V. I.

Lenin

MATERIALISM and EMPIRIO-CRITICISM

Critical Comments on a Reactionary Philosophy ( Chapter Six: Empirio-Criticism and Historical Materialism )

4. Parties in Philosophy and Philosophical
Blockheads

It remains for us to examine the relation between Machism and
religion. But this broadens into the question of whether there
are parties generally in philosophy, and what is meant by
non-partisanship in philosophy.

Throughout the preceding exposition, in connection with every
problem of epistemology touched upon and in connection with
every philosophical question raised by the new physics, we
traced the struggle between materialism and idealism . Behind the mass of new terminological
devices, behind the litter of erudite scholasticism, we
invariably discerned two principal alignments, two fundamental trends in the solution of philosophical
problems. Whether nature, matter, the physical, the external
world should be taken as primary, and consciousness, mind, sensation (experience—as the widespread
terminology of our time has it), the psychical, etc., should be
regarded as secondary—that is the root question which in fact continues to divide the philosophers into
two great camps . The source of thousands upon thousands
of errors and of the confusion reigning in this sphere is the
fact that beneath the envelope of terms, definitions, scholastic
devices and verbal artihces, these two fundamental trends are
overlooked . (Bogdanov, for instance, refuses to acknowledge his idealism, because, you see, instead of the
“metaphysical” concepts “nature” and “mind,” he has taken the “experiential”:
physical and psychical. A word has been changed!)

The genius of Marx and Engels consisted in the very fact that in
the course of a long period, nearly half a century, they developed materialism, that they further advanced one
fundamental trend in philosophy, that they did not stop at
reiterating epistemological problems that had already been
solved, but consistently applied—and showed how to apply— this same materialism in the sphere of
the social sciences, mercilessly brushing aside as litter and
rubbish the pretentious rigmarole, the innumerable attempts to
“discover” a “new” line in philosophy, to invent a “new” trend and so forth. The verbal
nature of such attempts, the scholastic play with new philosophical “isms,” the clogging of the issue by
pretentious devices, the inability to comprehend and clearly
present the struggle between the two fundamental epistemological
trends—this is what Marx and Engels persistently pursued
and fought against throughout their entire activity.

We said, “nearly half a century.” And, indeed, as far back as 1843, when Marx was only becoming Marx,
i.e., the founder of scientific socialism, the founder of modern materialism, which is immeasurably richer in
content and in comparably more consistent than all preceding
forms of materialism, even at that time Marx pointed out with
amazing clarity the basic trends in philosophy. Karl Grün
quotes a letter from Marx to Feuerbach dated October 20,
1843, [8] in which Marx invites Feuerbach to write an article for the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher [9] against Schelling. This Schelling,
writes Marx, is a shallow braggart with his claims to having
embraced and transcended all previous philosophical trends. “To the French romanticists and mystics he
[Schelling] says: I am the union of philosophy and theology; to
the French materialists: I am the union of the flesh and the
idea; to the French sceptics: I am the destroyer of dogmatism.” [1]

That the “sceptics,” be they called Humeans or Kantians (or, in the twentieth
century, Machians), cry out against the “dogmatism” of both materialism and idealism, Marx at that time already
realised; and, without letting himself be diverted by any one of
a thousand wretched little philosophical systems, he was able
through Feuerbach to take the direct materialist road as against
idealism. Thirty years later, in the afterword to the second
edition of the first volume of Capital, Marx just as clearly and definitely contrasted his materialism to
Hegel’s idealism, the most consistent and developed idealism of all; he contemptuously brushed Comtean
“positivism” aside and dubbed as wretched epigoni the contemporary philosophers who imagined that they had
destroyed Hegel when in reality they had reverted to a repetition of the pre-Hegelian errors of Kant and
Hume. [10] In the letter to Kugelmann of June 27, 1870, Marx refers just as
contemptuously to “Büchner, Lange, Dühring, Fechner, etc.,” because they understood nothing of
Hegel’s dialectics and treated him with scorn. [2]

And finally, take the various philosophical utterances by Marx in Capital and
other works, and you will find an invariable basic motif, viz ., insistence upon materialism and
contemptuous derision of all obscurity, of all confusion and all
deviations towards idealism . All Marx’s philosophical utterances revolve within these two fundamental
opposites, and, in the eyes of professorial philosophy, their
defect lies in this “narrowness” and “one-sidedness.” As a matter of fact, this refusal
to recognise the hybrid projests for reconciling materialism and
idealism constitutes the great merit of Marx, who moved
forward along a sharply-dehned philosophical road.

Entirely in the spirit of Marx, and in close collaboration with
him, Engels in all his philosophical works briefly and clearly
contrasts the materialist and idealist lines in regard to
all questions, without, either in 1878, or 1888, or
1892, [11] taking seriously the endless attempts to “transcend” “one-sidedness”
of materialism and idealism, to proclaim a new trend—“positivism,” “realism,” or
some other professorial charlatanism. Engels based his whole fight against Dühring on the demand for
consistent adherence to materialism, accusing the materialist
Dühring of verbally confusing the issue, of phrasemongering, of methods of reasoning which involved a
compromise with idealism and adoption of the position of
idealism. Either materialism consistent to the end, or the
falsehood and confusion of philosophical idealism—such is
the formulation of the question given in every paragraph of Anti-Dühring ; and only people
whose minds had already been corrupted by reactionary professorial philosophy could fail to notice it. And right down
to 1894, when the last preface was written to
Anti-Dühring, revised and enlarged by the author for the last time, Engels continued to follow the latest
developments both in philosophy and science, and continued with
all his former resoluteness to hold to his lucid and firm
position, brushing away the litter of new systems, big and
little.

That Engels followed the new developments in philosophy is
evident from Ludwig Feuerbach . In the 1888 preface, mention is even made of such a phenomenon as the rebirth of
classical German philosophy in England and Scandinavia, whereas
Engels (both in the preface and in the text of the book) has
nothing but the most extreme contempt for the prevailing
Neo-Kantianism and Humism. It is quite obvious that Engels,
observing the repetition by fashionable German and
English philosophy of the old pre-Hegelian errors of Kantianism
and Humism, was prepared to expect some good even from the turn to Hegel (in England and Scandinavia), hoping that the
great idealist and dialectician would help to disclose petty
idealist and metaphysical errors. [12]

Without undertaking an examination of the vast number of shades
of Neo-Kantianism in Germany and of Humism in England, Engels
from the very outset refutes their fundamental deviation from materialism. Engels declares that the entire tendency of these two schools is “ scientifically a step backward .” And what is his opinion of the
undoubtedly “positivist,” according to the current terminology, the undoubtedly “realist” tendencies of
these Neo-Kantians and Humeans, among whose number, for
instance, he could not help knowing Huxley? That “positivism” and that “realism” which
attracted, and which continue to attract, an infinite number of
muddleheads, Engels declared to be atb e s ta philistine method of smuggling in materialism while abusing and
abjuring it publicly! One has to reflect only very little on
such an appraisal of Thomas Huxley—a very great scientist and an incomparably more realistic realist and
positive positivist than Mach, Avenarius and Co.—in order
to understand how contemptuously Engels would have greeted the
present infatuation of a group of Marxists with “recent
positivism,” the “latest realism,” etc.

Marx and Engels were partisans in philosophy from start to
finish, they were able to detect the deviations from materialism
and concessions to idealism and fideism in each and every
“new” tendency. They therefore appraised Huxley exclusively from the standpoint of his materialist
consistency. They therefore rebuked Feuerbach for not pursuing
materialism to the end, for renouncing materialism because of
the errors of individual materialists, for combating religion in
order to renovate it or invent a new religion, for being unable,
in sociology, to rid himself of idealist phraseology and become
a materialist.

And whatever particular mistakes he committed in his exposition
of dialectical materialism, J. Dietzgen fully appreciated and
took over this great and most precious tradition of his
teachers. Dietzgen sinned much by his clumsy deviations from
materialism, but he never attempted to dissociate himself from
it in principle, he never attempted to hoist a “new” standard and always at the decisive moment he firmly and
categorically declared: I am a materialist; our philosophy is a
materialist philosophy. “Of all parties,” our Joseph
Dietzgen justly said, “the middle party is the most repulsive. . . . Just as parties in politics are more and more
becoming divided into two camps . . . so science too is being
divided into two general classes (Generalklassen) :
metaphysicians on the one hand, and physicists, or materialists,
on the other. [3]

The intermediate elements and conciliatory quacks, with their various
appellations—spiritualists, sensationalists, realists, etc., etc.—fall into the current on their way. We aim at
definiteness and clarity. The reactionaries who sound a retreat
(Retraiteblaser) call themselves idealists, [4] and materialists should be the name for all who are striving to
liberate the human mind from the metaphysical spell. . . . If we
compare the two parties respectively to solid and liquid,
between them there is a mush.” [5]

True! The “realists,” etc., including the “positivists,” the Machians, etc., are all a
wretched mush; they are a contemptible middle party in philosophy, who confuse the materialist and idealist trends on
every question. The attempt to escape these two basic trends in
philosophy is nothing but “conciliatory quackery.”

J. Dietzgen had not the slightest doubt that the
“scientific priestcraft” of idealist philosophy is simply the antechamber to open priestcraft. “Scientific
priestcraft,” he wrote, “is seriously endeavouring to assist religious priestcraft” (op. cit.,
p. 51). “In particular, the sphere of epistemology, the
misunderstanding of the human mind, is such a louse-hole”
(Lausgrube) in which both kinds of priests “lay their eggs.” “Graduated flunkeys,” who with
their talk of “ideal blessings” stultify the people by their tortuous (geschraubte) “idealism”
(p. 53)—that is J. Dietzgen’s opinion of the professors of philosophy. “Just as the antipodes of the
good God is the devil, so the professorial priest (Kathederpfaffen) has his opposite pole in the
materialist.” The materialist theory of knowledge is “a universal weapon against religious belief”
(p. 55), and not only against the “notorious, formal and
common religion of the priests, but also against the most
refined, elevated professorial religion of muddled (benebelter) idealists” (p. 58).

Dietzgen was ready to prefer “religious honesty” to the “half-heartedness” of freethinking professors
(p. 60), for “there at least there is a system,” there we find integral people, people who do not separate theory
from practice. For the Herr Professors “philosophy is not
a science, but a means of defence against Social-Democracy
. . .” (p. 107). “All who call themselves philosophers, professors, and university lecturers are, despite
their apparent freethinking, more or less immersed in superstition and mysticism . . . and in relation to
Social-Democracy constitute a single . . . reactionary mass” (p. 108). “Now, in order to follow the true
path, without being led astray by all the religious and
philosophical gibberish (Welsch), it is necessary to study the falsest of all false paths (der Holzweg der Holzwege), philosophy” (p. 103).

Let us now examine Mach, Avenarius and their school from the
standpoint of parties in philosophy. Oh, these gentlemen
boast of their non-partisanship, and if they have an antipodes, it is the materialist . . . and
only the materialist. A red thread that runs through all the writings of all the Machians is the
stupid claim to have “risen above” materialism and idealism, to have transcended this “obsolete”
antithesis; but in fact the whole fraternity are continually sliding into idealism and are conducting a
steady and incessant struggle against materialism. The subtle
epistemological crotchets of a man like Avenarius are but
professorial inventions, an attempt to form a small philosophical sect “of his own”; but, as a matter of fact, in the general circumstances of the
struggle of ideas and trends in modern society, the objective part played by these epistemological
artifices is in every case the same, namely, to clear the way
for idealism and fideism, and to serve them faithfully. In fact,
it cannot be an accident that the small school of empirio-criticists is acclaimed by the English spiritualists,
like Ward, by the French neo-criticists, who praise Mach for his
attack on materialism, and by the German immanentists!
Dietzgen’s expression, “graduated flunkeys of fideism,” hits the nail on the head in the case of Mach,
Avenarius and their whole school. [6]
[6] Here is another example of how the widespread currents of reactionary bourgeois philosophy make use of Machism in practice. Perhaps the “latest fashion” in the latest American philosophy is “pragmatism” [15] (from the Greek word “pragm”—action; that is, a philosophy of action). The philosophical journals perhaps speak more of pragmatism than of anything else. Pragmatism ridicules the metaphysics both of idealism and materialism, acclaims expericnce and only experience, recognises practice as the only criterion, refers to the positivist movement in general, especially turns for support to Ostwald, Mach, Pearson, Poincaré and Duhem for the belief that scicnce is not an “absolute copy of reality” and . . . succcssfully deduces from all this a God for practical purposes, and only for practical purposes, without any metaphysics, and without transcending the bounds of experience (cf . William James, Pragmatism. A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking, New York and London, 1907, pp. 57 and 106 especially). From the standpoint of materialism the difference between Machism and pragmatism is as insignificant and unimportant as the difference between empirio-criticism and empirio-monism. Compare, for example, Bogdanov’s definition of truth with the pragmatist definition of truth, which is: “Truth for a pragmatist becomes a class-name for all sorts of definite working values in expericnce” (ibid ., p. 68). — Lenin

It is the misfortune of the Russian Machians, who under took to
“reconcile” Machism and Marxism, that they trusted the reactionary professors of philosophy and as a result slipped
down an inclined plane. The methods of operation employed in the
various attempts to develop and supplement Marx were not very
ingenious. They read Ostwald, believe Ostwald, paraphrase
Ostwald and call it Marxism. They read Mach, believe Mach,
paraphrase Mach and call it Marxism. They read Poincaré,
believe Poincaré, paraphrase Poincaré and call it
Marxism! Not a single one of these professors, who are capable of making very valuable contributions in the special
fields of chemistry, history, or physics, can be trusted one iota when it comes to philosophy. Why? For the same reason
that not a single professor of political economy, who may be capable of very valuable contributions in the field of
factual and specialised investigations, can be trusted one iota when it comes to the general theory of political
economy. For in modern society the latter is as much a partisan science as is epistemology . Taken as
a whole, the professors of economics are nothing but learned salesmen of the capitalist class, while the professors of
philosophy are learned salesmen of the theologians.

The task of Marxists in both cases is to be able to master and
adapt the achievements of these “salesmen” (for instance, you will not make the slightest progress in the
investigation of new economic phenomena unless you have recourse
to the works of these salesmen) and to be able to lop off their reactionary tendency, to pursue your own line
and to combat the whole alignment of forces and classes
hostile to us. And this is just what our Machians were unable to
do, they slavishly follow the lead of the reactionary professorial philosophy. “Perhaps we have gone astray, but
we are seeking,” wrote Lunacharsky in the name of the authors of the Studies . The trouble is that it is not
you who are seeking, but you who are being sought ! You do not go with your, i.e., Marxist
(for you want to be Marxists), standpoint to every change in the
bourgeois philosophical fashion; the fashion comes to you,
foists upon you its new surrogates got up in the idealist taste,
one day à la Ostwald, the next day à la Mach, and the day after à la
Poincaré. These silly “theoretical” devices (“energetics,” “elements,”
“introjections,” etc.) in which you so naïvely believe are confined to a narrow and tiny school, while the
ideological and social tendency of these devices is immediately spotted by the Wards, the neo-criticists, the
immanentists, the Lopatins and the pragmatists, and it serves their purposes . The infatuation for
empirio-criticism and “physical” idealism passes as rapidly as the infatuation for Neo-Kantianism and
“physiological” idealism; but fideism takes its toll from every such infatuation and modihes its devices in a
thousand ways for the benefit of philosophical idealism.

The attitude towards religion and the attitude towards natural
science excellently illustrate the actual class use made of empirio-criticism by bourgeois reactionaries.

Take the first question. Do you think it is an accident that in
a collective work directed against the philosophy of
Marxism Lunacharsky went so far as to speak of the “deification of the higher human potentialities,” of
“religious atheism,” etc.? [7]

If you do, it is only because the

Russian Machians have not informed the public correctly regarding the whole Machian current in
Europe and the attitude of this current to religion. Not only is
this attitude in no way similar to the attitude of Marx, Engels,
J. Dietzgen and even Feuerbach, but it is the very opposite, beginning with Petzoldt’s statement to the
effect that empirio-criticism “contradicts neither theism
nor atheism” (Einführung in die Philosophie der reinen Erfahrung, Bd. I, S. 351), or Mach’s
declaration that “religious opinion is a private affair” (French trans., p. 434), and ending with the
explicit fideism, the explicitly arch-reactionary views of Cornelius, who praises Mach
and whom Mach praises, of Carus and of all the immanentists. The
neutrality of a philosopher in this question is in itself servility to fideism, and Mach and Avenarius,
because of the very premises of their epistemology, do not and
cannot rise above neutrality.

Once you deny objective reality, given us in sensation, you have
already lost every one of your weapons against fideism, for you
have slipped into agnosticism or subjectivism—and that is
all fideism wants. If the perceptual world is objective reality,
then the door is closed to every other “reality” or quasi-reality (remember that Bazarov believed the
“realism” of the immanentists, who declare God to be a “real concept”). If the world is matter in motion,
matter can and must be infinitely studied in the infinitely
complex and detailed manifestations and ramifications of
this motion, the motion of this matter; but beyond it, beyond the “physical,” external world,
with which everyone is familiar, there can be nothing. And the
hostility to materialism and the showers of abuse heaped on the
materialists are all in the order of things in civilised and
democratic Europe. All this is going on to this day. All this is
being concealed from the public by the Russian
Machians, who have not once attempted even simply to compare the attacks made on materialism by Mach, Avenarius,
Petzoldt and Co., with the statements made in favour of
materialism by Feuerbach, Marx, Engels and J. Dietzgen.

But this “concealment” of the attitude of Mach and
Avenarius to fideism will not avail. The facts speak for themselves. No efforts can release these reactionary professors
from the pillory in which they have been placed by the kisses of
Ward, the neo-criticists, Schuppe, Schubert-Soldern, Leclair,
the pragmatists, etc. And the influence of the persons mentioned, as philosophers and professors, the popularity of
their ideas among the “educated,” i.e., the bourgeois, public and the specific literature they have created
are ten times wider and richer than the particular little school
of Mach and Avenarius. The little school serves those it should
serve, and it is exploited as it deserves to be exploited.

The shameful things to which Lunacharsky has stooped are not
exceptional; they are the product of empirio-criticism, both
Russian and German. They cannot be defended on the grounds of
the “good intentions” of the author, or the “special meaning” of his words; if it were the
direct and common, i.e., the directly fideistic meaning, we should not stop to discuss matters with the author,
for most likely not a single Marxist could be found in whose
eyes such statements would not have placed Anatole
Lunacharsky exactly in the same category as Peter
Struve. If this is not the case (and it is not the case
yet), it is exclusively because we perceive the “special” meaning and are fighting while there is still ground for a fight on comradely lines. This is
just the disgrace of Lunacharsky’s statements—that he could connect them with his “good”
intentions. This is just the evil of his “theory”—that it permits the use of
such methods or of such conclusions in the pursuit of good intentions. This is just the trouble—that
at best “good” intentions are the subjective affair of Tom, Dick or Harry, while the social significance of such statements is undeniable and
indisputable, and no reservation or explanation can mitigate
it.

One must be blind not to see the ideological affinity beiween
Lunacharsky’s “deification of the higher human potentialities” and Bogdanov’s “general
substitution” of the psychical for all physical nature. This is one and the same thought; in the one case it is
expressed principally from the aesthetic standpoint, and in the
other from the epistemological standpoint. “Substitution,” approaching the subject
taciitly and from a different angle, already deifies the “higher human potentialities,” by
divorcing the “psychical” from man and by substituting an immensely extended, abstract, divinely-lifeless
“psychical in general” for all physical nature . And what of Yushkevich’s “Logos”
introduced into the “irrational stream of experience”?

A single claw ensnared, and the bird is lost. And our Machians
have all become ensnared in idealism, that is, in a diluted and
subtle fideism; they became ensnared from the moment they took
“sensation” not as an image of the external world but as a special “element.” It is nobody’s
sensation, nobody’s mind, nobody’s spirit, nobody’s will—this is what one inevitably comes to
if one does not recognise the materialist theory that the human
mind reflects an objectively real external world.

---
Notes:
[1]
Karl Grün, Ludwig Feuerbach in seinem Briefwechsel und Nachlass, sowie in seiner philosophischen Charakterentwicklung, I. Bd.,
Leipzig 1874, S. 361.
— Lenin

[2]
Of the positivist Beesly, Marx, in the letter of
December 13, 1870, speaks as follows: “Professor Beesly is
a Comtist and as such obliged to think up all sorts of crotchets.” [13] Compare this with the opinion given
of the positivists of the Huxley type by Engels in
1892. [14]
— Lenin

[3]
Here again we have a clumsy and inexact expression: instead of “metaphysicians,”
he should have said “idealists.” Elsewhere Dietzgen himself contrasts the metaphysicians and the
dialecticians.
— Lenin

[4]
Note that
Dietzgen has corrected himself and now explains more exactly which is the party of the enemies of materialism.
— Lenin

[5]
See the article, “Social-Democratic Philosophy,” written in
1876, Kleinere philosophische Schriften, 1903, S. 135.]

— Lenin

[6] THIS FOOTNOTE has been moved into BODY OF DOCUMENT.

[7]
Studies, pp. 157, 159. In the
Zagranichnaya Gazeta [16] the same author speaks of “scientific socialism in its religious significance” (No. 3, p. 5) and in
Obrazovaniye , [17] 1908, No. 1,
p. 164, he explicitly says: “For a long time a new
religion has been maturing within me.”
— Lenin

[8]
See Early Writings of K. Marx and F. Engels, 1956, Russian edition, pp. 257-58.

[9]
Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher (German-French. Yearbooks)— an annual published in
Paris in German, edited by Karl Marx and Arnold Ruge. Only the
first, double number was issued in Feb ruary 1844. It contained
Marx’s works “The Jewish Question” and “Contribution to the
Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Bight. Introduction”, as well
as Engels “Outlines of a Criticism of Political Economy” and
“The Position of England. Thomas Carlyle. ‘Past and
Present’\thinspace”. These works mark the definitive adoption of the
standpoint of materialism and communism by Marx and Engels. Marx’s
disagreement in principle with the bourgeois radical Ruge was
the main reason why the journal ceased to appear.

[10]
See K. Marx, Capital, Vol. I, Moscow, 1959, p. 19.

[13]
See K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Correspondence, Moscow.1955, pp. 290, 306.

[14]
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,
pp. 99-102).

[11]
Lenin is referring to Engels’ works
Anti-Dürhring (1878), Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy (1888), “Special
Introduction to the English Edition of 1892” of Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (see F. Engels,
Anti-Dürhring and K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works, Vol. II, Moscow, 1958, pp. 358-402,
93-115).

[12]
See K. Marx and F. Bagels, Selected Works, Vol. II, Moscow, 1958, p. 359.

The turn to Hegel in the second half of the nineteenth century
was characteristic of the development of bourgeois philosophy in
a number of European countries and the U.S.A. In Britain it
began with the appearance in 1865 of James Hutchison Stirling’s
book The Secret of Hegel. The bourgeois ideologists were attracted by Hegel’s absolute idealism, which offered wide
opportunities for a theoretical justification of religion. There
developed a special philosophical trend which was given the name
of Anglo-Hegelianism, whose representatives (Thomas Green, the
brothers Edward and John Caird, Francis Bradley and others)
vigorously at tacked materialism, making use of the reactionary
aspects of Hegel’s doctrine.

In the Scandinavian countries, too, Hegelian philosophy became
more influential in the second half of the eighteenth century. In Sweden its revival was sponsored by Johann Borelius
who counterposed Hegelianism to the prevailing subjective-idealist philosophy. In Norway the Right-wing
Hegelians Marcus Jacob Monrad, G. W. Ling and others interpreted
Hegel’s philosophy in the spirit of mysticism, discarding its
rationalism and trying to sub ordinate science to religion. In
Denmark, where Hegelian philosophy began to spread even during
Hegel’s lifetime, it was criticised from the same standpoint.

The spread of Hegel’s philosophy did not lead to its revival;
the bourgeois epigones of Hegel “developed” (mainly in the
spirit of subjective idealism) various aspects of his conservative philosophical system.. All this paved the way for
the emergence at the turn of the century of neo-Hegelian—a
reactionary trend of bourgeois philosophical thought in the
imperialist era that attempted to adapt Hegel’s philosophy to
fascist ideology.

[15]
Pragmatism— a subjective-idealist trend of bourgeois (mainly American) philosophy in the imperialist
era. It arose in the seven ties. of the last century in the
U.S.A. as a reflection of specific features of the development
of American capitalism, replacing the hitherto prevailing
religious philosophy. The main propositions of pragmatism were
formulated by Charles Peirce. As an independent philosophical
tendency it took shape at the turn of the century in the works
of William James and Ferdinand Schiller and was further
developed in the instrumentalism of John Dewey.

The pragmatists consider that the central problem of philosophy
is the attainment of true knowledge. However, they completely
distort the very concept of truth; already Peirce looked on
cognition as a purely psychological, subjective process of
achieving religious belief. James substituted the concept of
“usefulness”, of success or advantage, for the concept of truth,
i.e., for the objectively true reflection of reality. From his
point of view, all concepts, including religious ones, are true
insofar as they are useful. Dewey went, even farther by
declaring all scientific theories, all moral principles and
social institutions, to be merely “instruments” for the
attainment of the personal aims of the individual. As the
criterion of the “truth” (usefulness) of knowledge, the
pragmatists take experience, understood not as human social
practice but as the constant stream of individual experiences,
of the subjective phenomena of consciousness; they regard this
experience as the solo reality, declaring the concepts of matter
and mind “obsolete”. Like the Machists, the pragmatists claim to
have created a “third line” in philosophy; they try to place
themselves above materialism and idealism, while in fact
advocating one of the varieties of idealism. In contrast to
materialist monism, the pragmatists put forward the standpoint
of “pluralism”, according to which there is no internal
connection, no conformity to law, in the universe; it is like a
mosaic which each person builds in his own way, out of his own
individual experiences. Hence, starting out from the needs of
the given moment, pragmatism considers it possible to give
different, even contradictory, explanations of one and the same
phenomenon. Consistency is declared to be unnecessary; if it is
to a man’s advantage, he can be a determinist or an indeterminist, he can assert or deny the existence of God, and
so on.

By basing themselves on the subjective-idealist tradition of
English philosophy from Berkeley and Hume to John Stuart Mill,
by exploiting particular aspects of the theories of Kant,
Mach

and Avenarius, Nietzsche and Henri Bergson, the American
pragmatists created one of the most reactionary philosophical
trends of modern times, a convenient form for theoretically
defending the interests of the imperialist bourgeoisie. It is
for this reason that pragmatism spread so widely in the U.S.A.,
becoming almost the official American philosophy. There have
been advocates of pragmatism at various times in Italy, Germany,
France, Czechoslovakia and other countries.

[16]
Zagranichnaya Gazetz (Gazette Etrangére) —the weekly newspaper of a group
of Russian emigrants, published in Geneva from March 16 to April
13, 1908. The four numbers that appeared during this period
dealt mainly with the life of Russian emigrants and carried
material on events in Russia and abroad. The second number
published Lenin’s speech “Lessons of the Commune” at an
international meeting in Geneva on March 18, 1908. The newspaper
contained propaganda for god-building and Machism (articles by
A. Bogdanov and A. V. Lunacharsky).

Lenin quotes a passage from A. V. Lunacharsky’s “Sketches of
Modem Russian Literature”, which was published in Nos. 2 and 3
of the newspaper.

[17]
Obrazovaniye (Education) —a legal monthly literary magazine of a popular scientific and socio-political character
published in St. Petersburg from 1892 to 1909. In 1902-08 it
printed articles by Social-Democrats. In No. 2, 1906, the
magazine printed Chapters V-IX of Lenin’s work “The Agrarian
Crisis and the ‘Critics of Marx’\thinspace”.