationale that the Bolsheviks needed a single top leader, and Lenin was best suited for this role, he did not really have to have Bogdanov expelled to consolidate that leadership. I mean, he was like almost destined to, because of his brother, who had been executed by the czar. Everybody knew this and was sure that Lenin was going to see this whole revolutionary thing through, would not defect, would not compromise, would not run away with the party funds. That's why he always had all the hardliners firmly behind him, even as Bogdanov's group was pushing for a harder line than himself.
As for Stalin, his relation to Bogdanov was a practical one. Prior and during 1905 Bogdanov was confined by the police to his permanent place of residence, which happened to be the city of Tula, which happened to be the center of small arms manufacturing, so it's up to everyone's imagination what kind of connection there was between him as the main Bolshevik organizer "on the ground" and Stalin, who was basically the chief of the Caucasian pistoleros at the time. In later years, when Stalin was on his way to supreme power, he saw to it that Bogdanov, by then a doubly marginalized suspect of political dissent, received enough funds to get his project of research into blood transfusion going.
How much Bogdanov's theoretical thought influenced Stalin is debatable. Officially, in "The History of VKP(b)" he codified "Materialism and Empirio-Criticism" as the true orthodoxy. He also mentioned "Bogdanovism" rather disparagingly in his "Response to Yaroshenko" in "The Economic Problems of Socialism".
Ironically, back in 1937, when Stalin gave the order to draft a textbook on political economy (which "The Economic Problems" were all about), he instructed the committee that the task was assigned to, to use Bogdanov's "Short Course of Economic Science" from the early 1900s as a starting point (it was also translated into English by the CPGB in the 1920s, by the way).
Stalin used to make notes on the margins of some of the books he read. In total, there are 392 such books and journals preserved in the Russian State Archive. Among those there are 5 different editions of that Bogdanov's textbook, but no other books by him. (Incidentally, the earliest edition contains a stamp signifying that it had previously been in the library of the czarist finance ministry...)
On a final note, I'm also glad about this renewed interest in Bogdanov, which seems to have cropped up in the recent years, although I fully expect that these enthusiasts for Bogdanov's legacy will tend to present this story as though Bogdanov was "a good guy", and Lenin was "a bad guy". This would be wrong, of course, as both were "good guys". But all good guys have their human/monkey flaws, that sometimes lead to regrettable misunderstandings and tragic consequences. One must always keep this in mind.

[John Lowrie]: J. D. White in his "Marx and Russia" (2019) and "The Red Hamlet: the Life and Ideas of Alexander Bogdanov" (2018) examines many of the issues you attest above. One is that when Marx came to study Russian and other social conditions he came to abandon all Hegelian schemes. Thus in his famous letter to Mikhailovsky he complained of him: "That he feels he must absolutely metamorphose my historical sketch of the genesis of capitalism in Western Europe into a historic-philosophical theory of the universal path every people is fated to tread". Bogdanov despised Plekhanov and rejected his universal "philosophy" of dialectical materialism. According to White, Lenin's "Materialism" was written to defend Plekhanov and undermine Bogdanov. Bogdanov held Lenin in his "Materialism" to be pompously posturing with pseudo-erudition ("The Red Hamlet", p. 246).

( Bogdanov's prediction )

Whenever the topic of "distribution according to needs" comes up, it goes hand in hand with the topic of rationing and of the definition of "needs", which is a double-edged thing. On one edge there is the effective restriction of the "needs" (at least from the present day perspective), and on the other, the question as to who is going to make decisions about the restrictions - what to restrict, to which exact amount and for whom. In addition, what consequences suboptimal decisions about rationing tend to have?

In this regard, the practice of "real socialism" in the Soviet Union gives quite a few examples that must be considered for future reference. One of the most glaring of such examples and the one that almost invariably comes up among the Russian speakers when these topics are discussed, is the "Red Caviar Problem".

Caviar is basically fish's eggs. That's why it is very nutritious as food and contains almost all vitamins and such. On top of that, it tastes deliciously and the red sorts of it even pop in your mouth like bubble wrap. So it's safe to say that caviar is a product of particular dietary and culinary value.

But at the same time, it doesn't take any more labor or energy input to make and preserve it, than most other fish products. Thus, there is no reason why members of a communist society (even in its lowest stage) should be denied it. Except for the fact that the fish species from which caviar is extracted are rather rare. So, there is natural scarcity of caviar. Even today, when the technology of aquaculture and fish farms has been developed, you don't see caviar competing against tuna, let alone pork and chicken...

Back in the USSR, when consumer prices were fixed by the government and in theory had to reflect the socially necessary labor time that went into production of the goods, caviar was pretty cheap. Every worker and collective farmer could afford to buy some. But the supply was naturally very short of the demand. The total amount of black caviar extracted in the USSR was ~2000 tons per year. If we assume for simplicity the population of the USSR as ~200 million citizens, average annual per capita consumption would be ~10 grams, or a full teaspoon! That is, if it were not exported to the "free world" at market prices nominated in very green and much appreciated dollars...

Red caviar was more abundant and not so lucrative in the world market due to competition from Japan, so it was more available to the ordinary Soviet citizens. Yet it was still a "premium" good.

The government had to ration it one way or another. In fact, there were several ways. It started with the "special dispensaries" for certain privileged categories, such as "responsible" Party and Soviet officials, ranking military and police officers, etc. Caviar was available for purchase there more or less regularly at fixed prices. From there, as well as from poachers, caviar flowed to the black market, where it sold for ten times the fixed price. Corruption bloomed, of course, to the point that a deputy minister of the fishing industry was tried and shot - at the end of Brezhnev's rule, when such things weren't really common.

To ordinary citizens caviar was available every day only in high-end restaurants and theater buffets. The restaurants were allowed to put a high mark-up on top of the wholesale price (justified as per the service of the chefs and waiters) and the theater/concert hall buffets were sites of rather unbecoming stampedes the less cultured representatives of the most cultured Soviet citizenry went on to grab a sandwich or a cake during the short intermissions in the performances, so the price of caviar there was inconsequential anyway.

At the factories, research institutes, etc., there were "bureau of orders" operating under the trade unions umbrella, which offered a variety of goods unavailable in common retail stores (like those imported from the ComEcon countries). But there were certain shenanigans. First of all, to place an order for the thing you really wanted (like caviar), you would usually have to accept a "load", i.e. some junk (like a broom, shoe wax or stationery) that you didn't really need, but the 5-year plan had provisioned to "realize" to the populace. Then the amount of orders available at any given time was limited, and you'd have to wait for your turn after you made one, so you could easily miss out on something (like caviar), if you had timed another order less than optimally. Needless to say, petty corruption flourished there too, and you'd better had a certain skill to navigate that trade union environment of favoritism and the "telephone law", to make a steady use of it. And if you weren't a good boy, had multiple or recent disciplinary run-ins with the higher-ups, this bureau would be effectively closed for you.

But in the weeks leading up to major holidays (1st&9th of May, 7th of November and especially the New Year) stockpiles of red caviar were dumped upon the retail stores all over Moscow, Leningrad and other major cities. The rule "no more than X cans in 1 pair of hands" had to be observed to prevent immediate rushes. Still, people who would like to hoard some for other special occasions (birthdays, weddings, etc.) or for speculation would do so by circling around several stores and so on. People from small towns and the countryside would also come in what was colloquially called "sausage trains" and, depending on luck and "connections", get their more or less fair share of the delicacies. So, the stores would run out of the allotted supply earlier than expected and then have to wait to be restocked. Rumors would start to circulate about which store and when was about to "cast it out" on the shelves again. People then would come en masse and form queues, some making arrangements and calling favors with their colleagues and managers at their workplaces to leave early in the day to have better chances of catching the desired gourmet. But then the rumors often proved false and the shelves remained empty. The crowd would naturally get agitated, suspecting foul play and what not. And at that moment of high tension a snarky store manager would come out and announce: "Dear customers! Comrades! The Politburo has convened and declared that today there is no need of red caviar!" One can only imagine what the disappointed people thought of the wisdom of the Politburo, the fat cheeks of the store manager and the communist system in general (on the eve of the official holidays).
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