V. I.

Lenin

Joseph Dietzgen, a tannery worker and one of the most eminent German Social-Democratic philosophical writers, died twenty-five
years ago, in 1888.

Joseph Dietzgen was the author of a number of works (most of them
translated into Russian) that include The Nature of the Workings of the Human Mind (published in 1869), A Socialist’s Excursions into the Theory of Knowledge, Acquisition of Philosophy , etc. It was Karl Marx,
in a letter to Kugelmann on December 5, 1868, who made the best appraisal
of Dietzgen and his place in the history of philosophy and of the
working-class movement:

“ A fairly long time ago he sent me a fragment of a manuscript on the
‘faculty of thought’ which, in spite of a certain confusion and of too
frequent repetition, contains much that is excellent and—as the
independent product of a working man—admirable.”

Such is the importance of Dietzgen—a worker who arrived at
dialectical materialism, i.e., Marx’s philosophy, in dependently. In
forming an assessment of the worker Dietzgen it is of great value to
remember that he never considered himself the founder of a school.

Dietzgen spoke of Marx as the leader of a trend as early as
1873, when few people understood Marx. Dietzgen emphasised that Marx and
Engels “possessed the necessary philosophical training”. And in 1886, a
long time after the publication of Engels’s Anti-D\"uhring , one of
the chief Marxist philosophical works, Dietzgen wrote of Marx and Engels as
the “recognised founders” of a trend.

This must be borne in mind when judging the many sup porters of
bourgeois philosophy, i.e., idealism and agnosticism (including Machism),
who attempt to take advantage of “ a certain confusion ” in
Dietzgen’s writing. Dietzgen himself would have ridiculed such admirers and
would have repulsed them.

To become politically conscious, workers should read Dietzgen but
should never for a moment forget that he does not always give a true picture of the doctrine of Marx and Engels, who are
the only writers from whom philosophy can be learned .

Dietzgen wrote at a time when simplified, vulgarised materialism was most widespread. Dietzgen, therefore, laid his
greatest stress on the historical changes that had taken place in
materialism, on the dialectical character of materialism, that is,
on the need to support the point of view of development, to understand that
all human knowledge is relative, to understand the multilateral connections
between, and interdependence of, all phenomena in the universe, and to
develop the materialism of natural history to a materialist conception of
history.

Because he lays so much stress on the relativity of human knowledge,
Dietzgen often becomes confused and makes incorrect concessions to idealism
and agnosticism. Idealism in philosophy is a defence, sometimes extremely
elaborate, sometimes less so, of clericalism, of a doctrine that places
faith above science, or side by side with science, or in some way or
another gives faith a place. Agnosticism (from the Greek words “a”
no and “gnosis” knowledge ) is vacillation between materialism and idealism, i.e., in practice it is vacillation between
materialist science and clericalism. Among the agnostics are the followers
of Kant (the Kantians), Hume (the positivists, realists and others) and the
present-day Machists. This is why some of the most reactionary bourgeois
philosophers, the most thorough-placed obscurantists and direct defenders
of clericalism, try to “use” Dietzgen’s mistakes.

By and large, however, Dietzgen was a materialist. He was an enemy of
clericalism and agnosticism. “The only thing we have in common with
earlier materialists,” wrote Dietzgen, “is that we accept matter as the
prerequisite to, or foundation of, the idea.” That “only thing” is precisely the
essence of philosophical materialism.

“ The materialist theory of knowledge,” wrote Dietzgen, “may be
reduced to a recognition of the fact that the human organ of knowledge does
not irradiate any metaphysical light but is a bit of nature that reflects
other bits of nature.” That is the materialist theory of the
reflection in human knowledge of eternally moving and changing
matter, a theory that evokes hatred and horror, calumny and distortion on
the part of all official, professorial philosophy. And how Dietzgen berated
and branded the “certificated lackeys of clericalism”, the idealist
professors, the realists and others—how he lambasted them with the deep
passion of a true revolutionary! “Of all parties,” Dietzgen rightly
said, speaking of the philosophical “parties”, i.e., materialism and
idealism, “the vilest is the party of the centre”.

To this “vile party” belong the Luch editorial board and
Mr. S. Semkovsky ( Luch No. 92). The editors made a tiny
reservation. “We do not share the general philosophical point of view”,
they say, but the exposition of Dietzgen’s views is “correct and clear”.

That is an appalling untruth. Mr. Semkovsky unconscionably misquoted
and distorted Dietzgen, seizing upon the “ confusion ” and
ignoring Marx’s appraisal of Dietzgen . Incidentally, both
Plekhanov, a socialist who possesses the greatest knowledge of the
philosophy of Marxism, and the best Marxists of Europe have recognised that appraisal in full .

Mr. Semkovsky distorts both philosophical materialism and Dietzgen,
talking nonsense on the question of “one or two worlds” (this,
supposedly, is the “key question”! Learn a little, my friend, at least
read Engels’s Ludwig Feuerbach ) and on the question of the
universe and phenomena (Dietzgen is supposed to have reduced the real world
to nothing but phenomena; this is clerical and professorial slander of
Dietzgen).

It is impossible to list all Mr. Semkovsky’s distortions. Let workers
interested in Marxism know that the Luch editors are a union of liquidators of Marxism. Some want to liquidate the underground,
i.e., the Party of the proletariat (Mayevsky, Sedov, F. D., etc.), others,
the idea of the hegemony of the proletariat (Potresov, Koltsov, etc.), the third, the
philosophical materialism of Marx (Mr. Semkovsky & Co.), the fourth,
the internationalism of proletarian socialism (the Bund members Kosovsky,
Medem and other supporters of “cultural-national autonomy”), the fifth,
the economic theory of Marx (Mr. Maslov with his theory of rent and the
“new” sociology) and so on and so forth.

This blatant distortion of Marxism by Mr. Semkovsky and the editors who
defend him is only one of the more obvious examples of the “activities”
of this literary “union of liquidators”.

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