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

So far we have examined empirio-criticism taken by itself. We must now examine it in its
historical development and in its connection and relation with
other philosophical trends. First comes the question of the
relation of Mach and Avenarius to Kant.

1. The Criticism of Kantianism
from the Left and From the Right

Both Mach and Avenarius began their philosophical careers in
the seventies, when the fashionable cry in German professorial circles was “Back to Kant” And,
indeed, both founders of empirio-criticism in their philosophical development started from Kant. “His
[Kant’s] critical idealism,” says Mach, “was, as I acknowledge with the deepest gratitude, the
starting point of all my critical thought. But I found it
impossible to remain faithful to it. Very soon I began to
return to the views of Berkeley . . . [and then] arrived at
views akin to those of Hume. . . . And even today I cannot
help regarding Berkeley and Hume as far more consistent
thinkers than Kant” (Analysis of Sensations,
p. 292).

Thus Mach quite definitely admits that having begun with Kant
he soon followed the line of Berkeley and Hume. Let us turn to
Avenarius.

In his Prolegomena to a “ Critique of Pure Experience ” (1876), Avenarius already in the
foreword states that the words Kritik der reinen Erfahrung (Critique of Pure Experience) are indicative of his
attitude towards Kant’s “Critique of Pure
Reason,” and “of course, of an antagonistic attitude” towards Kant (1876 ed., p. iv). In what does
Avenarius’ antagonism to Kant consist? In the fact that
Kant, in Avenarius’ opinion, had not sufficiently “purified experience.” It is with this
“purification of experience” that Avenarius deals in his Prolegomena (§§ 56, 72 and many
other places). Of what does Avenarius “purify” the
Kantian doctrine of experience? In the first place, of apriorism. In § 56 he says: “The question as to
whether the superfluous ‘ a priori conceptions of reason’ should and could be eliminated from the
content of experience and thereby pure experience par excellence established is, as far as I know, raised here,
as such, for the first time.” We have already seen that
Avenarius in this way “purified” Kantianism of the recognition of necessity and causality.

Secondly, he purifies Kantianism of the assumption of substance (§ 95), i.e., the thing-in-itself,
which, in Avenarius’ opinion “is not given in the stuff of actual experience but is imported into it by
thought.”

We shall presently see that Avenarius’ definition of his
philosophical line entirely coincides with that of Mach,
differing only in pompousness of formulation. But we must
first note that Avenarius is telling a plain untruth when he asserts that it was he who in 1876 for the first time raised the question of “purifying
experience,” i.e., of purifying the Kantian doctrine of apriorism and the assumption of the
thing-in-itself. As a matter of fact, the development of
German classical philosophy immediately after Kant gave rise
to a criticism of Kantianism exactly along the very line followed by Avenarius. This line is represented in
German classical philosophy by Schulze-Aenesidemus, an adherent of Humean agnosticism, and by J. G. Fichte, an
adherent of Berkeleianism, i.e., of subjective idealism. In 1792 Schulze-Aenesidemus criticised Kant for
this very recognition of apriorism (op. cit., pp. 56,141, etc.) and of the thing-in-itself. We sceptics, or
followers of Hume, says Schulze, reject the thing-in-itself as
being “beyond the bounds of all experience” (p. 57). We reject objective knowledge (p. 25); we
deny that space and time really exist outside us (p. 100); we
reject the presence in our experience of necessity (p. 112),
causality, force, etc. (p. 113). One cannot attribute to them
any “reality outside our conceptions” (p. 114). Kant proves apriority “dogmatically,”
saying that since we cannot think otherwise there is therefore
an a priori law of thought. “This argument,” Schulze replies to Kant, “has long been
utilised in philosophy to prove the objective nature of what
lies outside our ideas” (p. 141), Arguing thus, we may attribute causality to things in-themselves
(p. 142). “Experience never tells us (wir erfahren niemals) that the action on us of objective things
produces ideas,” and Kant by no means proved that “this something (which lies outside our reason) must be
regarded as a thing in-itself, distinct from our sensation
(Gemut) . But sensation also may be thought of as the sole basis of all our knowledge” (p. 265). The
Kantian critique of pure reason “bases its argument on the proposition that every act of cognition begins with the
action of objective things on our organs of sensation (Gemüt), but it then disputes the truth and
reality of this proposition” (p. 266). Kant in no way refuted the idealist Berkeley (pp. 268-72).

It is evident from this that the Humean Schulze rejects
Kant’s doctrine of the thing-in-itself as an inconsistent concession to materialism, i.e., to the
“dogmatic” assertion that in our sensations we are given objective reality, or, in other words, that our ideas
are caused by the action of objective things (independent of
our mind) on our sense-organs. The agnostic Schulze reproaches
the agnostic Kant on the grounds that the latter’s assumption of the thing-in-itself contradicts agnosticism and
leads to materialism. In the same way, but even more vigorously, Kant is criticised by the subjective idealist
Fichte, who maintains that Kant’s assumption of the thing-in-itself independent of the self is
“ realism ” (Werke, I, S. 483), and that Kant makes “no clear” distinction between
“realism” and “idealism.” Fichte sees a crying inconsistency in the assumption of Kant and the
Kantians that the thing-in-itself is the “basis of objective reality” (p. 480), for this is in
contradiction to critical idealism. “With you,” exclaims Fichte, addressing the realist expositors of Kant,
“the earth rests on the great elephant, and the great elephant rests on the earth. Your thing-in-itself, which is
only thought, acts on the self !” ( p. 483).

Thus Avenarius was profoundly mistaken in imagining that he
“for the first time” undertook a “purification of the experience” of Kant from
apriorism and from the thing-in-itself and that he was thereby
giving rise to a “new” trend in philosophy. In reality he was continuing the old line of Hume and
Berkeley, Schulze-Aenesidemus and J. G. Fichte. Avenarius
imagined that he was “purifying experience” in general. In reality he was only purifying agnosticism of Kantianism . He fought not against the agnosticism of Kant
(agnosticism is a denial of objective reality given in sensation), but for a purer agnosticism, for the
elimination of Kant’s assumption, which is contradictory
to agnosticism, that there is a thing-in itself, albeit
unknowable, noumenal and other-sided, that there is necessity
and causality, albeit a priori, given in our understanding, and not in objective reality. He fought Kant
not from the Left, as the materialists fought Kant, but from the Right, as the sceptics and idealists
fought Kant. He imagined that he was advancing, when in
reality he was retreating to the programme of criticising Kant
which Kuno Fischer, speaking of Schulze-Aenesidemus, aptly
characterised in the following words: “The critique of pure reason with pure reason [ i.e. , apriorism] left
out is scepticism. The critique of pure reason with the
thing-in-itself left out is Berkeleian idealism” (History of Modern Philosophy, German ed., 1869,
Vol. V, p. 115).

This brings us to one of the most curious episodes in our
whole “Machiad,” in the whole campaign of the
Russian Machians against Engels and Marx. The latest discovery
by Bogdanov and Bazarov, Yushkevich and Valentinov, trumpeted
by them in a thousand different keys, is that Plekhanov is
making a “luckless attempt to reconcile Engels with Kant
by the aid of a compromise—a thing-in-itself which is just a wee bit knowable” (Studies, etc ., p. 67 and many other places). This discovery of
our Machians discloses a veritable bottomless pit of utter
confusion and monstrous misunderstanding both of Kant and of
the whole course of development of German classical philosophy.

The principal feature of Kant’s philosophy is the reconciliation of materialism with idealism, a compromise
between the two, the combination within one system of heterogeneous and contrary philosophical trends. When Kant
assumes that something outside us, a thing-in-itself, corresponds to our ideas, he is a materialist. When he
declares this thing-in-itself to be unknowable, transcendental, other-sided, he is an idealist. Recognising
experience, sensations, as the only source of our knowledge,
Kant is directing his philosophy towards sensationalism, and
via sensationalism, under certain conditions, towards materialism. Recognising the apriority of space, time,
causality, etc., Kant is directing his philosophy towards
idealism. Both consistent materialists and consistent idealists (as well as the “pure” agnostics, the
Humeans) have mercilessly criticised Kant for this inconsistency. The materialists blamed Kant for his idealism,
rejected the idealist features of his system, demonstrated the
knowability, the this-sidedness of the thing-in-itself, the
absence of a fundamental difference between the thing-in-itself and the phenomenon, the need of deducing
causality, etc., not from a priori laws of thought, but from objective reality. The agnostics and idealists blamed
Kant for his assumption of the thing-in-itself as a concession
to materialism, “realism” or “naïve realism”. The agnostics, moreover, rejected not only the
thing-in-itself, but apriorism as well; while the idealists
demanded the consistent deduction from pure thought not only
of the a priori forms of perception, but of the world as a whole (by magnifying human thought to an abstract
Self, or to an “Absolute Idea”, or to a “Universal Will ” etc., etc.). And here
our Machists, “without noticing” that they have taken as their teachers people who had criticised Kant from
the standpoint of scepticism and idealsim, began to rend their
cloathes and to cover their heads with ashes at the sight of
monstrous people who criticised Kant from a diametrically opposite point of view, who rejected the slightest
element of agnosticism (scepticism) and idealism in his
system, who demonstrated that the thing-in-itself is objectively real, fully knowable and this-sided, that it does
not differ fundamentally from appearance, that it becomes
transformed into appearance at every step in the development
of the individual consciouness of man and the collective
consciousness of mankind. Help!—they cried— this is an illegitimate mixture of materialism and Kantianism!

When I read the assurances of our Machists that they criticise
Kant for more consistently and thoroughly than any of the
antiquated materialists, it always seems to me as though
Purishkevich [1] had joined our company and was shouting: I criticised the
Constitutional-Democrats [4] far more consistently and thoroughly than you Marxist gentlemen!
There is no question about it, Mr. Purishkevich, politically
consistent people can and always will criticise the
Constitutional-Democrats from diametrically opposite points of
view, but after all it must not be forgotten that you criticised the Constitutional-Democrats for being
excessively democratic, while we criticised them for being insufficiently democratic! The Machians
criticise Kant for being too much of a materialist, while we
criticise him for not being enough of a materialist. The
Machians criticise Kant from the Right, we from the Left.

The Humean Schulze and the subjective idealist Fichte may be
taken as examples of the former category of critics in the
history of classical German philosophy. As we have already
seen, they try to obliterate the “realistic” elements of Kantianism. Just as Schulze and Fichte criticised
Kant himself, so the Humean empirio-criticists and the subjective idealist-immanentists criticised the German
Neo-Kantians of the second half of the nineteenth century. The
line of Hume and Berkeley reappeared in a slightly renovated
verbal garb. Mach and Avenarius reproached Kant not because
his treatment of the thing-in-itself was not sufficiently
realistic, not sufficiently materialistic, but because he
assumed its existence; not because he refused to deduce causality and necessity in nature from objective
reality, but because he assumed causality and necessity at all
(except perhaps purely “logical” necessity). The immanentists were at one with the empirio-criticists, also
criticising Kant from the Humean and Berkeleian standpoint. For instance, Leclair in 1879, in the work in
which he praised Mach as a remarkable philosopher, reproached
Kant for his “inconsistency and connivance at realism” as expressed in the concept of the
“ thing-in-itself ”—that “nominal residuum of vulgar realism” (Der Realismus der modernen Naturwissenschaft, usw .,
S. 9). Leclair calls materialism “vulgar
realism”—in order “to make it stronger.”
“In our opinion,” writes Leclair, “all those parts of the Kantian theory which gravitate towards
realismus vulgaris should be vanquished and eliminated as being inconsistencies and bastard
(zwitterhaft) products from the idealist point of view” (p. 41). “The inconsistencies and
contradictions in the Kantian theory of knowledge [arise from]
the amalgamation (Verquickung) of idealist criticism with still unvanquished remnants of realistic dogmatism”
(p. 170). By realistic dogmatism Leclair means materialism.

Another immanentist, Johannes Rehmke, reproached Kant because
he realistically walled himself off from Berkeley with the thing-in-itself (Johannes Rehmke, Die Welt als Wahrnehmung und Begriff, Berlin, 1880, S. 9). “The
philosophical activity of Kant bore an essentially polemical
character: with the thing-in-itself he turned against German
rationalism [ i.e. , the old fideism of the eighteenth century], and with pure contemplation against English
empiricism” (p. 25). “I would compare the Kantian thing-in-itself with a movable lid placed over a pit: the
thing looks so innocent and safe; one steps on it and suddenly
falls into . . . the ‘ world-in-itself ’” (p. 27). That is why Kant is not liked by the
associates of Mach and Avenarius, the immanentists; they do
not like him because in some respects he approaches the
“pit” of materialism!

And here are some examples of the criticism of Kant from the
Left. Feuerbach reproaches Kant not for his “realism,” but for his idealism, and
describes his system as “idealism based on empiricism” (Werke, II, 296).

Here is a particularly important remark on Kant by
Feuerbach. “Kant says: If we regard—as we should—the objects of our perceptions as mere
appearances, we thereby admit that at the bottom of appearances is a thing-in-itself, although we do not know how
it is actually constructed, but only know its appearance,
i.e., the manner in which our senses are affected (affiziert) by this unknown something. Hence, our
reason, by the very fact that it accepts appearances, also
admits the existence of things-in-themselves; and to that
extent we can say that to entertain an idea of such entities
which lie at the bottom of appearances, and consequently are
but thought entities, is not only permissible, but unavoidable. . . .” Having selected a passage from Kant
where the thing-in-itself is regarded merely as a mental
thing, a thought entity, and not a real thing, Feuerbach
directs his whole criticism against it. “. . . Therefore,” he says, “the objects
of the senses [the objects of experience] are for the mind
only appearances, and not truth. . . . Yet the thought entities are not actual objects for the mind! The Kantian
philosophy is a contradiction between subject and object,
between entity and existence, thinking and being. Entity is
left to the mind, existence to the senses. Existence without
entity [ i.e. , the existence of appearances without objective reality] is mere appearance—the sensible
things—while entity without existence is mere thought—the thought entities, the noumena; they are
thought of, but they lack existence—at least for us—and objectivity; they are the things-in-themselves,
the true things, but they are not real things. . . . But what
a contradiction, to sever truth from reality, reality from
truth!” (Werke, II, S. 302-03). Feuerbach reproaches Kant not because he assumes things-in-themselves,
but because he does not grant them reality, i.e., objective reality, because he regards them as
mere thought, “thought entities,” and not as “entities possessing existence,”
i.e., real and actually existing. Feuerbach rebukes
Kant for deviating from materialism.

“ The Kantian philosophy is a contradiction,”
Feuerbach wrote to Bolin on March 26, 1858, “it inevitably leads either to Fichtean idealism or to
sensationalism.” The former conclusion “belongs to the past,” the latter “to the present and the
future” (Grün, op . cit ., II, 49). We have already seen that Feuerbach advocates objective
sensationalism, i.e., materialism. The new turn from
Kant to agnosticism and idealism, to Hume and Berkeley, is
undoubtedly reactionary, even from Feuerbach’s standpoint. And his ardent follower, Albrecht Rau, who
together with the merits of Feuerbach also adopted his faults,
which were eliminated by Marx and Engels, criticised Kant
wholly in the spirit of his teacher: “The Kantian philosophy is an amphibole [ambiguity]; it is both materialism
and idealism, and the key to its essence lies in its dual
nature. As a materialist or an empiricist, Kant cannot help
conceding things an existence (Wesenheit) outside us. But as an idealist he could not rid himself of the
prejudice that the soul is an entity totally different from
sensible things. Hence there are real things and a human mind
which apprehends those things. But how can the mind approach
things totally different from itself? The way out adopted by
Kant is as follows: the mind possesses certain a priori knowledge, in virtue of which things must appear
to it as they do. Hence, the fact that we understand things as
we do is a fact of our creation. For the mind which lives
within us is nothing but the divine mind, and just as God
created the world out of nothing, so the human mind creates
out of things something which they are not in themselves. Thus
Kant guarantees real things their existence as
‘things-in-themselves.’ Kant, however, needed the soul, because immortality was for him a moral postulate. The
‘thing-in-itself,’ gentle men [says Rau, addressing the Neo-Kantians in general and the muddleheaded
A. Lange in particular, who falsified the History of Materialism], is what separates the idealism of Kant from
the idealism of Berkeley; it spans the gap between materialism
and idealism. Such is my criticism of the Kantian philosophy,
and let those who can refute it. . . .” “For the materialist a distinction between a priori knowledge
and the ‘thing-in-itself’ is absolutely superfluous, for since he nowhere breaks the continuity of
nature, since he does not regard matter and mind as two
fundamentally different things, but as two aspects of one and
the same thing, he need not resort to artifice in order to
bring the mind and the thing into conjunction.” [2]

Further, Engels as we have seen, rebuked Kant for being an
agnostic, but not for his deviation from consistent agnosticism. Lafargue, Engels’ disciple, argued in 1900
against the Kantians (amongst whom at that time was Charles
Rappoport) as follows:

“. . . At the beginning of the nineteenth century our bourgeoisie, having completed its task of revolutionary
destruction, began to repudiate its Voltairean and free-thinking philosophy. Catholicism, which the master
decorator Chateaubriand painted in romantic colours (peinturlurait), was restored to fashion, and
Sebastian Mercier imported the idealism of Kant in order to
give the coup de grâce to the materialism of the
Encyclopaedists, whose protagonists had been guillotined by
Robespierre.

“ At the end of the nineteenth century, which will go down in history as the ‘bourgeois century,’ the
intellectuals attempted to crush the materialism of Marx and
Engels beneath the philosophy of Kant. The reactionary movement started in Germany—without offence to the
socialist integralistes who would like to ascribe the honour to their chief, Malon. But Malon himself had been
to the school of Höchberg, Bernstein and the other disciples of Dühring, who were reforming Marxism in
Zurich. [Lafargue is referring to the ideological movement in
German socialism in the later seventies. [5] ] It is to be expected that Jaurès, Fournière and our other
intellectuals will also treat us to Kant as soon as they have
mastered his terminology. . . . Rappoport is mistaken when he
assures us that for Marx the ‘ideal and the real are identical.’ In the first place we never employ such
metaphysical phraseology. An idea is as real as the object of
which it is the reflection in the brain. . . . To provide a
little recreation for the comrades who have to acquaint
themselves with bourgeois philosophy, I shall explain the
substance of this famous problem which has so much exercised
spiritualist minds.

“ The workingman who eats sausage and receives a hundred
sous a day knows very well that he is robbed by the employer
and is nourished by pork meat, that the employer is a robber
and that the sausage is pleasant to the taste and nourishing
to the body. Not at all, say the bourgeois sophists, whether
they are called Pyrrho, Hume or Kant. His opinion is personal,
an entirely subjective opinion; he might with equal reason
maintain that the employer is his benefactor and that the
sausage consists of chopped leather, for he cannot know
things-in-themselves .

“ The question is not properly put, that is the whole trouble. . . . In order to know an object, man must first
verify

whether his senses deceive him or not. . . . The chemists have gone still further—they have penetrated
into bodies, they have analysed them, decomposed them into
their elements, and then performed the reverse procedure, they
have recomposed them from their elements. And from the moment
that man is able to produce things for his own use from these
elements, he may, as Engels says, assert that he knows the things-in-themselves . The God of the Christians, if he
existed and if he created the world, could do no more.” [3]

We have taken the liberty of making this long quotation in
order to show how Lafargue understood Engels and how he
criticised Kant from the Left, not for those aspects of
Kantianism which distinguish it from Humism, but for those
which are common to both Kant and Hume; not for his assumption
of the thing-in-itself, but for his inadequately materialist
view of it.

And lastly, Karl Kautsky in his Ethics also criticises Kant from a standpoint diametrically opposed to
that of Hume and Berkeley. “That I see green, red and white,” he writes, arguing against Kant’s
epistemology, “is grounded in my faculty of sight. But that green is something different from red testifies to
something that lies outside of me, to real differences between
the things. . . . The relations and differences between the
things themselves revealed to me by the individual space and
time concepts . . . are real relations and differences of the
external world, not conditioned by the nature of my perceptive
faculty. . . . If this were really so [if Kant’s doctrine of the ideality of time and space were true], we
could know nothing about the world outside us, not even that
it exists.” (Russian Translation, pp. 33-34.)

Thus the entire school of Feuerbach, Marx and Engels turned from Kant to the Left, to a complete rejection of all
idealism and of all agnosticism. But our Machians followed the
reactionary trend in philosophy, Mach and Avenarius, who criticised Kant from the standpoint of Hume and
Berkeley. Of course, it is the sacred right of every citizen,
and particularly of every intellectual, to follow any ideological reactionary he likes. But when people who have
radically severed relations with the very foundations of Marxism in philosophy begin to dodge, confuse matters,
hedge and assure us that they “too” are Marxists in philosophy, that they are “almost” in agreement
with Marx, and have only slightly “supplemented” him—the spectacle is a far from pleasant one.

SEE:

Supplement to Chapter Four, SECTION I

From What Angle Did N. G. Chernyshevsky Criticise Kantianism?

---
Notes:
[1]
Purishkevich, V. M. —a representative of the parties of the extreme
Right in the Duma, a big landlord and arch-reactionary.
— Lenin

[2]
Albrecht
Rau, Ludwig Feuerbachs Philosophie, die Naturforschung und die philosophische Kritik der Gegenwart [Ludwig Feuerbach’s Philosophy, Natural Science and the Modern Philosophical Critique ], Leipzig, 1882,
S. 87-89.
— Lenin

[3]
Paul Lafargue, “Le materialisme de Marx et l’idealisme de Kant” [ Marx’s Materialism and Kant’s Idealism ],
Le Socialiste , [6]
February 25, 1900.
— Lenin

[4]
Constitutional-Democrats (Cadets)——members of the
Constitutional—Democratic Party, the leading party of the liberal-monarchist bourgeoisie in Russia. The Cadet Party
was founded in October 1905; it included representatives of
the bourgeoisie, landlord Zemstvo members and bourgeois
intellectuals. Prominent lenders of the Cadets were
P. N. Milyukov, S. A. Muromtsev, V.A. Moklakov, A, I, Shin
garev, P. B. Struve, F. I. Bodichey and others. To deceive the
working people the Cadets falsely entitled themselves the
“party of people’s freedom”, but actually did not go beyond the demand for a constitutional monarchy. The Cadets
made the struggle against the revolutionary movement their
chief aim and endeavoured to share power with the tsar and
feudal landlords. During the First World War the Cadets
actively supported the annexationist foreign policy of the
tsarist government. During the February bourgeois-democratic
revolution they tried to save the monarchy. Occupying a
leading position in the bourgeois Provisional Government., the
Cadets pursued an anti-popular, counter-revolutionary policy
convenient to the American-Anglo-French imperialists. After
the victory of the October Socialist Revolution the Cadets came out as irreconcilable enemies of Soviet power and took an
active part in all the armed actions of the counter-revolutionaries and the campaigns of the
interventionists. After the rout of the interventionists and
white-guards the Cadets became émigrés but did not cease their anti-Soviet counter-revolutionary activity.

[5]
This refers to the opportunist trend that developed within the
German Social-Democratic Party in the second half of the
seventies of the nineteenth century. Its chief ideologists
were Karl Höchberg, Eduard Bernstein and Karl August
Schramm, who were influenced by Duhringism. Bernstein and
Louis Viereck, along with Johann Most and others, actively
helped to spread the eclectic views of Eugen Duhring among the
German Social-Democrats. Höchberg, who, as Marx expressed
it, had “bought” his way into the Party by his money, demanded that socialism should be made a movement of
“humanity in general” based on the “sense of justice” of both the oppressed and the representatives
of the “upper classes”.

In Berlin, Viereck took the initiative in forming the
Mauritanian Club, in which Dürhringism prevailed and which set itself the task of bringing “educated
people” to “socialism” and achieving class collaboration between the workers and the bourgeoisie. After
the promulgation of the Anti-Socialist Law in Germany (1878),
the leaders of the Mauritanian Club migrated to Zurich where
they continued their efforts to win over the bourgeoisie to
“socialism”.

The opportunist, anti-Marxist character of
Höchberg’s group was clearly shown in regard to the founding in Zurich of a central organ of the German
Social-Democratic Party. fl6chberg and his co-thinkers considered that the newspaper should not carry out the
revolutionary policy of the Party but should limit itself to
the abstract preaching of socialist ideals. The Party leadership—August Bebel, Wilhelm Liebknecht and
others—in fact underestimated the opportunist danger by
entrusting the publication of the newspaper to the Zurich
group.

In July 1879 the . Jahrbuch für Sozialissenschaft und Social-politik (Annals of Social Science end Social Politics), the journal edited by Höchberg, published
an article entitled “A Retrospective Review of the
Socialist Movement in Germany”, which discussed the revolutionary tactics of the Party. The authors of the
article—Höchberg, Schramm and
Bernstein—accused the Party of having provoked the
Anti-Socialist Law by its attacks on the bourgeoisie, and
called for alliance with and subordination to the bourgeoisie,
on the grounds that the working class was not able to emancipate itself by its own efforts. These opportunist,
reformist views evoked sharp protest from Marx and Engels, who
rightly regarded them as a betrayal of the Party, and in
September 1879 they came out with their famous “Circular Letter” (see K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Correspondence, Moscow, 1955, pp. 388-95).
“The result of Marx’s ‘furious’ attack,” wrote Lenin in describing the struggle of the
founders of Marxism against opportunism, “was that the opportunists retreated and—tade themselves scarce. In a
letter dated November 19, 1879, Marx announced that
Höchberg had been removed from the editorial committee and that all the influential leaders of the Party—Bebel,
Liebknecht, Bracke, etc.—had repudiated his ideas” (present edition, Vol. 12, p. 367).

Subsequently Hocbberg and Schramm left the workers’ movement, but Bernstein, who temporarily refrained from
advocating opportunism, became one of the leaders of German
Social-Democracy. The theoretical confusion, however, and the
opportunist position adopted by Bernstein at the end of the
seventies, were not accidental. After Engels’ death, Bernstein openly came out with a revision of Marxism, putting
forward the opportunist slogan; “The movement is everything, the final goal is nothing”, which was a further
development of the basic propositions of the 1879 article.

[6]
La Socialiste (The Socialist) —a weekly newspaper published from 1885 as the theoretical organ of the
French Workers’ Party; from 1902 it was the organ of the
Socialist Party of France, and from 1905 of the French
Socialist Party. The newspaper reprinted articles by Marx and
Engels and published articles by prominent leaders of the
French and international working-class move meat at the turn
of the century: Paul Lafargue, Wilhelm Liebknecht, Clara
Zethin, 0. V. Plekhanov and others. The newspaper ceased
publication in 1915.

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