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 )

2. How the “Empirio-Symbolist”

Yushkevich
Ridiculed the “Empirio-Criticist” Chernov “ It is, of course, amusing,” writes
Mr. P. Yushkevich, “to see how Mr. Chernov tries to make
the agnostic positivist Comtean and Spencerian, Mikhailovsky,
a forerunner of Mach and Avenarius” (op. cit., p. 73).

First of all, what is amusing here is Mr. Yushkevich’s astonishing ignorance. Like all Voroshilovs, he conceals this
ignorance under a display of erudite words and names. The
passage quoted is from a paragraph devoted to the relation
between Machism and Marxism. And although he undertakes to
treat of this subject, Mr. Yushkevich does not know that for
Engels (as for every materialist) the adherents of the Humean
line and the adherents of the Kantian line are equally agnostics. Therefore, to contrast agnosticism generally with
Machism, when even Mach himself confesses to being a follower
of Hume, is simply to prove oneself an ignoramus in philosophy. The phrase “agnostic positivism” is
also absurd, for the adherents of Hume in fact call themselves
positivists. Mr. Yushkevich, who has taken Petzoldt as his
teacher, should have known that Petzoldt definitely regards
empirio-criticism as positivism. And finally, to drag in the
names of Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer is again absurd,
for Marxism rejects not what distinguishes one positivist from
another, but what is common to both and what makes a philosopher a positivist instead of a materialist.

Our Voroshilov needed this display of words so as to “mesmerise” his reader, to stun him with a
cacophony of words, to distract his attention away from the essence of the matter to empty trifles. And the
essence of the matter is the radical difference between
materialism and the broad current of positivism, which includes Auguste Comte, Herbert Spencer, Mikhailovsky, a
number of Neo-Kantians, and Mach and Avenarius. The essence of
the matter has been very accurately expressed by Engels in his
Ludwig Feuerbach, where he places all the Kantians and Humeans of that period (i.e., the eighties
of the last century) in the camp of wretched eclectics,
pettifoggers ( Flohknacker : literally, flea-crackers), and so
on. [2] To whom this characterisation can and must apply is a question on which our
Voroshilovs did not wish to reflect. And since they are
incapable of reflecting, we shall cite one illuminating
comparison. Engels, speaking both in 1888 and 1892 of the
Kantians and Humeans in general, mentions no names. [3] The only reference Engels makes to a
book is his reference to the work of Starcke on Feuerbach,
which Engels analysed. “Starcke,” says Engels, “takes great pains to defend Feuerbach against the
attacks and doctrines of the vociferous lecturers who today go
by the name of philosophers in Germany. For people who are
interested in this afterbirth of German classical philosophy
this is a matter of importance; for Starcke himself it may
have appeared necessary. We, however, will spare the reader
this” ( Ludwig Feuerbach,
S. 25). [4]

Engels wanted to “spare the reader,” that is, to save the Social-Democrats from a pleasant acquaintance with
the degenerate chatterboxes who call themselves philosophers. And who are implied by this “afterbirth”?

We open Starcke’s book (C. N. Starcke, Ludwig Feuerbach, Stuttgart, 1885), and find constant references
to the adherents of Hume and Kant . Starcke dissociates Feuerbach from these two trends. Starcke quotes in
this connection A. Riehl, Windelband and A. Lange (pp. 3, 18-19, 127, etc., in Starcke).

We open Avenarius’ The Human Concept of the World, which appeared in 1891, and on page 120 of the
first German edition we read: “The final result of our analysis concurs—although not absolutely
(durchgehend) in the measure of the various points of view—with that reached by other investigators, for
example, E . Laas, E . Mach, A . Riehl, W . Wundt . See
also Schopenhauer .”

Whom was our Voroshilov-Yushkevich jeering at?

Avenarius has not the slightest doubt as to his kinship in
principle—not regarding any particular question, but regard ing the “final result” of
empirio-criticism—to the Kantians Riehl and
Laas and to the idealist Wundt. He mentions Mach between the two Kantians. And, indeed, are they not all one
company, since Riehl and Laas purified Kant à la
Hume, and Mach and Avenarius purified Hume à la
Berkeley?

Is it surprising that Engels wished to “spare” the
German workers, to save them from a close acquaintance with
this whole company of “flea-cracking” university lecturers?

Engels could spare the German workers, but the Voroshilovs do
not spare the Russian reader.

It should be noted that an essentially eclectic combination of
Kant and Hume, or Hume and Berkeley, is possible, so to speak,
in varying proportions, by laying principal stress now on one,
now on another element of the mixture. We saw above, for
instance, that only one Machian, H. Kleinpeter, openly admits
that he and Mach are solipsists (i.e., consistent
Berkeleians). On the other hand, the Humean trend in the views
of Mach and Avenarius is emphasised by many of their disciples
and followers: Petzoldt, Willy, Pearson, the Russian empirio-criticist Lessevich, the Frenchman Henri
Delacroix, [1] and others. We shall cite one example—an especially
emincllt scientist who in philosophy also combined Hume with
Berkeley, but who emphasised the materialist elements of this
mixture. He is Thomas Huxley, the famous English scientist,
who gave currency to the term “agnostic” and whom
Engels undoubtedly had chiefly and primarily in mind when he
spoke of English agnosticism. Engels in 1892 called this type
of agnostics “shamefaced materialists.” [5] James
Ward, the English spiritualist, in his book Naturalism and Agnosticism, wherein he chiefly attacks the
“scientific champion of agnosticism,” Huxley (Vol. II, p. 229), bears out Engels’ opinion when he
says: “In Huxley’s case indeed the leaning towards the primacy of the physical side [“series of
elements” Mach calls it] is often so pronounced that it
can hardly be called parallelism at all. In spite of his
vehement repudiation of the title of materialist as an affront
to his untarnished agnosticism, I know of few recent writers
who on occasion better deserve the title” (Vol. II, pp. 30-3l). And James Ward quotes the following statements by
Huxley in confirmation of his opinion: “‘Anyone who is acquainted with the history of science will admit, that
its progress has, in all ages, meant, and now more than ever
means, the extension of the province of what we call matter
and causation, and the concomitant gradual banishment from all
regions of human thought of what we call spirit and spontaneity.’” Or: “‘It
is in itself of little moment whether we express the phenomena of matter in
terms of spirit, or the phenomena of spirit in terms of
matter—each statement has a certain relative truth
[“relatively stable complexes of elements,” according to Mach]. But with a view to the progress of
science, the materialistic terminology is in every way to be
preferred. For it connects thought with the other phenomena of
the universe. . . whereas the alternative, or spiritualistic,
terminology is utterly barren, and leads to nothing but
obscurity and confusion of ideas. . . . Thus there can be
little doubt, that the further science advances, the more
extensively and consistently will all the phenomena of Nature
be represented by materialistic formulae and symbols’” (Vol. I, p. 17-19).

So argued the “shamefaced materialist” Huxley, who refused to accept materialism, regarding it as
“metaphysics” that illegitimately goes beyond “groups of sensations.” And this same Huxley
wrote: “‘If I were obliged to choose between absolute materialism and absolute idealism I should feel
compelled to accept the latter alternative. . . . Our one
certainty is the existence of the mental world’” (J. Ward, Vol. II, p. 216).

Huxley’s philosophy is as much a mixture of Hume and
Berkeley as is Mach’s philosophy. But in Huxley’s case the Berkeleian streaks are incidental, and agnosticism
serves as a fig-leaf for materialism. With Mach the “colouring” of the mixture is a different one, and
Ward, the spiritualist, while bitterly combating Huxley, pats
Avenarius and Mach affectionately on the back.

---
Notes:
[1]
Bibliotheque du congrès international de philosophie, Vol. IV, Henri Delacroix, David Hume et la philosophie critique [David Hume and Critical Philosophy] . Among the followers of Hume the author
includes Avenarius and the immanentists in Germany, Ch. Renouvier and his school (the neo-criticists) in France.
— Lenin

[2]
K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works Vol. II,
Moscow,. 1958, p. 376.

[3]
Lenin is referring to Engels’ work Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy (1888) and the
“Special Introduction to the English Edition of
1892” of his Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (see K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works, Vol. II,
Moscow, 1958, pp. 370-71, 99-102).

[4]
See K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works, Vol. II, Moscow, 1958, p. 378.

[5]
See F. Engels’ “Special Introduction to the
English Edition of 1892” of his Socialism: Utopian and
Scientific., (K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works, Vol. II,
Moscow, 1958, p. 99).

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