V. I.

Lenin

Statement of the Editors of Proletary

In Neue Zeit , No. 20, in the foreword by an unknown translator of
A. Bogdanov’s article on Ernst Mach, we read the following:

“Russian Social-Democracy, unfortunately, reveals a strong tendency
to making this or that attitude towards Mach a question of factional
division within the party. Grave tactical differences of opinion between
the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks are aggravated by a controversy on a
question, which, in our opinion, has no bearing whatever on these
differences, namely, whether Marxism, from the point of view of theory, is
compatible with the teaching of Spinoza and Holbach, or of Mach and
Avenarius.”

In this connection the Editorial Board of Proletary , as the
ideological spokesman of the Bolshevik trend, deems it necessary to state
the following. Actually, this philosophical controversy is not a factional
one and, in the opinion of the Editorial Board, should not be so; any at
tempt to represent these differences of opinion as factional is radically
erroneous. Both factions contain adherents of the two philosophical trends.

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