V.I. Lenin

MATERIALISM and EMPIRIO-CRITICISM

Critical Comments on a Reactionary Philosophy ( Chapter Four: The Philosophical Idealists as Comrades-In-Arms and Successors of Empirio-Criticism )

5. A. Bogdanov’s “Empirio-Monism”

“ I personally,” writes Bogdanov of himself, “know so far of only one empirio-monist in
literature—a certain A. Bogdanov. But I know him very well and can answer for it that his views fully accord with
the sacramental formula of the primacy of nature over mind. To
wit, he regards all that exists as a continuous chain of
development, the lower links of which are lost in the chaos of
elements, while the higher links, known to us, represent the
experience of men [Bogdanov’s italics]—psychical and, still higher, physical
experience. This experience, and the knowledge resulting
therefrom, correspond to what is usually called mind” (Empirio-Monism, III, xii).

The “sacramental” formula here ridiculed by
Bogdanov is the well-known proposition of Engels, whom
Bogdanov, however, diplomatically avoids mentioning! We do not
differ from Engels, oh, no!

But let us examine more carefully Bogdanov’s own summary
of his famous “empirio-monism” and “substitution.” The physical world is called the
experience of men and it is declared that physical experience is “ higher ” in the chain of
development than psychical. But this is utter nonsense! And it
is precisely the kind of nonsense that is characteristic of
all idealist philosophies. It is simply farcical for Bogdanov
to class this “system” as materialism. With me, too, he says, nature is primary and mind secondary. If
Engels’ definition is to be thus construed, then Hegel is also a materialist, for with him, too, psychical experience
(under the title of the Absolute Idea) comes first, then
follow, “higher up,” the physical world, nature, and, lastly, human knowledge, which through nature apprehends
the Absolute Idea. Not a single idealist will deny the primacy
of nature taken in this sense for it is not a genuine primacy,
since in fact nature is not taken as the immediately given, as the starting point of epistemology. Nature is in
fact reached as the result of a long process through abstraction of the “psychical.” It is
immaterial what these abstractions are called: whether
Absolute Idea, Universal Self, World Will, and so on and so
forth. These terms distinguish the different varieties of
idealism, and such varieties exist in countless numbers. The
essence of idealism is that the psychical is taken as the
starting point; from it external nature is deduced, and only then is the ordinary human consciousness deduced
from nature. Hence, this primary “psychical” always turns out to be a lifeless abstraction
concealing a diluted theology. For instance, everybody knows
what a human idea is; but an idea independent of man and prior to man, an idea in the abstract, an Absolute Idea,
is a theological invention of the idealist Hegel. Everybody
knows what human sensation is; but sensation independent of
man, sensation prior to man, is nonsense, a lifeless abstraction, an idealist artifice. And it is precisely to such
an idealistic artifice that Bogdanov resorts when he erects
the following ladder.

1) The chaos of “elements” (we know that no other
human concept lies back of the term “element” save sensation).

2) The psychical experience of men.

3) The physical experience of men.

4) “ The knowledge emerging therefrom.”

There are no sensations (human) without man. Hence, the first
rung of this ladder is a lifeless idealist abstraction. As a
matter of fact, what we have here is not the usual and familiar human sensations, but fictitious sensations,
nobody’s sensations, sensations in general, divine sensations—just as the ordinary
human idea became divine with Hegel when it was divorced from
man and man’s brain.

So away with the first rung!

Away also with the second rung, for the psychical before the physical (and Bogdanov places the second rung
before the third) is something unknown to man or science. The physical realm existed before the psychical could
have appeared, for the latter is the highest product of the
highest forms of organic matter. Bogdanov’s second rung
is also a lifeless abstraction, it is thought without brain,
human reason divorced from man.

Only when we throw out the hrst two rungs, and only then, can
we obtain a picture of the world that truly corresponds to
science and materialism. To wit: 1) the physical world exists
independently of the mind of man and existed long prior to man, prior to any “human
experience”;

2) the psychical, the mind, etc., is the highest
product of matter (i.e., the physical), it is a function of that particularly complex fragment of matter
called the human brain.

“ The realm of substitution,” writes Bogdanov, “coincides with the realm of physical phenomena; for the
psychical phenomena we need substitute nothing, because they
are immediate complexes” (p. xxxix).

And this precisely is idealism; for the psychical, i.e., consciousness, idea, sensation, etc., is taken
as the immediate and the physical is deduced from it, substituted for it. The world is the non-ego created
by the ego, said Fichte. The world is absolute idea, said Hegel. The world is will, said Schopenhauer. The world is
conception and idea, says the immanentist Rehmke. Being is
consciousness, says the immanentist Schuppe. The physical is a
substitution for the psychical, says Bogdanov. One must be
blind not to perceive the identical idealist essence under
these various verbal cloaks.

“ Let us ask ourselves the following question,” writes Bogdanov in Book I of Empirio-Monism
(pp. 128-29): “What is a ‘living being,’ for instance, ‘man’?” And he answers:
“‘Man’ is primarily a definite complex of
‘immediate experiences.’ [Mark, “ primarily ”!] Then, in the
further development of experience, ‘man’ becomes both for himself and for others a physical body amidst other
physical bodies.”

Why, this is a sheer “complex” of absurdities, fit only for deducing the immortality of the soul, or the idea of
God, and so forth. Man is primarily a complex of immediate
experiences and in the course of further development becomes a physical body! That means that there are
“immediate experiences” without a physical body, prior to a physical body! What a pity
that this magnificent philosophy has not yet found acceptance
in our theological seminaries! There its merits would have
been fully appreciated.

“. . . We have admitted that physical nature itself is a
product [Bogdanov’s italics] of complexes of an immediate character (to which psychical co-ordinations also
belong), that it is the reflection of such complexes in
others, analogous to them, but of the most complex type (in
the socially organised experience of living beings)” (p. 146).

A philosophy which teaches that physical nature itself is a
product, is a philosophy of the priests pure and simple. And
its character is in no wise altered by the fact that personally Bogdanov emphatically repudiates all
religion. Dühring was also an atheist; he even proposed
to prohibit religion in his “socialitarian” order. Nevertheless, Engels was absolutely right in pointing
out that Dühring’s “system” could not make ends meet without
religion. [1] The same is true of
Bogdanov, with the essential difference that the quoted
passage is not a chance inconsistency but the very essence of
his “empirio-monism” and of all his “substitution.” If nature is a product, it is
obvious that it can be a product only of some thing that is
greater, richer, broader, mightier than nature, of something
that exists; for in order to “produce” nature, it must exist independently of nature. That means that something
exists outside nature, something which moreover produces nature. In plain language this is called
God. The idealist philosophers have always sought to change
this latter name, to make it more abstract, more vague and at
the same time (for the sake of plausibility) to bring it
nearer to the “psychical,” as an “immediate complex,” as the immediately given which requires no
proof. Absolute Idea, Universal Spirit, World Will, “ general substitution ” of the psychical
for the physical, are different formulations of one and the
same idea. Every man knows, and science investigates, idea,
mind, will, the psychical, as a function of the normally
operating human brain. To divorce this function from substance
organised in a definite way, to convert this function into a
universal, general abstraction, to “substitute” this abstraction for the whole of physical nature, this is the
raving of philosophical idealism and a mockery of science.

Materialism says that the “socially-organised experience
of living beings” is a product of physical nature, a result of a long development of the latter, a development from
a state of physical nature when no society, organisation,
experience, or living beings existed or could have existed. Idealism says that physical nature is a product of
this experience of living beings, and in saying this, idealism
is equating (if not subordinating) nature to God. For God is
undoubtedly a product of the socially-organised experience of
living beings. No matter from what angle you look at it,
Bogdanov’s philosophy contains nothing but a reactionary
muddle.

Bogdanov thinks that to speak of the social organisation of
experience is “cognitive socialism” (Bk. III,
p. xxxiv). This is insane twaddle. If socialism is thus
regarded, the Jesuits are ardent adherents of “cognitive
socialism,” for the basis of their epistemology is divinity as “socially-organised experience.” And
there can be no doubt that Catholicism is a socially-organised
experience; only, it reflects not objective truth (which
Bogdanov denies, but which science reflects), but the exploitation of the ignorance of the masses by definite social
classes.

But why speak of the Jesuits! We find Bogdanov’s “cognitive socialism” in its entirety among the
immanentists, so beloved of Mach. Leclair regards nature as
the consciousness of “mankind” (Der Realismus, etc ., S. 55), and not of the
individual. The bourgeois philosophers will serve you up any
amount of such Fichtean cognitive socialism. Schuppe also
emphasises das generische, das gattungsmässige Moment des Bewusstseins (Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie, Bd. XVII, S. 379-80), i.e., the
general, the generic factor of consciousness. To think that
philosophical idealism vanishes when the consciousness of
mankind is substituted for the consciousness of the individual, or the socially-organised experience for the
experience of one person, is like thinking that capitalism
vanishes when one capitalist is replaced by a joint-stock
company.

Our Russian Machians, Yushkevich and Valentinov, echo the
materialist Rakhmetov in asserting that Bogdanov is an idealist (at the same time foully abusing Rakhmetov
himself). But they could not stop to think where this idealism
came from. They make out that Bogdanov is an individual and
chance phenomenon, an isolated case. This is not true. Bogdanov personally may think that he has invented an
“original” system, but one has only to compare him with the afore mentioned disciples of Mach to realise the
falsity of such an opinion. The difference between Bogdanov
and Cornelius is far less than the difference between
Cornelius and Carus. The difference between Bogdanov and Carus
is less (as far as their philosophical systems are concerned,
of course, and not the deliberateness of their reactionary
implications) than the difference between Carus and Ziehen,
and so on. Bogdanov is only one of the manifestations of that
“socially-organised experience” which testifies to the growth of Machism into idealism. Bogdanov (we are here, of
course, speaking exclusively of Bogdanov as a philosopher)
could not have come into God’s world had the doctrines of his teacher Mach contained no “elements”. . . of
Berkeleianism. And I cannot imagine a more “terrible vengeance” on Bogdanov than to have his
Empirio-Monism translated, say, into German and presented for review to Leclair and Schubert-Soldern,
Cornelius and Kleinpeter, Carus and Pillon (the French collaborator and disciple of Renouvier). The compliments that
would be paid by these outright comrades-in-arms and, at
times, direct followers of Mach to the “substitution” would be much more eloquent than
their arguments.

However, it would scarcely be correct to regard
Bogdanov’s philosophy as a finished and static system. In the nine years from 1899 to 1908, Bogdanov has gone
through four stages in his philosophical peregrinations. At
the beginning he was a “natural-historical” materialist (i.e., semi-consciously and instinctively
faithful to the spirit of science). His Fundamental Elements of the Historical Outlook on Nature bears
obvious traces of that stage. The second stage was the “energetics” of Ostwald, which was so fashionable
in the latter nineties, a muddled agnosticism which at times stumbled into idealism. From Ostwald (the title page of
Ostwald’s Lectures on Natural Philosophy bears the inscription: “Dedicated to E. Mach”) Bogdanov went
over to Mach, that is, he borrowed the fundamental premises of
a subjective idealism that is as inconsistent and muddled as
Mach’s entire philosophy. The fourth stage is an attempt
to eliminate some of the contradictions of Machism, and to
create a semblance of objective idealism. “The theory of
general substitution” shows that Bogdanov has described
a curve of almost 180 (degree) from his starting position. Is this
stage of Bogdanov’s philosophy more remote or less remote from dialectical materialism than the previous stages?
If Bogdanov remains in one place, then he is, of course, more
remote. If he keeps moving along the same curve in which he
has been moving for the last nine years, he is less remote. He
now has only one serious step to make in order to return once more to materialism, namely, universally to
discard his whole universal substitution. For this universal
substitution gathers into one Chinese pigtail all the transgressions of half-hearted idealism and all the weaknesses
of consistent subjective idealism, just as (si licet parva componere magnis !—if it is permissible to compare
the great with the small) Hegel’s “Absolute
Idea” gathered together all the contradictions of
Kantian idealism and all the weaknesses of
Fichteanism. Feuerbach had to make only one serious step in order to return to materialism, namely, universally to
discard, absolutely to eliminate, the Absolute Idea, that
Hegelian “substitution of the psychical” for physical nature. Feuerbach cut off the Chinese pigtail of
philosophical idealism, in other words, he took nature as the
basis without any “substitution” whatever.

We must wait and see whether the Chinese pigtail of Machian
idealism will go on growing for much longer.

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Notes:
[1]
See F. Engels, Anti-Duhring, 1959, pp.435-38.