From The Marxist Archives -In Honor Of The 75th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Leon Trotsky-Led Fourth International

Workers Vanguard No. 945	23 October 2009

TROTSKY

LENIN

In Defense of Dialectical Materialism

(Quote of the Week)

This year marks the centennial anniversary of the publication of Materialism and Empirio-criticism, written by Bolshevik leader V.I. Lenin in 1908 during the period of victorious reaction following the defeat of the 1905 Russian Revolution. This work is a powerful repudiation of bourgeois philosophical idealism—embraced at the time even by some Bolshevik leaders—which in the end always amounts to a defense of reaction and the status quo. In the excerpt below, Lenin provides a concise exposition of the Marxist materialist outlook.

Yesterday we did not know that coal tar contains alizarin. Today we have learned that it does. The question is, did coal tar contain alizarin yesterday?

Of course it did. To doubt it would be to make a mockery of modern science.

And if that is so, three important epistemological conclusions follow:

1) Things exist independently of our consciousness, independently of our sensations, outside of us, for it is beyond doubt that alizarin existed in coal tar yesterday and it is equally beyond doubt that yesterday we knew nothing of the existence of this alizarin and received no sensations from it.

2) There is definitely no difference in principle between the phenomenon and the thing-in-itself, and there cannot be any such difference. The only difference is between what is known and what is not yet known....

3) In the theory of knowledge, as in every other sphere of science, we must think dialectically, that is, we must not regard our knowledge as ready-made and unalterable, but must determine how knowledge emerges from ignorance, how incomplete, inexact knowledge becomes more complete and more exact.

Once we accept the point of view that human knowledge develops from ignorance, we shall find millions of examples of it just as simple as the discovery of alizarin in coal tar, millions of observations not only in the history of science and technology but in the everyday life of each and every one of us that illustrate the transformation of “things-in-themselves” into “things-for-us,” the appearance of “phenomena” when our sense-organs experience an impact from external objects, the disappearance of “phenomena” when some obstacle prevents the action upon our sense-organs of an object which we know to exist. The sole and unavoidable deduction to be made from this—a deduction which all of us make in everyday practice and which materialism deliberately places at the foundation of its epistemology—is that outside us, and independently of us, there exist objects, things, bodies and that our perceptions are images of the external world.

—V.I. Lenin, Materialism and Empirio-criticism (1909)

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V. I. Lenin

MATERIALISM and EMPIRIO-CRITICISM

Critical Comments on a Reactionary Philosophy

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Preface to the First Edition

A number of writers, would-be Marxists, have this year undertaken a veritable campaign against the philosophy of Marxism. In the course of less than half a year four books devoted mainly and almost exclusively to attacks on dialectical materialism have made their appearance. These include first and foremost Studies in [?—it would have been more proper to say “against”] the Philosophy of Marxism (St. Petersburg, 1908), a symposium by Bazarov, Bogdanov, Lunacharsky, Berman, Helfond, Yushkevich and Suvorov; Yushkevich’s Materialism and Critical Realism ; Berman’s Dialectics in the Light of the Modern Theory of Knowledge and Valentinov’s The Philosophical Constructions of Marxism.

All these people could not have been ignorant of the fact that Marx and Engels scores of times termed their philosophical views dialectical materialism. Yet all these people, who, despite the sharp divergence of their political views, are united in their hostility towards dialectical materialism, at the same time claim to be Marxists in philosophy! Engels’ dialectics is “mysticism,” says Berman. Engels’ views have become “antiquated,” remarks Bazarov casually, as though it were a self-evident fact. Materialism thus appears to be refuted by our bold warriors, who proudly allude to the “modern theory of knowledge,” “recent philosophy” (or “recent positivism"), the “philosophy of modern natural science,” or even the “philosophy of natural science of the twentieth century.” Supported by all these supposedly recent doctrines, our destroyers of dialectical materialism proceed fearlessly to downright fideism^[1][3] (in the case of Lunacharsky it is most evident, but by no means in his case alone!^[4]). Yet when it comes to an explicit definition of their attitude towards Marx and Engels, all their courage and all their respect for their own convictions at once disappear. In deed—a complete renunciation of dialectical materialism, i.e., of Marxism; in word—endless subterfuges, attempts to evade the essence of the question, to cover their retreat, to put some materialist or other in place of materialism in general, and a determined refusal to make a direct analysis of the innumerable materialist declarations of Marx and Engels. This is truly “mutiny on one’s knees,” as it was justly characterised by one Marxist. This is typical philosophical revisionism, for it was only the revisionists who gained a sad notoriety for themselves by their departure from the fundamental views of Marxism and by their fear, or inability, to “settle accounts” openly, explicitly, resolutely and clearly with the views they had abandoned. When orthodox Marxists had occasion to pronounce against some antiquated views of Marx (for instance, Mehring when he opposed certain historical propositions), it was always done with such precision and thoroughness that no one has ever found anything ambiguous in such literary utterances.

For the rest, there is in the Studies “in” the Philosophy of Marxism one phrase which resembles the truth. This is Lunacharsky’s phrase: “Perhaps we [i.e., all the collaborators of the Studies evidently]^[2] have gone astray, but we are seeking” (p. 161). That the first half of this phrase contains an absolute and the second a relative truth, I shall endeavour to demonstrate circumstantially in the present book. At the moment I would only remark that if our philosophers had spoken not in the name of Marxism but in the name of a few “seeking” Marxists, they would have shown more respect for themselves and for Marxism.
As for myself, I too am a “seeker” in philosophy. Namely, the task I have set myself in these comments is to find out what was the stumbling block to these people who under the guise of Marxism are offering something incredibly muddled, confused and reactionary.

The Author

September 1908

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Notes

[1]Fideism is a doctrine which substitutes faith for knowledge, or which generally attaches significance to faith.—Lenin

[2]Interpolations in square brackets (within passages quoted by Lenin) have been introduced by Lenin, unless otherwise indicated.—Ed.

[3]V. I. Lenin in a letter to A. I, Ulyanova-Yelizarova, dated October 20 (November 8), 1908, wrote: “...if considerations due o the censorship prove very severe, the word’clericalism’ could be replaced everywhere by the word ’fideism’with an explanatory note (’fideism is a doctrine which substitutes faith for knowledge, or which generally attaches significance to faith). This is in case of need—toexplain the nature of the concessions which I am ready o make’ (see Collected Works, present edition, Vol. 37, p. 395). In another letter to his sister, Lenin proposed replacing the word “clericalism” by the word Shamanism”, to which she answered.’ "It is already too late for Shamanism. And is it really better?’ (Ibid., p. 662). From the ext of the book Materialism and Empirio-criticism it can be seen that the word “fideism” was substituted for“clericalism”, although the latter word remained unaltered in some places. The note suggested by Lenin was given in the first edition of the book and was retained in subsequent editions.

[4]Lenin is referring to a religious-philosophical tendency hostile o Marxism called “god-building”, which arose in the period of reaction among a section of the party intellectuals who had deserted Marxism after the defeat of the revolution of 1905–07. The “god-builders”(A. V. Lunacharsky, V.Bazarov and others) preached the creation of a new“socialist” religion in an attempt to—reconcile Marxism with religion. At one time A. M. Gorky supported them.

An enlarged meeting of the editorial board of Proletary(1909) condemned “god-building” and stated in a special resolution that the Bolshevik group has nothing in common with“such a distortion of scientific socialism”. The reactionary nature of “god-building” was exposed by Lenin in his workMaterialism and Empirio-criticism an din his letters to Gorky of February-April 1908 and November-December 1913.