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Dr. Riggins' Series on Lenin's Materialism and Empirio-Criticism |
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1/7/2022 V. I. Lenin - Materialism & Empirio-Criticism. Commentary and Analysis (23/23). By: Thomas RigginsRead Now CHAPTER SIX: EMPIRIO-CRITICISM AND HISTORICAL MATERIALISM: SECTION FIVE: ERNST HAECKEL AND ERNST MACHIn this last section of Chapter Six, Lenin turns his attention to the philosophy of science of Machism. All of the Machists reject the natural materialist standpoint of the sciences, calling it metaphysics. Petzoldt (1862-1929), for example, declares the scientific assumption of external reality no better than the Indian belief that the world rests on the back of a giant elephant. "It makes no difference," he says, "whether the world rests on a mythical elephant or on just as mythical a swarm of molecules and atoms epistemologically thought of as real and therefore not used merely metaphorically." All of this Lenin calls sheer obscurantism, out-and-out reaction." He then mentions the "storm provoked by Ernst Haeckel's The Riddle of the Universe." This was a popular book written by a famous scientist, which was translated into many languages and appeared in many editions-- it was a best seller as we would say. Haeckel (1834-1919) was a biologist and his book was written to explain the origin of life using Darwin's theory of evolution as the basis of his explanation. Haeckel's book, published in 1899, is still in print. He was denounced by theologians and professional philosophers alike for his theories. Lenin says there was "one underlying motif" in the attacks on Haeckel, namely, "they are all against the ‘metaphysics’ of natural science, against 'dogmatism', against 'the exaggeration of the value and significance of natural science', against 'natural-scientific materialism.’” What is seemingly so strange about this is that Haeckel is actually a reconciliationist who “renounces materialism” and wants religion and science to work together. The problem is, as Lenin sees it, is that despite "his personal conciliatory tendencies and proposals concerning religion" [in this he is somewhat like Steven Jay Gould] nevertheless “The general spirit of his book, the ineradicability of natural-scientific materialism and its irreconcilability with all official professorial philosophy and theology .... gives a slap in the face” to all forms of Machism and subjective idealistic tendencies. Haeckel himself does not see the contradiction between his method and his goal due to "philosophical naiveté." The Machists and other idealist humbugs realize this and also realize that a hundred thousand readers of The Riddle of the Universe will pick up the natural scientific (materialist) attitude towards the world that these idealists have been combating. This is also the Marxist view-- i.e., the view of dialectical materialism. Lenin says: "The 'war' on Haeckel has proved that this view of ours corresponds to objective reality, i.e., to the class nature of modern society and its class ideological tendencies." Lenin concludes this chapter with a reference to Franz Mehring's review of The Riddle of the Universe in Neue Zeit. Haeckel's problem is that he has no conception of historical materialism. He is unable to apply his natural scientific materialism to social problems. Mehring writes, "Haeckel is a materialist and monist, not a historical materialist." And, "he who wants to be convinced that natural-scientific materialism must be broadened into historical materialism if it is really to be an invincible weapon in the great struggle for emancipation of mankind, let him read Haeckel's book." Haeckel's book demonstrates that natural scientific materialism underlies the method of the natural sciences and its dialectical development into historical and dialectical materialism is the only basis for bringing about the final liberation of humanity and the solution of the social question. Who could have predicted in 1908 what the world would be like in 2008? The general Marxist view more or less was that capitalism would have been replaced by socialism inspired by the October Revolution. Is it back to the drawing board? How can we know what 2108 will look like? The Chinese think that it will take a hundred years for them (using Chinese characteristics) to create the foundations for such a transition. What about the rest of us? Will Lenin still be read? If the social question hasn't been solved, I think so. CONCLUSION: There are "four standpoints", Lenin says, that Marxists should start from in evaluating empirio-criticism. 1. Understand "the thoroughly reactionary character of empirio-criticism. 2. Recognize that "the whole school of Mach and Avenarius is moving more and more definitely towards idealism" along with the most reactionary idealists. 3. Know that the "vast majority of scientists ... are invariably on the side of materialism." 4. Finally, "one must not fail to see the struggle of parties in philosophy, a struggle which in the last analysis reflects the tendencies and ideology of the antagonistic classes in modern society." SUPPLEMENT TO CHAPTER FOUR, SECTION 1: FROM WHAT ANGLE DID N.G. CHERNYSHEVSKY CRITICISE KANTIANISM? Lenin added this while the book was at the printers. He added it as an extra dig at the Russian Machists wanting to be Marxists. Most people in the West, and especially in the USA will never have heard of Chernyshevsky (1828-1889) but he was a very famous Russian revolutionary democrat and socialist who would have been well known to all of Lenin's readers. The point Lenin wanted to make was that Chernyshevsky opposed Kant from the left, as a disciple of Feuerbach, while Bogdanov et al opposed Kant from the right, from the Machist and hence idealist position and were backwards in their thinking even compared to Chernyshevsky whose views dated from the the 1850s and 60s. So much then for Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. But since so little is known about Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevskii (NGC) here, I culled some info from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia [GSE] to introduce him. You can also Google him. The three major influences on NGC were German philosophy, French utopian socialism and English political economy (the same three factors that Lenin called the component parts of Marxism). NGC's philosophy was based on the anthropology of human nature and was a form of rational egoism. We look out for our own interests. This should lead us to become socialists [The Anthropological Principle in Philosophy 1860]. NGC was a follower of Feuerbach who was, in NGC's own words, "the culmination of German philosophy, which --- having now for the first time achieved positive solutions --- has abandoned its former scholastic type of metaphysical transcendentalism and, admitting that its own results has merged with the general theory of natural science and anthropology." For NGC, practice was the source of truth, it was "that immutable touchstone of all theory." In 1855 he wrote The Aesthetic Relation of Art to Reality in which he declared "beauty is life" meaning "what is of general interest in life --- that is the content of art." [All quotes are from NGC's works.] Art should look to the real world and portray it and "pass judgment on its manifestations." In his 1857 work Lessing: His Time, Life, and Work, he maintained that "the principal motive force of historical development" could in certain historical situations be literature. While NGC was a pre-Marxist revolutionary, he did hold that "intellectual development, like development in any other area, including the political, depends on economic circumstances." In 1861 he wrote a study called Essays on Political Economy (According to Mill in which he attacked the bourgeoisie, developed his own economic theory which he called "theory of the working people" which stated "the need to replace the present economic system with a communist one." NGC held that with socialism, "the separate classes of hired worker and employer will disappear, being replaced by a single class of people who will be workers and managers at the same time." NGC, being a pre-Marxist as I said, thought that Russia would be able to skip over the stage of capitalism and build socialism directly based on peasant communes. The GSE says that he, along with A. Herzen (1812-1870) was the founder of Narodnichestvo (the Narodnicks), also known as populism. The Russian government persecuted NGC from the early 60s to the end of his life by imprisoning him (seven years at hard labor) and placing him in internal exile for his writings and ideas. His 1862 novel, What is to be Done was read by Lenin who used the title for one of his most important early works. Lenin had great respect for NGC and said that he was the only high level philosophical materialist in Russia from the 1850s up to 1888. Well, if you have persevered thus far you have finally finished this series. Finis coronat opus AuthorThomas Riggins is a retired philosophy teacher (NYU, The New School of Social Research, among others) who received a PhD from the CUNY Graduate Center (1983). He has been active in the civil rights and peace movements since the 1960s when he was chairman of the Young People's Socialist League at Florida State University and also worked for CORE in voter registration in north Florida (Leon County). He has written for many online publications such as People's World and Political Affairs where he was an associate editor. He also served on the board of the Bertrand Russell Society and was president of the Corliss Lamont chapter in New York City of the American Humanist Association.
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1/5/2022 V. I. Lenin - Materialism & Empirio-Criticism. Commentary and Analysis (22/23). By: Thomas RigginsRead Now CHAPTER SIX: EMPIRIO-CRITICISM AND HISTORICAL MATERIALISM -SECTION FOUR: PARTIES IN PHILOSOPHY AND PHILOSOPHICAL BLOCKHEADS Lenin will now discuss Machism and religion. He reminds us that there are two basic trends in philosophy: materialism and idealism and that the basic question between these two great camps revolves around the question of the priority or matter over mind or vice versa. Lenin opposes all attempts to blur this twofold division within philosophy by the invention of a "third way" that tries to squirm around these two schools. The greatness of Marx, according to Lenin, was his "insistence upon materialism and contemptuous derision of all obscurity, of all confusion and all deviations towards idealism.” Engels also followed this path both before and after the death of Marx. Engels opposed the neo-Kantians, the positivists and Machists as well as the Humeans. Speaking about Engels' views on Thomas Huxley, Lenin wrote, "That 'positivism' and that 'realism' which attracted, and which continue to attract, an infinite number of muddleheads, Engels declared to be at best a Philistine method of smuggling in materialism while publicly abusing and disavowing it." Lenin asks, if Engels said that about Huxley, "a very great scientist", what would he say about today's [1908] muddleheads? We still have such muddleheads in our movement in the 21st century I might add. Lenin answers his own question by writing, "they are a contemptible middle party in philosophy, who confuse the materialist and idealist trends on every question." They produce nothing but "conciliatory quackery." This quackery is also used by religion to gain respectability. By and large religion is the great ally of reaction and bourgeois domination. Today there are some exceptions, i.e., religious leaders with progressive outlooks (the late Archbishop Tutu, for example, Dr. King, also)- but these individuals appeal to our consciences and feeling for justice, they are exceptions to the rule and the role of religion remains primarily negative and a major source of obscurantism and human oppression. Lenin quotes J. Dietzgen: "The materialist theory of Knowledge is 'a universal weapon against religious belief' and not only against the 'notorious, formal and common religion of the priests, but also against the most refined, elevated professorial religion of muddled idealists'" So,it appears it was from Dietzgen that Lenin picked up "muddle- heads" an expression he is overly fond of using. Lenin appears to think that one of the functions of Marxist journalism and writing is to disabuse the public of any faith in faith. Lenin agrees that Ostwald, and Mach, and Poincaré and all the others (almost) are important scientists making contributions to physics, chemistry, history, etc., but they cannot “be trusted one iota when it comes to philosophy." Nor can they be trusted in political science, outside of "factual and specialised investigations." This is because both philosophy and political science are, in our society, partisan endeavors. Lenin adds an interesting footnote at this point about another "reactionary bourgeois philosophy"-- one we still have with us-- namely, pragmatism. Lenin got hold of William James (1842-1910) Pragmatism, A New Name For Some Old Ways Of Thnking, published in 1907, and was not impressed. "Pragmatism ridicules the metaphysics both of materialism and idealism, acclaims experience 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 science is not an 'absolute copy of reality' and ... successfully deduces from all this a God for practical purposes, and only for practical purposes, without any metaphysics, and without transcending the bounds of experience." This is not very different from Machism, according to Lenin, and is similar to Bogdanov's view, especially with regards to James' definition of "Truth"-- i.e., "a class-name for all sorts of definite working values in experience." So what is "the task of Marxists" when confronted with all this anti-materialist literature? It is to take what is worthwhile from bourgeois thought and shape it in conformity with Marxism. Lenin tells us we can make no progress in our thinking about "new economic phenomena" (but other areas of knowledge are also meant) unless we make use "of the works" of the bourgeois intellectuals. So one task is to study them and not just our own people. The second task is to enrich dialectical and historical materialism with the valid information gained. We should not revise Marxism to be in accord with bourgeois thought. Lenin uses Lunacharsky as an example of a Marxist who has allowed himself to be tainted by the influence of Machism to such an extent that he entertains notions derived from religion (shudder). Some of Lunacharsky's statements: he speaks of the "deification of the higher human potentialities" and mentions "religious atheism" and "scientific socialism in its religious significance" and even writes "For a long time a new religion has been maturing within me." Lenin doesn't go for this. [I note that around this time the British philosopher Bertrand Russell was talking about (German) Social Democracy as a form of religion. Russell, however, meant social democrats acted like religious people in their behavior (in his opinion) believing things based on faith in their movement and blindly following leaders and living a particular lifestyle. Cults of personality had not yet developed.] Lenin says, "this attitude [is] in no way like that of Marx, Engels, J. Dietzgen and even Feuerbach, but is the very opposite” Lenin is not at all neutral on this issue. "The neutrality of a philosopher in the question is in itself servility to [religion]." And: "Once you deny objective reality given us in sensation, you have already lost every weapon against [religion]." Lenin says that Lunacharsky's mixing up of religious and Marxist categories is "shameful." Lenin is totally opposed to piecemeal Marxism, of taking some parts of the theory and ignoring others. It is true the Marxism is a guide to action and not a dogma, but it is a unified theory in which every doctrine is logically implied by and logically implies every other. You cannot, for example, reject the dictatorship of the proletariat on the one hand and on the other speak sensibly about class struggle and its outcome. "A single claw ensnared and the bird is lost," Lenin writes. Idealism and religious chatter a la Bogdanov, Lunacharsky, Yushkevich, etc., "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." Next Up: Stay tuned for the thrilling conclusion of MATERIALISM AND EMPIRIO-CRITICISM starting with Chapter 6 Section 5 "Ernst Haeckel and Ernst Mach". AuthorThomas Riggins is a retired philosophy teacher (NYU, The New School of Social Research, among others) who received a PhD from the CUNY Graduate Center (1983). He has been active in the civil rights and peace movements since the 1960s when he was chairman of the Young People's Socialist League at Florida State University and also worked for CORE in voter registration in north Florida (Leon County). He has written for many online publications such as People's World and Political Affairs where he was an associate editor. He also served on the board of the Bertrand Russell Society and was president of the Corliss Lamont chapter in New York City of the American Humanist Association. 1/3/2022 V. I. Lenin - Materialism & Empirio-Criticism. Commentary and Analysis (21/23). By: Thomas RigginsRead Now CHAPTER SIX: EMPIRIO-CRITICISM AND HISTORICAL MATERIALISM The Russian Machists comprise two groups. The first is made up of conservatives and reactionaries grouped around V. Chernov (already discussed), and the other group is made up of "would be Marxists" who think they can harmonize the philosophy of Avenarius and Mach with that of Marx and Engels. Lenin, in this chapter, will show that this is a hopeless task. SECTION ONE: THE EXCURSIONS OF THE GERMAN EMPIRIO-CRITICISTS INTO THE FIELD OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES Lenin begins by discussing an 1895 article by a disciple of Avenarius named Franz Blei [1871-1942], "Metaphysics in Political Economy." Among other things the article maintains that Marxism is metaphysical because of its belief in "materialism" and "objective" truth and "that there was indeed nothing behind the Marxist teaching save the 'subjective' views of Marx." Lenin has no doubt that the party members, remember Bogdanov was a Bolshevik leader, flirting with Machism will reject Blei's version of Marxism. But, says Lenin, "You must not blame the mirror for showing a crooked face." Blie gives a true reflection of the social views of his movement. Rejecting his views would show the "good intentions" of the Russian "Marxist" Machists, but would show even better "their absurd eclectical endeavors to combine Marx and Avenarius." The next Machist Lenin looks at is Petzoldt, whom we have seen before. He has a philosophy of "stability" which is based on "human nature." The tendency is for humanity to attain a state of "stability." This conflict free state will come about on its own by the operations of human nature. It cannot be brought about by socialism. But "moral progress" towards this stability and equality can be seen in our [1908] time. Wages are going up for workers and profits are going down, and there is the foundation of the Salvation Army (!) all of which is evidence for Petzoldt's views! Lenin says this is just "hackneyed rubbish" and represents not a scientific understanding of social science but the "infinite stupidity of the philistine." Now it is time to look at the Russian Machists. SECTION TWO: HOW BOGDANOV CORRECTS AND "DEVELOPS" MARX Bogdanov wrote an article in 1902 in which he quotes the famous passage from Marx's introduction to Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy about consciousness being a reflection of material reality. Bogdanov then concludes, “Social being and social consciousness are, in the exact meaning of these terms, identical." Lenin thinks this is nonsense. In complex societies, and especially in capitalism, people are not conscious of their social being. Thomas Frank's book, What is the Matter with Kansas, is an example of that. What Marx says is that social consciousness reflects social being. But just what does this mean? Lenin says, "A reflection may be an approximately true copy of the reflected, but to speak of identity is absurd. Consciousness in general reflects being-- that is a general thesis of all materialism." I hate to say it, but there seems to be a problem with this formulation. Does it account for false consciousness? Working people voting for Republicans, or even Democrats for that matter, are not manifesting a consciousness that reflects their actual social being as cogs in the capitalist machine. What is the distorting mechanism and how does it supervene to block even an "approximately true copy of the reflected"? At any rate, Bogdanov is certainly wrong to be talking about an identity relation between reality and its reflection. Lenin says Bogdanov's formulation is based on the idealism inherent in the Machist position that outer reality is the same as the sensations we have of it: that outer reality is in fact sensation. "Sense-perception is the reality existing outside us" as Bazarov puts it. Bogdanov wants to be a good Marxist; Lenin says Bogdanov minus Machism "is a Marxist," but is hampered by his idealist deviations. With regard to Machism: "If certain people reconcile it with Marxism, with Marxist behaviour, we must admit that these people are better than their theory, but we must not justify outrageous theoretical distortions of Marxism." Social production was complex in Marx's day and is even more complex today. Actions of producers in Iowa can have effects on people in Africa. The world economy of capitalism is so vast and interconnected that no one can know all that is going on. Even "seventy Marxes," Lenin says, could not grasp it. But Marx has discovered the objective laws that govern the development of capitalism, and this is the most important thing. Once we understand this we understand "the highest task of humanity." And what is this task? It is to understand these objective laws, Lenin says "to comprehend this objective logic of economic evolution," so that we conform our social consciousness to this logic and the social consciousness "of the advanced classes of all capitalist countries." This is a task, I fear, we are woefully deficient at in the present social environment of capitalism. Bogdanov and the Russian Marxists did not contribute to this task when they, whatever their good intentions, mixed up reactionary bourgeois idealism with Marxism. Historical materialism sees social being (here the capitalist process) as independent of human consciousness which reflects it with greater or lesser precision. The philosophy of Marx and Engels "is cast from a single piece of steel, you cannot eliminate one basic premise, one essential part, without departing from objective truth, without falling prey to bourgeois-reactionary falsehood." Is this too strong a statement? Is Lenin too fundamentalist? Or is this correct and far too many so-called Marxists, even in our own day, have fallen into a similar stance as that of Bogdanov? I don't mean being "Machist" but are they eliminating a fundamental pillar of Marxism (the dictatorship of the proletariat, the labor aristocracy, class struggle, democratic centralism, internationalism, etc.,) and expecting the house to remain standing? Bogdanov's desire to "update" Marxism is not based on any real empirical analysis of the facts. In fact, Lenin says, he "is not engaged in a Marxist enquiry at all; all he is doing is to reclothe results already obtained by this enquiry in a biological and energeticist terminology. The whole attempt is worthless from beginning to end...." At the close of this section Lenin makes some interesting comments about Marx and Engels that are certainly relevant today. He says that for Marx "the transfer of biological concepts in general to the sphere of the social sciences is phrase-mongering.” This is certainly true of social Darwinism, but what about modern attempts to do this? Has science advanced to where this is no longer phrase-mongering? I am thinking of sociobiology, evolutionary psychology and neuroscientific explanations being applied to the social sciences. While Lenin has spent most of the time in MEC discussing epistemology, he nevertheless says that, as Marx and Engels transcended Feuerbach, they emphasized not materialist epistemology (which they certainly believed in) but rather "the materialist conception of history." He says they put the stress "rather on dialectical materialism than on dialectical materialism and insisted on historical materialism rather than on historical materialism.” The Russian Machists have been confused by their embracement of empirio-criticism which is more interested in spreading an idealistic form of epistemology than it is in thinking seriously about the problems of historical materialism. This leads to the falsification of Marxism by non-materialist doctrines and is also a "characteristic feature of modern revisionism in political economy, in questions of tactics [especially in a possible tendency to confuse tactics and strategy--tr] and in philosophy generally, equally in epistemology and in sociology." SECTION THREE: SUVOROV'S "FOUNDATIONS OF SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY" This section is about an essay by S. A. Suvorov that appeared in the collection Studies 'in' the Philosophy of Marxism which book we have discussed before. Lenin heaps scorn on Suvorov for making up new terms for already existing aspects of historical materialism developed by Marx, and using biological examples to try and illustrate social phenomena. Suvorov would be making what today we call a "category mistake." Suvorov's essay is so out of date and behind the times we need not spend any more time on it. The book it appeared in was a collection by all of the usual Russian Machist suspects and elicited from Lenin the comment that "we arrive at the inevitable conclusion that there is an inseparable connection between reactionary epistemology and reactionary efforts in sociology." Next Up: Section 4 of this chapter. AuthorThomas Riggins is a retired philosophy teacher (NYU, The New School of Social Research, among others) who received a PhD from the CUNY Graduate Center (1983). He has been active in the civil rights and peace movements since the 1960s when he was chairman of the Young People's Socialist League at Florida State University and also worked for CORE in voter registration in north Florida (Leon County). He has written for many online publications such as People's World and Political Affairs where he was an associate editor. He also served on the board of the Bertrand Russell Society and was president of the Corliss Lamont chapter in New York City of the American Humanist Association. |
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