ABSTRACT
This chapter explores Nikolai Bukharin's thinking, his theoretical methodology, and his concept of society as expressed in his early writings, above all in the writings of 1920-22, addressing the economy of the transitional society and its social integration. Bukharin begins by presenting basic problems of political science in the form of scientific declarations: causal, nonteleological, historically determined, and materialistic. In short, Bukharin wanted to construct a positive, theoretical model for the general functioning of society. Bukharin's sociology was similar to bourgeois sociology in its all-encompassing form. It deals with a nationally bounded "totality"; it articulated the holistic problem and answered questions on integration, coherence, and solidarity. Current social thinking seems to deal mostly with the relationship between such a system and the everyday world, "the world we live in", the autonomous sector, the individual human being.
